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Re: Challenging standard game against AI


Jim Kingdon wrote:
> 
> > I generally play the standard game and I'm having trouble finding a
> > combination of options / advantages / world size that provides a
> > challenging game.  It seems that either I cream the computer or it
> > overwhelms me (and I can usually predict which will happen in 50 turns
> > or so).
> 
> Have you tried playing with country-separation-min and
> country-separation-max (you need to edit the .g files, there isn't a
> pointy-clicky way to set them as far as I know)?

No, they have to be done in a game file.  They would make sense as
a standard variant though...

> I've only begun to try tweaking them, but just based on the games I've
> played, it seems like the distance between my country and that of the
> AI(s) is the biggest factor (and the defaults for min and max are 16
> and 48 - well a factor of 3 is a pretty big range!).

These were chosen to keep countries out of easy bomber range of
each other, but not ridiculously far apart in larger worlds.

The other key factor is land/sea ratio.  The AI still needs work
on its use of naval units.  Also, you could tinker with blob sizes
and numbers to create terrain with different amounts of "jagginess";
it might do better with different values.

Finally, there is no intrinsic reason to limit advantage to 5;
this was more motivated by country size, which is small so as
to make quick games work better.  Bump up the country size so
cities won't get all crammed together, then set the advantage
limit to 15 - that ought to be pretty challenging!

(I lose at +4 myself - yes indeed, I'm a lousy Xconq player,
too sloppy usually.)

> Those are all on a standard size world.  As a general rule of thumb,
> making the world bigger seems to make the game easier (because I
> explore and conquer independent cities faster than the AI at the start
> of the game), but I haven't done as much experimentation with larger
> worlds.

Larger worlds would require the AI to plan the movements of groups
of units in a coordinated fashion.  Right now it just thinks about
areas (theaters) and individual units (or pairs, when planning
transportation).  So in a large world, you'll see units dribbling
out to the front slowly, when instead the AI ought to assemble
a task force sufficient to accomplish a goal, and to protect itself
while getting there.

Stan


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