[Freeciv-Dev] Re: [RFC][Patch] AI can fly v2 (fwd)

[Mike Kaufman <kaufman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Ccing freeciv-dev for now until I know core AI group is 'scribed

On Thu, Apr 11, 2002 at 07:26:49PM -0400, Ross W. Wetmore wrote:
> At 01:07 PM 02/04/11 -0500, Mike Kaufman wrote:
> >On Thu, Apr 11, 2002 at 07:36:51PM +0200, per@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> >> On Sun, 7 Apr 2002, Gregory Berkolaiko wrote:
> >> > Oops, the patch was too big so my first email didn't go through...
> 
> >> - The AI should not attack cities with aircraft without checking for
> >> reinforcements first. Should also check for SAM (it's omniscient, use it;
> >> we don't remember and analyze stuff).
> >
> >I don't like this. We should be moving away from the idea that AI can see
> >all not toward it.
> 
> The real problem here is that humans have persistent memory about what
> they *have* seen (in now fogged out areas), or pretty good guessing skills
> about what they are likely to find based on lots of subtle clues.
> 
> The AI program to mimic this is probably a few decades out even at rates
> like Moores's Law.
> 
> Even caching past information is expensive.

a possibility would be to give the ai a second map and game struct,
which houses educated guesses, about troop concentrations in enemy
cities for example. Another example would be seeing an enemy unit coming
out of unknown territory and then assigning probabilities about the
terrain type (!ocean) to the unknown tiles.

> 
> A reasonable compromise is to allow the AI to "see" the real map but 
> add an error or ai_fuzzy() factor that makes this information less
> reliable in locations that are unknown or fogged. For a difficulty
> factor you can have the AI fuzz run from 0% (i.e. Mike's favorite
> level) to 100% accuracy reflecting a more sophisticated cognitive
> ability in a human.

yes, yes, but I'm looking at a point in time where the AI doesn't have
any choice because it ain't connected to the server. It can only see
what it sees. Coding new stuff that takes advantage of the current
omniscient ability is not a good plan.

> 
> >> - Also in the same savegame, why doesn't solomon invade sooner? It cruises
> >> around with dozens of transports with units in for dozens of turns before
> >> it finally decides to land them. Drives me crazy. pille's cities are empty
> >> and deserted!
> >
> >yes, I noticed this when I looked at the original patch. AI doesn't seem to 
> >know when to pull the trigger.
> 
> You are supposed to be able to determine "flag" presence, so the AI should
> know when a town is empty and change its attack computation accordingly.
> This should not be a big deal if someone is playing in that code area. It
> may be as simple as it never targets towns, just units in find something to
> kill, so empty towns are 100% safe if they don't have units as bait :-)

whatever it is, the its_time_to_invade() function should be on the
todo list.

-mike