Re: AI questions

[Nikola Smolenski <smolensk@xxxxxxxx>]

On Thursday 20 September 2007 23:44, Jens Granseuer wrote:
> > If you are interested in AI-improvements of this kind, I would
> > offer to code it. But first I want to check if this is desired
> > at all, because it would require very much testing to check if
> > the results are reasonable for existing maps. And I don't want
> > to waste time on something that will not be used anyhow. (-:
>
> AI improvements have long been on the wishlist. At one point
> we've also been thinking about having multiple AI implementations
> that map designers could chose from according to the mission
> requirements and e.g. the difficulty setting. Provided we
> supported that, one very nice way to check whether AI changes
> are actually an improvement, would be to pit different AIs
> against each other...

Using the opportunity to remind of a few possible features:

"Cheat mode", in which player would be able to freely move, create, destroy 
etc. units. This would be useful when designing new levels and testing the 
AI.

"Borg mode", where computer would play against computer. This would also be 
useful when designing new levels (if one side wins more often, the level is 
unbalanced, or there is an AI flaw) and testing the AI. Also, it would be 
possible to match different AI engines over network to see which is the best 
one.

Level replay. Analysis of several human victories would make it possible to 
see the optimal starting moves for levels which would then create impression 
of a better AI.