Stardock is a pretty silly place to “work” at. So my new rule of thumb is, blame Derek for all my problems. Compiler problem? Derek. VPN issue? Derek. Incredibuild glitch? You get the idea.
Now, if the airs are let out of my tires again…well, who knows what caused that. 
…
Anyway, thanks to Derek, I get to work primarily on the parts of our games I’m traditionally used to working on. With GalCiv, I knew exactly what I wanted. With War of Magic, we kind of did the kumbaya approach (everyone gets to throw in something..). In FE, Derek has the final word. And it has made a tremendous difference in terms of focusing the game design.
Sometimes, it means features get cut. For example, I wanted to let players and the AI to trade items back and forth. But that could turn into a real time sink code-wise for all involved so we have had to put it up. That leaves more time to focus on other parts of the AI.
Of course, my view of the world is ugly. Everything is turned off. But every day I get to see new stuff.
I don’t even know what this is, new today. Cool!
It is interesting to see where AI design and game design meet. As the advocate for AI rights, I am constantly requesting game design changes. Sometimes they get in, sometimes they don’t.
I’ve been really pushing for a way to let players (ahem computer players especially) fast build things. I hate having to wait 18 turns or whatever for something to build if I’m “rich”. Punish me massively but let me get things out quickly if possible.
The tech tree and magical spells area are another area that I lobby a lot because the AI can do so much with these that you…humans…won’t because you guys just aren’t good enough at math to come up with optimal strategies compared to computer players. So the “richer” the tech tree and the more varied the spells are, the better.
Today’s updates to the tech tree start it out smaller but have it grow. You can now see how many turns it takes to get somewhere with your current research.
The AI is doing a lot of work on “scouting” the world. But today’s question is, how intelligently will the AI make use of this scouting? The AI can uncover squares quickly…
But it does not good if it squanders its knowledge.
and so…
FAIL.
Back to the drawing board.