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.
Interesting, I never considered doing clearing areas between buildings, only arround single ones. A minimum spanning tree... that would require constantly updating the clearing areas based on distance. Perhaps a compromise would be to pathfind from newly created building to the nearest 1 or 2 buildings, and make sure that a 2-wide path stays intact between them. This would keep pathways open without trying to create unneccessarry pathways as circumstances change.
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.
Someone did suggest to me that I use "danger paint" to bassically decide where and where I don't want my warriors going. I would bassically paint arround enemy units and defense. The paint would accumulate, and I would put restricted zone over any point over some trigger value that I deduce by testing. I could also paint over long distances. Then the dig-out algorithm I have already put together would automagically kick in when neccessarry, and combined with the restricted areas, it could dig a large tunnel right into the heart of the enemy.
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.
This is in my plan, to build an army of explorers if the ressources are available.
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).
This is a bit more difficult, however I'll add it to my defense mechanism to defend with explorers if attacked with explorers, and defend with warriors if attacked with warriors.
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.
I add this as a special check, simply to check if the initial buildings are where it wants them to be, swarm near wheat, inn near wheat for example, and not to use them if they aren't. Its more of a special case then a complete solution but it would do the trick for this circumstance.
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.
Again, I don't yet have a defense mechanism. Currently it doesn't even know that its attacked, or even that its buildings are damaged. This is certainly a good idea though, I had considered that it should target whoever is the most offensive at the current time, as to keep all enemies at odds while it destroys them
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.
I suppose this would be easy enough to do. When schools or barracks are under construction, clear a 3-wide path to the nearest stone.
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 did notice this when Nicowar was playing. Perhaps it should be a simple matter of no wood within one-distance of a farmed wheat or vice versa? I can do this easy enough.
I hope these comments are helpful.
Yes actually they where.
--
Joe
To deal with the "war-rush" problem, I've simply made Nicowar activate the war-preparation phase sooner, at 30 total units instead of 50, which is aproximitly when war-rush attacks. I've seen Nicowar take on 2 war rush on Big Pond, and It held out a decent fight against 3 of them on Garden 3, however its army got bottlenecked at the entrance untill eventually its enemy got overgrown. The dig-out algorithm doesn't activate for war-flags its already placed (a change I'm about to make), so it just sat there guarding its entrance untill I intervened with clearing flags, at which point it raped its opponents. The change for earlier warriors doesn't seem to impede its game on other plays, such as 7 Castors on Playground or 3 of them on Four Squares.