A is for Anticipating awesome AI. General Staff’s AI sounds smarter than a sack of weasels. In a recent blog post Ezra Sidran describes how MATE, the upcoming American Civil War game’s ersatz commander, works out which section of an enemy line it should Schwerpunkt during an attack. It identifies the opposing force that must be dealt with to achieve its assigned objective, does strength analysis of the two opposing forces, determines if the defender has anchored or unanchored flanks, calculates the slope of the attack, etc., and then calculates the Schwerpunkt after analyzing the enemy s flank positions, supporting forces and if the attacker has an unrestricted avenue of attack. . Evidently bumble in the rough direction of victory locations , the modus operandi of many a pitched battle wargame AI, isn’t good enough for Ezra. (more…)