[dgant]

How to efficiently achieve build goals is itself a mostly solved problem. See BOSS by Dave Churchill.

The catch is that "can I build this without dying in the process" is an almost completely unsolved problem. Even "can my opponent just kill me now" is currently only solved by fairly crude approximation. Without being able to evaluate that statically we're nowhere near evaluating it over the course of a build order, accounting for incomplete information and multiple possible responses.

In general, Starcraft is tricky because very small differences in unrelated concerns can cause wild swings in expected outcome. Compare a Terran wall-in that blocks zealots vs. one with a zealot-sized gap. A few pixels of space -- a pathfinding concern -- radically impacts build order concerns.

Come check out the current state-of-the-art (and lots of earlier stage work as well) at http://twitch.tv/sscait