It seems like every few days, we see a post with someone complaining about how the AI did something stupid in some circumstance. Sometimes these are accompanied with "I mean, how hard can it be?" type posts. A couple weeks ago, I posted to one of Brad's replies asking about letting those people put their coding where their mouth is by adding some AI APIs so people can write their own.

I didn't receive a single reply, but I kinda like the idea. Since I know that "customize the AI" is going to be a feature for Dark Avatar, it would be nice if there was an API.

Here is the post I made, I just want to see if anyone else would like to see it:

Hey Brad, is there a possibility of providing an API (the same API that the AIs would use to direct their turns) so that people who say "how hard can it be??!?!" can put their code where their mouth is? I'm semi-serious here. If you were just wrap an IDL around whatever API your AI algorithms use and export them as COM objects and include some simple way (maybe just detailed via a config file) to get the game to load user-defined AIs, then we can really add to the game, I think. You could get people trying to duke it out with other people's AIs. Not only would people realize just how hard it is to keep track of everything, but they could maybe come up with some creative ways of doing things that could be added back into the game. I'm not suggesting publishing the source to your AIs, just give an API so the more geeky of us can attempt to write our own. And people could release their AIs to the Library (along with source, hopefully, so that other can tweak the good ones). Maybe in an expansion pack, or GalCiv3?