Agree, I think countries already run their simulations, and when they believe they are on the winning side, they invade. Doesn't matter if the simulation is rolling a dice.
If you don't invade, you haven't taken control.
Or putting it from other perspective, you could run the simulation between 2 parties, be the winner and "impose" your will. But I don't think that the other side will now leave their houses and leave their own city voluntarily, at that point you need to invade anyways.
That’s not how that works. The nation that gets to impose its will is the one that can put boots on the ground and hold them there. Doesn’t matter if they’re cyborg or robot boots, but they have to physically be there. That’s a lesson as old as history.
I understand what you’re getting at, and maybe someday smaller powers will participate in “simulated warfare” (which means something else) in lieu of total destruction like some hunter-gatherer and monkey tribes do, but it will always be in the physical world and involve death or destruction.
Otherwise, why would anyone go to war even now? If any other mechanism other than physical violence would have worked, we wouldnt go to war.