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> When Google’s AI can beat a human at StarCraft, it’s time to be very afraid. I don't actually agree with this. Unlike Go, StarCraft is not only a game of str

by burke 10y ago

> When Google’s AI can beat a human at StarCraft, it’s time to be very afraid. I don't actually agree with this. Unlike Go, StarCraft is not only a game of strategy; "micro" (micro-managed tactics, basically) also plays a big role. An AI is going to be able to issue a LOT more commands per second than even the most skilled humans, giving them a natural tactical advantage. Strategy is more difficult for an AI, but not the only deciding factor in StarCraft.

arcticfox 10y ago
I agree. I think you'd have to limit that machine's APM to somewhere around the human limit, and make it choose which actions it wants to spend its time on. Otherwise the AI is eventually just going to absolutely destroy humans with micro, which is not remotely interesting. We've known transistors were faster than fingers for ages.
- lordnacho 10y ago
  > Otherwise the AI is eventually just going to absolutely destroy humans with micro, which is not remotely interesting. If you could issue as many orders as you wanted, what would the optimal strategy be?
  - Thaxll 10y ago
    Simple example would be in combat, like being always out of range ect ... Imagine one army where every single unit is controlled by one human. Each individual unit would be very very strong.
    - Maro 10y ago
      > Imagine one army where every single unit is controlled by one human. Each individual unit would be very very strong. Like a real army :)
  - trjordan 10y ago
    A big part of Starcraft is that certain units counter other units. Tanks counter zerglings, because they do splash damage to a bunch of them at once. Here's what you can do with infinite APM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKVFZ28ybQs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKVFZ28ybQs It's just broken. It's not even the same game.
    - defen 10y ago
      How does the AI "know" which Zergling is going to be fired upon? Are the tank shots not instant-hit? Or is this just a demonstration of what actual optimal control would look like.
      - detaro 10y ago
        The tanks aren't given overriding manual commands, so it likely could just predict how their automatic targeting works. If a player would give commands, it could get at least some information from the animation frames before the target is aquired and the shot fired. (The implementation in the video likely just cheats and gets the information from the engine, but at least the first case should be deterministic enough)
    - theptip 10y ago
      I enjoyed this, thanks for sharing. Pretty cool.
    - pavel_lishin 10y ago
      A nice illustration of the potential battlefield of tomorrow.
      - otempomores 10y ago
        Privat third in first row you ve been ai selected to draw splash damage for king and cuntry. Everybody else give him some privacy
        ethbro 10y ago
  - tyrust 10y ago
    I haven't played SC in a few years, but I think I can give a basic answer. There's would not be one optimal strategy, but many optimal strategies depending on the matchup between units. By taking advantages in differences in movement speed, attack range, attack projectile speed, and attack cooldown, a weaker group of units can potentially beat a stronger group. This is an older video that demonstrates some examples of winning with good micro: https://youtu.be/CdSKD3LRHV8?t=11 https://youtu.be/CdSKD3LRHV8?t=11. An AI knowledgeable of and capable of executing such tactics would be pretty strong.
    - stouset 10y ago
      Given that the game wasn't balanced for the possibility of infinite micro, I think it's highly probable that there's a globally optimal strategy.
      - tyrust 10y ago
        Could you give an example of what that might look like?
        stouset 10y ago
        Just on the surface, these sorts of games are notoriously difficult to balance properly. Someone discovers a strategy that tips the balance, and units/abilities/whatever have to get nerfed. The odds that there's a stable balance at a level of play not actively tested (e.g., infinite APM) are extremely low. One example is a sibling post's video of 100 zerglings against 20 siege tanks. For humans, the zerglings are capable of destroying only a handful of tanks before being killed of. For an AI with infinite APM, they can move all but an individual targeted zergling out of the way of the tank's splash damage. This allows them to take out all of the siege tanks with only moderate losses. Many such matchups will be tossed on their heads, and it's likely that one of them is totally game-breaking.
        otempomores 10y ago
        There is a lua widget in spring rts that allows for units with at least one farsighted unit to automatically stay out of los. Sneaky army will wriggle through all defense lines.
  - patmcguire 10y ago
    There's almost certainly a bunch of timing-based micro with animations/game ticks/etc that a machine would find. For example, if a machine does a sequence of actions with sub-millisecond precision they can pop a unit into range, fire, and then pop back out again without being fired upon over and over. A lot of units would be rendered useless because it's balanced for humans. That means the units they counter would be a lot stronger. I'm afraid it would probably just be a race to get the fastest rush.
    - __s 10y ago
      Rush is a bit risky, it has to be invested in before enough scouting & will go up against well micro'd workers Meta is still pretty fast, here's a SC1 AI finals: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjSXj4cb_Yo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjSXj4cb_Yo
