new bot Pylon Puller
New protoss bot Pylon Puller is running on BASIL only, not SSCAIT. It was uploaded yesterday, and already has one update.
Pylon Puller plays at least three strategies. Its favorite is three gate zealot. It also knows builds for cannon defense followed by dark templar, and cannon defense followed by dragoon-reaver.
Pylon Puller tries to win in the opening. Once its unit mix is set, it does not seem to change. It is able to expand, but rarely does. It can do long distance mining, which I have seen more often than an expansion. Its micro is not strong. It sometimes leaves units on hold position while they’re under attack.
Pylon Puller has not always played the same build against the same opponent. I have only seen it play its dragoon-reaver build against Yuanheng Zhu aka Juno, a cannon bot: The reavers are theoretically effective versus cannons. Without more games, it’s impossible to tell whether it’s a strategy adaptation or a hardcoded build for this opponent. Against IceBot, it played zealots the first game, and Ice defended effortlessly and won. The second game, Pylon Puller went DT and won. Since there was an update, it’s impossible to know whether the switch was due to the bot learning, or the author coding. Similarly for two losses in a row against MadMixT, where Pylon Puller played different builds. But I doubt that a bot at Pylon Puller’s skill level has both strategy adaptation and learning. Learning does seem moderately likely.
Running on BASIL only, frequent updates, focus on winning early with little attention to the middle game, and a restricted but hand-adapted set of opening builds all strike me as characteristic of a Newbie Zerg production—though unlike many past Newbie Zerg bots, it does not seem to be based on Steamhammer. I expect that Pylon Puller will be unable to threaten top bots, but may become a danger to some opponents one tier lower if Pylon Puller’s hand-crafted builds target their weaknesses. Eh, maybe two tiers lower. So far, it does not look impressive.
But whatever. Every new bot is good! Weakness exposed by manual adaptation are still weaknesses that need fixing. Every bot that brings something new will teach us something new.
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Jay Scott on :
It now seems definite that the opening builds are hand-configured for each opponent.
Jay Scott on :
Hao Pan on :
It's very hard to achieve this with only 2500 lines of code (which you'll see after AIIDE concludes). I take this as a compliment for the opponent strategy identification and countering routine implemented there, that it is functioning as intended. Thank you, Jay.
Jay Scott on :
I drew my conclusion that the builds were hand-configured by seeing the bot fail to change its build, when playing the same opponent twice and losing—in early games. Since then I have seen it change its build. It has been gaining skills pretty fast.