[freeciv-ai] Re: better easy mode

[Gregory Berkolaiko <Gregory.Berkolaiko@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I didn't test the patch, but I found the bug!!

The problem is that minimap gets flooded.
Here is the scenario of the tragedy:
1. Unit finds itself a nice spot to colonize, reserves it (and surrounding 
territory) on the minimap.
2. Starts to go there, but then decides to do improvements instead (mostly 
because of ai_fuzzy around settlers.c:1267)
3. But the (imaginary) city isn't removed from the minimap (so blocks 
construction of other cities around the site).

Note that if you save/load the game, the settlers start moving again 
(minimap is flushed by generate_minimap).

Removal of ai_fuzzy will probably prevent bug from showing explicitly, 
but it can still happen, I am sure.

Proper solutions might be:
1. Flushing minimap each turn (has it's cons).
2. Wrapping each change of ai.ai_role and if it changes from 
AIUNIT_BUILD_CITY, tidy up the minimap (better IMO).

The current patch should still be considered for the S branch though.

G.

On Tue, 29 Oct 2002, Per I. Mathisen wrote:

> Here follows a fix for my fix for the settlers problem in easy mode,
> included with the aforementioned fix.
> 
> Or in other words, here is my settlersfixv2 patch with some changes that
> make the AI "easy" again but without the pathological behaviour. I changed
> the expansionism variable from 30 to 10 (ie 90% reduction of city building
> want), since otherwise the want for cities would be so great the
> expansionism variable simply wouldn't matter. I also changed the behaviour
> of huts for easy AIs, because the biggest threat to a newbie player are
> those early legions/chariots the AI can get and that the newbie is
> chanceless against. Now "easy" AI only gets gold from huts.
> 
> I've watched several games with this and they seemed fine. The AI builds
> as many settlers as before, but uses them to build land improvements
> before building cities. The settlers aren't ever idle. This makes it look
> like the AI is "doing" a lot while it really wastes a lot of time, which
> is good. (Nothing is less satisfactory than beating an AI you can easily
> see is totally lobotomized.)
> 
> Please test and review for S1_14 inclusion.
> 
>   - Per
>