[Freeciv-Dev] Re: AI strategy

[Raimar Falke <hawk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, Dec 04, 2001 at 03:31:28PM -0500, vze2zq63@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> Raimar Falke wrote:
> 
> > On Tue, Dec 04, 2001 at 04:44:44AM -0800, Raahul Kumar wrote:
> >>--- Raimar Falke <hawk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 
> >>> 3) multi player with civbots on the clients without human player
> >>>    (AI-vs-AI): no problem (there is the problem that the human player
> >>>    may help the civbot ;) )
> >>>
> >>How?
> >>
> > 
> > In a civbot-vs-civbot game it is possible that one of the civbots is
> > really a human player. But you can catch this because you can request
> > the source (or a binary) of the civbot and can test it independently.
> 
> This should be allowed.

> That is to say, if it's possible to unhandicap a civbot by giving them 
> extra bonuses (everything in the enumeration), it should be possible to 
> unhandicap a human player in the same way.

Ack.

> It is possible that one of the civbots is really a human - but there 
> would be little point in cheating this way, since you could never claim 
> credit for your victory (for instance, you'd never make it into the 
> rankings). 

Why?

> Really, though, a civbot fired up by a player might as well 
> be a human - everything about it, down to the source code, is controlled 
> by them.  

> What is needed to avoid this is have the server control the startup
> of civbots

Ack.

> - but this brings us back to the question of efficiency, where the
> "civbot" implementation is much slower than a server-side AI since
> communications must go over the network protocol.

But is should be faster than a human player.

> Here's another problem: if we handle handicaps as above, and an AI 
> player (civbot or server-side) is replaced by a human player, does the 
> human player inherit the unhandicaps?

Add an option to the cheat command.

> Even in the current situation where that doesn't happen, the AI has
> an advantage in the very early game (say, first 20 turns at least),
> so it would be to the advantage of a human player to join a game 20
> turns in.

        Raimar

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