The Worlds of Kaomaris

Xarfei and I have just been chatting about the latest Advanced WoK game and how it might take a while to fill.

We were wondering about the idea of Advanced Duel, to fill in the gap. Duel games have proved to be a big benefit to Standard games, with the opportunity to play when only 2 players want a game, as well as trying out new tactics not normally viable in a 10 player game.

A couple of questions came up:

1) How many players could realistically be commanded by one player?

2) How should the robots behave?


Answers (and further questions) welcome!

Chris.

Well, I might as well sum up some of our/my ideas from last night.

1) I think commanding 2 players would be the most suitable option, maybe 3 but no more.

2) Robot behaviour:
Attacking: Use a similar script to the one used in standard wok.
Maybe have the robot attack three provinces on the first turn however.

Production: Have the robot set the aim of his provinces to something useful: i.e. mining in a mountain / tundra, chopping in a forest, harvesting in the rest.
Additinally, the robot should also try to make some more workers up to a certain limit (e.g. max 20 harvesters or 40 choppers/miners).

Other:
Robot could thus try to make upgrades (equal amounts of each) as well as spells (maybe always try rain-pusher-morale).
Robot could try to go up 1-2 teach levels a turn.
Maybe have the robot put small amounts of randomly chosen stuff on the market (for a predefined price)?

Xarfei

Guys

Thought about robots when I was writing the code.

Suggest you write code that looks for Tribe = 20. Set all Robots to Tribe = 20.

Make seperate code within each phase to check for Tribe = 20.


Other points:

Robots don't need food.

Robot workers could be more efficient.

Robot players could always have 80% EFF.

Robot players should convert POP to ARM in 3 provinces every turn if possible (maybe after all other players attacks you can check for the head army and the two next bigest POP sources for each robo)

If a robos head is destroyed it recommences attacks from the province with the most armies.

That's all for now.

There is a question which should probably be asked before making other decisions: What is the purpose of the robots?

In Standard Duel, they are 'moving terrain features'. They're not meant to play very well. I toyed with the idea of giving them a reasonable AI, but Han convinced me that making them too clever would also make them too hard to predict, which would turn players off the game.

Obviously people who play Advanced WoK like working through stupidly long combinations of options, so this may be less of an issue. Also they robos will have to have *some* intelligence or their economy will crash in about 3 turns...

A tribe is one option (although I believe there already is a tribe 20 ) But it is just as easy to check for the Player ID to detect a robot (all robots are controlled by the WoK AutoGM). It's an imagery thing here. Are robot players actually commanding a group of robots in the land, or are they just a dummy player, like a neutral with teeth?


Chris.

I agree with Gaz that neutrals would probably have to cheat a bit not to ruin themselves or the provinces they take.

If we leave the overall aim of the Duel to take out the other player (not taking out robos which is an option in Duel-lite) then robos can remain 'moving terrain features', I think.