Homework Six

Assigned 5/1/03, due 5/8/03

As we discussed in class, AI is a make-or-break issue in creating enjoyable strategy games.  In the following two assignments, you are going to modify the strategy AI in Age of Kings to produce two new computer opponents with distinctive personalities:

• Fang (this assignment)  will be hyper-aggressive, the pit-bull of Age of Kings AI's.  Attacking in the Dark Age would be a nice touch, but tenacity and sheer viciousness is also important, so the economy cannot be totally neglected.
• Peacenik (next assignment)  will rely almost entirely on the power of religion.  That is, the only mobile units that Peacenik can build are villagers and monks.  No watchtowers allowed either.  The idea is that this civilization will not sully itself with fighting.  (The folks doing the shooting when the town center defends itself are hired from other less enlightened civilizations.)  If monks convert a solider, who then chooses to use the skills of his prior life in the service of Truth and Light, then clearly it was meant to be.  

In producing these AIs, you will not be starting from scratch.  Your goal is to start with the standard Age of Kings AI, analyze how they work, and based on that analysis make the minimal necessary changes to implement these personalities.  To help you get you started, we have created sets of files for Fang and Peacenik by copying the Age of Kings AI files and changing the file names appropriately.  Since you are starting with Ensemble Studio's work, please make sure you cite them appropriately in the comments of your code.  

This week, you will need to turn in:

• Zip archive for your Fang AI.  As usual, please include your name in the file name for the zip archive, and archive the files to a subdirectory based on your last name so that we can easily unpack them in a common place.  Please note all changes in the files via comments in the files themselves. 
• TA's note:  Important: make sure to zip up the folder , and not just the files (e.g. r_zubek.zip should contain a folder named r_zubek, which in turn should contain all the .per files and the .ai file).
  
• A Microsoft Word document that describes your design for Fang.  You must explain all modifications you made and why, justifying them in terms of your analysis of how the AI works and the mechanics of the game.

Some hints:

• The class web site lists some resources for Age of Kings, but there are many others available on the web.  
• It is fine to share your findings in understanding how the game AI works with other students.  In fact, we encourage you to discuss what you are learning on the newsgroup.  However, you are not to share code: All code that is part of your AI that is not from the original AI must be written individually.
• We strongly recommend that you carefully read and analyze how the AI works before starting into modifications.  It is true that random tweaking (i.e., evolution) can create intelligent beings, but you have a week, not a million years.  A few hours of analysis can save weeks of hacking.
• For testing it is handy to have a scenario where you can just start it up and watch closely what the AIs are doing, rather than playing yourself. We have built a test scenario that you can use for this purpose. 

Last edited 5/2/03 by RZ.
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