[freeciv-ai] Re: general report about a single player game with 15 AIs

[Per Inge Mathisen <per@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, 7 Feb 2005, Lo'oris wrote:
> I played a single player game with 15 AIs, and this is a general report
> on how they did behave. I hope it will be useful (well Per said it
> could).

It is :)

> +++ PEACE +++
> I played peacefully while every AI was doing war with at least 3
> opponents. It was very easy not to do war, since they all asked for
> cease fire and peace treaty soon after they met me. Even if i was so
> inferior to them (no more than one lame defense unit, even in big
> cities) that they could crash me in 2 turns.

I think this needs to be improved, so that the AIs will try to estimate
potential gain from waging war when evaluating war wants. Defense power
divided by the number of cities would be a good measure, perhaps. I know
the AI in Moo2 does this, and it makes it worthwhile to upkeep a dummy
army even though you have no need for it ;)

> +++ TECH +++
> First thing to be noted, is the tech level: i was far more advanced
> then any AI except one. I suppose that this is only partly caused by my
> peaceful status... and the main problems are tech exchanges. I could
> trade technology with every other player

Hopefully Mateusz has fixed this.

> +++ ALLIANCE +++
> It was already strange that everybody was willing to be in peace with
> me, even when i was weaker both in military and in science... but it
> was even more strange to see how easily they proposed alliances. I got
> something like at least one proposal per turn, from anybody. They were
> really eager to get more allies.

I agree this happens too quickly.

> Do they understand that the game is won by a single player? I think they
> don't.

We have introduced 'allied victory' in the game, and the AI will attempt
to achieve this.

> I personally thought an alliance is a very important and dangerous
> thing, and i would not intend to be allied with more than one player at
> once.They instead created two great blocks of alliances, something "the
> axis and the allies". Sounds weird to me.

This is intentional. How smart it is, is another question.

> +++ SIXTH SENSE +++
> I very appreciated one thing in particular: i was preparing to do war
> to on an opponed that "peacefully colonized" myown island. So i
> created lots of units, fortifications, etc. They noticed this, and
> their attitude to me became "Uneasy". Unfortunatly they were not
> willing or not able to protect those cities, even if they had plenty of
> time.

The AI is stupid. What can I say.

> +++ VARIETY +++
> Unfortunatly i found it very frustrating to play a game with 15
> opponents that thought exactly in the same way. I think that having
> different behaviours for different AI players, would be the most
> important improvement that freeciv could do.

In what ways should the AIs be different? Which is more important?
Diplomacy? Units built?

  - Per