Man vs. Artificial Intelligence - Part Two 

Excellent episode with the outcome as expected. Very much looking forward to your further takes on all of this, great job.

Our wargames are a lot tougher for real AI to handle than the games AI works in. For example, it took almost 20 years for Big Blue to reach the level where it could beat a master on a game that has only 32 units of 6 types on a map (board) of 64 squares (hexes). Antietam's map has 28,000 hexes. It has five general counter types with subtypes of each. And it has over 500 of these units to track in a system that allows many to be completely hidden. Add in each unit has multiple ways of moving and you have an AI nightmare. Most games that have a completive AI achieve it by limiting what the player can do and/or by having the AI play part of the game for both sides.

The big problem seems to be in most of these games that the AI has a hard time to keep track of the overall and overarching objectives on a larger scale aswell as what to do with individual units and how to handle things on a smaller scale and ultimately how to bring these things into Unison.

Anyone who has played these games knows how poorly the AI performs. Hopefully, this series is to remind the developers that this issue is a real drawback to their products. I have to play with house rules, such as not capturing enemy cannons or officers, but that doesn't help the AI's lack of any kind of sound tactics. They claim to have two kinds of AI, one being scripted. It's obvious that the scripting is just as bad as the general AI and it's almost pointless to even start a battle against the AI. There is no sound logic to the way the AI performs. I know it can be challenging to create a competent AI, but many other systems have done it well. Even old games like TW Rome II and TW Napoleon have an AI that can keep formations intact, attack in lines, and protect ranged units. I would probably buy more WDS games if the AI was better. It's well past time for some of these games to be rebuilt from the ground up, because as they stand now, I find them hard to recommend to new players.