ORIGINAL: Iain McNeil
Currently neural nets are nowhere near being able to play even a simple wargame so there is no way to use them or make reusable code. Maybe at some point in the future but there are simply too many possibilities for it to work it out currently. There are just vast - billions of irrelevant moves that can be made that a human dismisses instantaneously that make it very hard for a neural net to evaluate. There are also many options that seems good in the short term but have serious long term consequences or put you in trouble against someone with any experience which a neural net would find almost impossible to see coming, at least now.
There's no way to make an AI that stores information at least of how the player moves? For instance you couldn't make a program that reminds the AI that the player likes to move to the flanks and do feints pretty often? No way to program it to search for flank movement or patrol for it?
I've always thought that player information should be stored in a data file (we have large enough hard drives for that to happen now). Based on what it has stored when it sees certain movement it triggers the data file to read what the player did before when it made this certain movement. Thus, causing it to at least prepare for a flank attack or rear attack or feint. I see way too many games that ignore this. Even one of my favorite Norbsoft's Civil War series the AI doesn't really look and counter flank attacks very well. It at least does a pretty good job flanking and surprising the player and I find that enjoyable.
Just placing start up units on the maps edges would be an improvement in some games. Not talking about operational games but more on the tactical games.
Teaching the AI to value what it has vs what it might obtain and playing for the victory not just a delaying action for the player to always win. I've seen AI that would have won games had it stayed in place in its bunkers vs going out of defense mode just to "try" to capture another victory hex that the player just liberated that it really didn't need for the victory.
It's the little things I think that would make an AI better. I'm not looking for Big Blue. Just something that plays to "win" not just another delaying action AI in a game.
Give players more options to tamper with the AI. Like you did with Spartan. With a few changes to the build templates I was able to make a very challenging AI opponent on the upper tier difficulty levels. We need more games where each individual player can adjust the AI performance based on his type of play and difficulty he can handle.