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Wargamers! While we love head-to-head multiplayer, we know that for a huge portion of our community, single-player is where you’ll spend most of your time. Whether you’re short on time for an online match, testing out experimental armies or using solo play to learn the ropes of Bolt Action - a great AI opponent is vital.
We wanted an opponent that plays like a real human wargamer—one that reads the battlefield, weighs risk versus reward, and abides by the exact same D6 rules, line-of-sight checks, and morale limits that you do. Today, we’re giving you a peek behind the systems to show you exactly how our AI works under the hood.
So, what can you actually expect when you go up against the AI?
It won’t simply follow a fixed script. It will read the battlefield, weigh its options and adapt: taking cover when survival matters, pushing for objectives when the time is right, protecting valuable units, and using each unit’s strengths to its advantage.
Behind these decisions is a system that evaluates the value of every possible action, combined with specialised behaviours for different unit types.
In this diary, we’ll take you from the big picture to the details: how the AI makes decisions, how different units behave, and how difficulty levels shape the challenge.
Let’s take a look under the hood.
Every potential action is evaluated on a points system and the action with the best score is executed.
Action Point Value = Points Won + Points Defended
E.g., Consider an AI 10-man Regular Squad (100 points) evaluating two choices against an enemy 10-man Regular Squad caught in the open:
Option A - FIRE: 10 rifle shots against regular infantry (4+) yield 5 expected kills, earning 50 Points Won, but 0 points are defended standing in the open. Total Score: 50 Points.
Option B - ADVANCE: Taking a move penalty (needing 5+) yields 3.33 kills (33.3 Points Won). However, stepping behind a wall grants a hard cover save, dropping return-fire lethality against our 100-point squad from 50% down to 16.7%—saving 33.3 Points Defended. Total Score: 66.6 Points.
Because 66.6 beats 50, the AI mathematically chooses to Advance into cover—sacrificing a fraction of immediate firepower to drastically improve squad survival.
This exact same point comparison determines which unit activates next: the AI simply evaluates the highest available action score across all unactivated units and assigns the Order Die to whichever unit has the most urgent play.
Under the hood, the math is more complex and is affected by action multipliers for applying pins, wiping squads to remove order dice, holding objectives, scouting fog of war, maintaining indirect fire target locks, calculating enemy morale failure chances, and tracking which units have already acted.
To ensure our AI opponent never feels like a homogenous, one-size-fits-all algorithm, each unit archetype operates on specialized decision logic designed around its distinct tabletop rules and tactical role:
Infantry & Line Squads (Objectives & Morale): Standard infantry are the operational backbone for holding ground, managing suppression, and securing victory points. Objective scoring scales over time: early in the match (Turns 1–2), infantry prioritize safe cover and fire lanes; late in the match (Turns 5–6), objective multipliers spike, pulling infantry out of cover to sprint for victory points.
Observers & Fog of War: The AI cannot target what it cannot see. Observers advance to reveal unmapped areas, then go Down to stack their innate camouflage with physical cover, acting as passive spotters for off-map assets.
Mortars & Indirect Fire: Mortars target high-density infantry clusters hiding in hard cover. However, pinning a Mortar or forcing it to move resets its "Ranging-In" memory back to needing a 6+ to hit—so the AI will actively maintain its targets.
Armor & Anti-Tank: Main Battle Tanks keep their thickest Front Armor pointed toward your AT Guns while split-firing secondary machine guns at nearby infantry. Meanwhile, AT Guns run bimodal checks to automatically load whichever shell—Armor-Piercing vs. High-Explosive—yields the highest point return.
Commanders & Leadership: Officers mathematically track army-wide morale. An Officer will Advance to extend their leadership aura over pinned squads, and trigger Snap to Action to chain multi-unit "Alpha Strikes" at critical moments.
Finally, we give you full control over how formidable your digital opponent is before you even roll the first die:
Adjusting the Challenge: On lower difficulties, the AI uses "fuzzy" decision logic—selecting randomly from a window of 3 or 4 viable actions to create a forgiving, human opponent that occasionally makes plausible mistakes. On higher settings, the fuzzy filter is removed, and the AI always picks the mathematically optimal move.
Tournament-Grade Preset Armies: To ensure the AI fields competitive rosters, we built preset army lists directly from top-tier tabletop tournament rosters across multiple point thresholds (500, 1,000, and 1,500 points). We will also seek community feedback to fine-tune these lists!
Bonus for Players: All AI preset rosters are available in the Army Builder as ready-to-play templates, giving new players a great starting point for their own armies!
We took a slightly different approach with today’s dev diary by lifting the curtain and showing you how our AI actually thinks under the hood. We hope you enjoyed this peek into the systems!
Community Question: We’re building preset AI lists based on competitive tabletop tournament rosters across 500, 1,000, and 1,500 points. Which iconic combined-arms platoon setup or tournament archetype would you love to see included as a ready-to-play preset? Tell us in the comments!
Wishlist Bolt Action now: https://www6.slitherine.com/game/bolt-action
