Create AI Monarchs: Morbo et al

One of those suggestions where people will say "if you don't want to play utopia, then don't" but here goes:

I suggest creating AI provinces specifically designed to teach players how to war but also to facilitate the warring itself.

Model the AI after the great morbo. Have the AI create forum posts outlining it's plans for world (server) domination. If the kingdom votes for and elects the AI it should begin managing the kingdom, if not it should defect out and continue it's mission. Number of AI provinces within the game should be determined based on perceived need (how many kingdoms seem to do nothing), but I could see a utopia where all kingdoms choose to have an AI king. So I'm not talking about automating anything for the player this time, just *everything* the king normally has to do ;D

Have the AI able to model warring plans based on it's own KD composition and it's target KD's. Doesn't have to be Deep Blue but shouldn't be one-dimensional. Maybe allow the kingdom (or a 'council') to take moderate amounts of control over the AI if they wish, either through .munk commands or an in-game interface.

But why?

Obvs being a monarch is a rewarding experience, but it takes a lot of investment as well. It seems to me there are simply not enough people around willing to make that investment. What happens when a potential utopia player joins the game and can't find a team to play for? Right now they might get lucky and get recruited by a mentor, but other than that it's a vast wasteland of 'casual' kingdoms where the play can get boring and a new player might think "well this was a boring game" and quit.

Okay so the most obvious issue with this is that it assumes someone can just make an AI that can lead a KD well.

If it was that easy to lead then there would be more good leaders...

Munknet has not yet evolved this capability.

But it will.

Very true.

So create an organic solution...

Have the community 'evolve' their own AI's. Create an interface to create hierarchy's of action. Program your king to behave as you would if you could be logged in 24/7. As things go wrong adjust to account for those situations. Eventually kingdoms could account for all situations they've seen or can think of.

Now you have a situation where the OP from this thread (http://forums.utopia-game.com/showth...-playing-field) can have his plan set in motion, because the real 'unbalancing' element would be the leader and the leader could be copy-pasted (a la 'open-source monarchs') into a kingdom at will. Have the crowning kingdom's kings become publicly available the following round. Or the top 3 kingdoms' kings from the three charts. Or all island winners. Whatever. Something. It could happen.

If the top kingdom did everything manually then nobody knows their secrets and we can still have a competitive utopia.

Come on, think about it...

Wouldn't it be crazy if utopia was featured in some academic/scientific/tech journals/magazines? This is how you can do it: AI, it's all the rage!

The game has been dumbed down to the point anyone can run a war or a kingdom in the ghetto. Right now it's find a army home and chain them. How much skill does it really take? SURE if you get to the top warring kingdoms or whoring kingdoms you need alot more strategy and micro managing but they won't ever use a AI monarch anyways. So kind of pointless with current mechanics.