Big Game Hunters on SCHNAIL

The popular map Big Game Hunters (BGH) has been added on SCHNAIL. It is very different from standard maps: There are 8 start positions, the mineral patches and geysers have 10x or more the usual resources per item, the layout is irregular, and there are imbalances everywhere. Strategy is different than on a tournament map, and bots need different knowledge and tuning to play on it.

Nevertheless, when I noticed last night that BGH was added, I quickly enabled it for Steamhammer. It should be fun, and I expect that different bugs and weaknesses will show. Steamhammer has played 3 games on the map so far. It lost them all, but I did learn stuff—so far, so good.

From the game history, it looks as though Krasi0 is the only other bot to have BGH enabled. I see one game as far back as 8 September. I recommend the map for authors who have time to learn from their bot’s SCHNAIL games, or who just want more fun.

A Fastest map is also added. I did not enable that for Steamhammer. (The layout is different from Fastest AfreecaTV, the closest corresponding map in Liquipedia.) I think it is not as much fun, and without trying it I guess Steamhammer is not likely to work there. Again, Krasi0 seems to be the only bot to enable it.

Aside: If I were in charge, Big Game Hunters and Fastest would only be enabled for practice games. They should not be inflicted on human players when they’re being serious. But SCHNAIL allows it. I see ranked games in the history.

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Comments

Bruce on Friday, September 24. 2021:

It’s been suggested that humans should also have the ability to choose their preferred map pools somehow, which I think is reasonable. Some of the “normal” maps have been unused in so long that players have a hard time playing on them as well.

Jay Scott on Friday, September 24. 2021:

It makes sense to me.

Dan on Friday, September 24. 2021:

I strongly agree on BGH/fastest not being available for ranked games for the humans' sake (the bots can just opt out)

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