Models of Defeat

Capture the Flag is a wargaming environment that includes intelligent, autonomous adversaries. In the past, the planner controlling the adversaries focused on two goals: occupying objectives and attrition. However, attrition is actually a means to an end, defeat of one’s enemies, not an end in itself, and not necessarily desirable. Similarly, coalition operations plan for defeat by applying force for political and psychological effect. For Capture the Flag to plan for these effects, it needs a model of defeat. We model the ”capacity for conflict” as a leaky bucket: when a unit’s bucket is full, it has no more capacity for conflict and it capitulates. Flow into and out of the bucket is modulated by several factors including attrition and heroism. The model is inherently dynamical, so it exhibits the time-dependent behaviors one observes in real conflicts; for example, identical attacks will have different effects on capitulation as a function of their timing.