6 ms·

Looks like the AI is just playing against Starcraft II's AI, which makes this slightly less impressive, as I first thought it was against human players. The SC

Looks like the AI is just playing against Starcraft II's AI, which makes this slightly less impressive, as I first thought it was against human players. The SC2 AI on higher difficulties does cheat though (extra resources) so it does make it slightly impressive, but still a far cry from human opponents as SC2's AI is pretty easy to beat (it would be around Gold in ladder I think)

Strilanc 8y ago
If it's just the built-in AIs, you're right that it's much less impressive. They should be winning 100% of the time. For example, I don't know if they've fixed this, but you used to be able to beat the AIs 1v4 on the highest difficulty. There was a bug where the AIs would surrender individually even though they were on a team. So with an all-out rush you could get two of them to surrender almost immediately by running 2-3 zealots through their mineral lines. Getting the third one to surrender required a bit more fighting, and then the fourth was more of a normal game. The AIs also used to keep their entire army in one big death ball, and if there were 3-4 fighting units in their base they would send the army home to defend. Even if their army was 10x bigger than yours and they'd win the base race. So you could hop reapers into and out of their bases to prevent them from attacking your base indefinitely (because they kept running home). Also you were doing pretty serious damage with the reapers while they ran back. Another exploit was to start building a cheap building in their base area at the start, somewhat far away from the mining line. They would send a ridiculous number of workers to attack your building. So they'd lose significantly more money to lack-of-mining than you did for building and cancelling a pylon or whatever.
- swarnie_ 8y ago
  > Another exploit was to start building a cheap building in their base area at the start, somewhat far away from the mining line. They would send a ridiculous number of workers to attack your building. So they'd lose significantly more money to lack-of-mining than you did for building and cancelling a pylon or whatever. Similar to this none of the inbuilt AI's can deal with a slow cannon rush. They will hesitate for ages then rush 5 finished cannons. The later Ai's do a little scv tanking and kiting but nothing near enough, they don't even focus down the probes.
- snarfy 8y ago
  If you float an overlord just out of range, sometimes their entire army will just sit their watching it. I've accidentally won many vs AI games this way. There also some 1 base all-in's that I've never had the AI defend.
- qubax 8y ago
  > If it's just the built-in AIs, you're right that it's much less impressive. They should be winning 100% of the time. Absolutely. Unless the win-loss ratio includes all games while the AI "learns" to play the game. It might have lost most of its early games, but now wins 100% of the time. I suspect it wouldn't take DeepMind long to master starcraft II and beat starcraft's AI 100% of the time.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- sct202 8y ago
  It also reacts very badly to liberators zones, compared to like tank zones.
- henryw 8y ago
  Vs 4 insane AIs, I floated my command center to an island with 2 mineral patches and produced mass battlecruisers =D
36bydesign 8y ago
It would be bronze. The built in AI is much worse than you think.
- __s 8y ago
  Bronze is now the bottom 4 percentile. I was around the level of Very Hard while 2600 NAMMR (High silver)
- tudelo 8y ago
  This is not true. Maybe when the game first came out, but average skill level has decreased greatly.
  - cjbprime 8y ago
    This is counter to the current perception of professional players, which is that world champions from ten years ago played the way that unexceptional ladder players play today. I think the average skill level has been increasing monotonically over time.
    - tudelo 8y ago
      Fine, overall skill has increased. But given the vast amount of information and strategy guides, it is much easier to get to a diamond level now than it was before.
      - cjbprime 8y ago
        That idea doesn't seem coherent to me -- Diamond is just another way to say "top 60-90th percentile". The vast amount of information is available to everyone equally, so it doesn't explain why some people are above average players. Players in every league have improved. There's no static "diamond level" way of playing that's been unchanged over ten years to compare against.
  - 36bydesign 8y ago
    I’ve played since the release date thru now with gaps of time not playing... from my experience it’s unequivocally clear that the skill level is much much higher than when the game first came out. Like not even close.
deleted 8y ago
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thomasahle 8y ago
> it would be around Gold in ladder I think In the article, they say it plays around Platinium / low Diamond, when they had it play on the ladder. Though also: "It is worth noting that although TStarBot1 can successfully learn and acquire strategies to defeat all the builtin AIs and TStarBot2, it lacks strategy diversity in order to consistently beat human players. In the aforementioned test with human players, TStarBot1 will be unable to win once the human player starts to know TStarBot1’s preference for Zergling Rush."

