I love Med/Cradle mods but why AI is not attacking?

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by Marko Polo
Does that mean that you and Calvitix are making your own versions of this concept and then we playtesters an verify which one is better? What's the method in this project to sort out the different opinions? Project manager? Voting?

No, it isn't such complicated. We don't have enough programmers therefore a project manager is superflous, maybe it would be better to have one. So the best we could do was posting and discussing the changes. Most things we did were bug fixing, in some cases it is obvious how something should work, in other cases we know how it works in CTP1 and therefore it has to work in CTP2 is well like this, for instance tile improvements have in CTP1 a construction sound, but these were simply forgotten in CTP2, missing city style buttons in the Cheat Editor and so on.

Other things are common requests or may be useful, like exposing the strategies the AI uses to personalities.txt or more city styles, the first thing that had to be added once CTP2 was released. or more slic functions or more flags for the database files, to expose or to add new properties to units, buildings, tileimps etc.

That are actual easy tasks because you know what is the goal in particular, and you can verify the results very easilly. But as you said AI is more a challange, and it is not quite clear at the start what to do, you don't know the code and you don't quite know what is the problem. And if you want to test you alteration you have at least to run a game in some kind of playtesting mode. I usually start a new game and switch to the Barbarians in Barbarian only from ruins mode and let the AI play and then I messure the results. But even this needs some time.

And since we aren't so many here we can select our area of interest and program. And some things are programmed before they can be discussed. And maybe this avoid danger code came from a discussion directing into a dead end. Well it might be good for non trespathing treaties, but not for avoiding danger, if there is danger on the way then of course this has to be attacked, actual this is the stuff I do in my lastest BetterAI beta code.

-Martin

[Marko Polo]

Originally posted by Martin Gühmann

And maybe this avoid danger code came from a discussion directing into a dead end. Well it might be good for non trespathing treaties, but not for avoiding danger, if there is danger on the way then of course this has to be attacked, actual this is the stuff I do in my lastest BetterAI beta code.

-Martin

I agree that the attack is the best defense. All work being done to make AI more aggressive is needed anyway. It's way too passive and gun shy now IMHO. I've been watching Mayans conquering America (I got spies covering the whole area) and it's painfully slow process. America got 4 cities left and everything is pillaged around them already. Mayans approach, then all the sudden they get "retreat" goal while nobody threatens the Mayans.

Also, seems like AI is changing his goals too often so his actions are not very efficient. Is it possible to kinda "lock" some goals that takes several turns to complete, like gathering an attack stack and take a city? Only unlock that goal if there is a really big reason to? Like a sudden attack at the other part of the empire.

Martin, if you have some beta version of your betterai code, I would be delighted to playtest it and share my finding with you, if you like.

Marko

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by Marko Polo
Martin, if you have some beta version of your betterai code, I would be delighted to playtest it and share my finding with you, if you like.

This should be the post of relevance.

-Martin