Emergent AI
In a quote from the developer, Chris Park, "'There are a ton of RTS games out there that are fun to play...The key weakness that they almost all share, in my opinion, is AI that falls apart in advanced play." AI War is developed using "Emergent AI", which differs from standard game AI in that it doesn't follow "decision trees", or in other words, the AI does not have an easily predictable pattern that can be exploited as in most games. Instead, the AI makes decisions on an individual unit level, a concept the developer coins as "Decentralized Intelligence".
Some other key factors that make the AI War "Emergent AI" unique are:
Strategic Tiers – The 3 levels of 'thinking' in AI War: Strategic, sub-level, and individual unit. The critical decisions made by the Emergent AI are based on a combination of these 3 factors.
Sub-Commanders – The way the individual AI units work together on a group level, in which they will "Do what's best for themselves, but also take into account what the group is doing." The developer compares this design principle to flocking behavior in the animal kingdom. He also points out that because of this design mechanic, the AI is "fairly untrickable", meaning they won't often fall victim to the same tactic.
Fuzzy Logic – This mechanic is designed to prevent players from "knowing" based on standard logic what the AI will do. The general concept of this design strategy is to prevent the AI from being predictable by programming them to not always make the "best" choice, but instead choosing from a larger selection of possibly sub-optimal choices, to prevent the player from being able to easily understand and therefore counter them.
Intelligent Mistakes – The intentional programming of the AI to make "mistakes" on lower difficulties, to make the game easier for the player. Since the AI at its full operating capacity is reportedly an extremely tough opponent to face, the developer designs the AI to be less of a challenge on easier settings.
Asymmetrical AI – A design which simplifies the AI reinforcement/attacking process by simply giving them reinforcements of units they need in important locations (on a timer), rather than over-complicating the design with the build process that humans use.
Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_War:_Fleet_Command