[Freeciv-Dev] Re: ai colonization ability

[Tony Stuckey <stuckey@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, Jun 25, 2001 at 03:19:26PM +0200, Martin Hinsch wrote:
> I just played a game with land percentage set to 20 and a 120x75 size map 
> (this
> produces a map with many scattered islands of medium size (2-5 cities) and
> a few big ones).
> There were five ai players all of them set to normal strength. In addition
> research cost was set to 20.
> I was really surprised when I saw that the AI was quite slow in colonizing the
> islands. I'm not a good player, nevertheless at 1600 AD I owned about the half
> of the available land mass. Also at this time there were still several empty
> islands.
> Could this effect point to a general weakness in the AI? Or is it just related
> to the non-standard parameters and the low ai-strength setting?
> If someone could tell me where to look at, I will browse the code to find out
> myself.

        Probably.
        The AI does not understand trireme loss percentages.  It makes no
effort to protect them from being lost at sea.
        The AI ferryboat code is blatantly stupid.
        The building values are screwed -- Wonders and Capitalization are
far overvalued early on in the game.  The computer will frequently take 60
turns building the Great Library starting in 3500 BC, thus ensuring that it
is so far behind on expansion that it loses the game quickly.
        The AI makes no calculation of map size versus explored area, and
so does not understand Archipelago style maps.

        The last two of these are on my "A" list to fix, but if you beat me
to it, go right ahead.
--
Anthony J. Stuckey                              stuckey@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
"And they said work hard, and die suddenly, because it's fun."
        -Robyn Hitchcock.