Psychological Warfare

1
Psychological Warfare

• The forgotten warfare . . .

2
Wargaming

• A mere handful of strategy games have been
  developed which focus on the psychological
  aspects of warfare
• This is disappointing in two ways. There are a
  large number of wargames that exist, and the fact
  that psychological factors have largely been
  ignored
• The US invasion of Iraq is a prime example of
  people not considering psychological factors in a
  military campaign

3
What we can gain from wargames

• Intelligence Analysts often wish to contemplate
  numerous scenarios simultaneously, often with
  missing or incomplete information.
• Any tool that would make that job easier or more
  effective would be highly sought after ()
• Wargames serve as a potential launching point for
  the development of tools for IAs because the
  rules are well defined and understood.

4
Development

• Given the need for such a tool, the wonderful
  people at RPI decided to design one.
• PsyPre is the name of this yet to be developed
  tool (good luck Micah) which will make
  predictions in the psychological realm.

5
PsyPre in a few short months . . .

• PsyPre will generate predictions using both the
  psychological realm and game kinetics
• This type of system would use effect based
  operations (EBO)
• EBO wants to know what the future will bring in
  terms of psychological effects.

6
Short term goals

• Find a suitable war game that involves both
  psychological and physical warfare
• The rules of the game must be clearly defined and
  known

7
Nicaragua

• Revolution in Central America

8
Why study an old game?

• The type of game differs significantly from many
  of the current Real Time Strategy games which are
  popular today
• The game involves political AND military
  operations

9
goals continued . . .

• Define the rules of the game into machine
  language
• In progress, this is a tedious process where
  every possible rule and each state must be
  codified
• Find a way to host the game that will allow the
  specifics of the game to remain stable yet remain
  playable by a general game playing system.

10
GDL and GM

• Coding the game using Game Description Language
  (GDL) will allow a Game Manager (GM) to host the
  game and enforce the rules. Players will then
  connect to the GM to play the game, note that the
  players can be either human or computer.

11
Game Administration

• First you specify the rules to the GM (long
  tedious section)
• Let players connect!

12
GDL format

• GDL uses an indexical approach to defining games.
  A GDL game description takes the form of a set of
  logical sentences that must be true in every
  state of the game. The distinguished vocabulary
  words that support this are described
  below.init(p) means that the datum p is true in
  the initial state.true(p) means that the datum p
  is true in the current state.
• does(r,a) means that player r performs action a
  in the current state.next(p) means that the
  datum p is true in the next state.
• legal(r,a) means it is legal for r to play a in
  the current state.goal(r) means that player r's
  goal is achieved in the current state.
• terminal means that the current state is a
  terminal state.GDL is an open language however,
  the significance of these basic vocabulary items
  is fixed for all games.

13
State space

• Each player only has information about its
  current state and the state of the environment
• Each turn each player submits a move to make and
  the GM returns the result

14
Rules of Nicaragua

• 2 Players Government vs Rebel
• There are numerous scenarios to play so the
  starting conditions vary widely.
• Game turns broken up into seasons/turns
• Game ends when National Will goes below 1, or
  military invasion from abroad
• Additional scenarios have victory conditions
  which end the game as soon as they occur

15
How game is defined

• S(1) contains (Rebel infantry covert)
• S(1) contains (Government infantry overt)

Covert infantry Overt infantry
Department S(1)
16
Example
1 infantry
1 infantry 1 armor
2 armor 5 infantry
1 infantry 1 covert infantry
1 infantry
17
Map layout

• 16 Departments Urban, Rural, or Remote
• Each department has 1 or more social classes
• Somocistas, Middle Class, Workers, Peasants,
  Indians, Intellectual and Church

18
Internal Politics

• Other states of the game concern the political
  climate.
• Each social class has a ranking of how much it
  favors either the Rebel or Government forces
• These rankings effect psychological warfare,
  chances of recruiting new troops, etc . . .

19
External politics

• Three countries are represented
• USA, USSR, and Latin America
• A rating ranging from
• Neutral - Assistance - Intervention - Military
  invasion
• measures how much foreign support is given by
  that country

20
External assistence

• If the game ends if it ever reaches Military
  Intervention
• The support level effects the levels of the
  internal class support, military fighting
  percentages, and the National Will

21
Political Program

• There are 4 political programs which the player
  may choose from.
• Changing the program effects internal and
  external political rankings, total national will
  level, and military chances.

22
Sequence of Action

• 1) World Events Phase
• 2) Air Power Phase
• 3) Rebel player turn
• 4) Government player turn
• 5) Victory Determination

23
3) Rebel player turn

• Foreign support phase
• Political phase (next slide)
• Organization phase
• Movement phase
• Reaction phase (Government)
• Intelligence phase
• Combat phase
• Recovery phase
• National Will phase

24
Political Phase

• Political Program Segment
• Mobilization
• Political Warfare
• These three steps are what differentiates this
  game.
• Without this we have a complicated Risk

25
Political Phase II

• All political actions have ramafications on other
  political interests.
• This is where the nuances of the game really come
  into play
• Specific rules have to be encoded
• eg. Holding the capital 2 National Will

26
Conclusion

• That concludes the rules of the game
• Now comes the fun part of converting those rules
  into GDL

27
Conversion to GDL

• Role(Rebel)
• Role(Government)
• tells us that we have 2 players

28
Initialize the scenario

• Init(department(Managua, 1 infantry, Government,
  covert, free))
• This has 1 covert infantry in the capital to
  start the game

29
Alternate turns

• next(control(Rebel)) lt true(control(Government))
• next(control(Government)) lt true(control(Rebel))
• This alternates whose turn it is.

30
Legal moves

• legal(?role,attack(?m,?n)) lt
• true(department(?m,?n,overt,free))
• true(control(?role))
• This would make it legal to attack some unit in
  the same department providing your units were
  overt, and free to move

31
Goals

• goal(Rebel,100) lt
• NationalWillGreaterThan70(Rebel)
• goal(Government,100) lt
• MassTroops(Government) This says that one of the
  goals is for the Rebels to have a National Will gt
  70

32
Game Over

• terminal lt
• (NationalWillTooLow(?x)
• ExternalInvasion(?y))
• terminal lt
• TimeLeft
• This is a check to see if any of the ending game
  conditions are met.