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That doesn’t really sound like it understands the game... is this not training by playing against itself? How is it not learning the flawed reasoning behind thi

That doesn’t really sound like it understands the game... is this not training by playing against itself? How is it not learning the flawed reasoning behind this strategy?

__blockcipher__ 8y ago
>How is it not learning the flawed reasoning behind this strategy If it's playing against the Starcraft 2 blizzard AI, it will learn a lot of "bad habits" because outright bad strategies work against the AI. Thus the worker rushing.
zacharyz 8y ago
What makes it flawed? It is a legit strategy that occasionally works at the pro level.
- sudo_rm 8y ago
  Not a worker rush. Worker rushes only really work against lower ranked players that panic and do not know how to respond. The reason is that while the attacking player sends over their workers to attack, the defending player is still constantly making workers. By the time that attackers get there the defending player should have more workers. He simply has to command all of them to fight the opponent's workers.
  - MichaelDickens 8y ago
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KP_ZcpZIBDQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KP_ZcpZIBDQ This is a pro-level game where one of the players worker rushes, and the rush is moderately successful.
    - sudo_rm 8y ago
      That's a 12 pool though. Little different. The article was talking about an immediate worker rush, not building some army and then going over.
      - bseidensticker 8y ago
        There was no pool, no lings. Just double gas cancel to get 2 extra drones without needing an overlord.
    - kochthesecond 8y ago
      12 pool is a valid opening. A worker rush is not.
  - gpm 8y ago
    It's plausible that a self playing AI would still learn to worker rush in some race combos though, at least for awhile. If the opponent doesn't react, you win because you kill all their workers. If the opponent overreacts, you win because you are mining more than them (IIRC this is a problem with the insane ai). If the opponent reacts poorly in other ways, you might be able to win by out microing them. E.g. SCVs (terran workers) consistently beat drones/probe (the other races workers) 1-1 without micro. Repairing can be an advantage. The offensive AI being better at stacking damage on a few units. Etc. The defensive AI should learn to fix these problems and stop losing to worker rushes, but it could take awhile. In other words the defensive AI starts out as a lower ranked player. PS. I'm not sure how serious a tournament this was, but here's an example of a real worker rush (not an early pool with workers attached): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AtqgaJzJP4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AtqgaJzJP4
  - jandrese 8y ago
    Isn't the idea that because your opponent spent resources on things like their first barracks and gas collector that your workers should outnumber them for the attack? Of course you lose all of that time it takes for your workers to drive across the map, so it's a pretty dicey strategy. A 50% win rate against the AI sounds about right.
    - she11c0de 8y ago
      You shouldn't cut worker production at the beginning of the game - it's critical to keep pumping them uninterruptedly. You only build when you have enough resources to ensure that.
- kochthesecond 8y ago
  Worker rushes do not work at pro level. Cannon rushes and proxy buildings sometimes work if caught off guard. The openings in sc2 is more akin to the mind games of poker than chess. Information is hidden so there is nothing to keep you honest.
  - cjbprime 8y ago
    ZvZ is an exception, when a worker rueh is paired with an early pool, making it a worker and spine rush.
chongli 8y ago
The reasoning behind worker rushing is sound. StarCraft II is a game of hidden information and there's no time where that's more relevant than the beginning of the game. The problem is that there's a sort of rock-paper-scissors game of (conservative)-(greedy)-(all in). That is, a player who build defenses early on will crush a worker rush but they'll be far behind a player who ignores defenses and focuses on growing their economy. The worker rush is designed to punish this greedy build order. There's nothing that can be done, really. If you decide to send a worker to scout super early on then your economy suffers so much that you'll be behind no matter what you do. Edit: to those of you drawing a distinction between an immediate worker rush and something like an early pool or a cannon rush, that's splitting hairs. These are all classified as all-in strategies that almost automatically lose if they encounter a conservative build order.
- gpm 8y ago
  > Edit: to those of you drawing a distinction between an immediate worker rush and something like an early pool or a cannon rush, that's splitting hairs. These are all classified as all-in strategies that almost automatically lose if they encounter a conservative build order. Things like early pools and cannon rushes are (depending on the details of the meta at the time) a rock papers scissors game. Cheese (early pool/cannon rush) beats aggressive play beats conservative play beats cheese (roughly speaking). Worker rushes are just bad. Apart from playing against 6 pools on really old versions of SC2 on maps with ridiculously short rush distances they just lose. Even then I don't think I'd call them good.
- ALittleLight 8y ago
