Some thoughts on solo wargaming

A recent Facebook review on a new solo wargaming book got me to thinking about what I would want to read on the topic.  The review pretty much listed what I don't want and apparently the book in question had all of these!  I don't need force generators or scenarios I can do that myself.  I don't want a history of or definition of what solo wargaming is either, most of my games are solo I understand what's going on...honest.  What I want is a non player opponent who makes decisions based upon the situation, pre battle objectives, and tactical options available.  Ideally it would look at the balance between it's forces and mine and decide on an overall approach that suits it's forces strengths and weaknesses and takes advantage of my forces weak areas.  It would also be nice if it could surprise me from time to time and wasn't so smart that I am never able to beat it!  It's not too much to ask is it.  I suppose what I am looking for is some kind of Artificial intelligence (AI).

I suppose the same goes for Wargames

Funnily enough I had to undertake a long drive today (Well not that funny the weather was dismal) and , as you do, tuned into Radio 4 as my usual channel had poor reception.  Lo and behold I stumbled onto a discussion of the development of AI systems.  It seems that in the early days there were two schools of thought about how to create a workable system.  One was based on mathematical models and in effect created huge suites of 'IF THEN' steps.  The other was bio- computational and sought to create what we now call neural nets.  The first was something that was seemed achievable with the technology available but had limits hard wired in by the drafting of the IF THEN alternatives.  On the other hand the neural net had huge issues around being able to create the thing but would then have been self sustaining as it would set most of its own decision making parameters and would learn as it grew (Sounds a tad scary to me)

If I'm brutally honest I understand the concept of IF THEN chains but Neural Nets are beyond me.  I actually started to try to create an AI opponent using a simple set of IF THEN steps over a decade ago and ran into some of the problems that proper IT scientists hit.  The first is that you have to understand the entire decision making chain and second it gets very clunky very quickly as the length of the IF THEN steps increases.

So why am I bothering to write all of the above?  Well in the absence of any clever IT boffin creating a computerised AI opponent for me I am going to have another attempt at the 'IF THEN' approach.  Here is where my thought process has brought me to so far:

Firstly the AI General tries to gather information about the player's forces by scouting and interrogating the local population.  Friendly locals are going to give more help than non friendly ones.  The number of mounted troops (cavalry and or Dragoons) influences this step as does the number of player mounted troops screening against scouts.

Next there is a pre battle assessment where the AI General looks at his troops and compares them to what he knows of the enemy.  This considers troop types, quality, numbers compared to the player's force and the broader operational situation (for example is an attack at poor odds necessary to pull enemy troops away from another location).  A basic tactical decision is made at this stage about whether to engage in battle, to withdraw, hold the ground, redeploy to a better site and similar overarching matters.

Now comes a more detailed tactical review on how to deploy and actually fight.  This considers the ground held by the two armies and who it favours.  The balance and composition of forces and the possible deployment.

All I have to do is create excel spreadsheet formulas to value those decision factors and If Then statements or other options to fine tune the AI options.  Sad to say that is where it all came to a grinding halt last time I tried this.  So here is the thing do any of my readers have any suggestions on what to include, how to weight the various decision factors or even suggestions for something that has already done what I'm considering or even an AI chat bot that could create tactical decisions?

Answers gratefully received in the comment section.