Posted at: 2014-04-18, 13:33
We all know the AI in widelands is stupid, nad does not provide a real challenge to a human player, especially if said human player has had some time to build up its economy. This makes games on larger maps less fun than they could be. While the AI situation is unlikely to improve in the short term, here's something for those who just want to have some fun on a larger map.
The following description assumes widelands build 18. It probably can be adapted to other versions, other maps, etc.
Get my map "Lesser Ring" from http://pholia.tdi.informatik.uni-frankfurt.de/~philipp/widelands/Lesser%20Ring.wmf. It is a large, but not huge 8-player map.
The map is reasonably fair, but not fully symmetric. It has a bit of seafearing, which is not essential to the gameplay though.
The map size starting positions allow some buildup before encountering other players. However there are pairs of players that often will meet a bit earlier. These are: Red-Yellow, Green-Blue, Black-Orange, Violet-White. It is also a great map for games with multiple human players. The map is based on a slightly realistic geography: Plains near the sea, rivers flow from glaciers in the maintains to the see, there are hills in between mountains and the sea. Ore is mostly found in mountains, coal is mostly found in hills. Gold is more rare than iron.
Get the cheating starting condition
http://pholia.tdi.informatik.uni-frankfurt.de/~philipp/widelands/empire/sc64_headquarters_medium_cheat.lua
and put it into you tribes/empire/scripting directory. This will allow you to select a cheat starting condition in addition to the normal ones. The cheat gives the empire player with that starting condition a substantial amount of basic resources (wood, stone, water), and a bit of other resources every 15 minutes. It also get a colosseum at the start. We will use this to boost the AI (never running out of basic materials helps the AI alot).
Do the same for barbarians http://pholia.tdi.informatik.uni-frankfurt.de/~philipp/widelands/barbarians/sc64_headquarters_medium_cheat.lua and atlanteans http://pholia.tdi.informatik.uni-frankfurt.de/~philipp/widelands/atlanteans/sc64_headquarters_medium_cheat.lua.
For every player pair above, use one strong player (human with "Headquarters medium" starting condition or AI with "Headquarters medium cheat" starting condition) and one weak player (AI with "Headquarters medium" starting condition). You can use aggressive or normal AIs, depending on your preferences. I usually use a mix of aggressive and normal AIs for the strong AI players.
Typically, each strong player will have defeated or nearly defeated one weak player by the time the strong players meet.
Philipp
P.S.: I played quite some games, one starting scenario, in which the AI seems to do well is: Atlanteans for green, empire for red and black, barbarians for violet as the strong players.
P.P.S.: The AI still being the widelands AI sometimes the AI still manages to fail in some way, but even then this seems to give a much more challenging game than the normal way. I've (very rarely) seen a strong AI player fail to make contact with it's weak neighbour, and instead go for another player first). I've seen (multiple times, but not always) the black empire strong AI player get into a vineyard building rage after about 16 hours of gameplay. I've (sometimes) seen the black barbarian strong AI player be slow to expand.
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