  The rock paper scissors element is there, but not with worker rushing. Worker rushing is a huge disadvantage. The term means you take your initial workers and charge the enemy. If you know where the enemy is you'll arrive about the time they are up one or two workers on you, then you just have to fight when you're down one or two workers and you can't back off (they'll return to mine). A human can win like this if they are so much better at micro that they can overcome the material disadvantage (unlikely) or if their opponent panicks and does something dumb (e.g. pulling only half their workers to fight). Because worker rushes arrive so early it doesn't matter what plan you have for the match, you'll have at least as many workers (if you are also worker rushing) or you'll have more. Maybe if you're going six pool you'll have fewer but you'll also be able to get lings and win with them. The computer can lose to worker rushing only because it can get caught in loops of poor decisions (e.g. you lure away a couple workers and kill them). Worker rushing is always a bad plan.
dsl 8y ago
> flawed reasoning Your "reasoning" is actually a false perception. It doesn't make these mistakes and tries strategies that seem improbable to human players. A 50% win rate against the Insane AI is very good, as at the higher AI levels the computer actually cheats (no fog of war, more resources, etc).
- vkou 8y ago
  A moderately skilled human player will be able to beat the insane AI ~100% of the time. The AI cheats, but is also incredibly predictible, and bad at decision-making.
  - cowmoo728 8y ago
    As a moderately skilled human player myself, I developed a foolproof cheese strategy for defeating insane AI. They go crazy if you attack their worker line and recall every attacking unit that's not currently engaged. I played terran and built a single supply depot in the middle of the map to give me enough advance warning when they were coming to attack me, and then dropped 2-3 marines behind their minerals to stall them. If you do this long enough you can build a virtually undefeatable siege tank army that the AI would simply smash its face into, and then corral them to 2 or 3 bases. They would always run out of minerals while I expanded everywhere and slowly inched tanks forward. Doing this same strategy against humans got me to about gold tier in the early days of sc2.
    - skocznymroczny 8y ago
      it's more simple than that, just play Protoss and cannon rush the AI.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - cjbprime 8y ago
    Even a below average one: it's normal to belong in bronze league (~5th percentile) if you beat the AI on every level and then start playing other humans. The AI is not a serious opponent.
mmartinson 8y ago
I am a layman, but isn't the point that it doesn't ever understand that game, it just wins?
- brootstrap 8y ago
  I think you bring up a good point. People imprint their own perception of things to this AI game. The bot is probably working like other deep learning machine learning things. It runs some models or whatever and tries to minimize error. Not surprising really that the computer thinks differently than humans. A worker rush sounds hilarious to us but hey it can work.
  - hannasanarion 8y ago
    It doesn't sound hilarious to a Starcraft player. It's a very common strategy in the lower ranks that's very effective against players who panic or don't have good micromanaging skills. Everybody has been beaten by a worker rush at least once.
  - kochthesecond 8y ago
    Except that worker rushes are actually terrible and very easy to beat if you don't panic. the insane AI is easy to panic though.
- b_tterc_p 8y ago
  For a complicated game that lacks a dominant strategy like Starcraft does, the two are the same. You must be able to infer the state of the game given your limited factbase of what’s going on. You must be able to choose the strategy that is most likely to Result in victory. Using this strategy is objectively bad in that it can be repelled by an opponent almost regardless of their initial strategy. If deepmind’s goal is to beat the standard Ai, then sure I guess it understands that. But that’s a very different problem from understanding Starcraft, and a much less difficult one at that.
  - eru 8y ago
    They are still learning. So at some point their AI should explore worker rushes, but also explore how to defend against them. And once the defense gets good enough, the attack portion of the AI should probably do the worker rushes much less often. Of course, given that the AI has different constraints in micro-management and attention, and that the game is balanced given human skills, some things that would be totally bonkers to do as a human might work for the AI.
neuronexmachina 8y ago
The following sentence: > After feeding the agent replays from real players, it started to execute standard macro-focused strategies, as well as defend against aggressive tactics such as cannon rushes.
chrisco255 8y ago
"Cheesing" as it's called, is classic SC2 strategy. People absolutely hate it, but it occasionally works, even though it feels cheap. It's kinda like Blitzkreig in chess...
- fernandotakai 8y ago
  it's a valid strategy that brought some super exciting moments, like boxer bunker rushing yellow 3x at 2004 EVER OSL.
  - pvg 8y ago
    I believe the technical term you want here is 'legitimate strategy'. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLMYTQUw8Lc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLMYTQUw8Lc
- snarfy 8y ago
  As I get older I appreciate cheesing much more. 'Has' is one of my favorite players these days.
- khazhou 8y ago
  I hate it when people call it cheesing. It's not my fault if you don't scout. Planetary Fortress rushes, proxy barracks, cannon rush... it's all fair game.
  - d0m 8y ago
    Like someone else mentioned, early game sc2 is a bit like rock, paper, scissor - scout too early and you'll be behind in economy against someone who's super greedy, but scout early against cheese and you've got a free win. You can take the "conservative" approach which is relatively safe against early cheese while not falling "too far behind" against a greedy opponent, but you'll still be behind in most of the games. If you're the better player though I'd argue it's still better to play conservative, be slightly behind, but win in the late game, while not falling victim of early cheeses.
stale2002 8y ago
But it is not a flawed strategy. It works 50% of the time against the "insane" AI!

