First I've got an idea as competition:
1. We could make several categories such as "standard victory", "first-in-bronze-age", "death match" or "wonders only".
2. We could do some kind of cup where AI1 plays against AI2, the winner goes on to the winner of AI3 vs. AI4 and so on.
3. I think it would be fair to play some "best of three" so that there is not too much luck involved.
Second there are a few remarks about designing an AI:
1. I tried to do a nice Yamato file by immitating my own style as Yamato player. Unfortunately this was totally wrong because the computer was incredibly slow that way. He made tool age only after more than 15 minutes! Thus I checked the predifined AI and found out that he creates only 12 villies till tool age and he can do tool in about 11:30. The problem is that the AI simply puts too many villies on wood, stone and especially gold.
2. I also discovered that the standard PER file seems to disable elephant hunting. Why this?
3. The computer has got huge problems with space. He places houses and farms such that either they block the ways or they are very far away from the town center.
4. I once told the AI to build a second town center. It did, but it built it in tool age! So there seems to be a bug which allows the AI to build town centers whenever they like.
Now, I'm going on to PER files and try to make my AI a bit more reasonnable about food collection. There must be a way to make them faster....
edit: All right, I managed to get a few minutes, not really good but ok as first try.
I discovered another strange thing: The AI places the farms pretty close to the town center. But as soon as they are gone the AI places the next farms a little bit further away. This keeps on until he reaches a certain point (city limit perhaps). Is there a way to forbid this "wandering away"? And is it somehow possible to make the AI place farms near the granary instead of the town center?
Nanaki from the super heroes
When you play with fire you must anticipate some burns.
Chasing for desire is just a different way to learn! Kamelot - III Ways To Epica[This message has been edited by c4master (edited 07-17-2006 @ 12:15 PM).]