Advice on an FFH Mod-Mod

[tesb]

@hbar

Orbis wants to be my favorite. If someone could combine WM's AI with Orbis' everything else, I would never buy another game in my life.

what especially do you like about orbis that you miss in other modmods? the reworked techtree, economic changes, ...?

 

[hbar]

....I live in Florida, man.

What the hell kind of schedule do you keep? You just sleep inthe middle of the day?

Anyway, the question is really one of specialist vs generalist AI. Considering the limited resources involved, I think specialist subsystems for heroes, worldspells, and the like are a good allocation of lime ited computing power.

 

[hbar]

@hbar



what especially do you like about orbis that you miss in other modmods? the reworked techtree, economic changes, ...?

Sorry for dbl post, stupid PS3...

Mostly the economic changes, it plays really differently fom any other mod.

 

[Valkrionn]

What the hell kind of schedule do you keep? You just sleep inthe middle of the day?

Anyway, the question is really one of specialist vs generalist AI. Considering the limited resources involved, I think specialist subsystems for heroes, worldspells, and the like are a good allocation of lime ited computing power.

No, as I've stated in the RifE forums I have been trying to find a job during the day. I went to bed at 4:30am last night; I was up at 10.

To address the rest... Frankly, specialist AI in and of itself is fine. It is just the hardcoded references to specific units and spells that I dislike.

In fact, we have some specialist AI in RifE 1.30, in the form of CivFlavors. Using these, we can encourage certain behaviors, without forcing them, and while maintaining the ability to use the same flavor in other ways for other civs.

For example, one flavor is CIVFLAVOR_HIGH_POPULATION. Believe it or not, this is used both for the Calabim, to encourage growth into unhealth/unhappiness (and oh how they do it. Governor's Manor is powerful for the AI now. ), and the Kuriotates, to encourage focusing on growth and obtaining the resources they need for large cities. It's simply a matter of setting the value correctly; The Calabim value is twice that of the Kurios.

 

[Sephi]

This will likely start a flame war, but there is a difference between good AI and forced AI. Yes, RifE is guilty of it too, but it is something we are steadily removing (something Snarko is quite good at, btw).

Wild Mana's AI is 'good' because it is guided by the hand like a blind boy. There is special AI code written for individual heroes (hardcoding in the DLL shouldn't happen. But that's just my own philosophy, so whatever), thousands of lines of python detailing what the AI should and should not build, and so on. AI is universally bad at Civ4... But it can be improved in ways that allows leeway, rather than a narrow path.

flamewar? nah, have fun bashing Wildmana AI. Anyone can download the modmod and see for themself how good the AI is.

 

[Valkrionn]

flamewar? nah, have fun bashing Wildmana AI. Anyone can download the modmod and see for themself how good the AI is.

Honestly, I'm not really bashing it from a player's perspective. If AI is what you want, right now WM is the modmod with the best AI.

I am voicing my issues with it from a modder's perspective, to make quite clear why your AI work is not used more widely, and why we are in the process of our own. Though I believe we've had that discussion before, with Ahwaric included that time.

 

[Tholal]

I disagree with the generic statement about hardcoding. FFH has many new features which the AI needs to know about. And as someone else stated, some things are so peculiar and specific (such as Rantine's ability, for example), that detailed instructions need to be created in order for the AI to properly use them.

That being said, I do agree that the massive tech and production choice python functions can be better handled with some proper modification of the appropriate DLL functions.

 

[Valkrionn]

I disagree with the generic statement about hardcoding. FFH has many new features which the AI needs to know about. And as someone else stated, some things are so peculiar and specific (such as Rantine's ability, for example), that detailed instructions need to be created in order for the AI to properly use them.

That being said, I do agree that the massive tech and production choice python functions can be better handled with some proper modification of the appropriate DLL functions.

It was honestly that specific hardcoding I was talking about in my first post. I dislike hardcoding altogether, but some things you either hardcode or never teach the AI; Too specific. Though I'd still prefer something less hardcoded.