That doesn’t really sound like it understands the game... is this not training by playing against itself? How is it not learning the flawed reasoning behind this strategy?

__blockcipher__ 8y ago

>How is it not learning the flawed reasoning behind this strategy If it's playing against the Starcraft 2 blizzard AI, it will learn a lot of "bad habits" because outright bad strategies work against the AI. Thus the worker rushing.

zacharyz 8y ago

What makes it flawed? It is a legit strategy that occasionally works at the pro level.

sudo_rm 8y ago
Not a worker rush. Worker rushes only really work against lower ranked players that panic and do not know how to respond. The reason is that while the attacking player sends over their workers to attack, the defending player is still constantly making workers. By the time that attackers get there the defending player should have more workers. He simply has to command all of them to fight the opponent's workers.
- MichaelDickens 8y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KP_ZcpZIBDQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KP_ZcpZIBDQ This is a pro-level game where one of the players worker rushes, and the rush is moderately successful.
  - sudo_rm 8y ago
    That's a 12 pool though. Little different. The article was talking about an immediate worker rush, not building some army and then going over.
    - bseidensticker 8y ago
      There was no pool, no lings. Just double gas cancel to get 2 extra drones without needing an overlord.
  - kochthesecond 8y ago
    12 pool is a valid opening. A worker rush is not.
- gpm 8y ago
  It's plausible that a self playing AI would still learn to worker rush in some race combos though, at least for awhile. If the opponent doesn't react, you win because you kill all their workers. If the opponent overreacts, you win because you are mining more than them (IIRC this is a problem with the insane ai). If the opponent reacts poorly in other ways, you might be able to win by out microing them. E.g. SCVs (terran workers) consistently beat drones/probe (the other races workers) 1-1 without micro. Repairing can be an advantage. The offensive AI being better at stacking damage on a few units. Etc. The defensive AI should learn to fix these problems and stop losing to worker rushes, but it could take awhile. In other words the defensive AI starts out as a lower ranked player. PS. I'm not sure how serious a tournament this was, but here's an example of a real worker rush (not an early pool with workers attached): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AtqgaJzJP4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AtqgaJzJP4
- jandrese 8y ago
  Isn't the idea that because your opponent spent resources on things like their first barracks and gas collector that your workers should outnumber them for the attack? Of course you lose all of that time it takes for your workers to drive across the map, so it's a pretty dicey strategy. A 50% win rate against the AI sounds about right.
  - she11c0de 8y ago
    You shouldn't cut worker production at the beginning of the game - it's critical to keep pumping them uninterruptedly. You only build when you have enough resources to ensure that.
kochthesecond 8y ago
Worker rushes do not work at pro level. Cannon rushes and proxy buildings sometimes work if caught off guard. The openings in sc2 is more akin to the mind games of poker than chess. Information is hidden so there is nothing to keep you honest.
- cjbprime 8y ago
  ZvZ is an exception, when a worker rueh is paired with an early pool, making it a worker and spine rush.

