Starcraft AI blog

Recently a not particularly skilled protoss played more than 20 practice games versus Steamhammer on SCHNAIL, winning 3 and losing the rest. I went through the games in sequence. Steamhammer put its variety of builds to good use, sometimes 4 pooling, sometimes busting with one or another kind of all-in, sometimes defending then countering, sometimes building up then rolling everything down with hive tech. I was mostly pleased, though tactical clumsiness was an issue. In the most spectacular game, protoss aggressively attacked, destroyed and held the zerg natural, built a gateway and nexus there and started mining the zerg’s minerals, and found and cleared the only other zerg expansion. Steamhammer held its main with sunkens and units, used an escaped drone to lay down another expansion that protoss did not find, teched to lurkers, pushed down its ramp to free its natural, defeated the dragoon army, and won with the one big counter. That must have been frustrating for the human player, who apparently did not have the multitasking ability to both micro the dragoons and get observers in time (a difficult skill to learn, if you ask me, because multitasking is not natural for humans). Yet game after game followed.

Looking at it from the human player’s viewpoint, protoss started with a not very convincing gateway and forge build with no cannons. After Steamhammer easily busted it a few times, protoss started experimenting with other plans. Some were defensive, like holding with cannons and trying to expand by shuttle. The more successful were aggressive, like the game above. Over the long sequence, I thought I could see the human player’s skills slowly sharpening, with more consistent macro and more appropriate strategies. Stronger players quickly notice Steamhammer’s weaknesses and exploit them, but this was a player who hadn’t reached that level of knowledge yet. It takes experience to build skills, you have to work through all the stages.

SCHNAIL is great for this, I conclude. If you can find a bot at your strength level or above, but not hopelessly above, and with some variety in its play, you may have a good practice partner. You can polish your basics and learn what kinds of plans work and try out new ideas. If you find yourself winning most games, then I guess either you’ve improved that much or else you’ve learned to exploit the bot’s weaknesses. I’d say if you want to keep improving, it has become time to look for your next opponent.