Starcraft AI blog

If you’ve been following SSCAIT games between the top bots, you’ll have noticed one striking change: 2015 Killerbot lost most games to recent versions of Bereaver, but the new 2016 Killerbot has just won 4 in a row.

The 4 games followed similar paths.

• Bereaver optimistically puts on some early pressure that Killerbot is more than ready for. Here is Killerbot’s simcity at its natural—it’s nothing you can attack with a few zealots.

• Bereaver sends out 1 initial corsair. Killerbot defends with hydras. Throughout the game, Bereaver usually keeps 1 or 2 corsairs in the air and gets some overlord kills but repeatedly loses corsairs to hydras.

• Killerbot gets aggressive with its hydralisk force, mixing in some lings. Bereaver gets reavers, defends, then chips away at the zerg army.

• Bereaver builds up power and pushes the zerg ground army back, aiming for a heavy attack. The wolf is at the door:

• Killerbot presumably notices the shortage of anti-air and goes mutalisks, the classic zerg counter to reavers. The wolfsbane is also at the door.

Bereaver can’t recover after the sudden zerg tech switch.

Both bots show risky over-aggression at times. Killerbot has improved its overlord protection and Bereaver’s corsair control—which used to be effective—is no longer alert enough to keep its corsairs alive. But that’s small beans; Bereaver’s strategic mistake is to rely on reavers without enough air defense to protect them. Corsairs are standard nowadays, but dragoon-reaver is also a classic unit mix.

As Igor Dimitrijevic said, Killerbot’s adaptation skills have become dangerous.