Re: The "Colonizing" plan

[Hans Ronne <hronne at pp dot sbbs dot se>]

>In this game, it's not a good idea to cover a territory that's larger
>than what you can defend.  I would imagine that the same applies for any
>Civ-type game.

Not according to my experience. Aggresive expansion in the early phase of
the game is the only viable strategy in Civ2 or Civ3, particularly at the
Deity level. It is better to loose some settlers than to play it safe and
let the other civs grab most of the territory. From the testing I did when
I wrote the advances game, the same is true in that case. Can't tell about
the game you are writing, but it would surprise me if careful step by step
expansion is not a loosing strategy there, too.

>It seems to me that the random code for the colonizers had the same
>problem.  When the game ends, I try to see what the AI was up to, and it
>looked like a settler might easily try to walk into a lake or ocean
>cell.

Running into obstacles will happen with any random walk algorithm. My point
was that the colonizer random walk is more randomized in that both the
direction and the move lenght is changed at random. This makes it easier
for the colonizer to get out of places such as small peninsulas where other
units tend to get stuck.

Hans

Hans Ronne

hronne@pp.sbbs.se