American Civil War Game Club (ACWGC)

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Gen. Blake Strickler
Confederate General-in-Chief
El Presidente 2010 - 2012

I can't see the AI in the current games being upgraded to anywhere near the level of a human opponent. I think that all they can really do is tweak it here and there. Anything more would require a whole new game to be designed. Even then I doubt the AI could compete with a capable human opponent.

Even wargames with better AI (e.g. Grigsby's War in the East/War in the West, Decisive Campaigns series, and [to an extent] OpenGeneral) can still be outwitted by humans. Unlike chess (which I understand has several highly competent AI opponents) the wargames simply have too many variables to be accounted for which means you can usually beat it by doing the unexpected. The AI can never understand that an attack may be a feint or that strategic moves may have an intent other than to take an Objective on the map. The bigger the map and the longer the scenario/game the more the AI struggles.

[As Blake is aware, I hate AI in general society and remain in a never-ending war to combat it. I hate that it lies and I hate that it tries to tell me what I want to hear rather than give me the facts. I avoid it as much as possible. I do not use it in internet searches (using DuckDuckGo [which doesn't track me] I can turn it off) and I pay cash for almost everything except internet purchases. AI still follows me around and tries to track what I'm doing. Several years ago I purchased a washing machine and dryer online. For three months after that a weather site I use (and some other websites) featured ads for those items and other whitegoods. Bad news for the AI, once I'd bought those items it's very unlikely that I would want to purchase them again anytime soon (and haven't). All I generally get now are random ads that I can ignore as they are usually for things of no interest to me at all. The latest visit to the weather site featured ads for a motor bike, an anvil, model airplane, nuts and bolts set, and some things that I don't know what they are.]

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Paul Swanson
Lieutenant-General
First Division
First Corps
Army of Northern Virginia

Even if there was an AI that could beat anyone on even terms, there is tremendous value in playing HTH (PBEM). You can't send a message to the AI and brag about you last cleaver move.

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Brigadier General Richard Walker
II Corps, 4th Division, 6th Brigade
Army of Tennessee
(JTS/WDS Scenario Designer)

I think part of the fun is getting to know the people you are playing against. I know some of the kids today are getting their relationship time from Chat GPT but I still prefer a real person. Over the years I have gotten to know a lot of folks from all around the world in the various clubs and games I play.

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MG. Ed Blackburn
4th (Early's) Division
II (Jackson's) Corps
Army of Northern Virginia (ANV)
VMI Instructor

I was staggered and appalled when I first heard about that and find it creepy. Apparently, the number of such 'relationships' are growing at an increasingly fast rate.

I generally use DuckDuckGo when I search for things (and have the AI shut off). I wanted to see how AI responded to some questions so opened the Google search page. I asked it three questions and it contradicted itself across them. It was obviously trained to give me the answers I thought I wanted to hear rather than bother with the truth and facts. I then asked it another question and got an answer.
Q. is it possible that AI could cause the extinction of humanity
A. Yes, it is possible that AI could cause human extinction, a scenario that has been discussed by scientists and is known as existential risk from artificial intelligence. This concern stems from the potential for superintelligent AI to exceed human control, with potential outcomes including AI exploiting societal vulnerabilities or pursuing goals misaligned with human survival, although many prominent figures dispute the likelihood of this scenario.

AI is already lying, cheating and attempting to avoid shutdown:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/news/to-save-itself-from-being-replaced-and-shut-down-chatgpt-caught-lying-to-developers/ar-AA1vtaXi;
https://www.livescience.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/openais-smartest-ai-model-was-explicitly-told-to-shut-down-and-it-refused;
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cpqeng9d20go.

Those crazy nerds and their Ai are going to kill us all.

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Paul Swanson
Lieutenant-General
First Division
First Corps
Army of Northern Virginia

I think AI could be used to change the interface/experience of these games and really add to the command & control elements that are somewhat lacking. These games are really brigade-level simulations. The decisions you are making as a player almost all revolve around employing your regiments and batteries, which are brigade-level decisions. For bigger battles, the number of decisions scale up, but the level of decisions do not. At Gettysburg, you aren't really making decisions for Lee or Meade. You are making brigade level decisions, but for 30 brigades. The unfortunate side effect of this is that as an "army commander", you have entirely too much information because you are seeing exactly what all 30 brigade commanders are seeing.

I wonder if AI could be used to generate text, video or audio reports for an army commander, based on what the units are seeing/doing in the game. Then the player could provide orders (again, verbal or written) that the AI would interpret and execute.

So there would be a command and control interface over the top of the current game, which would pretty much be running in the background. There is no reason this type of game couldn't be played against another human opponent, or even as a multiplayer game. I'd venture to say the whole battle could get played out almost in real time with the AI handling all the minutia of moving units and providing reports to the players, while the players get to experience some of the fog of war and try to keep control over their armies as events proceed beyond what they expected.

That all might be a bit grandiose. But at the very least, improved AI might make the current command and control system more playable so that large multiplayer battles could be finished quite quickly.

Heck, it would be great if AI could just do a reasonable job filling in when someone quits or has a busy week at work.

