First, id like to say great job concerning ur progress so far ive been keeping up to date as best as possible with the Halo Universe in general and i like how the E3 show turned out and how the latest demonstration looked.

Ok back to the matter at hand the AI. Ive played Numerous RTS games and the AI is always been the deciding factor in gameplay. The main thing to worry about is whether your AI will be reacting to your presence on the simulated terrain which should be its universe. The AI as an ally should be able to react to your strategy, a useful but underdeveloped assist i have come across is being able to send basic messages to the AI which stimulates a response. for example on Age of empires typing the number 35 into the chat would tell the AI you were attacking and the AI would respond and Assist you in the attack as best he could. the AI however always responded as if it was able to help you even when it wasnt so the player often sent in his army with no support only to get counter-attacked and beaten sensless into the ground. The fact that two human players can talk to each other is a big advantage over a player and a computer and if you dont want to go with the old fallback of making the computer better by increasing its ability to multitask or giving it more resources to level the playing field then the best way would to be to allow the AI and the player to communicate. this option comes with problems such as the AI Responding incorrectly or in a misleading way which can cause the balance to fold in half.

Now on to the AI as an enemy. The enemy in most RTS's ive played simply attempt to recreate preexisting strategies such as build so many buildings before attacking with so many units and can be crippled by destroying one building and waiting for it to attempt to rebuild over and over agian until the AI runs out of money. I think the AI should be able to make an informed choice of what tactic to use based on its perception of the enemy(s) it is facing. A library of tactical and economical strategies should be available to alow the AI to adapt to a given situation based on things known about the enemy and itself, eg. available resources, time into the game(possible enemy forces to counter), Types of enemy units encountered so far, Best way to suppliment the units an ally has, How many highly mobile units an ally may have to help defend AI's base if needed, Defendability of the AI base, the space available for building structures, Possible choke points that would be used as an advantage or disadvantage depending on proximity to known enemy structures, the Activity of the enemy whether agressive or relatively docile(defencive). Those are a few of the variables that i would take into account when im playing the game and the AI should be able to take in to account to perhaps a lesser extent also. The AI's may also have seperate names, this allows you to form strategies agianst each one as you play it. ALSO the AI's could be able to create a profile on each player it has played in the last 4 weeks or so allowing it to select strategies it has used effectively agianst certian profiles before or to avoid strategies that have been beaten. this would make the ultimate AI and a fantastically adaptible versitile and overall FUN game.

I realise that what i have suggested would allow the player to cheat by changing the AI's profile of the player but TBH those people shouldnt play the game if they arent going to do it properly. I also relise that to incorporate these variables into the AI and the Library of strategies would be Extensive and cause the overall game size to be huge i think Ensemble Studio's is up to the task and that players wont mind sacraficing Disk space to play what could prove to be greatest RTS ever made!

 Ps. Is there anywhere to get a copy of the Halo Compendium or is that top secret and highly guarded by Lasers and Robot Guards lol?(i asked bungie but they ignored that part of my post... and the emails xD)