Starcraft AI blog

My first try at the solidity metric did not work well enough. The flaw is easy to fix; expect numbers tomorrow if there are no more flaws. For today, a few notes instead.

The SSCAIT 2020 round robin phase has just finished. The top ranks are no surprise. #1 is Stardust with 104-6 for 94.5%, a dominating performance after a slow start when most of the losses were front-loaded. Tied at #2-#3 are BananaBrain and BetaStar with 99-11, and they scored 1-1 against each other. There is a gap below #4 Monster with 98-12. Tied at #5-#6 are Halo by Hao Pan and PurpleWave with 91-19. This time the head-to-head score is Halo-PurpleWave 2-0. Compared to past expectations, that’s a good result for Halo and a poor result for PurpleWave. #7 Iron landed higher than I predicted.

#16 TyrProtoss, the bottom of the top, is notable for losing every game against others of the top 16, except for one game versus #15 MadMixP. It made up for it with solidity against the rest. The next bot to do at least as poorly against the top 16 is #36 Flash. #17 McRaveZ, the top of the bottom, narrowly missed the top 16, and is notable for a string of 1-1 scores against higher-ranked opponents. McRaveZ also lost 0-2 to #54 Marine Hell, the biggest 0-2 upset. Those 2 points left it 2 games behind #16 TyrProtoss, so it hurt. #18 Skynet by Andrew Smith had even more 1-1 scores against higher opponents. Skynet is old but still tough.

The biggest upsets are cannonbot #50 Jakub Trancik > #2-#3 BetaStar, #52 GarmBot by Aurelien Lermant > #8 Dragon, #54 Marine Hell > #11 Steamhammer, and #55 JumpyDoggoBot > #15 MadMixP. That’s not many extreme upsets; the top 16 are fairly solid. I think another notable upset is the old school champion #29 ICEbot > #1 Stardust.

#11 Steamhammer scored 78-32 for 70.9%. I had forecast rank #9 or #10, and I was optimistic. In the past I’ve predicted more accurately. Looking at every Steamhammer game, I learned about a half dozen bugs and weaknesses that I hadn’t seen before, some severe (I’ll post more later). I guess my prediction was off because of the unexpected weaknesses that I didn’t take into account. But in any case, #11 is the same rank that Steamhammer earned last year, and the year before too, and its win percentage varied neatly with the number of bots in the tournament. In the big picture, Steamhammer had a startup transient (weak the first year because it was barely started, extra strong the next year because other bots had not yet adapted to its new skills), and since then has been holding its level, not surpassing its neighbors but not falling behind either. That’s not bad. But this year I’m putting effort into skills no other bot has, so stand back!

Next I expect a wait while the elimination phase is run behind the scenes, then they’ll turn on bot submission. I will prioritize fixing some of the surprise bugs ahead of my bigger project of opening timing, so I’m thinking I’ll upload Steamhammer 3.3.6 sooner (the tournament version is 3.3.5) and hold 3.4 for later. Then I expect the elimination phase results will come out slowly, week by week. Steamhammer is likely to fall to the losers’ bracket in the first round of the elimination phase, and may visit E-Lemon Nation early on.