losing with valkyries
A number of stronger terran bots make valkyries against Steamhammer. Not one of the terrans knows how to use them well. Steamhammer trades better against valkyries in nearly every game where they show up.
Valkyries are specialist units. Valkyries in small groups, when kept safe, can devastate mutalisks (or wraiths). A valkyrie wandering around on its own can’t devastate anything except one pair of scourge. Zerg will happily trade a pair of scourge costing 25/75 for a 250/125 valk. The valkyrie can run away from scourge, but only if it does not shoot. When the valk fires, it stops dead in the air!
In TvZ, defeating mutalisks is their only important role. In most situations they are not good for hunting overlords, because they are too vulnerable to scourge. To fight guardians, wraiths are better, because guardians have armor. Devourers have more armor, and goliaths and vessels are better.
Advice to terran bots: If you are facing mutalisks, consider keeping up to 3 valkyries in the air against a dozen mutas, maybe slightly more if the mutas mass up beyond that or pull ahead in armor upgrades. Valkyries are expensive; making too many is wasteful. Keep them together so they fire at nearly the same time. It makes them far more effective—seriously, mutas will melt away like light snow; zerg will be forced to spread them so that they cannot focus fire. Keep them near marines, goliaths, or turrets for protection from scourge. Make sure your anti-air units prioritize shooting down scourge; scourge are low in HP and expensive in gas, so they’re good targets whether you have air units nearby or not. Even with all that, valkyries may not pay for themselves unless you also implement valkyrie patrol micro as described in Liquipedia. It’s critical, and I’ve never seen a bot use it.
Valkyries can be worth it, but only for bots that know how to use them.
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Dan on :
Jay Scott on :
With correct micro, valkyrie shots cannot be dodged once fired. It involves frequent patrolling forward and back, easy for a bot. The Liquipedia article explains it.
Jay Scott on :
Dan on :
See http://www.openbw.com/replay-viewer/?rep=https://data.basil-ladder.net/bots/krasi0/krasi0%20vs%20Monster%20Benzene%20CTR_A64CEE24.rep @ 12:25 for an example of Valkyrie dodging in action. Yes, the Valkyrie is making all the other sorts of errors you describe, but the key observation is that the Valkyrie devolves into a single-target damage source at minimal impact to the Mutalisks.
Jay Scott on :
krasi0 on :
Against a good Zerg bot like Monster, valks are more than useless (a complete waste of time and money). I only keep them enabled for diversity (staying woke and all :D ) and because they sometimes do OK-ish against weak human players and dumber bots.
And still, my bot should NOT train too many of them in a single game. Unless there is a bug that I am not aware of.