Scouts and Terrain

[agentx]

Just want to share some fun I'm having with a new group for Hannibal: Scouts. Their goal is to explore the whole map and record geographic features like water, impassable terrain, resources, shores etc. I hope I get them clever enough to detect they are on an island and build a dock + ship to continue exploring the rest of the archipelago. The concept I try to fulfil is: Bots don't cheat. However clouded the map is a bot can easily analyse any part of the map and locate the opponents head-quarter. Hannibal is not like that

So here's a first result:

If you look closely the dots mark a spot where the scout took a snapshot. While testing I gave the scout three points to visit. If detected idle he moves to the next and so on. Which made another group appear on my list: Patrol. Now that the grainpickers can deal with buildings and scouts with the terrain, the next group is close: miners. After that I have utilized nearly the whole API and will make progress very fast.

Here the map to compare:

PS: If you think now winning against Hannibal will be easy, just kill the scouts and he's blind - no chance, they reproduce in growing numbers and avoid any violence.

[Radagast.]

Man, I can't tell how excited I am where this is leading. It will be an amazing experience to be confronted with Hannibal.