Improvements for AI Opponents

[JimMorrison]

Loren said:
*PART* of #3 could be implemented easily:

Check to see if the commander will benefit from the item. When I take an air-breathing item off an air-breathing commander, something's wrong.

I would also divide all commanders into caster or non-caster. Items would be flagged as to whether they are for casters/non-casters or both.

Well that's a fine idea, but how do you define casters? I mean, giving a staff and a robe to a Dai-Oni would just be a terrible SNAFU. In fact many of the best SCs have magical ability, and some of them have much better magical ability than the "mages of the line" that one might recruit in large numbers to spam buffs and minor evocations. It could prove very tiresome to try to work out rules to define what type of commander one is, on the fly. I think a better bet would be to have a flag that can be set to caster-only, combat-only, or left unflagged for those units who are thuggable, but also are perfectly worth having just casting.

And then it comes partly down to research as well..... Most thuggable casters are only viable if they have very specific buffs researched. If they don't, then they would be better used standing back casting whatever else they have access to in a support role.

Such is the conundrum of AI programming - there are so many potential variables, that you get worse results the more specific your rules are. Of course, one could argue it's hard to get much worse than a Fish Pendant on a human commander, but maybe he only had it because he picked it up, the AI never removes magic items AFAIK.