"Why most games are dumb"

Dave O'Connor, the boffin behind the smartest, most plausible strategy game AI I've ever had the pleasure to pit wits against, has been sharing some of his secrets with students in Canberra. His hour-long lecture sheds light on many of the features that make the Airborne Assault wargames so singular: the micro-management eliminating delegation system (31:10), the ingenious route-finding routines (36:50), the inertia modelling (18:45), the representation of 'soft' factors like leader temperaments (25:30)... If mainstream RTS developers adopted just a fraction of these ideas the world of strategy gaming would be a far more interesting place.