Starcraft AI blog

Today is April Fools, and the SSCAIT live stream has bots playing on the map BGH.

Some bots are struggling on the highly non-standard map, which has 8 starting locations, huge resources so that expanding has a different dynamic, and strangely laid-out bases and paths. For example XIMP, in the game I saw, misplaced its cannon wall and got run over since there is no standard natural expansion. Other bots make other uncharacteristic blunders, such as pathing errors or self-blocking in the narrow walkways.

It’s funny, but the serious lesson is that scripted behaviors are fragile. And also that a lot of Starcraft strategy is specific to given maps, and some commonalities that hold across maps come about because the maps have standardized aspects.