Re: AI now goes after bases

[Eric McDonald <mcdonald at phy dot cmich dot edu>]

Hi Jim, others,

On Wed, 31 Dec 2003, Jim Kingdon wrote:

> playing the standard game, and I noticed that the AI will now flatten
> my bases (using fighters and bombers), and it generally didn't used to
> do that.

Hmmm... The new victim_here code is also supposed to gauge whether 
a capturable transport (mobile or immobile) can withstand getting 
roughed up a little to see whether a unit can give it a "shake 
down" to discover/kill any occupants the transport might have. Of 
course, I had Bellum Towns in mind when I wrote that part of the 
code, and those Towns regenerate some lost HP every turn. Also, 
Bellum Towns are builder units, whereas I don't think Standard 
Bases are. If I remember the code correctly, I let it go ahead and 
mark non-builder capturable transports as potential victims 
indefinitely (pretend Transports were capturable in the Standard 
game; you would probably want to pound those until they are below 
sea level, hopefully with occs included). But perhaps the victim 
finder should make an assumption that capturable, immobile 
transports are "facility" or "base" units and spare them an 
untimely death before being assimilated by the AI's side?

> been using to beat the AI.  If the AI played to capture the bases
> instead of flatten them, that would probably be even better.

Agreed. Unless someone sees a problem with assuming capturable, 
immobile transports are worth saving, I will modify the AI's 
victim finder to account for this. (And violate my self-imposed 
Xconq feature freeze yet again.)

Eric