I'd like to begin tinkering around with an RTS AI, but I'm having trouble finding a good environment to work with, ie a game that has been already created. I have looked at Spring RTS and Bos Wars, but they don't seem to be conducive to creating simple examples.
I am not totally opposed to writing my own game environment, it would just take a long time. Does anyone have a suggestion as to how I can get my feet wet without programming my own game?
If you have a few bucks, Garage Games has an RTS kit for its Torque game engine. http://www.garagegames.com/products/rts-genre-kit
This should allow you to begin writing some AI code immediately.
Check out ORTS, maintained by Michael Buro at the University of Alberta.
I haven't used it myself, but I've seen it in action since even before the first release in 2003, and it's definitely grown in leaps and bounds.
I don't think creating a very simple rts engine from scratch is a big work.
I'm pretty sure Strarcraft II will come with a very complete, programmable, editor (some people even transformed it into a FPS). It will be released on July the 2nd.
Supreme Commander is also moddable via Lua. There are several WWI - WWII strategy games also moddable via Lua.
On the Opensource front, glest and temulous have their source available; you might want to try modding them.
Finally, there's 0 A. D., which is also opensource, but on Beta.
My recommendation, however, is that you give a look at the Spring project.
There's actually a starcraft AI competition going on right now. The BWAPI ai api is very nice and should get you going very quickly. There are already many impressive entrants.
http://eis.ucsc.edu/StarCraftAICompetition
Edit :(, just realized how old this question is.