Can Real-Time Strategy games be ever solved?

Question

With the advent of BWAPI, many AI enthusiasts have been making amazing AIs that can compete against top players in Starcraft. This led me to wonder if RTS (Real-Time Strategy) games can ever be solved theoretically.

One of my colleague argues no, because RTS games are non-deterministic and stochastic. What does this mean exactly? For instance, in Starcraft you have a set of defined and limited moves (I.E: Units, buildings, economy) you can make in the game, so I don't see what can be so stochastic about the game.

Answer 1

It looks like there are elements of (pseudo)randomness in StarCraft.

Of course, this does not seem like a major property and you can ask for solving the game without this feature. Then you end up with a very deep game tree that probably does not have any nice mathematical property or symmetry that would help you to effectively handle it. This is where it differs from the trees that arise from mathematical games.

You can use game theory to play StarCraft well (Monte Carlo, maybe?), but unless there is some strong form of rush that would quickly cut complexity of the tree, I am skeptical about solving it.

Answer 2

What you should also consider is that there is a whole execution factor that is also crucial in Starcraft, especially Broodwar. For instance, how does the Zerg control 50 Zerglings?

This is not a straightforward question, as 50 zerglings is 25 supply (Which is not much), but it would take a whole 4 control groups to manage (Broodwar only allowed 12 units in a control group). This, with all the other control groups, takes real thought on how to manage.

So, even if the knowledge can be solved in certain ways, the execution still makes the knowledge hard to use in a faultless manner. It is not like chess, there is a whole manual dexterity element to the original set of early 2000s LAN games that goes beyond just knowing what to do.

Knowing what to do is one thing; doing it is another.