Feb 28th 2011, 23:03:19
Bots can be a good or bad idea depending on how they are implemented. If bots are designed to strictly be land targets, it would be essentially the same as having a second explore option on the menu bar, as others have pointed out. Entire alliances building their strategies on bot farming would immensely take away from the interactivity which is the point of this game.
*Pros: Newer players get a break, player base expands
*Cons: Nothing interesting would ever happen, players leave
But on the other hand, if bot countries worked together and reacted to attacks in such a way that players would rather not risk attacking them, it would be not much different than having a new, immensely powerful alliance marked as "do not hit", and then we would be back to square one.
*Pros: New strategies created to deal with difficult bot behavior
*Cons: Bots become too much to handle, then it's back to farming newbies
Finding a middle ground for bots to stand on would be difficult but not impossible. A lot of testing will be needed but I will be quite interested to see the results.