[Freeciv-Dev] Re: Why client-side AI could be a Bad Thing

["Mike Jing" <miky40@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, 28 Jan 2000, Arkadiusz Danilecki wrote:
>         It seems that evverybody agreed that AI should be
> client-side. This is nice idea with many pluses, but it alsow
> has some drawbacks, and some of them are quite significant, i
> think.
As I understand it, server-side AI will NOT be abandoned.  Client-side AI 
will be an addition with a different purpose, i.e. it just provides 
facilities for users to create their own AI player or "helper" through the 
use of a scripting language.  It will NOT be a replacement for server-side 
AI.  Therefore, most of your worries below are unfounded.
> 1) AI should cheat. Yes, it should. Unless someone create
> really clever AI, it will have no chances without cheating
> wwith opponents. And i think it is really hard implement
> cheating AI without overhead if it will be on client-side,
> without access to server data.
I tend to agree on this one.  The biggest disadvantage of the AI is the lack 
of an overall strategy, i.e. it doesn't have an eye for the "big picture".  
Therefore, the AI "need" to cheat in order to compete with a good human 
player, as it is doing now on the "hard" level.
The way it is envisioned, I think, is that the client-AI should behave no 
differetly from a human player, as far as its communication with the server 
is concerned.  Therefore, cheating will not be possible for client-side AI.  
Tough luck.
> 2) Performance. If they will be client-side and communicate
> via network, it will cause some unnecessery overhead. If it
> will be separate process, it will cause overhead too. The
> only way to efficiently implement client-side AI will be i
> thinkwith using threads, but i am not sure if it will be then
> easy portable to platforms without native threads .
Since server-side AI will continue to be used for regular games, this is not 
an issue.
> 3)I have experience with newbies to freeciv and i see that
> they are sometimes terrfied when they had to type civserver
> and manually create AI. Half of them resign from game, saying
> it is too complicated, Imagine what will happened if they had
> to create AIat client side?
Ditto.

> 4) Real-time AI. Hm. If u can make ai thinking in real time,
> it will be cool, but i think it could be too difficult. Lets
> imagine AI is coutnig which towns are safe. Situation has
> changedm it starts again. Situation has changedm it starts
> again. Etc Etc. I am not sure if it will cause That AI will
> be able to move only when all players finish move.
This is certainly a hard problem for the client-side AI, or any AI, for that 
matter -- a good Turing test.  ;-)
> 5) I don't know what about you, but i hate to wait for others
> players, when i finished my turn. With client-side no-real
> time playing through network AI it will last even longer.
> Timeouts for AIs? Bue..
Again, this is not a problem for server-side AI.  And beacuse client-side AI 
is treated just like a human player by the server, no problem for it either.
> 6) Some of the reasons for moving ai to client side can be
> implemented also on server-side AI. Different algorithms for
> different ai? Compare old AI with new AI? No problem. sth
> like void *(algorithm*)(void) and void set_ai_alg().
And again, we are not really moving...

> I understand of course that client-side AI will had many
> pluses : clear code, no redundancy of some code etc. But i
> think important thing is realise that it will have drawbacks.
You made your point...

Mike


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