Quote Originally Posted by Steve Blair View Post
And that's one reason I tend to go back to the freeplay RPG style. It's about the only way you can really capture the rather unique elements that go into some human decision-making. Strategy games can capture this to a degree, but some of the better versions I've seen have been "house rules" built for things like Risk and the like. A robust RPG framework with computer aid (for resolution of some tasks like development and local infrastructure issues) still strikes me as the best way to go, although it would also be the most intensive in terms of manpower (training, white cell, and so on).
I absolutely agree—there is so much that unexpectedly crops up in a COIN or peace operation setting that a hard-coded computer simulator just couldn't handle, but which an experienced White Cell can easily deal with.

A case in point, from my own classroom simulation:

One year, the UNICEF player put together an integrated child/maternal health initiative for our fictional war-torn country. She was a very bright international development student, had done her homework, and frankly did an excellent job. Because donor funds were limited, she decided to target its initial application to those areas with the highest infant mortality rates.

The program was to be conducted in conjunction with local NGOs, and those local NGOs also offered a family planning component. Because of the nature of our simulated civil war, infant mortality rates were highest in the southern areas (where the war was largely being fought). Those areas were predominately inhabited by Zaharians, a secessionist ethnic minority.

The ethnic insurgents in those areas, who were in sensitive peace negotiations with the government through UN channels at the time, immediately condemned the UNICEF program as a "UN sponsored eugenics program intended to lower the Zaharian birth-rate." They complained bitterly that most of the areas being targeted had a Zaharian majority. A few insurgent units even went so far as to detain UNICEF and UNDP workers ("to protect them from the righteous wrath of the people," of course).

This was all a cynical ploy to increase pressure on the UN SRSG in the negotiations—right down to the organization of noisy demonstration by diaspora supporters outside UN headquarters in NY ("Peace, yes! Eugenics, no!") It worked wonders, as the SRSG started to press the government for concessions to mollify the angry Zaharians, and pressed other UN agencies to offer increased humanitarian and development assistance in the south.

The UN folks were released a week or so later. The SRSG read the riot act to the UN aid agencies, and insisted on a new structure for UN coordination that would increase political oversight. The UN agencies grumbled. The peace negotiations continued.

That particular intersection of ethnic demographic politics, peace negotiations, development assistance, and internal UN dynamics has only happened that one year out of the ten or so that I've run the sim. It was hugely instructive for the students, illustrating my constant lectures on 'all aid is political" in a way my lectures never could. More to the point here, it seems to me doubtful that an AI-based computer simulation would have been able to anticipate, capture, and moderate it as effectively.

The problem with an RPG or frei kriegspiel approach is that it is very dependent on experienced moderators—its not just something you can ship off to folks for local training.