Fundamentals of Strategy Game Design

Artificial Opponents

Single-player strategy games often present the fiction that the player is opposed by another player like himself, who makes moves just the way the player does. In war games, it’s fun to think of pitting one’s wits against an enemy general. The old Electronic Arts war game Patton vs. Rommel explicitly encourages this fantasy; the player takes the role of one general and the computer takes the other. It is only a fantasy, of course; the opponent it provides is artificial, implemented by AI techniques. Here, you’ll learn about some of the AI used to create artificial opponents in strategy games and the strengths and weaknesses of several approaches.

Game Tree Search

In turn-based games such as checkers, chess, or Go, each player ...