[Freeciv-Dev] patch rfc: active diplomats

["Per I. Mathisen" <Per.Inge.Mathisen@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Patch status: Needs comments/reviews
Requirements: AI passive diplomacy 6

This patch, which I wrote with considerable help from Greg, makes
diplomats actively go out to establish embassies and steal technology.
They might also snarf up a few cities with incite or sabotage something,
but only when it cannot make embassies or steal any more tech. And if it
can't steal tech, it won't bother building diplomats for offense. The AI
tries to keep more funds in reserve for bribing and incitement.

If you play with 'easy' difficulty mode, the AI doesn't use offensive
diplomats. If you play 'easy' or 'medium', it doesn't target your fogged
cities.

As of now, diplomats are only built for defense.

As of this patch, the AI builds a few diplomats for offense too. Not by
far enough of them, but since the AI build and bodyguard systems are
extremely primitive, being more liberal with diplomats creates a number of
issues.

Problems not solved and probably not going to be solved in this round:
Diplomats don't bribe units while doing goto (diplomats really need their
own goto). The AI doesn't know the (huge) value of inciting cities.
Diplomats don't use bodyguards. Diplomats don't stop early for cities (see
comment in point one). Diplomats aren't as scared of hostile units as they
should be.

But it is still a big improvement over things as they are now, and should
give the opponents of 'hard' AIs a slightly harder challenge.

(Greg: I ended up not including want calculations in f_c_t_diplomat, as we
discussed. I tried, but the result was a total Syela: Three times as much
code, twice as many parameters, twice as many variables and totally
unreadable code, all for no visible gain. While undoubtly the way to do it
thoroughly, it just couldn't be done properly.)

Yours,
Per

"Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men,
for the nastiest of reasons, will somehow work for the benefit of
us all." -- John Maynard Keynes

activediplomats6.patch.gz
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