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>>I would like to see someone program a computer who could beat the best starcraft player. I bet that would make the IBM Deep Blue seem like a joke. Deep Blue

by borisk 16y ago

>>I would like to see someone program a computer who could beat the best starcraft player. I bet that would make the IBM Deep Blue seem like a joke. Deep Blue is ancient, modern chess programs make it look like a joke ;-) In SC a program can abuse early some insane micromanagement to win before any hard strategy/positional decisions have to be made.

csytan 16y ago
Not true. There is a trade off between speed and economy when doing an early rush. The attacking player will always have less attacking units than the defensive player due to the travel distance between bases. (Assuming the defensive player is prepared for the rush) In addition, by the time any first tier attacking units reach you, it's always possible to have a defensive structure, which can deal fairly well with any sort of micromangement.
- borisk 16y ago
  >> There is a trade off between speed and economy when doing an early rush. The attacking player will always have less attacking units than the defensive player due to the travel distance between bases. (Assuming the defensive player is prepared for the rush) The attacking AI can abuse it's much much higher APM to do a lot of damage with less units. Like killing workers with zealots, zerglings or vultures. >>In addition, by the time any first tier attacking units reach you, it's always possible to have a defensive structure, which can deal fairly well with any sort of micromangement. Defensive structures are 1. expensive and 2. can be bypassed. An AI can use the same resources, human spent on defense, to expand or tech, easily winning the game.
  - _delirium 16y ago
    I can definitely see better micro giving the AI an advantage, but it seems like it'd have to have at least competent strategic play to still do well; it's hard to recover from completely screwed-up build order. It'll be interesting to see how it plays out, though; if bots in the Starcraft AI competition (http://eis.ucsc.edu/StarCraftAICompetition http://eis.ucsc.edu/StarCraftAICompetition) do start winning exclusively through insane micro and a hardcoded rush in the first 2 minutes, it might need to be changed to stay interesting. To me, the most interesting part is seeing what kinds of AI architectures can simultaneously deal with real-time action across all the levels of complexity--- micromanaging individual units while also making unit-group-movement decisions, build-order decisions, expansion decisions, teching-up decisions, etc., which coordinate with each other. That might need a different game or a variant, though; it's possible that Starcraft is now too much like chess, where people have already mapped out giant databases of opening books (you can find detailed information on various SC wikis about exactly when to build different things in which order, what to build to counter other strategies, etc.). So it might be that a computer perfectly executing one of those hardcoded strategies with perfect micro is too close to optimal to be interesting. But I'm not sure that's true yet; current bots are actually not too great. Alternately, someone could make an APM-limited variant to handicap the computer a little closer to human clicking speed. That would introduce a strange optimization problem where the AI would need to optimize its click usage as a limited resource.
  - cloudkj 16y ago
    Just wanted to point out that it's pretty silly to talk about an AI's APM, since its APM is infinite (bounded by hardware limits like clock speed, etc).
    - borisk 16y ago
      Just wanted to point out that it's pretty silly to say that infinite = bounded ;-)
      - deleted 16y ago
        [deleted]
yosho 16y ago
I guess what I meant was that it would make the hype that Deep Blue got at the time seem like a joke, since I believe Starcraft is an immensely more complicated game. And I disagree that insane micromanagement will win the game. In the opening moves, there's only so much micromanagement you can do since you're limited on resources , technology, and units. And by the time where lots of micromanagement comes into play, there are already a lot of strategic decisions made that could easily affect the outcome of the game.

by borisk 16y ago

csytan 16y ago

Not true. There is a trade off between speed and economy when doing an early rush. The attacking player will always have less attacking units than the defensive player due to the travel distance between bases. (Assuming the defensive player is prepared for the rush) In addition, by the time any first tier attacking units reach you, it's always possible to have a defensive structure, which can deal fairly well with any sort of micromangement.

borisk 16y ago
>> There is a trade off between speed and economy when doing an early rush. The attacking player will always have less attacking units than the defensive player due to the travel distance between bases. (Assuming the defensive player is prepared for the rush) The attacking AI can abuse it's much much higher APM to do a lot of damage with less units. Like killing workers with zealots, zerglings or vultures. >>In addition, by the time any first tier attacking units reach you, it's always possible to have a defensive structure, which can deal fairly well with any sort of micromangement. Defensive structures are 1. expensive and 2. can be bypassed. An AI can use the same resources, human spent on defense, to expand or tech, easily winning the game.
- _delirium 16y ago
  I can definitely see better micro giving the AI an advantage, but it seems like it'd have to have at least competent strategic play to still do well; it's hard to recover from completely screwed-up build order. It'll be interesting to see how it plays out, though; if bots in the Starcraft AI competition (http://eis.ucsc.edu/StarCraftAICompetition http://eis.ucsc.edu/StarCraftAICompetition) do start winning exclusively through insane micro and a hardcoded rush in the first 2 minutes, it might need to be changed to stay interesting. To me, the most interesting part is seeing what kinds of AI architectures can simultaneously deal with real-time action across all the levels of complexity--- micromanaging individual units while also making unit-group-movement decisions, build-order decisions, expansion decisions, teching-up decisions, etc., which coordinate with each other. That might need a different game or a variant, though; it's possible that Starcraft is now too much like chess, where people have already mapped out giant databases of opening books (you can find detailed information on various SC wikis about exactly when to build different things in which order, what to build to counter other strategies, etc.). So it might be that a computer perfectly executing one of those hardcoded strategies with perfect micro is too close to optimal to be interesting. But I'm not sure that's true yet; current bots are actually not too great. Alternately, someone could make an APM-limited variant to handicap the computer a little closer to human clicking speed. That would introduce a strange optimization problem where the AI would need to optimize its click usage as a limited resource.
- cloudkj 16y ago
  Just wanted to point out that it's pretty silly to talk about an AI's APM, since its APM is infinite (bounded by hardware limits like clock speed, etc).
  - borisk 16y ago
    Just wanted to point out that it's pretty silly to say that infinite = bounded ;-)
    - deleted 16y ago
      [deleted]

yosho 16y ago

I guess what I meant was that it would make the hype that Deep Blue got at the time seem like a joke, since I believe Starcraft is an immensely more complicated game. And I disagree that insane micromanagement will win the game. In the opening moves, there's only so much micromanagement you can do since you're limited on resources , technology, and units. And by the time where lots of micromanagement comes into play, there are already a lot of strategic decisions made that could easily affect the outcome of the game.