archive by month
Skip to content

recreating the Newbie Zergrush strategies

Newbie Zergrush has vanished like the morning dew. If you want to test against its nonstandard strategies and missed the boat, I reconstructed two of them. You can configure Steamhammer 1.0 to play these openings. The experience is not 100% authentic, but it’s close. I made these by watching the build orders, not by copying the original configuration, so there may be slight differences. Also there should be code differences, so the way the openings play out should be a little different. It’s still a good test of whether your bot survives these aggressive strategies.

Newbie Zergrush played 7 pool 12 hatch versus zerg and 8 hatch 7 pool versus terran and, at least at first, protoss. It also had a mass sunken build which I did not try to recreate.

    "7Pool12Hatch"  : { "Race" : "Zerg", "OpeningBuildOrder" : ["drone", "drone", "drone", "spawning pool", "go scout location", "drone", "overlord", "zergling", "zergling", "zergling", "zergling", "zergling", "hatchery @ min only", "zergling", "zergling", "zergling"]},
    "8Hatch7Pool"   : { "Race" : "Zerg", "OpeningBuildOrder" : ["drone", "drone", "drone", "drone", "hatchery @ min only", "spawning pool", "go scout location", "drone", "overlord", "zergling", "zergling", "zergling"]},

I cheated and cut these down to keep the post short. At the end of each build order, use the power of copy-paste to extend the line of , "zergling" out a long distance. That’s because the strategy manager doesn’t know these openings, so it will start an unhelpful default strategy as soon as the opening book ends.

Get the Steamhammer 1.0 binary release from from my page or from SSCAIT. I wrote documentation for the config file. Add the two opening book lines above (with the extra zerglings) to the “Strategy” subsection (be careful about commas, JSON files are unforgiving). Then configure Steamhammer to play the opening against your bot. For example, if you’re testing a terran bot, one way is to rip out the original ZvT setting and replace it with "ZvT": "8Hatch7Pool",.

Trackbacks

No Trackbacks

Comments

Jay Scott on :

I had hardly posted this when Newbie Zergrush returned under the name Newbie Zerg. So... ignore this post?

MicroDK on :

At least you did the hard work to figure out the build order so we do not have to keep an eye on the stream. ;)

Jay Scott on :

The newer versions are based on Steamhammer and play a range of builds with the randomized opening feature. By the way, “Newbie Zerg”, “5 Rax Newbie”, and “5 Pool” are all by the same author.

MicroDK on :

Almost spamming SSCAIT with new bots... it seems Newbie Zerg gets to play a lot of games recently against the other new bots AILien, McRave, PeregrineBot and krasi0. As I wite this, of the last 1000 games Newbie Zerg has played 115 games.

AIL on :

There's 3 changes he made with my help compared to default Steamhammer.

And seeing how these changes turned several MUs from losing to winning, I'd highly suggest to take them into Steamhammer aswell.

1. retreat-radius from 300 to 600. That's easy, it's in the Config-file.
2. Melee-Manager-Target-Priority: Make workers have the same priority as every other unit. There very rarely is a good reason not to. Even if there's a cannon behind the minerals, it's still helpful to wreck the workers instead while losing all Zerglings.
3. Anti-Stone-Worker-Behavior:
I (and NZ too) added that directly to the Workermanager by replacing the default "ManageCombatWorkers". Just check if there's any non-moving enemy unit withing 50 range (melee-distance) and if so attack it. If not, let the worker continue harvesting.

MicroDK on :

Thanks for the ideas! I have already changed retreat radius in my bot. ;)

Jay Scott on :

I can believe in changes 1 and 3, but the workers versus units decision is not so easy. It is often right to target them equally, especially in a rushbot. But it is also often wrong. I have seen AILien lose fights and retreat after killing some workers, when it could have defeated the units and then killed all workers and won the game on the spot. The decision wants a fancier analysis. Steamhammer tries to recognize when enemy units are out of range and pounce on workers then, which lets it get in some sneak attacks.

Jay Scott on :

To expand, in the situation where you are facing workers and combat units and want to engage: 1. If the workers are blocking the way to units, then hit whatever’s closest. It’s one of many things that I want to try convex hull analysis for. 2. If defenders are covering the workers but not blocked off, and your units are faster, then if you take out the defenders you can have a field day with the workers. 3. If the situation is the same but your units are not faster, the enemy may try to lead you on a goose chase. You should split your forces. I think Tscmoo knows how to do it. 4. If defenders are nearby but out of shooting range, you can get free shots in on the workers. 4 is the point that Steamhammer understands. A full analysis should look at the room to maneuver, expected reinforcements, and other stuff... and that’s not happening this week. :-)

Add Comment

E-Mail addresses will not be displayed and will only be used for E-Mail notifications.

To prevent automated Bots from commentspamming, please enter the string you see in the image below in the appropriate input box. Your comment will only be submitted if the strings match. Please ensure that your browser supports and accepts cookies, or your comment cannot be verified correctly.
CAPTCHA

Form options

Submitted comments will be subject to moderation before being displayed.