I like that influence map thing. But how would you set that up? How big would each tile be? Would every unit have to check where he is? These are all problems that need to be explained, as this is my first run with an RTS. The soldiers were the easy part, the AI is a toughy.

Yeah, I already have all the units set up. See, they work based on animations. The units do what you tell them. They handle their own methods of attacking, moving, etc. Lets say that we have a soldier(you), and to make him move:

you.anim = anim_move;
you.gox = target.x;
you.goy = target.y;
you.goz = target.z;

or to make him attack:

you.attack = on;
you.attackhandle = handle(enemy_guy);
(all of the anim_ are defined as 1, 2, 3, and .anim is declared as a skill)

See? All my ai is going to do is simulate an actual player. I already have the player's controls hooked up to the mouse.

What I was needing was a good process that the AI can go through to figure out what the best strategy is, where the weak spots are, etc. I'm going to make my maps bigger later on, with more objectives such as to take over a building, secure and defend a power plant, etc. I was just wondering how to make my AI smart-ish enough for it to be fun.

One more important thing, this game will be small, so there is only one type of unit, but they have special abilities. One side can bring back enemy soldiers to fight for them, and one side can crouch, to snipe the enemies. Of course, both of these have thier drawbacks, such as crouching takes time to set up(which is handled by the soldier), and the ressurecting takes half of the unit's life and speed(which can be recovered by killing, and is also handled by the unit). So, you know, the AI needs to use these abilities.

Last, do you know of a good auto-setup pathfind system that sets the nodes for you? I really don't want to have to set up the nodes for every map. I also want to incorperate a "map-builder" once you complete the game.