effect of iAIObjective?

[davidlallen]

There is a flag you can add to bonuses called iAIObjective. I have only ever seen it used as a boolean. Can anybody comment on how this actually affects the AI? From the outside, I have seen that this makes the AI "interested" in this bonus.

In Dune Wars, we are considering to add a central region with a limited resource (ice, in the polar cap) which the players can fight over. This region is not suited for founding cities. Our thought is that players should build forts, and have protected worker stacks to build a key improvement on the ice bonus. We can probably express the benefit of the improvement in a way that the AI can see.

But, if iAIObjective only makes the AI try to found cities there, this will not have the effect we want. We want the AI to also consider building forts instead, and fighting over it.

 

[jdog5000]

It comes up in three places:

1) It increases the perceived value of the bonus by 40 * iAIObjective (an AI without oil values it at ~120)

2) It greatly increases the value assigned to having a unit guard the plot where the bonus is (+ 200 * iAIObjective)

3) It greatly increases the value assigned to having a worker improve the bonus (+ 100 * iAIObjective)

The first effect is very far reaching, so I don't know what the total of that effect would be. Sounds like it might do what you want, and it does scale linearly with whatever integer you put in there.

The protected worker chains would be a bit trickier ...

 

[davidlallen]

Thanks! So it sounds like there is still no chance the AI will build a fort nearby and then improve it; is that correct? A human might consider that, but the AI never will.

 

[jdog5000]

Well, maybe ... forts improve the bonus, so it might work. But the AI would want to build the fort on the bonus.

 

[peter450]

If AI values oil at 120 does that mean it won't guard it as it's below the 200 threshold? i would have thought Oil, Iron, Horse, Uranium, Alu, Bronze, Elephant should always get a defender, that stuff is just to good to be without out

 

[jdog5000]

Huh?

The thresholds for guarding are 15 on land and 30 for sea resources.