[Freeciv-Dev] Re: more ai levels

[Tony Stuckey <stuckey@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, Feb 23, 2000 at 02:49:45PM -0200, Lalo Martins wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 23, 2000 at 08:15:03AM -0800, Andy Lubbers wrote:
> > One thing I remember from Civ 2 was that the
> > easiest difficulty level was _really_ easy.  I
> > think that for introductory players, it would be
> > a good idea to have more range in the levels of
> > AI, so that they don't get whomped on before 1000
> > BC.  And having more levels would make for an
> > easier learning curve to develop advanced
> > techniques and strategies.
> 
> This has been discussed a lot of times before (most of them by
> me, actually).
> 
> In short, what happens is that we don't know what more to do to
> make easy easy :-) Everyone is invited to read the AI code and
> submit patches for a ``veryeasy'' AI.
> 
> (Myself, I can't beat ``easy'' if my life depends on it.)

        Sure we do.  Limit the AI to one city, and have it establish trade
routes with the human players.  Maybe even re-introduce the bug that AI
Settlers were improving territory within human city boundaries.
        I find it hard to beleive that the AI could produce a dominating
military force or science advance machine with this kind of limited base.
        My experience is that with only one city the AI researches maybe 20
advances before the game ends in 2000.

        Another option is to finish the Alliances code, and have the AI
declare Peace towards any human players until the human sneak attacks.

        Both of these would be easier than the current "easy" AI.

        It's a simple fact of the game that isn't obvious to new players.
You put your entire industrial base into Settlers until you have no space
to expand to.  This is one thing the AI does right.
        Unfortunately, the code for determining
is_ai_in_initial_expansion() is broken, and not used anyway.
-- 
Anthony J. Stuckey                              stuckey@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
"And they said work hard, and die suddenly, because it's fun."
        -Robyn Hitchcock.