    - stale2002 10y ago
      Rushing is a bit of a rock paper scissors situation. You can beat a fast rush by doing a slightly slower rush that focuses more on economy, and winning via defenders advantage.
    - quantumpotato_ 10y ago
      I thought units attacked instantneously, there was end-lag but no startup?
    - halflings 10y ago
      What you're describing is called "kiting", and is already being done by regular players (not to mention the pros). It is only possible for some combinations of units, for example Marines with stimpack vs regular zerglings ("slowlings"), or Viking vs Void Ray because one unit needs to be fast enough to be able to shoot + move out of range before being shot. Here's the type of micro pro players can do: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrAlhk98WxE± https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrAlhk98WxE± They do say that they will limit the number of actions taken by the AI to focus on building a smart and strategic AI instead of learning gimmicky micro moves, but if one thing is sure, it's that even the best micro cannot win a StarCraft game if the macro is not on point, and bad choices are made (good luck micro-ing siege tanks against a swarm host!)
  - rlayton2 10y ago
    Infinite micro? I'd just send all drones/probes/SCVs directly to the human's base and kill their drones. The extra drones that the human has wouldn't be able to make up the difference.
    - catshirt 10y ago
      you are oversimplifying things and ignoring a lot of variables. just to illustrate a point: on a sufficiently large map, i could have four times as many workers by the time your first set reaches my spawn. if i'm playing Protoss against a Terran AI, i have an added advantage of worker regen without having to stop attacking.
    - quantumpotato_ 10y ago
      humans have tried this -- 6 pooling to grandmasters: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/sc2-strategy/283755-grandmaster-by-6pooling-how-to http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/sc2-strategy/283755-grandmas...
    - halflings 10y ago
      This is already an infamous strategy (worker rush) and it os easily countered as long as you have all your workers united and attack at once (not much micro can be done at that point, and the numerical advantage trumps that... unless you're playing protoss and constantly trying to replenish shields, and still!). Also, I'm pretty sure this is not something that DeepMind would do to "solve intelligence".
  - thesimpsons1022 10y ago
    still a tough question but they could do some insane things. for instance if they had 200 marines and controlled each individually i can't imagine what they'd do. for humans it's requires insane mechanics to even break them up into 8 seperatel groups and control them for more than a few seconds
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- frostirosti 10y ago
  Could probably configure it/optimize it for different apms (10,100,300,inf) Could be interesting to see if it chooses different strategies based on that. What actions will optimize performance if I can only do 50 a minute
  - softawre 10y ago
    We've seen exactly this happen in competitive play. There was a player who would always play "Mech" Terran units, even though it wasn't the best strategy, because he had a lower APM than the Korean pros did. And it worked for him, too.
- make3 10y ago
  the article says explicitly that they will limit the capacities of the ai to things that are mechanically (physically) possible for humans
- somerandomness 10y ago
  'Computers are capable of extremely fast control, but that doesn’t necessarily demonstrate intelligence, so agents must interact with the game within limits of human dexterity in terms of “Actions Per Minute”.'
  - tempestn 10y ago
    Yes, this is definitely necessary for it to be interesting. Even so the AI will have some significant advantages over a human, in terms of being able to perfectly time events like injects, chrono boosts, etc., and watching every visible area of the minimap at once, so never being unnecessarily surprised by an attack. There are plenty of other examples. Nothing that's technically impossible for a human, but the ai will be perfect at those aspects as a given. For the human player to win, even limiting the machine's APM, they will need considerably superior strategy to make up for these differences. Also, I'm not sure how they plan to limit APM, but if it's done in the naive way - the AI simply isn't allowed to surpass an APM of X, there will be plenty of optimizing it can do in terms of spending those actions more optimally than a human could (in some cases by performing fewer but more difficult actions to accomplish a task), as well as by remaining at peak APM continuously throughout an entire match. (Something that is a hallmark of great players, but like map awareness and macro timing, no human is able to keep up their peak speed indefinitely without any lapses.)
    - anchpop 10y ago
      Why not limit it to a certain number of keys typed per second, and a certain rate of moving the cursor? Maybe randomly wait 0-150 ms before sending a keypress to simulate human imprecision?
      - halflings 10y ago
        What "somerandomness" what pointing out is that nobody in this thread seems to have actually clicked on the link. DeepMind's article clearly states that they would limit the number of actions per minute (traditionally referred to as APM in esports) taken by their AI, yet people are still saying that this wouldn't be impressive because the machine has an unlimited number of actions.
scarmig 10y ago
