This reminds me of the recent Day[9] rant about Broodwar's mechanical difficulty being an integral part of what makes it a great "realtime" strategy game, and that the mechanics are inseparable from the strategy part of the game. [1]
His analogy of taking out mechanics from Broodwar being equivalent to taking out athleticism from Football was particularly insightful.
BW AI (in its culmination) to me is what Broodwar looks like when you take out the mechanics from the game and make it 100% about strategy and the execution of said strategy. It's really fascinating to see the differences between AI play and human bounded play.