ZvZ lurker game
Here’s a ZvZ SCHNAIL game where the human played an unusual strategy. It was a ranked game, so maybe the human shouldn’t be playing around... but they were clearly playing around. The game is Randomhammer - jki, appearing in the replay as Anonymous AI (rolling zerg) versus jk.
Randomhammer made an unfortunate choice of build, a hidden base with each base protected by a sunken. The goal is to survive a rush and hit back. Jki (who didn’t know at first that Randomhammer was zerg) went overpool then natural ahead of the hidden base, gaining an advantage from the start. And used the advantage ingeniously.
1. Contain Randomhammer to its main base with zerglings.
2. Get a spire.
3. Make scourge and repeatedly kill overlords. Overlords don’t cost gas and are usually a poor choice of scourge target, but since Randomhammer was already behind, it kept getting supply blocked and was unable to make enough units, air or ground, to break out. It didn’t help that it fought poorly.
4. Get lurkers too! The plan costs a lot of gas.
5. Win. If an overlord approaches to detect the lurkers, scourge it.
The picture shows the lurkers breaking down the hidden base. The lair is there because Randomhammer tries to morph the lair where it won’t be seen right away. Notice the human player’s much larger army supply.
In other ZvZ games, jki has played normal ZvZ strategies. The lurker plan was apparently an on-the-fly decision to have fun with Randomhammer’s poor start. Bots can’t do that... yet.
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Tully Elliston on :
Does your learning model treat all builds as equal? Does it acknowlege that some builds are distictly second or third rate (eg. only use these when win rate has been low after all the good builds have been tried)?
Jay Scott on :
This looks like it was the 5th game between these opponents. Randomhammer randomly rolled zerg all 5 games... we must worship the random number generator.
This build (and the choice of builds in general) is tuned to work against bots and is much weaker against humans, who easily infer that there must be a hidden base. “These units are coming from somewhere!”
Tully Elliston on :
https://github.com/Anarchid/zkgbai
It uses a static graph derived from pathable routes between resource points on the game map. If it holds a chokepoint, it infers all the resource points behind it to be safe locations that don't need scouting. If it knows the location of an enemy resource point, it prioritises the resource points that are pathable from that point it as locations of possible enemy expansion to scout and raid. If it spots an enemy unit in a location, it prioritises the nearest unscouted resource point to be scouted.
Jay Scott on :
Inferring dropship targets seems more urgent!