Re: [glob2-devel] Nicowar Update!

[Joe Wells]

Given that you are already working on Nicowar, here are what I think
are the most important points for improvement:

1. Nicowar could really benefit from better handling of resource
   overgrowth that cuts off individual buildings (and sometimes traps
   individual globules) or which divides the main base into two
   portions.  I would suggest computing some kind of minimal spanning
   tree that connects all of Nicowar's buildings and placing clearing
   areas (and maybe also clearing flags of radius 0 and 1) on this
   spanning tree.

2. It would be nice if Nicowar always planned its attack route and
   kept it clear of resource obstacles.  Right now, it simply relies
   on the AI of the individual globules to find their way to the
   target.  This can cause problems as resource overgrowth can make
   this path become longer and longer.  I've seen Nicowar sending its
   warriors all the way around the world and even further to attack.
   This makes the attack much weaker, because the warriors run out of
   food soon after reaching the target and often starve on the way
   back.  It is also easy for a human to take advantage of Nicowar by
   farming a wall and carefully choosing where to leave an opening.
   You can force Nicowar's warriors to march past a chain of defense
   towers on their way to the attack (and they go past the defense
   towers another time on their way back to heal and eat, so you can
   often kill most of them).  When Nicowar's enemy is using resource
   walls, it would be better if Nicowar usually chose to attack
   through the wall by clearing it, because this will generally find a
   less well defended part of the enemy base.

3. Nicowar should use its ground attack explorers once it gets level 4
   schools to attack enemy bases and to support ground attacks.
   Otherwise it's just a matter of holding out against Nicowar long
   enough to get your level 4 schools and then you can nuke Nicowar
   with ease.

4. Nicowar should notice when it is being attacked by ground attack
   explorers and defend with its own explorers and new defense towers
   (and also switch its chosen target to the attacking player).

5. For playing with random maps, it would be nice if Nicowar handled
   things better when its initial hive is not close to a large enough
   patch of wheat.  In this case, it would be good if it built another
   hive near wheat sooner, and turned off its initial hive to prevent
   wasting worker effort.  Otherwise it performs _extremely_ poorly in
   this situation, due to the long worker trips in feeding the hive.

6. It would be nice if Nicowar switched into war mode (and chose the
   attacking player as its target) if attacked early.  Otherwise (and
   this happens quite a bit on random maps unless the map is huge) if
   you start close enough to Nicowar you can just go on the attack
   immediately and wipe out the mostly defenseless Nicowar.

7. Nicowar should clear wheat/wood in order to have a good path to
   stone/algae for building schools.  On random maps, Nicowar often
   fails to build/upgrade schools because resource overgrowth makes it
   harder to get to stone/algae.

8. When farming, Nicowar should designate areas to grow wood or wheat,
   and put clearing flags (of radius 0 or 1) to clear wood in wheat
   areas and vice versa.  Often, Nicowar's wheat farms get clogged by
   wood overgrowth.  The reverse also happens (although less often).

I hope these comments are helpful.

-- 
Joe

"Bradley Arsenault" <address@hidden> writes:

> I went back over Nicowar again. I tested it on a wide variety of maps,
> evaluated its performance and I've made several improvements. Most notably, it
> now manages food much better. This includes barrior-backed farming, adjusting
> the number of units assigned to inns and swarms, and turning off swarms if we
> are in a food deficet, and turning them down when there are allot of units
> eating (a pre-emptive tactic).
>
> It also attacks sooner, but it still waits untill its "ready". So this far
> improves performance on maps where it has a hard time reaching its warrior
> minimums, but doesn't rollback performance on maps with lots of food, where it
> has no trouble maintaining its size-oriented colony. Some of my other changes
> inlcude more intelligent building placement.
>
> On maps where Nicowar performed bad (like Isles or Garden 3), it now performs
> with marginal to good performance. It also keeps itself from overflowing with
> workers, which substantially improved performance in longer games on maps like
> Big Pong and Four Squares.
>
> I just watched it play a very interesting game on Isles. It had wiped out one
> castor and was beating on another when the third rushed into its base. It had
> no warriors here (they where all off fighting) and was beaten close to
> extiction, completely wiped out on the original base. Thankfully however it 
> had
> a few inns and stuff on another island, which it quickly expanded thanks to 
> the
> starving-recovery code. The third castor pulled out from the main base to
> attack the alternative one, where my Nicowars adaptive style started
> re-building in the original base, and quickly put itself back together. The
> barrior-backed farming caused the original base to overgrow, and only one
> entrance there was to it. Its leftover workers put together new barracks
> quickly, and it soon had an army to defend itself with. The second base was
> being attacked still. The castor came to attack Nicowar one last time, however
> it defended with level 3 warriors, and soon attacked the enemy castor itself.
> The enemies warriors where still caught at the second base fighting, and 
> castor
> lost. I looked at the end game screen, and there is this very humerous and 
> very
> large dip in the number of units, going from 119 units to 26, and then it
> started climbing back up again.
>
> I need some sort of defense mechanism, to keep it from being nearly wiped out
> in the first place.
>
> --
> Really. I'm not lieing. Bradley Arsenault.
>
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