In this unpublished literature review we will survey the history of Influence Diagrams from their origin in Decision Theory to modern AI uses. We will compare the various methods that have been used to find an optimal strategy for a given influence diagram. These methods have various advantages under different assumptions and there is a pro- gression to the present of richer, more general solutions. We also look at an abstract algorithm used as an informal tool and determine whether it is equivalent to other formal methods in the literature.