Strilanc 8y ago

If it's just the built-in AIs, you're right that it's much less impressive. They should be winning 100% of the time. For example, I don't know if they've fixed this, but you used to be able to beat the AIs 1v4 on the highest difficulty. There was a bug where the AIs would surrender individually even though they were on a team. So with an all-out rush you could get two of them to surrender almost immediately by running 2-3 zealots through their mineral lines. Getting the third one to surrender required a bit more fighting, and then the fourth was more of a normal game. The AIs also used to keep their entire army in one big death ball, and if there were 3-4 fighting units in their base they would send the army home to defend. Even if their army was 10x bigger than yours and they'd win the base race. So you could hop reapers into and out of their bases to prevent them from attacking your base indefinitely (because they kept running home). Also you were doing pretty serious damage with the reapers while they ran back. Another exploit was to start building a cheap building in their base area at the start, somewhat far away from the mining line. They would send a ridiculous number of workers to attack your building. So they'd lose significantly more money to lack-of-mining than you did for building and cancelling a pylon or whatever.

swarnie_ 8y ago
> Another exploit was to start building a cheap building in their base area at the start, somewhat far away from the mining line. They would send a ridiculous number of workers to attack your building. So they'd lose significantly more money to lack-of-mining than you did for building and cancelling a pylon or whatever. Similar to this none of the inbuilt AI's can deal with a slow cannon rush. They will hesitate for ages then rush 5 finished cannons. The later Ai's do a little scv tanking and kiting but nothing near enough, they don't even focus down the probes.
snarfy 8y ago
If you float an overlord just out of range, sometimes their entire army will just sit their watching it. I've accidentally won many vs AI games this way. There also some 1 base all-in's that I've never had the AI defend.
qubax 8y ago
> If it's just the built-in AIs, you're right that it's much less impressive. They should be winning 100% of the time. Absolutely. Unless the win-loss ratio includes all games while the AI "learns" to play the game. It might have lost most of its early games, but now wins 100% of the time. I suspect it wouldn't take DeepMind long to master starcraft II and beat starcraft's AI 100% of the time.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
sct202 8y ago
It also reacts very badly to liberators zones, compared to like tank zones.
henryw 8y ago
Vs 4 insane AIs, I floated my command center to an island with 2 mineral patches and produced mass battlecruisers =D

36bydesign 8y ago

It would be bronze. The built in AI is much worse than you think.

__s 8y ago
Bronze is now the bottom 4 percentile. I was around the level of Very Hard while 2600 NAMMR (High silver)
tudelo 8y ago
This is not true. Maybe when the game first came out, but average skill level has decreased greatly.
- cjbprime 8y ago
  This is counter to the current perception of professional players, which is that world champions from ten years ago played the way that unexceptional ladder players play today. I think the average skill level has been increasing monotonically over time.
  - tudelo 8y ago
    Fine, overall skill has increased. But given the vast amount of information and strategy guides, it is much easier to get to a diamond level now than it was before.
    - cjbprime 8y ago
      That idea doesn't seem coherent to me -- Diamond is just another way to say "top 60-90th percentile". The vast amount of information is available to everyone equally, so it doesn't explain why some people are above average players. Players in every league have improved. There's no static "diamond level" way of playing that's been unchanged over ten years to compare against.
- 36bydesign 8y ago
  I’ve played since the release date thru now with gaps of time not playing... from my experience it’s unequivocally clear that the skill level is much much higher than when the game first came out. Like not even close.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

thomasahle 8y ago

> it would be around Gold in ladder I think In the article, they say it plays around Platinium / low Diamond, when they had it play on the ladder. Though also: "It is worth noting that although TStarBot1 can successfully learn and acquire strategies to defeat all the builtin AIs and TStarBot2, it lacks strategy diversity in order to consistently beat human players. In the aforementioned test with human players, TStarBot1 will be unable to win once the human player starts to know TStarBot1’s preference for Zergling Rush."