chongli 8y ago

The reasoning behind worker rushing is sound. StarCraft II is a game of hidden information and there's no time where that's more relevant than the beginning of the game. The problem is that there's a sort of rock-paper-scissors game of (conservative)-(greedy)-(all in). That is, a player who build defenses early on will crush a worker rush but they'll be far behind a player who ignores defenses and focuses on growing their economy. The worker rush is designed to punish this greedy build order. There's nothing that can be done, really. If you decide to send a worker to scout super early on then your economy suffers so much that you'll be behind no matter what you do. Edit: to those of you drawing a distinction between an immediate worker rush and something like an early pool or a cannon rush, that's splitting hairs. These are all classified as all-in strategies that almost automatically lose if they encounter a conservative build order.

gpm 8y ago
> Edit: to those of you drawing a distinction between an immediate worker rush and something like an early pool or a cannon rush, that's splitting hairs. These are all classified as all-in strategies that almost automatically lose if they encounter a conservative build order. Things like early pools and cannon rushes are (depending on the details of the meta at the time) a rock papers scissors game. Cheese (early pool/cannon rush) beats aggressive play beats conservative play beats cheese (roughly speaking). Worker rushes are just bad. Apart from playing against 6 pools on really old versions of SC2 on maps with ridiculously short rush distances they just lose. Even then I don't think I'd call them good.
ALittleLight 8y ago
The rock paper scissors element is there, but not with worker rushing. Worker rushing is a huge disadvantage. The term means you take your initial workers and charge the enemy. If you know where the enemy is you'll arrive about the time they are up one or two workers on you, then you just have to fight when you're down one or two workers and you can't back off (they'll return to mine). A human can win like this if they are so much better at micro that they can overcome the material disadvantage (unlikely) or if their opponent panicks and does something dumb (e.g. pulling only half their workers to fight). Because worker rushes arrive so early it doesn't matter what plan you have for the match, you'll have at least as many workers (if you are also worker rushing) or you'll have more. Maybe if you're going six pool you'll have fewer but you'll also be able to get lings and win with them. The computer can lose to worker rushing only because it can get caught in loops of poor decisions (e.g. you lure away a couple workers and kill them). Worker rushing is always a bad plan.

dsl 8y ago

> flawed reasoning Your "reasoning" is actually a false perception. It doesn't make these mistakes and tries strategies that seem improbable to human players. A 50% win rate against the Insane AI is very good, as at the higher AI levels the computer actually cheats (no fog of war, more resources, etc).