Isn't it easy to account for this? Just force the AI to stick to between 100 and 150 APM, and it becomes its responsibility budget its APM.
- chc 10y ago
  APM limiting would be an interesting way to scale the game's difficulty level.
  - rcthompson 10y ago
    Maybe at high levels of play it would, but limiting the APM to even very low levels (e.g. 60 APM, i.e. 1 action per second) would still allow the computer to macro very efficiently, so I don't think it would be a balanced difficulty adjustment. It would be simulating highly skilled player with limited mobility rather than a player that is overall less skilled.
- burke 10y ago
  Sure, but even then it's difficult. Micro'ing three fronts at once would be difficult for a human but could easily fit within the AI's budget. You could solve this by coming up with some sort of context-switch effort function but it starts to feel forced. Or at least, once you start calibrating the parameters of the problem around human limitations, it sort of feels weird to talk about the computer being better or worse than the human.
  - ryukafalz 10y ago
    >You could solve this by coming up with some sort of context-switch effort function but it starts to feel forced. Doesn't seem too forced to me IMO. Humans have to expend more effort to context switch, so if the goal is to put humans and computers on a level playing field that's something you have to take into account.
  - thesimpsons1022 10y ago
    no one is even mentioning the role of vision in the game. for a human it's pretty tough to keep track of the minimap and play at the same time. you end up missing a lot of things. imagine something that could monitor both simulataneously.
Corence 10y ago
The article says they're restricting the APM for the agent to try to reduce the impact of this.
samstave 10y ago
From my naive perspective; in GO you do not need to be concerned with resource consumption/mgmt... in Starcraft and other RTS' you do. How much more complexity is added by resource mgmt vs just "legal play possibilities" as now you have "this move isnt legal because you dont have the requisite resource, thus you need to depend on completing those moves first" Are there any efforts applying deepmind to, say, commodities markets? Or something along those lines? Supply chains for complex hardware manufacturing logistics? Robot assembly of complex parts in an assembly line? Sure, AI's playing games is cool... What I would like to see is an AI playing "Farm Simulator" to manage a vast swatch of farm equipment making and picking food over a vast expanse - with little human interaction. * Auto dock * Auto Harvest * Auto Refuel etc....
- visarga 10y ago
  > Supply chains for complex hardware manufacturing logistics? That would go well with the concept of Seed Factory, which is a factory that could reproduce itself, from raw materials. If we can build a self replicating device, we will reach another kind of singularity. At the moment, the whole human race is such a self replicating system, but if we can take humans out of the loop we could ship it to an undeveloped area (another planet?) and have it create a city and industry for us. Another application would be to ensure self reliance for humans in the post automation world. A self replicating factory, capable of solving the whole logistics puzzle of building repairing itself, as well as supporting its owners, would ensure that its owners don't depend on UBI or jobs. Such a factory would initially need some industrial machines and robots, probably at minimum a 3D printer, some raw materials and high end pieces such as CPUs. Then it would gradually print and assemble more equipment. It would eventually bootstrap like a compiler, being able to "compile" an identical factory from raw materials. Keeping count of each object, its source parts, construction waste, energy spent in building it, processes and time they could "compile" an ecosystem of devices that carefully work together, recycling everything that is wasted in the process. As the capabilities of the factory increase, the process could be "recompiled" to take advantage of the new capacity. The place of AI would be to optimize the process. Instead of a hand-made industrial compiler, it could search for a way to combine its resources in more masterful ways. It can keep track of more things than human planners (project managers?) can. It could potentially assess the needs and organize the industrial production for a whole country in a more efficient way than capitalism or communism could. The beauty of a seed factory is in its initial price - under 5% of the price of a factory built from buying equipment, because it only needs the seed of the factory and raw materials. The factory would grow like an organism, expanding itself. Most of the factory would be self made. Just like a cell, or an animal. [Wiki Book] https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Seed_Factories https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Seed_Factories
vtange 10y ago
That reminds me of a video demonstrating two "hardest" setting AI's against each other in Age of Empires II. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqiOQ1dAhL4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqiOQ1dAhL4 One AI won simply because it abused the fact it could spam monks and use the monks in a manner no human could ever achieve
theptip 10y ago
