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Every AI has to "cheat" or it would utterly destroy you. For example, AI can micro manage way better than you can, it can do a billion APMs. It has complete si

Every AI has to "cheat" or it would utterly destroy you. For example, AI can micro manage way better than you can, it can do a billion APMs. It has complete situational awareness at all times and never gets distracted by real-life. In an RTS where scouting is key, it could fan out with as many drones as it can produce and gather way more information than a human player could. You need to constrain your AI so that it's not impossible to defeat. For example, limit how many actions it can perform in a given situation, or make it stubbornly cling to some losing strategy for a while even when it could easily flip to the most optimal one in an instant.

Retric 10y ago
It's not hard to make a bot do worse, however in many games there are no bots that play well without cheating. Watch some StarCraft/StarCraft2 bots, it seems like an easy challenge, but they can't beat a good human player when they have to deal with the fog of war. PS: Multi drone scouting tanks your economy and becomes a really bad idea. You want to send out one scout that can both gather useful information, not die, and not significantly hurt your economy. To the point where some very high level players don't always scout early.
- astrodust 10y ago
  An unshackled bot will eventually destroy even the best human players once they can lock in the right approach. It's only a matter of discovery. Tic-tac-toe, checkers, chess, even Go have all fallen to computers. As for scouting, the ability of an AI to endlessly harass and endure minimal damage because of precise unit movement becomes a problem. A human can't finesse that as well and still have attention left over for other, more urgent priorities. It's probably the case that at a strategic level the AIs generally suck, but on a highly situational level they have an advantage that needs to be kept in check.
  - Retric 10y ago
    And when that happens we can nerf the bot. But, RTS like StarCraft are really difficult and with constant re balancing the optimal strategy keeps changing. Remember, at the meta level you need to have just enough army to survive an all in, while maximizing resource collection and research. Further, if you don't use a range of strategy's people will just pick the counter to your game style. Do you build static defense vs harassment? What do you do for vision? And everything has a cost in time or resources. Further, things like army composition, baiting, high ground, choke points etc. make combat very tactical which bots have issues with.
    - astrodust 10y ago
      It's too bad that there's no official Starcraft 2 bot league. There's only various student leagues and the occasional contest.
      - luminiferous 10y ago
        Blizzard worked with DeepMind to release a SC2 API recently, see here: https://us.battle.net/forums/en/sc2/topic/20751114921 https://us.battle.net/forums/en/sc2/topic/20751114921 When they released an API for Brood War, an AI competition popped up shortly thereafter, and I expect that there will be one announced shortly for SC2.
stale2002 10y ago
You are highly overestimating the capability of AI. Infinite APM AIs in starcraft still basically suck. There strategy/high level planning is so terrible that perfect/unfair micro doesn't save them.
- astrodust 10y ago
  This is a function of shitty AI, not infinite APMs. Honestly, the AI in most games is downright terrible to start with, but for those where it's actually competent, you need to nerf it a bit or it becomes overwhelming.
  - stale2002 10y ago
    Yes, that's my point. AI in real time strategy games all suck, because the problems there are very very hard. Even with blatantly unfair advantages and cheating the AIs still suck. No such competent AI exists for real time strategy games. The "decision tree" is a billion times more complex than something like Go.

Retric 10y ago

It's not hard to make a bot do worse, however in many games there are no bots that play well without cheating. Watch some StarCraft/StarCraft2 bots, it seems like an easy challenge, but they can't beat a good human player when they have to deal with the fog of war. PS: Multi drone scouting tanks your economy and becomes a really bad idea. You want to send out one scout that can both gather useful information, not die, and not significantly hurt your economy. To the point where some very high level players don't always scout early.

astrodust 10y ago
An unshackled bot will eventually destroy even the best human players once they can lock in the right approach. It's only a matter of discovery. Tic-tac-toe, checkers, chess, even Go have all fallen to computers. As for scouting, the ability of an AI to endlessly harass and endure minimal damage because of precise unit movement becomes a problem. A human can't finesse that as well and still have attention left over for other, more urgent priorities. It's probably the case that at a strategic level the AIs generally suck, but on a highly situational level they have an advantage that needs to be kept in check.
- Retric 10y ago
  And when that happens we can nerf the bot. But, RTS like StarCraft are really difficult and with constant re balancing the optimal strategy keeps changing. Remember, at the meta level you need to have just enough army to survive an all in, while maximizing resource collection and research. Further, if you don't use a range of strategy's people will just pick the counter to your game style. Do you build static defense vs harassment? What do you do for vision? And everything has a cost in time or resources. Further, things like army composition, baiting, high ground, choke points etc. make combat very tactical which bots have issues with.
  - astrodust 10y ago
    It's too bad that there's no official Starcraft 2 bot league. There's only various student leagues and the occasional contest.
    - luminiferous 10y ago
      Blizzard worked with DeepMind to release a SC2 API recently, see here: https://us.battle.net/forums/en/sc2/topic/20751114921 https://us.battle.net/forums/en/sc2/topic/20751114921 When they released an API for Brood War, an AI competition popped up shortly thereafter, and I expect that there will be one announced shortly for SC2.

stale2002 10y ago

You are highly overestimating the capability of AI. Infinite APM AIs in starcraft still basically suck. There strategy/high level planning is so terrible that perfect/unfair micro doesn't save them.

astrodust 10y ago
This is a function of shitty AI, not infinite APMs. Honestly, the AI in most games is downright terrible to start with, but for those where it's actually competent, you need to nerf it a bit or it becomes overwhelming.
- stale2002 10y ago
  Yes, that's my point. AI in real time strategy games all suck, because the problems there are very very hard. Even with blatantly unfair advantages and cheating the AIs still suck. No such competent AI exists for real time strategy games. The "decision tree" is a billion times more complex than something like Go.