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

["rwetmore@xxxxxxxxxxxx" <rwetmore@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Raimar Falke wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 29, 2003 at 08:30:48PM -0700, Mark Metson wrote:
[...]
>>Computers keep getting faster, ridiculously faster. Plus what about gains 
>>by parallelism, how many AIs can one computer run? How many smart AIs? How 
>>many really really smart AIs? 
> 
> Even with a lot of CPU power you can't offset the missing
> information. I still think to get a really strong AI you need
> controlled cheating (everybody knows that the server sends the whole
> map to player foobar) and a lot of CPU.
> 
>       Raimar

"Controlled" cheating is one way to phrase it, but since only humans cheat
and there is no control on their passing information amongst themselves, or
using cheats like memory and intuition that computers are not born with, a
lot of this is just discriminatory semantics designed to make sure the
humans always have the advantage :-).

However, there is no reason why there cannot be server APIs that produce
various information summaries that use internal server data and return the
results to the client, rather than sending the raw data to the client. You
can do computations anywhere and don't *have* to do them in client code. You
allow the possibility of using controlled server data if the computation is
done in the server without fear of exposing anymore raw data than you wish.

If a client uses these APIs, then they should be penalized in the score,
said to be running at "novice" level with crutches, or something. Thus
there are consequences in a competitive game commensurate with the level
of assistance the server provides to that player via response to such agent
requests.

AI clients don't really care about their peer standing, so they would
presumably ask for all the help they can, but humans could select their
level and handicaps as well if they felt they needed a boost or were
good enough to play straight (or as straight as humans can ever play).

Afterall, what is a CMA but a crutch for a human who can't do the complex
computations nearly as quickly. CMA in the server or CMA in the client
makes no practical difference to its computed result or way in which it
is used.

Cheers,
RossW
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