chrome oasis
Currently the base building of AI players (skirmish mode) is extremely dumb. They seemingly build randomly, often blocking both their own units and those of their human allies during matches. I have found myself needing to 'wall' my AI allies (often using windmills for a lack of walls) away from my base in order to stop them clogging up my unit paths in bases that I am building/have built. As such I have come up with a few suggestions on how to make the AI a bit easier to live with or at least temporary fixes.
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Allow the player to allocate areas where the AI can not build. In order to keep this somewhat less obvious to most players I would suggest using a 'build road' or 'fence' mechanic. It would also make this a bit more useful tactically if a 'road surface' increased wheeled/tracked/walking units speed of travel.
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Make the AI's leave a 2 square space around production facilities at all times. This would stop a behaviour I have seen many times where the AI either builds something up against the exit of a production facility (or blocking it by constructing the facility with the exit against the edge of the map) essentially blocking in whatever is manufactured there and making said production facility useless.
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Have the basic layout (as in the production building layout and inner defensive ring) of AI bases dictated on a selection of pre-defined designs based on the local environment, the area available for construction and the amount of mining points available within a certain range of the base.
My apologies if any of these ideas are not feasible, but I don't know because I am not a game dev.
rough hound