peter:

I, too, in grad school, played with predictive models, and their inherent limitations and inconsistencies with unbounded realities, unanticipated consequences, and real-life wicked problems.

I just finished a paper for a court case addressing the failures of economic models as a viable tool where certainty and precision are required. They are just not up to the task in many particular applications.

Quick" How many troops are required to take, hold and stabilize Marjah?

Not knowable, and whatever models were applied, did not work.

How many troops are required to take and hold Kandahar to "X" level of stability, with and without AWK? Another unknowable.

Does that mean that any of these objectives are not do-able? No. Does it mean that troop levels are not the critical variable? Yes.

So, the fun of war gaming is to test theories of war, not theories of societal structure and changes within an unstable society, fractured and post-conflict environment.

Better, perhaps, to identify and model the characteristics of a post-conflict fractured society, then test political/societal change theories based on careful delineation of the fractures, faults, parties and paths.

The troop-levl variables will probably fall out of that analysis.