To what extent do optimal strategies exist?

[shadyforce]

The choice to reveal information you have is dependant on the odds of success with and without revealing that information, which are fixed so therefore an optimal strategy exists.

The decision to protect someone is dependant on what your opponents are likely to do, which is not fixed so therefore no one optimal strategy exists.

Instead you are faced with a number of choices. Each can be weighted according to high likely they are to work, but there is a lot of speculation and human error involved in that. In the end, you usually make an educated guess based on the likelihood of being correct.

In AI, you should in no way always use the best weighted option as this would allow your opponents to always beat you. You should randomise the choice but taking account of the weighting. It also has to be acknowledged that there is no perfect way to correctly weight the options. How good the AI is, will be dependant on how accurate you can do it, but no perfect solution exists, you can only try and make it as realistic as possible.