Experiment to see how hard game is...

[Didz]

Here's an analogy. Monopoly is one of the most popular board games in the world. Regular players know what real estate to buy to effectively guarantee victory. Do they always buy that real estate? Well, the ones who do probably don't enjoy Monopoly for long. Does that mean Monopoly is a flawed game? I don't think so. The players who mix the game up and try different strategies play it for years.

Sentinel has already answered this point rather well but I thought I would add my own support to his response.

I happen to own a book (The Monopoly Book by Maxine Bradley) which describes strategies for playing Monopoly and essentially there are two basic player strategies normally referred to as 'Prince' or 'Pauper'. The Prince strategy relies on the acquisition of high rent sets e.g. BLUE (Mayfair, Park Lane) whilst the Pauper concentrates on lower value but high payout sets like ORANGE(Vine Street, Bow Street, Marlborough Street).

However, the point which Sentinel makes is the key to the success and replay value of this game. No player is likely to be able to acquire the properties he wants simply by rolling dice and moving round the board, particularly if you play the Auction Rule for unwanted title deeds. Therefore, at some point the strategies become dependant upon the negotiating skills of the human players in setting up deals for the exchange of title deeds.

This is why computer controlled monopoly games don't work, the computer either gives away vital properties or refuses to negotiate reasonably on anything, and so the result ends up determined by pure luck of the dice.

To put your analogy into context. Monopoly is a flawed computer game for preceisely the points which you make in your post, and is only popular when played against human opponents. Likewise, MTW2 would not be a flawed game if we could play it against 15 other human opponents, in fact it would be absolutely brilliant, the reason it is a flawed game is precisely because it lacks strategic challenge and options.