During this last month of development, we have been busy rewriting most of the code from blueprints to C++. The purpose of this was modernization and optimization of Artificial Intelligence. So, we get an incredible result. The Old algorithm, after hard optimization, took less than a second (instead of 20 seconds) to calculate AI opponent turn.
But, as you know, the AI was lacking its ‘I’ and suited only for playing in the “puzzles” modes. We decided to upgrade it. Now it takes nearly ten seconds a turn and its decisions look much more thoughtful, thus it became interesting to play with it 1 vs 1. At this moment it has no handicap and it was really hard task to make it competitive. It’s not so smart to concurrent with a highly experienced player, but it is ten times smarter than it was. The number of our AI parameters is too high and it will take a while for us to find best of them to achieve optimal results. Also we want to add several levels of AI difficulty and, maybe, some handicap system to make it interesting for the really good players.