ESAI stands for "Enhanced Strategic AI". It is an AI Commander Enhancement for Battlefield 2. It is a replacement for the default DICE commander script.
ESAI at work on Mount Olympus
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Description
This is a shot of ESAI running in AI Debug mode, on the Forgotten Hope 2 map: Mount Olympus.
Note the top left corner-
Team 1 is using the strategy "axis_attackSouthWest", while Team 2 is using "counterAttackHardest3". The first strategy was custom written for this map; the second one is a part of the ESAI core strategies.
The Big Idea here is that the CO now has strategy options more advanced than the defaults.
Before I coded the SAI on this map,the Germans could not make it past the first flag.
What about Monastery flag? The Germans never attack it!
Wow. This really adds to the game. You can duke it out in a strategy style coop war using bots as your armies vs the other human commander.
You could go human V human in coop mode and have a lot of fun, but ESAI would not be active if you were both playing as the Commander.
So how is it best used then?
Well, I have the most fun when I play coop mode on my LAN, and we split the human players evenly between the two teams and have at it. We all play as squad leaders,with the rest of each fire team consisting of bots only.
The AI commander runs the show for us in terms of the overall battle plan,and does a pretty decent job of it. That leaves us free to enjoy the squad level action without the distraction of crappy CO directives.
ESAI was originally made for a SP game environment, where it usually isn't much fun to play the role of CO. More accurately, -I- have never enjoyed being the commander in SP...I imagine there are people who do.
I'll have to try it like that.