[Freeciv-Dev] Re: freeciv feedback

[Martin Olveyra <molv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 2001.11.24 22:18 Kenn Munro wrote:
> I've been playing Freeciv for a year, and never knew that the middle
> mouse button did anything.  Quite useful.  Suppose I should take a look
> through the Help and see what else I'm missing. :o
> 
> I think the area of biggest need for improvement is the AI. 
> Specifically, it should be smarter and able to do diplomacy.  When I
> first started playing Freeciv, after coming from Civ1/2, that was the
> only disappointment: that I had to always be at war with the AI.  Now
> that I'm a better player, I'd also like the AI to be more challenging.
> 
> I've recently started looking through the AI code, and hopefully will be
> able to offer some specific recommendations for improvements sometime in
> the future.
> 
> Questions: Now that Civ3 is out, when/how will Freeciv start to adopt
> the new rules?  Will it be gradually, or most-at-once?  Perhaps it would
> be better to start the Civ3 rules before drastic changes were made to
> the current Freeciv AI.  I see on the roadmap that better Civ2
> compatibility comes before Civ3, but a lot of the work required for Civ2
> compatibility would have to be re-done once the change to Civ3 rules was
> made.
> 

I think it is a bad idea to follow the commercial civ changes.
First of all, if we do that, we will never reach a perfect code.
Second, why follow other people ideas? This community has different ideas
and approaches about how the game could be.
Third, and I agree with you, the most important thing that must be done is
a very high improvement of the AI. And this is the more difficult part. The
AI programming is an extense technic and theory by itself. It is not enough
to programm a given reaction to a given situation. The AI must have
variability (fuzzy logic?), must think at large (strategic) scale, and must
be capable to learn. A very serious AI programming could become a complete
separate proyect by itself, and the obvious start point is to separate the
AI from the server, that is, build AI clients, so freeciv could be a test
zone for different approaches, different AI models and different
programmers around the community, without the need to touch the freeciv
code. May be it would be nice to write a complete guide to client-server
communication to help the interested programmers to do that.