What do +2/-1 mean?

[LarryP]

This is NOT in the manual which just amazes me. When I select my troop, pick melee, and hold the cursor over an enemy, it displays numbers. What do they mean? For instance: +1/-1, I take it one is for attack(me) and the other is enemy defense? [&:]

[Deride]

These are the bonus adjustments for your attack against them and their return attack against you. It is based on a 10d, so a +1 means you have a 10% bonus to hit.
 
Deride

[LarryP]

ORIGINAL: Deride

These are the bonus adjustments for your attack against them and their return attack against you. It is based on a 10d, so a +1 means you have a 10% bonus to hit.

Deride

So the left side of the equation is my attack against them, and the right side is their's against me? [&:]

You are the programmer that worked on the AI. Good job! Excellent game! [&o][&o][:)]

[Deride]

Right.
 
And thanks for the compliment.
 
Deride

[LarryP]

ORIGINAL: Deride

And thanks for the compliment.

Deride

You more than deserve it. As I played more last night I was further impressed. I too am a programmer and I can very much relate to how hard it is to create AI. One that works good! [;)] [&o]

[Deride]

Well, I think it is a rather interesting and unique AI, so I would love to describe it a bit further. Essentially, it is mixing a few different mechanisms including: 1) a genetic algorithm, 2) a white board advisor approach and 3) a lottery ball algorithm.
 
It works by proposing a set of moves and having the 'white board' advisor evaluate each overall approach. These evaluations include piece by piece move advisors (such as a one for the 'defend' move) as well as more strategic advisors (such advisors such as keeping in formation or achieving some type of overall goal.) Then, the genetic algorithm picks from among the highest scoring move sets and applies it's genetic cross over to create a whole new family of choices. It continues this loop for the alloted number of times based on difficulty setting. Once completed, the lottery ball algorithm picks from among the highest choices ever seen -- this gives some randomness to the final selection. (It works similar to the NBA lottery whereby higher scoring moves get more 'balls' before one is selected.)
 
The real strength of the approach is that is is able to use a non-conventional approach to select from the more than 25^54 possible moves. And it does it on a decent machine in under 5 seconds.
 
Deride

[Joram]

Intriguing!  I haven't played it in awhile but that kind of made me want to look at it again.    I enjoy the entire series by the way.