Most strategy games are like this. If the game were simple enough to be amenable to the AI competing on an equal playing field, it wouldn't be marketable to str

Most strategy games are like this. If the game were simple enough to be amenable to the AI competing on an equal playing field, it wouldn't be marketable to strategy gamers. If it becomes more complex, it's dubious that AI could be developed at a reasonable price point in the first place, or that it could be run on consumer hardware. People looking for novel strategy gaming generally just go online, and those people are such a small minority of users it wouldn't make much sense to develop the game around their preferences. It would be interesting if an AI could be trained on ingesting data from multiplayer and single player games to come up with novel strategies, but the training costs probably exceed the total value of the market for any particular game. Civ IV was interesting in that it patched its AI across multiple expansions based on playtesting and user feedback. The AI in IV is generally predictable, but it doesn't fall for a lot of cheap feints that you might expect because of this. I always thought there might be some model that could support development like this - something like the season pass model, where the same game gets updated with novel content every year. Minecraft does this for free, FIFA does it every year by retailing what is effectively the same game with updated content, and Fortnite operates a traditional season pass. Microsoft has kind of done this by revamping some old titles like Age of Empires II, but the only studio I can think of that operates on this model is Paradox. That does get expensive though - Crusader Kings II with all of its expansions retailed for around $250 USD. Not bad for a game you play over the course of years (comparable to many MMORPGs), but a lot to pay for a game all at once.