Playing the meta definitely requires opponent modeling, but I don't think it's exclusively opponent modeling. In the example of Splendor, I think meta is best e

Playing the meta definitely requires opponent modeling, but I don't think it's exclusively opponent modeling. In the example of Splendor, I think meta is best explained as the interaction between emergent strategies. An AI may not need to think of it as a meta as is the case in chess, but an AI may still be playing strategies that match elements of the metagame. I think European style board games are great examples. Euro board games are often designed in a way where there are 3-6 different "currencies" in the game that are vaguely interchangeable in terms of progress towards the victory conditions, but these currencies have situational tradeoffs. It's usually a safe bet to play a T-shaped strategy where you focus on a few currencies but dabble in the rest enough to influence the game conditions to favor you. Scoring mechanisms often explicitly reward being T-shaped and gameplay mechanics often explicitly favor T-shaped strategies, so regardless of whether the AI is explicitly trying to play a meta strategy, it's probably going to look like a meta strategy because the meta is T-shaped.