[freeciv-ai] Re: active ai diplomats

["Per I. Mathisen" <per@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sun, 1 Sep 2002, Gregory Berkolaiko wrote:
> Yes, true...People complain...  But I think the right answer to their
> complaintswould be to make easy's expansion even slower rather than make
> it complitely incapable of employing diplomats.After all, these
> diplomats would appear only if the human player started using them first.

Ok.

> BTW, your valuation of city bribing seems a little arbitrary to me.I see
> several ways to evaluate this:

It may be "arbitrary", but it is also simple, doesn't invite bugs and
works pretty well in practice, IMHO.

> 1. Assuming (in the spirit of Civ strategy) that we want this city no
> matter what, estimate the number of military units we would need to build
> to get it and compare their cost to the cost of diplo + bribe.

This is a possibility, and better since it evaluates military benefits,
which is what really should be doing, but it sounds rather complex. Can
you show me in pseudocode how you would accomplish this?

> 2. Consider this as an investment and then use the amortization technique.
> I can spin a pseudo-scientific argument for this formula:
>         gain_incite = ((acity->tax_total + acity->science_total) *MORT
>                        - acity->incite_revolt_cost) * TRADE_WEIGHTING;
> This is done assuming that the city is self-sustainable and it's
> tax/science output will remain the same and also the rate of inflation is
> 4.3%

War isn't an investment. That won't work well in practice, I'm afraid.

> 3. A thourough appraisal of the city taking into account all defences,
> buildings and wonders, something that would be basis for diplomacy-based
> trading of the cities.

This is just an improvement over what I've done. So I'm in favour of this
one ;)

Yes, defences should probably be added to the equation somehow. I just
don't know how.

Yours
Per

"I don't see why people are so upset about cloning sheep. American
television networks have been doing that to their audiences for years."
-- Jello Biafra