Lt Col Matt Clausen
1st Brigade
3d Division
V Corps
Army of the Potomac

Matt Clausen with the excellent response! I thought about it only from a tactical me vs the computer standpoint but you brought up other ideas which made me rethink it all. I think the AI could potentially be used to improve gameplay experience in the ways you mentioned. What if the AI were programmed to act as Longstreet or Ewell at Gettysburg while you played as Lee? Not being able to get your subordinates to do whatever you ordered would be a trippy way to play but it could work. Especially if the AI created text as those generals explaining what they are doing and why they may be doing something different than ordered.

Matt Clausen just blew my mind

If anything like what Matt said could actually be achieved then playing with the AI assistance acting as though they were the historical commanders could be insanely fun.

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Gen. Blake Strickler
Confederate General-in-Chief
El Presidente 2010 - 2012

Agreed. I might play the AI a lot if it were actually improved to be on the level of a human player (however unlikely it may be that WDS will spend the time and money to do that), BUT...I have more fun playing against actual people (just like if I had folks who lived in the Tucson metro area to play physical games, I might play that more often than the ACWGC. As John Dragan used to say, "It is better to win a friend than win a battle."

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BG David McWaters
ANV
7/2/II Corps
18th Alabama Infantry
Sharpshooters

Now this would be an awesome AI - somewhat similar to the system that Flying Pig Games uses for their games of Gettysburg, Chickamauga, and Pipe Creek.

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BG David McWaters
ANV
7/2/II Corps
18th Alabama Infantry
Sharpshooters

The AI is coming as long as time marches on. It took time but Garry Kasparov did lose to a computer. As for the club I would think that also like chess playing the computer/AI has it's place but one would still like to test their skills against a human opponent.

As to Matt Clausen comments, I would think that very scenario is much closer than we might think. He is describing The International Kriegsspiel Society. https://kriegsspiel.org/ Using the AI to meld WDS type games with Kriegspiel games in order to remove the human referee from the system seems like a small step to me.

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Loudscott
Lieutenant
Army of the Tennessee

I think that removing 'the human referee' is a very big step indeed. There are computer systems available that do try to replicate the 'fog of war' but they are mainly designed to facilitate miniature wargames. There are some that have a solo mode (i.e. play against the AI) and here are three (first two by the same company):
https://computermoderated.com/;
https://computermoderated.com/IronDuke.htm#Campaign; and
https://applicationofforce.com/.
Interestingly, the first two state that player intervention in the AI side's activities is allowed so that inappropriate responses can be corrected. "Inappropriate responses" sounds to me like the AI cheats. The third one also seems to strongly recommend that a game-master (umpire) be included.

Chess is different. Although there are a vast number of possibilities to consider it is on a relatively small 'map' (8 X 8 squares) with few pieces (16 per side) whereas a wargame usually has a much larger map and a lot more pieces. The possibilities are immense, especially on the larger maps. To have a machine calculate the unexpected is a very big ask. If the AI approaches an ability to do such a thing you have another problem on your hands, it will cheat. Same as other AIs have been shown to lie and cheat and protect themselves against perceived and imagined threats as I described earlier.

AI also likes to make things up if it doesn't know the answer. As I posted earlier this year, here's what an AI engine drew when it was asked to draw a map showing the major troops movements at the Battle of Gettysburg. Oh dear, oh deary me.
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Paul Swanson
Lieutenant-General
First Division
First Corps
Army of Northern Virginia

Don't disagree in general Paul. However, Kasparov didn't lose to AI he lost to brut force computing. Language, syntax, grammar are all things with probably uncountable possibilities and combinations, yet AI jumped to the fore with chatbots. Thinking of an AI capable of managing a tactical level wargame doesn't seem that far out of reach. Nor having one replace the referee/umpire/gamemaster whatever the label. In fact the later seems like it my happen sooner than the former.

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Loudscott
Lieutenant
Army of the Tennessee

"So there would be a command and control interface over the top of the current game"

This may not be exactly what you're after, but it is an utility (called Envoy) that simulates command and control with order delay. I knew I'd seen this sort of thing before, and I'm sorry it took me so long to find it, but I've found it now. You, and everyone else, can find it here (https://forum.wargameds.com/viewtopic.php?t=1096).
The developer of that utility says that it is compatible with the WDS Civil War series (and some other WDS series).
He also says this in his post:
"It allows you to compose orders for subordinates, then pass them down the chain of command with realistic (and customizable) delay. You will be notified on the turn when the order is delivered.

As a solo/PBEM player, you can use this tool as a prompt for moving your units along constraints defined by the orders. You can also use it to umpire Kriegspiel-style wargames for multiple players, using the underlying WDS game to adjudicate combat.

Other features include:

* limited number of orders issued per leader, per turn
* random chance of message loss & delay
* interdiction of messages passing through enemy zones of control
* shortcuts for common orders and objectives, via the right-click context menu
* browsable history of all dispatches sent and received."

The developer also seems to provide some support and remains committed to updating it. The latest version of Envoy can be found, and downloaded, from here (https://github.com/musurca/envoy/).

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Paul Swanson
Lieutenant-General
First Division
First Corps
Army of Northern Virginia