Starcraft AI blog

I added parsing code for Ecgberht’s JSON format learning files. I had to refactor for generality, and it added complexity, but I can use the parser for more than one purpose. Today I summarize the contents of its history files.

Ecgberht I think is a complex and interesting bot. It played up to 5 different strategies in each matchup, though the selection of the 5 varied by matchup. Sometimes it played fewer. Against most opponents Ecgberht played its strategies at roughly equal rates—except for the strategies it didn’t play at all. Ecgberht uses UCB with a high exploration rate. The strategy manager in the source lists 15 strategies (plus one more played only on the map Plasma and named PlasmaWraithHell), so it did not play everything it knows. I made a quick scan through the source for opponent-specific preparation, and did find some, but for bots in the tournament only ZZZKBot is affected (it is flagged by a zergling rush check; some bots that always zealot rush are flagged for that). I didn’t dig deep enough to find out why Ecgberht ignores so many of its available strategies.

Ecgberht tries to recognize the opponent’s strategy, but often finds itself unsure. It recorded a high rate of Unknown enemy plans. The ones it does recognize are drawn from a small set that seems to me well-chosen.

Ecgberht recorded fewer than 150 games for 5 of its 11 opponents, although it completed all games with no crashes. In total, 7 games do not appear in the game records of the history files. Maybe it has a cleanup bug that bites occasionally?

A couple wins against the top player is not bad.

Ecgberht put up its strongest fight against zerg.

Ecgberht upset ZZZKBot, possibly aided by its hardcoded knowledge of how ZZZKBot plays.