[Freeciv-Dev] Re: stop ai from building useless buildings (2) (PR#1362)

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

On Fri, 5 Apr 2002, Jason Short wrote:
> I like the idea behind this (a lot), but I think you're going about it
> slightly wrong.  I have always considered the handicap list as something
> not directly related to the AI, but that could be related to any player.

Not _those_ handicaps, surely.

What I want, eventually, is to get a list of player attributes that you
can pick, like you pick race attributes in custom race dialog in Master of
Orion 2. Each attribute carriers with it a % bonus or penalty to your
final score. In competitive human vs human games it can be used to give
some players an advantage while others a handicap. (And maybe all players
could get a number of "buy points" to acquire attributes for, just like in
MOO2...)

Is this something like what you think about? I don't think this has
anything to do with ai handicaps at all. The latter is for adjusting
the difficulty level of ai _behaviour_, not the game rules.

> I think it would be *easier* to accomplish what you're trying to do by
> using different difficulty levels.  For instance, with something like:
>
>    if (ai_difficulty(pplayer) >= 8) {
>      /* experimental code */
>    } else {
>      /* old code */
>    }
>
> you can then face off a difficulty-7 (hard) AI player against a
> difficulty-10 player.  (Note, there is no ai_difficulty(), it's
> something like pplayer->ai.skill_level instead.)

I don't like this. It does not present a logical and clean interface to
experimental code. We could have something like

        bool is_experimental(pplayer) {
                return (pplayer->ai.skill_level == 10);
        }

though. But I don't see the advantages of that.

> This doesn't work so well if all the difficulty levels are eventually
> used.  But I still feel having "experimental" be listed under the
> handicaps is somehow wrong...

Only if you think you can somehow use H_* handicaps for players. Which I
think is totally wrong.

> Of course, if you're just using this patch locally you can do whatever
> you want.  But I think you should consider what the "handicaps" should
> be before pushing for inclusion of such a patch.

I think the handicaps are there to adjust ai behaviour. I think was the
intention behind them and I think is how they should be used.

Yours,
Per

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