Skyre Noktis
Warlord
- Joined
- Apr 28, 2009
- Messages
- 271
OK, now that I've got a computer that runs properly and time to work on modding, it's time to revive this topic.
So far, Wildmana has been a one-man project with Sephi doing basically everything. If we want to make Wildmana a collaborative effort, the first thing that needs to be done is to set up some sort of shared repository (e.g. svn, if that floats your boat) where changes can check in. This is really the only sensible way to coordinate a project with two or more developers, IMO; otherwise, we're going to quickly start going out of sync and there will be lots of painful, manual merges. Several other Civ 4 mods do something similar (I know Dune Wars and Better AI do, for example).
Onto development itself, the Legacy and Future of Wildmana topic lists some new features and enhancements that need implementing:
* better diplomatics: AI still lacks long term strategies. Most diplomatic decisions are based on randomness, not flavor or strategy.
* Naval Warfare: AI needs to understand what waterwalking means. If it builds fleets to settle or conquer distant shores, it should understand to send more than one ship
* Better lategame teching: Its still quite random what the AI techs lategame
* Hidden Nationality: The AI basically has no clue about it yet
* AI still lacks to understand a lot unique abilities of the many civilizations.
* AI warfare. AI needs more tactics than just Stack of Doom strategy. Assault stacks with high mobility units. Counter stacks with assasins. There is a lot of potential.
* Portals: Create Portals on the map which allow to travel between continents and teach the AI to use these.
The portals idea is particularly interesting to me. If we can get that to work, there's a good chance we could get multiple map planes to work. A lot depends on the limitations of the graphics engine, though - all of that stuff's in the EXE, frustratingly.
AI is complicated. Probably the best thing is to test out the existing AI as thoroughly as I can and try to identify its weaknesses. That was basically the path I followed with my own mod.
The meatier AI projects (like diplomacy or war strategy) could probably do with some brainstorming to work out the best way to tackle them. A lot of the war stuff boils down to teaching the AI about different types of stacks, when to build them and how to use them. Easier said than done, though.
So far, Wildmana has been a one-man project with Sephi doing basically everything. If we want to make Wildmana a collaborative effort, the first thing that needs to be done is to set up some sort of shared repository (e.g. svn, if that floats your boat) where changes can check in. This is really the only sensible way to coordinate a project with two or more developers, IMO; otherwise, we're going to quickly start going out of sync and there will be lots of painful, manual merges. Several other Civ 4 mods do something similar (I know Dune Wars and Better AI do, for example).
Onto development itself, the Legacy and Future of Wildmana topic lists some new features and enhancements that need implementing:
* better diplomatics: AI still lacks long term strategies. Most diplomatic decisions are based on randomness, not flavor or strategy.
* Naval Warfare: AI needs to understand what waterwalking means. If it builds fleets to settle or conquer distant shores, it should understand to send more than one ship
* Better lategame teching: Its still quite random what the AI techs lategame
* Hidden Nationality: The AI basically has no clue about it yet
* AI still lacks to understand a lot unique abilities of the many civilizations.
* AI warfare. AI needs more tactics than just Stack of Doom strategy. Assault stacks with high mobility units. Counter stacks with assasins. There is a lot of potential.
* Portals: Create Portals on the map which allow to travel between continents and teach the AI to use these.
The portals idea is particularly interesting to me. If we can get that to work, there's a good chance we could get multiple map planes to work. A lot depends on the limitations of the graphics engine, though - all of that stuff's in the EXE, frustratingly.
AI is complicated. Probably the best thing is to test out the existing AI as thoroughly as I can and try to identify its weaknesses. That was basically the path I followed with my own mod.
The meatier AI projects (like diplomacy or war strategy) could probably do with some brainstorming to work out the best way to tackle them. A lot of the war stuff boils down to teaching the AI about different types of stacks, when to build them and how to use them. Easier said than done, though.