[Freeciv-Dev] Re: AI strategy

[Raimar Falke <hawk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sun, Dec 02, 2001 at 11:06:00AM +0100, Petr Baudis wrote:
> > I suspect that having a reserve force of attacking units rather than 
> > settlers
> > would work well too. The AI builds far too many defensive units. 
> I don't think so. AI will be still overmilitaristic, expansionistic is better
> IMHO. I prefer settlers more than attack units, as they can generally increase
> food (irrigation), production (mines) and trade (roads), and all this at once
> (building of new city). Attack units can't. They can only conquer foreign
> cities, with much more effort put in than just building settler and deploying
> new city around.
> 
> > > I think we should go this way. I didn't like just converting the AI into
> > > "civilized perfecionist" as Gregory named it, but if you fix it in the 
> > > same
> > > time by forcing large number of settlers active, thus converting the AI
> > > back, only with its force now spent usefully, it would be great to follow
> > > you :-).
> > 
> > You might want to check out Raimar's CMA patches as well. I happen to think 
> > a
> > server side AI is a pretty bad idea. Client side means people can write
> > competing AI's.
> CMA is civclient-side. It's good, 

> but I think only as advisor, I'm not sure if bunch of CMAs put
> together and under AI leadership would work well

I agree that it I'm unsure if a bunch of agent will form an
AI. However I'm sure that any AI needs CMA or a similar piece of code
as a building block.

> , however I only glanced at the code yet, now I'm pretty busy with
> cleaning of current AI code.

> Also CMA is expected to work on player-side, as it contains some
> generic GUI code etc.

The algorithmic is gui-less. There is a gui for the core. You may
drive the core in any way you like.

> That's nice as player's helper, but not as separate AI, because
> what will you do with this GUI? 

> Nevertheless I agree that putting AI into separate client (kinda
> 'civbot') would be very good idea.

Ack.

> But we have to do following:
> 
> 1, Remove all AI hooks from server code. Way still too much of
> them. Settlers code is an example, but many others randomly around
> all the code.

This isn't an requirement. At least for the time till the civbot can
compete with the server AI, the server AI has to remain in the cvs.

> 2, Make AI _MUCH_ more smart. Diplomacy may be one step. Reason? As
> AI will be moved into separate client, it won't be allowed to cheat
> anymore. And without cheating current AI is almost lost against a
> little more expierenced players.

IMHO diplomacy is very hard. Much more harder than expand and flood
the human player with units. It would be a very good first step if the
civbot AI can win by this way.

> 3, We need some generic interface for civserver in civclient (for
> running and control of civserver on request etc), so we will be able
> to add code for running desired number of civbots there. Forcing
> inexpierenced user of windoze (typical gamer) to launch and
> configure those by hand is suicide.

Ack. However we have the aifill and aitoggle commands. The server has
to do the work of spawning the civbots.

> Summary: this is all is very nice, but very long-term idea.

We should remove the second "very" to show some faith ;)

        Raimar

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