[Freeciv-Dev] Re: (PR#14763) Advanced govt patch

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

<URL: http://bugs.freeciv.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=14763 >

On Mon, 16 Jan 2006, Benedict Adamson wrote:
> Per I. Mathisen wrote:
> > When the game starts, the AI is randomly assigned [a] personality.
>  > This should say something about its
> > priorities and its diplomatic tone, as well as its research priorities.
> >
> > This is clearly not as optimal for the current ruleset, as it will not try
> > to figure out which is the more optimal government for the present, eg go
> > over to Communism when it has lots of units and upkeep. Instead it should
> > attempt to change its playing style so that it fits whatever government
> > "personality" it has.
...
> The problem with this is that AIs with inappropriate personalities for
> the current rule-set or game settings are, effectively, stupid. If some
> AI nations are thereby randomly made stupid, this increases the
> randomness in the game. Which human player wins a multi player game with
> AI nations might critically depend on luckily starting adjacent to
> stupid AIs.

The governments should be changed along with game settings, so that all
government settings should be viable, and none "effectively stupid". If
there are "effectively stupid" governments, they should have an
"ai.better" field set (which Anarchy, Despotism and Monarchy have) so that
they are only used temporarily on the way to the viable ones.

Nevertheless, this adds more randomness. Some settings can be more
difficult against some players' strategies, or some starting positions.
Yet I do not see this as a problem, rather as a bonus. If you use AIs in a
multiplayer game, this is already a huge random variable in any case. If
you want a fair multiplayer game, you don't have AIs.

While on the other hand, having more variations and randomness to the AIs
in single player and cooperative multiplayer should be very good.

  - Per