Re: AI Help

[Hans Ronne <hronne@comhem.se>]

>Managing to build an AI that can function as well for
>games involving zombies as it can for games involving
>battlefleets is a daunting task.  I'm wondering,
>though, if there's a way to take a little pressure off
>the coders and put it into the hands of the designers.
> As it stands, the AI pretty much analyzes everything
>and comes up with its own ideas based on that (With a
>little help from tags like, 'air' and 'naval', but it
>doesn't seem like much).
>
>So maybe there could be some Roshambo tables to give
>the AI a little help.  I say Roshambo, or
>rock-paper-scissors, because much of game design
>follows a strategy of X beats Y.  You could have a
>preferred-opponent table that reads something like
>this:

<snip>

>I think the idea would also be good for unit building,
>to create a table that forces the AI to build based on
>set guidelines, rather than overarching strategy.
>
>(table ai-build-queue
>   (city legion 50)
>   (city fleet 10)
>   (city facility-types 10)
>   (city wonder 5)
>)

I think there is a lot of merit to your suggestion. Basically, it would be
an extension of the side doctrines to cover more than just construction run
lengths and resupply trigger levels. This is something we already discussed
on the list, and I am in favour of it. In fact, I suggested something very
similar for the same reason: that the game designer usually has a better
idea of what various unit types are best at than the AI can ever have using
its standardized unit worth functions.

Hans