[Freeciv-Dev] Re: (PR#6566) Re: Re: Barbarians

[Christian Knoke <chrisk@xxxxxxxxx>]

[Sorry for creating that ticket, please delete it]

On Sun, Oct 19, 2003 at 07:38:48AM -0700, rwetmore@xxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> Christian Knoke wrote:
> > On Sun, Oct 19, 2003 at 12:21:08AM -0400, Ross Wetmore wrote:
> [...]
> >>There really should be almost no coordination between barbarian units,
> > 
> > Why not?
> [...]
> > Each barbarian horde can be conrolled by a seperate AI player. All barbarian
> > AI players are teamed. They are relatively weak because they are few and
> > they are scattered. They need not to be weak by representing them with weak
> > units, though. Give them average strenge.
> 
> This is probably just noise level complexity and overkill. What is the
> practical difference between a single barbarian player with scattered units
> popping up all over and a bunch of teamed individual players ... unless
> you want to let observers of the game manage a single barb unit, I suspect
> the teaming flavour is far more trouble than it is worth.

Uhm, I wanted to say, each *group* of barbarian units (the ship and the
units on it) were seperate players. Ok then, alliance or maybe peace between
them is enough, instead of teams.

> But fundamentally, coordination is just not a characteristic of berserkers
> which is what Civ barbarians really are all about. They are a random irritant
> and not an opponent.

Yes, I know. My suggestion was to change this ...

> > When you play with normal AI players on the same continent from the
> > beginning, they have a good balance between aggressiveness and coordinated
> > settling and development, up to a certain point. When I play gen 1, I *have*
> > to see for my defence. That makes me think that normal AI can be a quite
> > good implementation for barbarians, more than the current one. But I can be
> > mistaken. We'd have to test it and compare current barbs with AI barbs, of
> > course.
> 
> If you want an AI opponent, then there is already code for an AI opponent.
> 
> The rationale for barbarians is something different than a standard AI, and
> has almost none of the features you say you are looking for. You can get your
> opponent with an AI that has an aggressive Attilla personality, heavily 
> weighted
> to attack with little or no defensive concerns.

Yes! A barb with more defensive concerns, more sustainability, more
strategical planning. It looks to me that barbs miss some of these features
currently implemented in AI's. My question is whether it might be posssible
to *remove* some of these restrictions, making barbs more AI-like (and maybe
ease code maintainance).

Just wanted to throw this in.

Christian

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