When I say AI, I mean control logic for computer played units in a game, not Ai as in Machine Learning or Artificial Intelligence. For instance in the Empire type game, that I started (On the Games source link) which has ships and units fighting on land and sea, capturing cities and building new units.

An AI for an Empire type game has a lot of logic to be implemented. I thought about this quite a bit and came up with a task based Ai system. A neutral city is spotted by an exploring ship. If its a transport with armour on infantry then it just attacks the city and hopefully captures it.

If not a task is created. This comprises a number of steps.

1. Locate units nearest to the city that aren’t allocated to the task.
2. If the units are on the same continent then just send them to attack the city.
3. If not Locate the nearest transport and send it to rendezvous with the units at the nearest point to them. Load the units.
4. If there aren’t any units free then locate the nearest friendly city that’s not tasked with anything and task it to build the units.
5. If there’s no transport, have the city build a transport after building the armour/infantry units.

That’s just one for task but what if a friendly city is threatened and the tasked units are the nearest. Care has to be taken so that units aren’t flip flopped, getting orders one turn then being pulled away three turns later to a different task.

Each task should be given a time-to-live (say 30 turns), long enough to acquire the resources (units it needs) to do the job and reach the target. The rule then is no diverting units on a task unless a dire emergency (like threatening one of its cities) and those are the nearest.

There’s nothing worse than allocating units to a task then seeing enemy units sail right past unopposed. Writing code to deal with different situations and priorities is not an easy task