Agreed that micro is a big advantage that AIs have held in previous AI vs. Human StarCraft contests, but the OP stated that the SC2 research environment will limit the AI to (elite) human APM levels, so that edge will be somewhat blunted. It's probably fair to question whether all actions are counted equally; I could believe that an AI could allocate their action budget more widely than a human can, even while hitting the same total APM. More importantly, in my opinion, I'm not aware of any other AIs that have been competitive at the StarCraft problem using a Neural-Net-based implementation; from talking to PhDs in the field (but not from direct technical experience, so take this with a pinch of salt), my impression is that state-of-the-art RNNs just don't have the ability to encode the history of the game-world in a way that would enable them to be competitive. So it will require significant advances to the theoretical models to be able to compete using the sort of implementation that DeepMind will build.
- rfrank 10y ago
  When I was playing SC2 frequently a few years ago, someone made a program that used genetic algorithms to construct build orders [1]. It would produce a build that technically worked, but in a lot of cases they weren't very viable. I tried to make a blink stalker rush that'd be the rough equivalent of the build shown in the post liked above, just with the Protoss race in the game. The program would tell me to do things like make two extractors but put fewer than necessary probes on them, pull probes to extractors after X trips or at X time (can't remember which), things like that. 1. http://lbrandy.com/blog/2010/11/using-genetic-algorithms-to-find-starcraft-2-build-orders/ http://lbrandy.com/blog/2010/11/using-genetic-algorithms-to-...
  - ctlaltdefeat 10y ago
    I remember that program! Interesting though that my experience with it was different; I recall that letting it run for enough time it was able to come up with viable and often quite efficient build orders. By the way, I do seem to remember that putting 2 probes on an extractor was slightly more efficient (per probe) than 3 :)
    - 10y ago
rezashirazian 10y ago
I don't agree with this. This was more true with the original StarCraft but with SCII a lot of the fine graining micro is automated. And although the computer will be able to reach 1000s of APM, a solid strategy with perfect timing will defeat it. It doesn't matter how well you split your zerglings or move your marines, when there are tanks busting through your front door.
- burke 10y ago
  Counterexample: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKVFZ28ybQs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKVFZ28ybQs
vladimirralev 10y ago
It will not get to strategy in these games at all. I can already see the AI dominating any human player just by splitting army. Imagine a terran AI dropping at 4+ places at the same time, just 4-5 marines each. This can be done within the first 6-7 minutes and no human player will be able to hold. I know they limit the APM for AI but you can easily do such drop with very few APM if you simply react fast enough on damage events.
- robryan 10y ago
  There is a lot scope for mimicking a human player in terms of how long it takes to react and how the APM is actually used. I think the more effort they put into the AI restrictions, the more interesting AI you will end up with. Having an AI that wins because it is faster isn't very interesting.
- stale2002 10y ago
  This is not as big of a deal you you think it is. Starcraft 2 custom AIs already exist and have existed for a long time. And they are really bad.
  - vladimirralev 10y ago
    They are bad mostly because they try to not be obvious so that Blizzard would ban them. High APM, precision clicks without camera move or unnatural multitasking gets you reported and banned fast these days. Could be because of other things but there seems to be a lot less cheating recently.
seanwilson 10y ago
> I don't actually agree with this. Unlike Go, StarCraft is not only a game of strategy; "micro" (micro-managed tactics, basically) also plays a big role. An AI is going to be able to issue a LOT more commands per second than even the most skilled humans, giving them a natural tactical advantage. Seems like they should probably tackle a game that involves strategy without micro as a stepping stone to StarCraft. Are there any games with good AIs like that already?
- aangjie 10y ago
  > strategy without micro as a stepping stone to StarCraft Never played StarCraft(assuming micro/tactics refers to simply continuous time based ability to give orders), but based on my experience AOE AIs, may be a game with turn-wise playing instead of continuous orders in time playing?? (for ex: battle of wesnoth)
imh 10y ago
>Computers are capable of extremely fast control, but that doesn’t necessarily demonstrate intelligence, so agents must interact with the game within limits of human dexterity in terms of “Actions Per Minute”. They address that in the article. The context they're talking about is a bot beating a human with human-like dexterity limits in place.
blazespin 10y ago
Is it just me, or is anyone else a little disturbed that some of the greatest minds in AI are optimizing it for winning at a highly strategical/tactical game of warfare..
- pdimitar 10y ago
  As a StarCraft 2 amateur, it is my opinion that it has a lot more to do with being able to manage a lot of actions at the same time -- production, defense, expansion, scouting and attacking your opponent. SC2 is definitely not only about war. The pro players are periodically uploading videos explaining SC2 economy and the huge importance of proper timing and type of production in order to achieve maximum growth -- and consequently, aggression towards the opponent. Don't get me wrong; I'd prefer DeepMind's efforts be focused on a huge and realistic economics simulator but there are simply no such games (not ones that are good and/or realistic anyway). IMO StarCraft 2 is the best economy and war simulator these days so that's why DeepMind chose it.
zacharycohn 10y ago
Micro is important, but good macro way more so.

