So, I just finished this game in which my partner got the boot on the 6th turn, so i had to play virtually the entire game with an AI--- http://warlight.net/MultiPlayer.aspx?GameID=2623219
I was able to ultimately win the game, but I came away with 2 things that would make playing with an AI better without drastically changing it's algorithims.
1. If you as a teammate attack your AI, then the next turn it by default transfers you the troops in that territory. IE- he's sitting on 40 and you have 4 or five you attack with a couple not having to really expend anything and the next turn he gives you those troops so you can put them to better effect.
2. the AI moves all troops that are not actively engaged on a contested border towards the nearest KNOWN enemy position. IE- there were large troop collections in the middle of a state the AI controlled that just sat there not helping at all.

I don't think either of these changes would fundamentally change the AI, just help to make it more involved in the conflict. Thoughts?

Fizzer has repeatedly stated he won't be changing the AI for any minor tweaks. When a change does occur it will be a sweeping one with significant ramifications across the game (since it would invalidate single-player stats for one)

So unfortunately any such change will have to wait, likely some time too.

How about negative bonuses? There are non of them in any single player level, so altering the AI so he does not complete them wouldn't be so drastic.

Hadn't thought about the single-player stats being affected, bummer, cuz with a few tweaks I think it works just fine....

i'm hoping one day we'll be able to submit our own AI algorithms to play the game for us while we are away.

@ps:

Have you looked at [this WL blog update](http://blog.warlight.net/index.php/2011/04/warlight-as-a-candidate-to-the-google-ai-challenge/)? It's not exactly what you want, but it's a start.

Are you really admitting that an AI could be at least as smart as you are yourself? Or am I drawing the wrong conclusion from your post? :p

The AI should indeed gain a boost. One of the largest problems is the inability to communicate with them. Their moves are crappy at best, and you can't tell them to change it. For example, I'm currently doing a 2v2 tournament in which I basically guide my teammate on what to do, since he's not that active/good. This is impossible with an AI. I fully disagree with the supposed opinion that you should be punished for getting an AI in your team. That is punishment already.

Any way, yes, minor changes aren't that good. A complete overhaul would be better. Might as well get some new singleplayer campaigns up too.

Or, make a new AI, but keep the old one when you want to play with less of a challenge! You could call them NAI and OAI, and add different NAI when keeping the OAI levels! Then you would be less pissed if the levels and challenges change, after you tried it a hundred times to get the gold star.

Moros, actually, from what I remember, that's exactly what Fizzer has in mind.

All I heard was something about a "Single-player overhaul", which could mean about anything.

or single player ai and multiplayer ai (SAI and MAI) if they are going to exist concurrently.

Difficulty settings sounds great, especially since we now know of ways to make them crappier (which they currently are). If this changes the singleplayer campaigns, I'd suggest simply resetting them for everyone. More maps (hopefully) and difficulty settings would increase popularity for that part of the game. Definitely hoping for more of the Europe challenge maps.

Darkruler,

The point is that the AI cannot be changed currently *as it would require resetting single player scores* (which is considered undesirable).

I explicitly mentioned that in my post.

It is not necessarily a bad thing. That is clinging onto old, virtual stuff while preventing many great changes for the future. If you're so good at the singleplayer campaign, then surely with a new AI and difficulty settings you can be on top again. If you haven't even completed the first challenge, then there's no worries over having your progress deleted. I myself completed levels 1 through 5 (on Kongregate, not here), but I won't mind at all a reset. In fact, if the oldies really want to keep all of their scores and such, why not simply move the old singleplayer campaigns to a new tab called "old singleplayer feature" and fill up the current one with what it should become.