This is a common trope in such scenarios that the author has to pull their punches. Everyone acts locally-reasonable and still ends up losing. If you let peopl

This is a common trope in such scenarios that the author has to pull their punches. Everyone acts locally-reasonable and still ends up losing. If you let people lose due to stupid mistakes then readers go "this is stupid, I wouldn't do that", if you let a superintelligence do 4D-chess things then "it's scifi, this would never happen in real life".