@Hawkster

If we lure them in with a simplier version of the game and recruit from there, would be a lot easier than watch them play as untag and get farmed to the ground out of protection.....

How would bots deter new players?

Here's a REST api spec that qz and I discussed earlier this week:

EE API

# COUNTRY ADMIN
GET /countries - get list of countries (UUID/API_ID, name, server, etc)
GET /country - get specific country information (UUID/API_ID, name, server, etc)
POST /country - create new country
DELETE /country - delete country
PUT /country - Update country information

# COUNTRY MANAGEMENT
GET /country_info - returns country information data

GET /government - returns current government
PUT /government - sets government

GET /industry - returns current industry %s
PUT /industry - sets industry percents

GET /taxrate - returns current tax rate (%)
PUT /taxrate - sets tax rate

GET /gdi - return whether the country is in GDI & join/leave time constraints
PUT /gdi - join or leave GDI

# ECONOMIC
GET /market/private/buy - returns information about private market volume + price
POST /market/private/buy - buys items from private market
GET /market/private/sell - returns information about private market sell price + number of items owned
POST /market/private/sell - sells items on the private market

GET /build - returns number of each building type, vacant land, but and building cost
POST /build - builds buildings
DELETE /build - destroy buildings

GET /cash - returns additional revenue per turn information
POST /cash - cashes turns

GET /explore - returns current acreage, current acreage unbuilt, expected per-turn explore rate, bpt
POST /explore - explores turns

GET /market/public/buy - returns price, volume, asking price, and max-buy for each item
POST /market/public/buy- attempts to buy items from the market
GET /market/public/sell - returns price, volume, asking price, and max-buy for each item
POST /market/public/sell- attempts to sell items on the market
GET /market/tech/buy - returns price, volume, asking price, and max-buy for each tech
POST /market/tech/buy - attempts to buy tech from the market
GET /market/tech/sell - returns price, volume, asking price, and max-buy for each tech on the market
POST /market/tech/sell - attempts to sell tech on the market
GET /market/standing_orders, alias /market/so - returns a list of current standing orders 
POST /market/standing_orders, alias /market/so - creates a standing order
DELETE /market/standing_orders, alias /market/so - deletes one or more standing orders

GET /research - returns information about tech levels, tpt, max techable points
POST /research - create research

# WAR
GET /military - returns list of current troops, number of generals available, brigade status information and max oil support

GET /warroom - returns military status, troop counts, oil usage, planned strike cool down time
POST /warroom - launch an attack

GET /spy - return information on spy effectiveness, number of operations available, list of operations available
POST /spy - run a spy op

GET /previous_spyops - return a list of spy’s previously performed (i.e., country/military/market ops)
GET /previous_spyop - return specific spy information

# ALLIES
GET /relations - returns a list of current relations and statuses
POST /relations - send a request for a pact
PUT /relations - accept or decline a pact
DELETE /relations - cancel a pact

GET /foriegn_aid - returns information about what you can send and how often
POST /foreign_aid - send a foreign aid package

GET /clan - return the country’s current clan information
POST /clan - join a clan
DELETE /clan - leave a clan
PUT /clan - make changes to a clan (admin)

GET /clans - list of clans + members + nw

All requests would require at least 2 params:
1) your API key
2) country UUID. The country UUID would be a quicker way of accessing countries instead of server + cnum combo.

There will still be ways to get a list of your countries and whatnot via the API key only, I guess. But for the country-specific API, those two params will be required.

Looks good pang

Agreed!

only things i see missing are

check for declare war
declare war
cancel declare war

GET /clans - list of clans + members + nw

for this if your going to run them untagged still

would it be possible to make a hidden server side 'untagged' clan

so that bots could use math do decide how well they were doing vs other bots and untagged

the problem with that may be team where there is restrictions on countries leaving a tag but im not even certain if you have bots on team

also warroom might be missing missile functionality, ie check for missiles and send missiles, you might even want to return max missiles to simplify things

bonus points:

could the bots be given either max, average, or normal max

ie all bonuses every 24 without the 22 one rolling forwards, perhaps skipping the forum turns as a tradeoff for never losing a day on the 24's

then be able to spend bonus points

if you did that the gdi stuff would need perma gdi too

how about vacation? i think it might be better to leave that option out since it would probably only be trolly

