Given a fully deterministic single player resource management game with a pre-known finite number of turns and reasonably simple rules (eg, Farmville, if it were single player, deterministic, and ended after a certain number of turns), is it usually possible to write a computer program that can optimize the game in a reasonable amount of time? Details: I'm trying to create such a game (sort of a M.U.L.E. clone, but not really). Players would compete individually to get the highest score under a given set of starting conditions. The game must be simple enough to be fun, but complex enough that someone can't write a computer program to rapidly optimize it. The game is semi-tedious (in its current form), so I encourage API/automated use. Since the game is deterministic and finite, I realize that an optimization algorithm must exist. So my question really is: can someone always write an optimization algorithm that runs fast enough to be useful? I realize the answer depends on the actual game I write, so I'm looking for one of these answers (roughly): Give up. If you design a resource management game easy enough for people to understand, someone could easily design an algorithm to win it. There's hope. Depending on how you design the game, it may or may not be possible to write a reasonable algorithm to optimize it. However, you have to be very careful. Go for it. In general, there are no algorithms that can optimize most resource management games. Barring extreme conditions, any resource management game you design could not reasonably be optimized by a computer. There are Farmville strategy guides online, but they focus on general strategy, not an explicit algorithm. I realize this is a specific case of P != NP, and that's it theoretically possible to create simple questions that cannot be solved easily (eg, factor a product of two large primes) or even at all (eg, the halting problem), but I'm wondering if resource management games fall, in general, into the NP category. For reference, the game will be a scaled down (and single player) version of: https://github.com/barrycarter/bcapps/tree/master/YAMC 
Optimizing resource management game (similar to Farmville)
game theory