Starcraft AI blog

Back in last July and August, I wrote up a couple of Steamhammer-Krasi0P proxy games, proxy vs proxy just to show off the new skill, and proxy vs turtle, which was a festival of absurdity. A few days ago, Steamhammer played another proxy hatchery against Krasi0P, this time one that looked almost tailor-made for the opponent. In reality the build was tailor-made to defeat TyrProtoss’s cannon-and-build-up-at-home strategy, although Steamhammer has never tried it against TyrProtoss. It was sheer coincidence that it was also suitable to counter Krasi0P’s cannon-contain strategy (not its cannon-at-home strategy this game). Though I should add, I keep specialized builds around in part to discover coincidences like this.

The game is already 6 minutes old. Krasi0P, seeing the proxy, built only one containing cannon, which you may be able to make out as a purple dot on the minimap. That may be why protoss has extra minerals. Steamhammer, when it saw the cannon in turn, decided not to take its natural but to send a drone to the upper left, where it took a “hidden” base. Steamhammer does not want to be stuck inside a containment, it wants to be on both sides, and here it forgot that it already was on both sides. Protoss chose to tech up and defend itself with more cannons before moving out with its first dragoon, and zerg is just starting its first sunken with good timing. The timing is an accident, since the build was made for a different opponent playing differently!

Steamhammer made lurkers and, before anything else, sent them to clean up the isolated containing cannon. It would have been more efficient to send the hydras before morphing them into lurkers....

Steamhammer added more sunkens and a spore to prepare for TyrProtoss’s move out with a large army including an observer. Krasi0P did not have a large army or an observer, and soon fell to three hatcheries worth of zerg onslaught (on the minimap you can see units approaching from both other bases). Krasi0P seemed to try to adapt by cutting its containing cannons down to one, but did not understand the situation and reacted slowly. Steamhammer didn’t understand either, and only chose an appropriate plan by chance, but did at least execute its build efficiently.

They aren’t visible, but in each picture, outside the frame, there are drones mining at the proxy. Even after making 4 sunkens and a spore, 3 drones remained to mine there. Another funny game between these two.