Re: AI Tweaking

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

On Thu, 2004-05-20 at 14:35, Elijah Meeks wrote:
> Does anyone have any advice on how to reduce the
> number of units the AI sets to exploratory reserve
> and/or how to make the AI more aggressive?

We did have a thread a while back ago about getting the AI to switch
units, particularly higher mobility ones, between theaters more
frequently. I think someone (Jim, perhaps?) mentioned that in the
standard game, Fighters do not get called to the places where they are
needed as much as they should.

> Also, it seems to be feast or famine with the AI build
> decisions for me.  Either the AI builds the same unit
> in vast quantities or it builds nothing.  So, anyone
> have any experience with tweaking the
> build-times/material costs to make a unit more
> attractive to the AI?

Well, I have encountered the same thing with Bellum II independent
units. They were cranking level 1 fortifications just fine. Then I made
some tweaks to resolve some other things, and they stopped producing
anything. (And I didn't touch 'indepside-can-build' and
'indepside-has-ai' or whatever they are called.)

It is something I plan to look into eventually, but I have no immediate
plans to do so.

My more immediate plans are (not necessarily in any order):
(1) Add some fallback path searching capabilities for the code that
reports the locations of the Xconq library, scores, and images
directories and Tcl/Tk scripts.
(2) Finish dealing with some config/build issues that pertain to
Windows.
(3) Add Matthew Skala's terrain change patch.
(4) Add my change-type ACP patch.
And then:
(5) Build a new, lighter Windows installer.
(6) Build new RPM's.
(7) Deal with giving to the treasury from units that have storage for
the treasury material.

Eric