restart functionality, when i a restart is made there should be a flag to tell a bot its a restart so any turns run less than x logic can be set to ignore it

messaging, could bots send messages to eachother indicating reason and potentially logic for pacts, such as 'im a 1000 tpt techer techer teching 80% of turns stocking until one week from end of set' then the other bot can accept or decline if it makes sense, and reply with its own status

and they could keep lists of do or dont ally this country

then maybe it could use the news options, which could be added in to check that the country is actually teching

news options would be needed for bots to notice if someone is doing harmful ops on them, such as stealing tech

and for retals

and possible market news for things like 'how fast did i sell, if too fast maybe raise price if too slow maybe lower price'

@pang: Will we be able to use the API outside the AI server?

I look at game activity prior to joining any new game and I am sure I am not the only one to do this. IF a game has bots playing, than noob cant really tell how active the game really is. This is not my overall final decision on whether to try the game out or not, but is huge factor.

For example before I started playing here I was looking for an e2025 clone to play temporarily, so half my decision was already made up on if to start new game or not. I looked at ee as well as mars. Mars clearly had lots of multi's .. not bots that I could tell but who knows might have had them too, but I could not determine how active Mars really was but it didnt appear that active. So I looked here at ee, bots were being spoken about but were not really that far along yet and as far as I could tell dont think were even in-game yet. Multi's were not allowed here and it appeared some effort was in place to keep them out. All of this meant that at time it appeared to be at least 500 if not 1000 actively playing. So I decided to try this game. However IF bots were around like they are today I would not have even bothered to start an account here.

I dont come on-line to play against the computer, I can do that with out internet. I have heard others say the same thing from time to time in various different places. So I know for fact it would deter some (like myself), I just do not know how many .. or whether I am in small minority or not.

i think your worried more about optics than effects

if there were bots then there might have been 300 bots instead of 100 bots now

it wouldnt have made 300 people of those 1000 disapear, it would have made 1000+300

i think you were around a while?

you should have some idea that in the peak countries times there were thousands of bots and multies

the more we increase bot numbers in relation to players and grabbers the less new people get farmed into the ground

but keep in mind the increase needs to be high enough tat it isnt soaked up by people switching from allx to grabbing

there were sets in alliance where people went tyranny just so they got 20 acre miniums on gains instead of 10

there were sets in limited/silver where people died purely due to being farmed to death for land

Yea, Enshula raises some good points -- one of the consequences of us making the game more secure and building mod tools that could actually find and stop multies/bots was that we lost a lot of fluff countries. There were definitely tons of bots in E2025 that disappeared in EE.

But the reasoning for the bot API isn't only so we can add bots to the current servers but so we can:
a) create bot servers where bots battle bots
b) leverage the bot server infrastructure to offer learning opportunities for universities, colleges, high schools or whoever to learn more about working with REST apis, building a non-linear AI, or build UIs using EE. IMO it's the sort of thing that would be a fun project for a third year AI class or fourth year human computer interaction class. Add in the competition aspect and it fits really well.
c) be able to redo our own UI via the same API.

Does it matter that you misspelled "foreign" as foriegn in one spot?

True, but I was talking from perspective of potential new people joining. They would not be able to determine just by looking at the game whether it was 300 bots and 1000 players or 1000 bots and 300 players or maybe even 1250 bots with only 50 players. All they could quickly see is there are bots and wonder how many are actual real people.

I never actually played e2025 but yes I have heard about all the tons of multies and bots, before I even started playing here.

Agreed, the more you increase bot numbers IF it is significant enough of an increase will mean less new people being farmed. As you pointed. However if that were done I wouldnt stick around. It is already far too easy with not much skill required to net here as it is, so dont think making it even easier will make game better. Would be opposite.

That is actually a good thing and I wished it were that way now. I have played elsewhere that it was like that and miss it.

but it also meant actual untagged players were getting hit about 50 times a day and in constant max dr

as to skill and ease, the bots dont have to explore max, and can sit at smaller land and nw while running full defence

then you can have more bots in lower dr without average grab size going up a huge amount

comparing things to the old days the real change was turn count though, now we have 4800 reset turns

old sets were i think as low as 2k at one point thats the biggest difference

as well as the 2b bug removal, the nw doubling, and the expenses nerf so it didnt double as fast