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

[Jules Bean <jmlb2@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, 28 Jan 2000, Mike Jing wrote:
> 
> >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.
> 

I don't like cheating.

Instead, use a handicap.

If the AI is cheating, then I find it hard to play against because I don't
understand the rules it's playing by.  One of the things that annoyed me
about payciv.  The AI should play by the same rules.

However, if the AI needs an advantage, give it a handicap on hard levels,
and make this explicit.  Then human players can also use handicaps if they
want to.  Possible handicaps would be: a bonus to research rate, a bonus
to battles, etc.

OK, the difference between cheating and a handicap is semantic.  But the
handicap is more out-in-the-open, and should also lead to an enjoyable
game.

> 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.

With handicaps, you could give them to the client-side AIs if you wanted
to.


> >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.

Yes.  But this is totally irrelevant to the issue of making things
separate executables.  It just means that civclient needs to be taught to
run civserver itself, if necessary.

Jules

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