by burke 10y ago

arcticfox 10y ago

I agree. I think you'd have to limit that machine's APM to somewhere around the human limit, and make it choose which actions it wants to spend its time on. Otherwise the AI is eventually just going to absolutely destroy humans with micro, which is not remotely interesting. We've known transistors were faster than fingers for ages.

lordnacho 10y ago
> Otherwise the AI is eventually just going to absolutely destroy humans with micro, which is not remotely interesting. If you could issue as many orders as you wanted, what would the optimal strategy be?
- Thaxll 10y ago
  Simple example would be in combat, like being always out of range ect ... Imagine one army where every single unit is controlled by one human. Each individual unit would be very very strong.
  - Maro 10y ago
    > Imagine one army where every single unit is controlled by one human. Each individual unit would be very very strong. Like a real army :)
- trjordan 10y ago
  A big part of Starcraft is that certain units counter other units. Tanks counter zerglings, because they do splash damage to a bunch of them at once. Here's what you can do with infinite APM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKVFZ28ybQs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKVFZ28ybQs It's just broken. It's not even the same game.
  - defen 10y ago
    How does the AI "know" which Zergling is going to be fired upon? Are the tank shots not instant-hit? Or is this just a demonstration of what actual optimal control would look like.
    - detaro 10y ago
      The tanks aren't given overriding manual commands, so it likely could just predict how their automatic targeting works. If a player would give commands, it could get at least some information from the animation frames before the target is aquired and the shot fired. (The implementation in the video likely just cheats and gets the information from the engine, but at least the first case should be deterministic enough)
  - theptip 10y ago
    I enjoyed this, thanks for sharing. Pretty cool.
  - pavel_lishin 10y ago
    A nice illustration of the potential battlefield of tomorrow.
    - otempomores 10y ago
      Privat third in first row you ve been ai selected to draw splash damage for king and cuntry. Everybody else give him some privacy
      - ethbro 10y ago
- tyrust 10y ago
  I haven't played SC in a few years, but I think I can give a basic answer. There's would not be one optimal strategy, but many optimal strategies depending on the matchup between units. By taking advantages in differences in movement speed, attack range, attack projectile speed, and attack cooldown, a weaker group of units can potentially beat a stronger group. This is an older video that demonstrates some examples of winning with good micro: https://youtu.be/CdSKD3LRHV8?t=11 https://youtu.be/CdSKD3LRHV8?t=11. An AI knowledgeable of and capable of executing such tactics would be pretty strong.
  - stouset 10y ago
    Given that the game wasn't balanced for the possibility of infinite micro, I think it's highly probable that there's a globally optimal strategy.
    - tyrust 10y ago
      Could you give an example of what that might look like?
      - stouset 10y ago
        Just on the surface, these sorts of games are notoriously difficult to balance properly. Someone discovers a strategy that tips the balance, and units/abilities/whatever have to get nerfed. The odds that there's a stable balance at a level of play not actively tested (e.g., infinite APM) are extremely low. One example is a sibling post's video of 100 zerglings against 20 siege tanks. For humans, the zerglings are capable of destroying only a handful of tanks before being killed of. For an AI with infinite APM, they can move all but an individual targeted zergling out of the way of the tank's splash damage. This allows them to take out all of the siege tanks with only moderate losses. Many such matchups will be tossed on their heads, and it's likely that one of them is totally game-breaking.
        otempomores 10y ago
        There is a lua widget in spring rts that allows for units with at least one farsighted unit to automatically stay out of los. Sneaky army will wriggle through all defense lines.
- patmcguire 10y ago
  There's almost certainly a bunch of timing-based micro with animations/game ticks/etc that a machine would find. For example, if a machine does a sequence of actions with sub-millisecond precision they can pop a unit into range, fire, and then pop back out again without being fired upon over and over. A lot of units would be rendered useless because it's balanced for humans. That means the units they counter would be a lot stronger. I'm afraid it would probably just be a race to get the fastest rush.
  - __s 10y ago
    Rush is a bit risky, it has to be invested in before enough scouting & will go up against well micro'd workers Meta is still pretty fast, here's a SC1 AI finals: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjSXj4cb_Yo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjSXj4cb_Yo
  - stale2002 10y ago
    Rushing is a bit of a rock paper scissors situation. You can beat a fast rush by doing a slightly slower rush that focuses more on economy, and winning via defenders advantage.
  - quantumpotato_ 10y ago
