I'm nearing a first release of my AI but I have a few finishing touches to add (and I want to try to tweak it so I don't lose the tournament!!! )! At the moment it builds a nice bus network and can make quite a tidy profit, but...
- A - It tries to build EVERYTHING straight away. It the first 3-4 months it burns through its entire maximum loan and builds every possible road and bus service until it runs out of cash.
- B - Once it has built everything or maxed out its loan it does nothing to follow up or maintain its services. It doesn't attempt to build any additional routes past the ones it starts with.
- C - It doesn't make NEARLY as much profit as RalphsAI, Convoy, or Jinjaba. I attribute this to point B, but I think there might be more to it than that.
So I could do with some tips. I would like your advice on the following...
- What's a good way to "ration out" construction and development? I don't want to build everything at once, but at the same time I don't want it to go too slow either.
- How much load can you put on a town? At present there my AI builds one stop per town, but I'm wondering if that's a mistake.
- How do you know if a town has more to give? I am trying to think of a way to judge whether or not more services can be added to a town. I was thinking of basing it on how much there is waiting at a station, but then I noticed that the number of waiting passengers says nothing about the RATE at which they are productted.
- Is it more profitable to spam short range services, or to carefully choose services between the best towns regardless of range?
- How do you strike a balance between enhancing existing services and adding new ones?
Thanks very mush guys.