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

[Tony Stuckey <stuckey@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, Jan 28, 2000 at 10:15:24AM +0100, Arkadiusz Danilecki wrote:
>       I finally had finished read archives of freeciv-dev for 1999/2000.
> I have some new ideas, which i will post in another mail, and i saw
> discussion about AIs. 
>       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.
> 
> 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 absolutely disagree.  I beleive that a competitive, non-cheating
AI can be made.  You start with 1/3 to 1/14 of the resources in the game.
Simple cooperation on the part of other players can prevent any single
player from winning.
        The problem is that historically, such a massive antagonistic
mindset has been declared "no fun".  Making a *FUN* non-cheating AI may in
fact be impossible.

> 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? 

        They click 3 buttons to set the AI difficulty level and
preferences.

> 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. 

        Real-time AI is harder but not impossible.  The big point with real
time is that it's not a part of the Civ experience.

> 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..

        Most turn-based games have found that players are willing to let
the AI think for only a minute or so before they get fidgety.  This is
another reason why mature AIs have never appeared.
        Using thread-like behavior to think while the player is moving may
or may not provide useful results.

> 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.  

        The only drawback is that it will have to be very speculative.
Otherwise, it's guaranteed to have no more information than a human player
would have had.
-- 
Anthony J. Stuckey                              stuckey@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
"And they said work hard, and die suddenly, because it's fun."
        -Robyn Hitchcock.