RE: More revisions to exploring_worth

[Lincoln Peters <peters2000 at mindspring dot com>]

On Tue, 2002-07-23 at 14:03, Stanley Sutton wrote:
> If you think that through, you need to include the probability of seeing
> the unit, too.  If the AI is encountering a lot of saucers, then it
> needs to build defenders, but if it's encountering hovercars, it needs
> saucers.  The value of the different type of units will vary with the
> situations encountered.

Good point.  I hadn't quite thought through how to write it to consider
the fog of war.  Usually when I play, I start by building hovercars,
transport-subs, and constructors, then once I've covered some ground,
I'll switch production to other things (groundcars, saucers, defenders,
motherships, attack-subs), but not so quickly that I spend more time
re-tooling than I spend building.  Of course, if I can get a loaded
transport-sub to my opponent's mainland, it's usually not too hard to
capture all of the enemy cities and towns before the AI has time to
react (and if it does react, it doesn't respond very well).  Then again,
maybe this is only because in future.g, there is no way for units to
protect occupants or transports from damage and/or capture.

> 
> If you calculated the probability of encountering the unit type and
> multiplied it times the offensive/defensive worth of each unit against
> the other units, you might get a better result for the mode 0 worth
> calculation.  This would greatly increase the need for observors near
> the enemy in order to have good informaiton to base the calculation on.

That's a bit tricky is future.g because there are no spy units.  You can
easily have a few transport-subs or attack-subs monitor the enemy's
shorelines, but they're vulnerable to defenders once they've been
spotted.
In cases where the AI can't effectively spy on its enemies, I suppose
the AI should try to build a few of everything, starting with the most
powerful units (hovercars or groundcars, but not rockets!!!) and working
down.  It might then try to count the number of enemy units of each type
that it runs into and use those numbers to modify the worths of
offensive or defensive units.

I'm not sure if this kind of code would have as much impact on other
games, but it would be nice in the standard game to see the AI not try
to intercept fighters with bombers.