[glob2-devel] Nicowar Revision 3, New Unit Allocation System Needed

[Bradley Arsenault]

I spent the last day or two working on a entirely new AI feature for
Nicowar. The new, revision 3 Nicowar possesses the intelligence to
detect when its enemies have become enclosed entirely in ressources,
blockading its access in. But, not only does it detect this, it has
the smarts to *dig them out again*!! This is more of an AI vs AI
thing, but the same code will cause Nicowar to dig itself out in the
event that all of its buildings are locked inside ressources.

I have yet to work out the kinks, but you can see the code in action
by doing modifying FourSquares so that all of the enemies bases are
locked in with ressources. After building up its army, you will see
Nicowar place a clearing flags from the outside inward to the building
that it wants to attack.

Unfortenetly, development of this has come to a halt after I realized
the unit allocation system is just plain broken: Even though there are
numerous units rolling arround with swim level 1 and nothing to do,
none of them go to the clearing flag. They just roll arround and
consume food for no reason.

This bug has been talked about, and a fix had been started in another
branch. But its since been forgotten about. So, I'm going to rewrite
the unit allocation system myself. The new system works like this:

1) The focus is on the building, the building chooses the unit
2) Every tick (or so), buildings are prioritized, and higher priority
buildings (eg Inn) get first pick
3) The chain is worked down untill every building is satisfied.
4) The unit remains working at the building untill it can no longer
work there or the building lays the unit off the job


This fairly simple set of rules has the advantage that every unit will
be used if it can be used. No playing arround. No bugs. Just pure,
simple allocation. It can have some surprisingly intelligent results.
Prioritizing the buildings doesn't have to be simple. Building
priorities can be based on
1) The type of building (eg Inn has higher priority)
2) User settings (the low-medium-high buttons that have already been discussed)
3) The number of units already working at the building

How a building picks a unit doen't have to be complex. Units with the
ressource that the building needs comes first (unless the task at hand
isn't collecting ressources), and after that the closest unit is
picked.

Minimizing the complex rules is meant to minimize bugs and maximize
the result. The only complexity in this system should be how buildings
are prioritised, but even that is simple, clear, concise code.


--
Really. I'm not lieing. Bradley Arsenault.