[freeciv-ai] Re: RFC: Behaviour constants.

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

On Wed, 4 Dec 2002, Gregory Berkolaiko wrote:
> How can we improve AI without going too deep?
>
> This is a legitimate question, and an answer to it is given by various
> constants and factors and multipliers that the AI code is peppered with.
> Examples are: what is considered to be a small nation (number of cities)
> -- used to encourage settler building; what is the default danger for
> capital; what is food/shield weighting etc.
>
> Some of these numbers are defines, some are just plain numbers.What I
> propose is to collect them all in some .h file included in all AI files,
> so they can be tweaked in a systematic way.Then tweak them and run
> pitfights, lots of them.There ar, of course difficulties like "constant
> is constant for all nations", but they are solvable.

I think this is the wrong answer. We can tune the AI a lot to a bunch of
constants, but the moment we change the rules or use a modpack, these
constants will be way off. Better teach the AI to utilize the rules
better. Better attack code, better ferry code, better settler code and
better production code is much more of an improvement in the long run than
even a 50% improvement in pitfight stats due to tuning of constants.

  - Per