AI strategies

[CMaster2003]

Hello again.

I was wandering... the game needs some nice tactics for the AI to be less stupid and to realise some important things, but where should I put such a function that is to be run every turn(or at least everytime a new city springs up), in order not to overload the memory?? (It's impossible not to put very sophisticated algorythms, which contain many lines!)

I have also encountered a problem(or bug): I'm playing freeciv with the "default" ruleset(at least I thought so). The thing is that I can't build that unit... AWACS(or whatever) and the Submarine has an attack of only 10 instead of 15...
Note that the ruleset dir is "default"!! and, instead, I'm playing with the Civ2 ruleset(it seems)... What's wrong?

The last questions would be: when is a new version of freeciv going to be ready for download?; where can I get the CivWorld editor(not the source but the compiled program, and please specify if it's for free ); and can I submit (not now, but in the quite near future) a "big" patch -- making the computer smarter, adding new units and, maybe, new terrain tiles, and hopefully optimizing the source code so that I don't have to wait 2-4 minutes for the AI to finish its turn(after it had researched all techs) on my Pentium4 !!!!

[Per]

AI data calculations should go in ai/aidata.c

I have no idea what your default vs civ2 ruleset problem is.

The 1.14.1 release of Freeciv will be out in a few days, while the 1.15.0 release will be out some time after xmas.

There is no compiled version of civworld to be downloaded anywhere, to my knowledge.

Send any patches you might have to rt[at]freeciv.org, but please - split up your patches into as small self-contained portions as possible, and do read the style guide (doc/CodingStyle).

[Ecliptik]

Re: AI strategies

WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT
The Ai r gr8 they kik mi ass every time you must be a very experienced player.

Originally posted by CMaster2003
I was wandering... the game needs some nice tactics for the AI to be less stupid and to realise some important things, but where should I put such a function that is to be run every turn(or at least everytime a new city springs up), in order not to overload the memory?? (It's impossible not to put very sophisticated algorythms, which contain many lines!)

[CMaster2003]

I'm not that experienced but I might say I'm really good at Civ2 and Freeciv is not very different from it I mean the AI doesn't really realise many important things in terms of tactics(ie: it attacks a very well fortified city with armors even if it needs 3 or 4 to kill one of my units; it also makes lots of money that are not put to any use!!! etc)

[Per]

Yep. The AI can still be improved a lot. If you want to work on the AI, you should definitely work on the latest CVS version, since the AI code there is significantly cleaned up and improved.

[Ecliptik]

CMaster2003,
have a look @ thread newbies

[DrMinistr]

AI is producing units like musketeers, reflemen, mech.inf. but it doesn´t have strong attacking force.

[CMaster2003]

I know. That's why I said that something must be done about it...

[Per]

I'm working on more intelligent transport-hunting for the AI. Work is also being done for better settler code. More improvement of the transport code is underway as well. Once these things are done, I expect attention to be turned towards teaching the AI about army groups and proper attack tactics.

Help would be much appreciated on all these and other things.

[CMaster2003]

I think that it would be a nice thing to have the possibility of using "controls"... I mean being able to select more units at once or assign them a "control" so as to create army groups... Also I believe that cities can be more fun to attack if they had a i.e. "Towers" to defend against land units, "coastal defence system" -> against navy and the existing SAM site, BUT all of these to be controlled by the player(apart from giving some defence bonuses...). The tower should be able to strike 3 tiles away etc...
Now, in order to compensate for this powerful defence, something should be done about the attack , like the no. of units attacking the city(from one tile only) should matter, every (extra)unit giving an attack bonus to the one that actually attacks the city.
But most importantly, something like a "no retaliation" feature should be introduced, meaning that i.e. the artillery, bombers, fighters(against some land units) should strike without being attacked back. This means that some sort of damage control can created in order to give the defender a chance of survival(it shouldn't be the actual attack pattern with which one of the units always die). A reason for this "no retaliation" feature is that... well, I can never figure out how a cannon(or rifleman) can destroy a stealth bomber(which flies at 10000 feet!!!!!!), let alone how battleships get destroyed by riflemen

[DrMinistr]

This is real good idea. It´really unrealistic when musketeers shot down bomber or sink cruiser. That would also force defender to upgrade units (or build new) and also new technologies will be more important.