[Freeciv-Dev] Re: (PR#4111) Client-side AI

["ChrisK@xxxxxxxx" <ChrisK@xxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, Apr 29, 2003 at 03:03:51PM -0700, Gregory Berkolaiko wrote:
> 
> The purpose of this thread is to collect the arguments for and against the
> client-side AI and to discuss possible dangers and advantages.
> 
> PRO:
> 
> 1. The cheating is absolutely controlled by what server is sending to the
> client.
> 
> 2. The introduction of such AI will promote the distillation of the rules
> into a module separate from the server.
> 
> 3. AI will no longr be in danger of mucking the server up by its buggy
> actions.
> 
> 4. It will create infrastructure for writing AIs in other (possibly more
> specialised) languages.

5. The same infrastructure can be used for player controlled modules which
   support different parts of the game (think CMA) (CAF Computer Aided
   Freeciv).

6. Users can write AI modules.

> CONTRA:
> 
> 1. There will be a lag between requests sent by the AI and their
> execution.  Everything will become much slower.

This is a good thing.

> 2. The AI will no longer have a turn for itself.  The situation will be
> fluent.  This makes caching any calculations very hard, especially the
> large-scale ones like settler maps.
> 
> 3. It can be very hard to make a non-cheating but reasonably clever AI.
> 
> 
> To be continued....

-- 
Christian Knoke     * * *      http://www.enter.de/~c.knoke/
* * * * * * * * *  Ceterum censeo Microsoft esse dividendum.