Although I made a brief wiki post at
<http://freeciv.wikia.com/wiki/User_talk:Cazfi>, I figured it'd be best
to post more here. I would like to be able to run scripts on the
client. It would allow a user controlled auto-settler, explore,
patrol(and improve to do something more than just move), and more and
take some of the burden off of the server. Part of the inspiration is
managing a large army of units, such as when winning the giant earth
map. I'd like a miniature AI, or General, to do the attacking an
conquering for me, and perhaps another AI for defense(and auto attack).
All that would really need to be done is add lua(or anything) to the
client to allow scripting, an ability to add units and cities to
groups, and some user IO method, even a kludgy one. With what I've
seen in the server scripting capabilities, there's sufficient back work
to overcome the initial hurdles.
But here's what's probably the best part, with enough development, and
switching the server-ai code to the script(at least temporarily), it'd
be possible to run 8 different AI's with different code and different
preferences on one server to test superiority, and superiority on
different map types so code could be added to make the AI as hard as
possible for each map. If people are using the "General" idea enough
and tweaking it enough for their liking it could make the AI better
than what's currently used. Here's some of my idea.
Player AI:
Manages cities and improvements, orders the AI's, switching unit's
between itself and the attack and defense AI's
May split an AI into two if the forces are large enough, and for
defense, if there's enough of a split to prevent ferrying units across
wide area's that would make the transport's vulnerable
Attack AI:
Instructed to attack a city/continent/player and how determined to
attack(kamikaze to near guaranteed success) based on some want level
May attack just to conquer, or attack to weaken the enemy for a later
invasion
May ask the player for a delay if it would prefer or need time for
units such as transports, or to group units better, but of course can
be overridden
Only really cares about patrolling/conquering so assumes the player
knows the rest
Defense AI:
Protects designated cities, moves units around based on apparent
threat(how many enemy units have been spotted recently, how close to
border, etc)
Attack incoming enemy units(submarines and stealth bombers are great
for this).
An AI may ignore a new order if the 'want' of the new order is low
enough compared to a previous order to allow the AI a little more
ability to follow through on it's actions. Also, if the militaristic
units are split off from the player and managed as such, the AI may
commit more units(like every unit the attack AI has) for a particular
attack instead of petty skirmishes. This combined with the attack and
defense being client side and scriptable(so faster and easier to edit,
and more likely to be tweaked by various poeple), could make the AI far
stronger than it is now, so that perhaps there could just be games of
seeing who's made the strongest AI. And by being client sided easier
to directly compare different AI strength's.
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