Interactive Meta-Reasoning: Towards a CAD-Like Environment for Designing Game-Playing Agents - Computational Creativity Research: Towards Creative Machines - page 343

Fig. 17.1 A screenshot of the Freeciv client interface
through peaceful means such as scientific advancement resulting in the building of
an interstellar spaceship. It can take a few hours to play a complete game.
Figure 17.1 illustrates a screenshot of the Freeciv client. The largest pane displays
a map of a player's cities and units (warriors, workers, etc.). The pane in the upper
left corner displays a smaller overview map of the entire game world, with which
the player can navigate. The icons below the small map display the allocation of
player resources among taxes, luxuries, and scientific research. Below these icons is
a button that the player can click to end his/her current turn. The large white text box
on the bottom of the screen is the information window, containing all messages sent
from the Freeciv server to the Freeciv client. The tool bar at the top has game options
and actions enabling the player to, for example, save the game, develop research
technologies, and create new playing units.
On one hand, Freeciv is so large, complex, and dynamic that no simple, rigid
strategy is likely to succeed in winning the game. On the other, Freeciv provides
a controlled environment in which we can experiment with different game rules,
different opponents (human, built-in, or of our own devising), and different strategies
(developing a city, building an army, collecting resources, defending a city, attacking
an opponent, etc.). More importantly from our perspective, the problem of designing