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

[Arkadiusz Danilecki <szopen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, 28 Jan 2000, Jules Bean wrote:

A.D.Danilecki wrote: 
> > >1) AI should cheat. Yes, it should. Unless someone create

> I don't like cheating.

        I don't like cheating too, but i like long hard games, and it is
hard for such a game with freciv AI

> Instead, use a handicap.

        Handicap can's be used instead. If ai is stupid, it will play
stupid no matter how big advantage it gets at beginning. When it can
cheat, it can at least try be equal opponent to human players.
        When i think about cheating, i think more about knowledge about
map etc. not breaking all rules.

> 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.

        server option cheat off? :)

> 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.

        I'm not so sure.

> > >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?
> 
> 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.
> 

i can agree with this. So, instead of having two processes on my poor k166
i will have 16 processes. Hm. No overhead right?

A.D.Danilecki "szopen"