    I thought units attacked instantneously, there was end-lag but no startup?
  - halflings 10y ago
    What you're describing is called "kiting", and is already being done by regular players (not to mention the pros). It is only possible for some combinations of units, for example Marines with stimpack vs regular zerglings ("slowlings"), or Viking vs Void Ray because one unit needs to be fast enough to be able to shoot + move out of range before being shot. Here's the type of micro pro players can do: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrAlhk98WxE± https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrAlhk98WxE± They do say that they will limit the number of actions taken by the AI to focus on building a smart and strategic AI instead of learning gimmicky micro moves, but if one thing is sure, it's that even the best micro cannot win a StarCraft game if the macro is not on point, and bad choices are made (good luck micro-ing siege tanks against a swarm host!)
- rlayton2 10y ago
  Infinite micro? I'd just send all drones/probes/SCVs directly to the human's base and kill their drones. The extra drones that the human has wouldn't be able to make up the difference.
  - catshirt 10y ago
    you are oversimplifying things and ignoring a lot of variables. just to illustrate a point: on a sufficiently large map, i could have four times as many workers by the time your first set reaches my spawn. if i'm playing Protoss against a Terran AI, i have an added advantage of worker regen without having to stop attacking.
  - quantumpotato_ 10y ago
    humans have tried this -- 6 pooling to grandmasters: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/sc2-strategy/283755-grandmaster-by-6pooling-how-to http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/sc2-strategy/283755-grandmas...
  - halflings 10y ago
    This is already an infamous strategy (worker rush) and it os easily countered as long as you have all your workers united and attack at once (not much micro can be done at that point, and the numerical advantage trumps that... unless you're playing protoss and constantly trying to replenish shields, and still!). Also, I'm pretty sure this is not something that DeepMind would do to "solve intelligence".
- thesimpsons1022 10y ago
  still a tough question but they could do some insane things. for instance if they had 200 marines and controlled each individually i can't imagine what they'd do. for humans it's requires insane mechanics to even break them up into 8 seperatel groups and control them for more than a few seconds
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
frostirosti 10y ago
Could probably configure it/optimize it for different apms (10,100,300,inf) Could be interesting to see if it chooses different strategies based on that. What actions will optimize performance if I can only do 50 a minute
- softawre 10y ago
  We've seen exactly this happen in competitive play. There was a player who would always play "Mech" Terran units, even though it wasn't the best strategy, because he had a lower APM than the Korean pros did. And it worked for him, too.
make3 10y ago
the article says explicitly that they will limit the capacities of the ai to things that are mechanically (physically) possible for humans
somerandomness 10y ago
'Computers are capable of extremely fast control, but that doesn’t necessarily demonstrate intelligence, so agents must interact with the game within limits of human dexterity in terms of “Actions Per Minute”.'
- tempestn 10y ago
  Yes, this is definitely necessary for it to be interesting. Even so the AI will have some significant advantages over a human, in terms of being able to perfectly time events like injects, chrono boosts, etc., and watching every visible area of the minimap at once, so never being unnecessarily surprised by an attack. There are plenty of other examples. Nothing that's technically impossible for a human, but the ai will be perfect at those aspects as a given. For the human player to win, even limiting the machine's APM, they will need considerably superior strategy to make up for these differences. Also, I'm not sure how they plan to limit APM, but if it's done in the naive way - the AI simply isn't allowed to surpass an APM of X, there will be plenty of optimizing it can do in terms of spending those actions more optimally than a human could (in some cases by performing fewer but more difficult actions to accomplish a task), as well as by remaining at peak APM continuously throughout an entire match. (Something that is a hallmark of great players, but like map awareness and macro timing, no human is able to keep up their peak speed indefinitely without any lapses.)
  - anchpop 10y ago
    Why not limit it to a certain number of keys typed per second, and a certain rate of moving the cursor? Maybe randomly wait 0-150 ms before sending a keypress to simulate human imprecision?
    - halflings 10y ago
      What "somerandomness" what pointing out is that nobody in this thread seems to have actually clicked on the link. DeepMind's article clearly states that they would limit the number of actions per minute (traditionally referred to as APM in esports) taken by their AI, yet people are still saying that this wouldn't be impressive because the machine has an unlimited number of actions.

