[freeciv-ai] Re: omniscience problem

[Mike Kaufman <kaufman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, Apr 08, 2003 at 09:14:34PM +0000, Per I. Mathisen wrote:
> The AI is omniscient and makes decisions based on this. This includes
> where to build cities. However, workers, even an AI's workers, cannot be
> placed on unknown territory. This presents a problem. Sometimes the AI
> places a city on a really great spot, but since much of it is unknown, it
> stagnates. An entire AI nation can grind to a halt this way.
> 
> One obvious solution is to allow the AI to place workers on unknown tiles.
> This solution may break clients watching the AI, however. Sure would wreak
> havoc on CMA.
> 
> I am tempted to go for a more radical solution. Now that we have /away, we
> can reveal the entire map for omniscient AIs. This way those of us who
> watch AIs, can see what AIs see, which is very useful.

NOOOOOOOOO! This  is  the  wrong  direction....

We want to work toward removing omniscience not finding new and improved
ways of manipulating it. Also, this is dumb. What if a human wants to take
an AI player. He all of a sudden gets to see the whole map? Improve the
exploring code instead. I could come up with a dozen reasons why this is 
a bad idea, but I leave it here.

-mike