[freeciv-ai] Re: (PR#3663) [PATCH] The AI gets tech too quickly at the easy level

["Gregory Berkolaiko" <Gregory.Berkolaiko@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sun, 9 Mar 2003, Anthony J. Stuckey wrote:

> On Sat, Mar 08, 2003 at 04:49:32PM -0800, Gregory Berkolaiko wrote:
> > I would ask you to listen to "recreational" players, whose opinions are 
> > contained in Sam's email and the link he gives.  
> 
>       I read both, and far more besides.

Reading is not the same as listening.

> > Yes, Diplomacy with non-attacking AIs will make _survival_ trivial.  But
> > it won't make winning easier: once provoked, the AI will come down on the
> > newbie player like an avalanche, with all it's tech advantage.  If not
> > provoked, the AI will just blast off to space in 1775.
> 
>       With survival "assured", there will be far less pressure and more time
> for learning the game.  I believe that people will learn to beat the Easy
> AI relatively quickly.

When I played Civ I for the very first time, I (as a Prince) built what I
perceived to be a neat historic empire, of 5 cities.  I was in peace with
my neighbours until I decided to get a city off them.  I built an "army"
of 3 or so units.  After my attack my army was massacred and the AI
clamped down on me with quite some vigour.  This experience put me off
completely.  I did not play Civ again until about 5 years later (not
necessarily a bad thing of course :)

5 years later I was less pretentious and set the level to warlord, managed 
to get a couple of cities of my rather peaceful neighbours and noticed 
that more cities I have, better the units I can build.  Then I read 
Civilopedia and eventually grew to kick AI at Deity.

The point is, to learn you need to win at least once (or to read the
strategy guides).  Survival alone, as a puny empire of 3 cities, won't
teach you a thing.

> > The appeal of Sam's proposal is that this handicap can be tuned and graded
> > very easily.  It's not a dichotomy like "omniscient or stumbling in the
> > dark".
> 
>       And is apparently less invasive than tuning TRADE_WANT.  Color me
> unimpressed.

I thought about it.  The difference is that with Sam's handicap, part of
the trade goes to waste.  With lower TRADE_WANT, part of the trade gets
converted into food and production.  I cannot predict the results of these
just looking at the code.

It might work though.  And it's a good thing to make unfixed, some other 
values might make AI tougher.  So a patch to convert it into 
level-dependent (until we create per-player option-setting) set of 
variables is certainly welcome.  Lots of testing is welcome too 
:)

G.