scarmig 10y ago

Isn't it easy to account for this? Just force the AI to stick to between 100 and 150 APM, and it becomes its responsibility budget its APM.

chc 10y ago
APM limiting would be an interesting way to scale the game's difficulty level.
- rcthompson 10y ago
  Maybe at high levels of play it would, but limiting the APM to even very low levels (e.g. 60 APM, i.e. 1 action per second) would still allow the computer to macro very efficiently, so I don't think it would be a balanced difficulty adjustment. It would be simulating highly skilled player with limited mobility rather than a player that is overall less skilled.
burke 10y ago
Sure, but even then it's difficult. Micro'ing three fronts at once would be difficult for a human but could easily fit within the AI's budget. You could solve this by coming up with some sort of context-switch effort function but it starts to feel forced. Or at least, once you start calibrating the parameters of the problem around human limitations, it sort of feels weird to talk about the computer being better or worse than the human.
- ryukafalz 10y ago
  >You could solve this by coming up with some sort of context-switch effort function but it starts to feel forced. Doesn't seem too forced to me IMO. Humans have to expend more effort to context switch, so if the goal is to put humans and computers on a level playing field that's something you have to take into account.
- thesimpsons1022 10y ago
  no one is even mentioning the role of vision in the game. for a human it's pretty tough to keep track of the minimap and play at the same time. you end up missing a lot of things. imagine something that could monitor both simulataneously.

Corence 10y ago

The article says they're restricting the APM for the agent to try to reduce the impact of this.

samstave 10y ago

From my naive perspective; in GO you do not need to be concerned with resource consumption/mgmt... in Starcraft and other RTS' you do. How much more complexity is added by resource mgmt vs just "legal play possibilities" as now you have "this move isnt legal because you dont have the requisite resource, thus you need to depend on completing those moves first" Are there any efforts applying deepmind to, say, commodities markets? Or something along those lines? Supply chains for complex hardware manufacturing logistics? Robot assembly of complex parts in an assembly line? Sure, AI's playing games is cool... What I would like to see is an AI playing "Farm Simulator" to manage a vast swatch of farm equipment making and picking food over a vast expanse - with little human interaction. * Auto dock * Auto Harvest * Auto Refuel etc....

visarga 10y ago
> Supply chains for complex hardware manufacturing logistics? That would go well with the concept of Seed Factory, which is a factory that could reproduce itself, from raw materials. If we can build a self replicating device, we will reach another kind of singularity. At the moment, the whole human race is such a self replicating system, but if we can take humans out of the loop we could ship it to an undeveloped area (another planet?) and have it create a city and industry for us. Another application would be to ensure self reliance for humans in the post automation world. A self replicating factory, capable of solving the whole logistics puzzle of building repairing itself, as well as supporting its owners, would ensure that its owners don't depend on UBI or jobs. Such a factory would initially need some industrial machines and robots, probably at minimum a 3D printer, some raw materials and high end pieces such as CPUs. Then it would gradually print and assemble more equipment. It would eventually bootstrap like a compiler, being able to "compile" an identical factory from raw materials. Keeping count of each object, its source parts, construction waste, energy spent in building it, processes and time they could "compile" an ecosystem of devices that carefully work together, recycling everything that is wasted in the process. As the capabilities of the factory increase, the process could be "recompiled" to take advantage of the new capacity. The place of AI would be to optimize the process. Instead of a hand-made industrial compiler, it could search for a way to combine its resources in more masterful ways. It can keep track of more things than human planners (project managers?) can. It could potentially assess the needs and organize the industrial production for a whole country in a more efficient way than capitalism or communism could. The beauty of a seed factory is in its initial price - under 5% of the price of a factory built from buying equipment, because it only needs the seed of the factory and raw materials. The factory would grow like an organism, expanding itself. Most of the factory would be self made. Just like a cell, or an animal. [Wiki Book] https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Seed_Factories https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Seed_Factories

vtange 10y ago

That reminds me of a video demonstrating two "hardest" setting AI's against each other in Age of Empires II. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqiOQ1dAhL4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqiOQ1dAhL4 One AI won simply because it abused the fact it could spam monks and use the monks in a manner no human could ever achieve

theptip 10y ago

Agreed that micro is a big advantage that AIs have held in previous AI vs. Human StarCraft contests, but the OP stated that the SC2 research environment will limit the AI to (elite) human APM levels, so that edge will be somewhat blunted. It's probably fair to question whether all actions are counted equally; I could believe that an AI could allocate their action budget more widely than a human can, even while hitting the same total APM. More importantly, in my opinion, I'm not aware of any other AIs that have been competitive at the StarCraft problem using a Neural-Net-based implementation; from talking to PhDs in the field (but not from direct technical experience, so take this with a pinch of salt), my impression is that state-of-the-art RNNs just don't have the ability to encode the history of the game-world in a way that would enable them to be competitive. So it will require significant advances to the theoretical models to be able to compete using the sort of implementation that DeepMind will build.

