[freeciv-ai] Re: player's view on ai

[Christian Knoke <chrisk@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Sun, Mar 20, 2005 at 02:50:58PM +0000, Per Inge Mathisen wrote:
> On Wed, 16 Mar 2005, Christian Knoke wrote:

> > AI fight at each other when they are equally strong. I don't.
> >
> > Maybe AI should only attack if/when:
> >
> > 1) it has a military signifant plus of technologies
> >
> > 2) has it's units updated to that tech level
> >
> > If 1 or 2 is not true, it should only attack if there is no possibility to
> > develop by means of expansion, infrastructure, or research.
> 
> Perhaps good ideas, but need fleshing out more.


> What if the AI never develops superior technology?

It does not attack. It tries to expand, grow, build infrastructure.

> It would never attack?

Yes. As long as it can do something else.

> That would be boring.

Kind of. Right now, it's attacks are *ridiculous* most of the time.

This is not because they perform the attack badly (they do), but because the
are trying battles they cannot win, e.g. putting a single cannon in front of
my city which contains an alpine troops. While they are on 'hard' level they
should really know better..

> It may be more fun to be continually bothered by the AI - more challenge
> throughout the game, instead of all being squeezed into one huge attack.

Ok. Maybe introduce a SAF option? Read Stupid Aggressiveness Factor.

> What if another player is expanding faster? Harassing him with a few fast
> units might be a way to stall him. The AI does that a lot against me and
> I find it quite annoying ;) But this is mostly when we start on the same
> continent.

Yes, this is a good thing and should stay! But at a certain point the AI
should stop that.

Whats even good is cruising with ships and shot settlers. It should stop
when it looses too much.

> Finding out how well we can expand is not easy the way the code is written
> now.
> 
> What I can do is to make the AI not declare war while it is still
> expanding. However, this will only make it very easy to derail the AI by
> declaring war on it to make it slow its expansion.

Being in war != attacking. Only attack if you will win. This is Sun Tsu I
think ;)

Christian

-- 
Christian Knoke            * * *            http://cknoke.de
* * * * * * * * *  Ceterum censeo Microsoft esse dividendum.