vkou 8y ago
A moderately skilled human player will be able to beat the insane AI ~100% of the time. The AI cheats, but is also incredibly predictible, and bad at decision-making.
- cowmoo728 8y ago
  As a moderately skilled human player myself, I developed a foolproof cheese strategy for defeating insane AI. They go crazy if you attack their worker line and recall every attacking unit that's not currently engaged. I played terran and built a single supply depot in the middle of the map to give me enough advance warning when they were coming to attack me, and then dropped 2-3 marines behind their minerals to stall them. If you do this long enough you can build a virtually undefeatable siege tank army that the AI would simply smash its face into, and then corral them to 2 or 3 bases. They would always run out of minerals while I expanded everywhere and slowly inched tanks forward. Doing this same strategy against humans got me to about gold tier in the early days of sc2.
  - skocznymroczny 8y ago
    it's more simple than that, just play Protoss and cannon rush the AI.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- cjbprime 8y ago
  Even a below average one: it's normal to belong in bronze league (~5th percentile) if you beat the AI on every level and then start playing other humans. The AI is not a serious opponent.

mmartinson 8y ago

I am a layman, but isn't the point that it doesn't ever understand that game, it just wins?

brootstrap 8y ago
I think you bring up a good point. People imprint their own perception of things to this AI game. The bot is probably working like other deep learning machine learning things. It runs some models or whatever and tries to minimize error. Not surprising really that the computer thinks differently than humans. A worker rush sounds hilarious to us but hey it can work.
- hannasanarion 8y ago
  It doesn't sound hilarious to a Starcraft player. It's a very common strategy in the lower ranks that's very effective against players who panic or don't have good micromanaging skills. Everybody has been beaten by a worker rush at least once.
- kochthesecond 8y ago
  Except that worker rushes are actually terrible and very easy to beat if you don't panic. the insane AI is easy to panic though.
b_tterc_p 8y ago
For a complicated game that lacks a dominant strategy like Starcraft does, the two are the same. You must be able to infer the state of the game given your limited factbase of what’s going on. You must be able to choose the strategy that is most likely to Result in victory. Using this strategy is objectively bad in that it can be repelled by an opponent almost regardless of their initial strategy. If deepmind’s goal is to beat the standard Ai, then sure I guess it understands that. But that’s a very different problem from understanding Starcraft, and a much less difficult one at that.
- eru 8y ago
  They are still learning. So at some point their AI should explore worker rushes, but also explore how to defend against them. And once the defense gets good enough, the attack portion of the AI should probably do the worker rushes much less often. Of course, given that the AI has different constraints in micro-management and attention, and that the game is balanced given human skills, some things that would be totally bonkers to do as a human might work for the AI.

neuronexmachina 8y ago

The following sentence: > After feeding the agent replays from real players, it started to execute standard macro-focused strategies, as well as defend against aggressive tactics such as cannon rushes.

chrisco255 8y ago

"Cheesing" as it's called, is classic SC2 strategy. People absolutely hate it, but it occasionally works, even though it feels cheap. It's kinda like Blitzkreig in chess...

fernandotakai 8y ago
it's a valid strategy that brought some super exciting moments, like boxer bunker rushing yellow 3x at 2004 EVER OSL.
- pvg 8y ago
  I believe the technical term you want here is 'legitimate strategy'. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLMYTQUw8Lc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLMYTQUw8Lc
snarfy 8y ago
As I get older I appreciate cheesing much more. 'Has' is one of my favorite players these days.
khazhou 8y ago
I hate it when people call it cheesing. It's not my fault if you don't scout. Planetary Fortress rushes, proxy barracks, cannon rush... it's all fair game.
- d0m 8y ago
  Like someone else mentioned, early game sc2 is a bit like rock, paper, scissor - scout too early and you'll be behind in economy against someone who's super greedy, but scout early against cheese and you've got a free win. You can take the "conservative" approach which is relatively safe against early cheese while not falling "too far behind" against a greedy opponent, but you'll still be behind in most of the games. If you're the better player though I'd argue it's still better to play conservative, be slightly behind, but win in the late game, while not falling victim of early cheeses.

stale2002 8y ago

But it is not a flawed strategy. It works 50% of the time against the "insane" AI!