rfrank 10y ago
When I was playing SC2 frequently a few years ago, someone made a program that used genetic algorithms to construct build orders [1]. It would produce a build that technically worked, but in a lot of cases they weren't very viable. I tried to make a blink stalker rush that'd be the rough equivalent of the build shown in the post liked above, just with the Protoss race in the game. The program would tell me to do things like make two extractors but put fewer than necessary probes on them, pull probes to extractors after X trips or at X time (can't remember which), things like that. 1. http://lbrandy.com/blog/2010/11/using-genetic-algorithms-to-find-starcraft-2-build-orders/ http://lbrandy.com/blog/2010/11/using-genetic-algorithms-to-...
- ctlaltdefeat 10y ago
  I remember that program! Interesting though that my experience with it was different; I recall that letting it run for enough time it was able to come up with viable and often quite efficient build orders. By the way, I do seem to remember that putting 2 probes on an extractor was slightly more efficient (per probe) than 3 :)
  - 10y ago

rezashirazian 10y ago

I don't agree with this. This was more true with the original StarCraft but with SCII a lot of the fine graining micro is automated. And although the computer will be able to reach 1000s of APM, a solid strategy with perfect timing will defeat it. It doesn't matter how well you split your zerglings or move your marines, when there are tanks busting through your front door.

burke 10y ago
Counterexample: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKVFZ28ybQs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKVFZ28ybQs

vladimirralev 10y ago

It will not get to strategy in these games at all. I can already see the AI dominating any human player just by splitting army. Imagine a terran AI dropping at 4+ places at the same time, just 4-5 marines each. This can be done within the first 6-7 minutes and no human player will be able to hold. I know they limit the APM for AI but you can easily do such drop with very few APM if you simply react fast enough on damage events.

robryan 10y ago
There is a lot scope for mimicking a human player in terms of how long it takes to react and how the APM is actually used. I think the more effort they put into the AI restrictions, the more interesting AI you will end up with. Having an AI that wins because it is faster isn't very interesting.
stale2002 10y ago
This is not as big of a deal you you think it is. Starcraft 2 custom AIs already exist and have existed for a long time. And they are really bad.
- vladimirralev 10y ago
  They are bad mostly because they try to not be obvious so that Blizzard would ban them. High APM, precision clicks without camera move or unnatural multitasking gets you reported and banned fast these days. Could be because of other things but there seems to be a lot less cheating recently.

seanwilson 10y ago

> I don't actually agree with this. Unlike Go, StarCraft is not only a game of strategy; "micro" (micro-managed tactics, basically) also plays a big role. An AI is going to be able to issue a LOT more commands per second than even the most skilled humans, giving them a natural tactical advantage. Seems like they should probably tackle a game that involves strategy without micro as a stepping stone to StarCraft. Are there any games with good AIs like that already?

aangjie 10y ago
> strategy without micro as a stepping stone to StarCraft Never played StarCraft(assuming micro/tactics refers to simply continuous time based ability to give orders), but based on my experience AOE AIs, may be a game with turn-wise playing instead of continuous orders in time playing?? (for ex: battle of wesnoth)

imh 10y ago

>Computers are capable of extremely fast control, but that doesn’t necessarily demonstrate intelligence, so agents must interact with the game within limits of human dexterity in terms of “Actions Per Minute”. They address that in the article. The context they're talking about is a bot beating a human with human-like dexterity limits in place.

blazespin 10y ago

Is it just me, or is anyone else a little disturbed that some of the greatest minds in AI are optimizing it for winning at a highly strategical/tactical game of warfare..

pdimitar 10y ago
As a StarCraft 2 amateur, it is my opinion that it has a lot more to do with being able to manage a lot of actions at the same time -- production, defense, expansion, scouting and attacking your opponent. SC2 is definitely not only about war. The pro players are periodically uploading videos explaining SC2 economy and the huge importance of proper timing and type of production in order to achieve maximum growth -- and consequently, aggression towards the opponent. Don't get me wrong; I'd prefer DeepMind's efforts be focused on a huge and realistic economics simulator but there are simply no such games (not ones that are good and/or realistic anyway). IMO StarCraft 2 is the best economy and war simulator these days so that's why DeepMind chose it.

zacharycohn 10y ago

Micro is important, but good macro way more so.