Re: XConq AI

[Hans Ronne <hronne at pp dot sbbs dot se>]

>Can anyone suggest any examples og games where the AI performs extremely
>well, or have any other ideas on the subject?

Xconq is well suited for testing new AIs since it has a plug-in AI
structure, which also makes it possible to run different AIs against each
other. Currently, there are three AIs, the mplayer, the oplayer (old
mplayer - latest release version for comparison) and the iplayer (a
minimalistic bare bones AI).

If you want to develop your own AI you could start with the iplayer and add
code to make it smarter. One complication that you should be aware of is
that some AI code lives outside the specific AI files (mplayer.c etc). A
lot of shared AI code is found in ai.c. In addition, files like plan.c and
run.c  also contain AI code. This puts some limits on what you can do by
tinkering with the specific AI code.

One of the best free source AIs available is supposed to be that of
Freeciv. I haven't looked at it myself, so I can't tell how easy it would
be to use parts of it in xconq. My guess is, not too easy. The xconq AIs
must use the available hooks, which are not the same as in Freeciv or any
other game.

Hans

Hans Ronne

hronne@pp.sbbs.se