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. _______________________________________________ Freeciv-dev mailing list Freeciv-dev@gna.org https://mail.gna.org/listinfo/freeciv-dev