Starcraft AI blog

Bereaver is mounting a strong challenge for #1 on SSCAIT, and may have already reached it. It has been scoring wins against most of its rivals, including Krasi0, Iron, LetaBot and Tscmoo versions, and ZZZKBot. I haven’t seen a win against KillerBot, though.

Bereaver’s favored game plan is to outmacro its opponent and win with repeated direct frontal attacks, “damn the torpedoes” style. Against strong defenders like Krasi0 and IceBot that can lead to long games, but they aren’t strategically interesting.

Here Bereaver has defeated Krasio’s slightly sloppy early push in the center and broken into the terran natural. The zealots ignored the defending vultures and killed all the SCVs, bringing a quick win.

Bereaver has adequate skills with storm and reavers. Both could stand to be improved (but what couldn’t?). It knows how to cannon a ramp for defense (the early error where the cannons blocked the path is fixed). I think its most impressive special skill is entrance blocking, as here. It forms the zealot block with smooth ease, and dissolves it just as easily when it wants to let units through. It’s nothing compared to ZerGreenBot’s special skills of reaver drop, zealot bombing, and overlord hunting, but Bereaver is much stronger overall.

Bereaver plays a different strategy against ZZZKBot’s 4 pool. As soon as it scouts the rush, it blocks its entrance with probes. Here it blocked the entrance much too early, while the zerglings were still in their eggs, and lost mining time needlessly.

Then it cancels its gateway, starts a forge instead, and cannons its main. The plan seems successful. It’s slow, but who cares about that when you win? The probe block is tight. The lings tend to suffer pathfinding failure and wander, but may soon kill a probe to break through, as here. The probes fought back, as you can see by the blood.

Then Bereaver pulls probes to defend its cannons and easily holds. With its probe skills, it is not in any danger whatever. After this it can build up and win at its leisure.