I understand the AI is handled server side, but at some point in the future will there be some way to load/run custom AI?
Excellent news, thanks for the info! I'm especially excited for this. It might be pretty cool to have AI tournaments, as a sort of programmer's competition.
This is a genius idea reminds me of Robocode http://robocode.sourceforge.net/ "Robocode is a programming game, where the goal is to develop a robot battle tank to battle against other tanks in Java or .NET. The robot battles are running in real-time and on-screen."
This is great news, when games have custom AI it always means good for the community the longevity to the game as well, not everyone is a competitive online player heh..
I am still an advocate of the Client being able to upload AI Scripts to units, or customizable AI of some sort. It sounds complicated as all hell, but it would be great for people who are more about macro than micro. I could program my engineers to automatically expand and focus more on deciding where to attack and what to attack with. Sounds like cheating or macros, but I'd like this for PA in lieu of just making the game slower. TA gave the player a lot of time in-between engagements for formulating strategies, without being boring. For me, planning is half the fun.
If not done, (or if no suitable unit AI is present by default), client side mods for that very purpose will pop up. Only a matter of time before the first auto-dodge mod is released.