Starcraft AI blog

Steamhammer 1.1.1 has a lot of resilience improvements over version 1.0. It can rebuild from scratch in a new base after its main is destroyed, for example. I thought that disaster resilience added little to the bot’s strength. In Starcraft, surviving a near-death experience usually means that death is still near.

But lately I notice that Steamhammer 1.1.1 is more consistent than earlier versions. It is rarely upset by much weaker bots, saving many elo points. Unlike in the tournament (version 0.2), most of its upsets are at the hands of opponents which are at least average in skill—and Steamhammer retains its knack of occasionally upsetting stronger opponents.

This game Steamhammer-UPStarcraftAI (elo 2303 versus 1825, compared to the average of 2000) was extremely badly played by both sides. Don’t watch this if you have sensitive eyes, it will hurt! Terran UPStarcraftAI blocked some of its own forces behind its mineral line and was unable to concentrate its strength, while Steamhammer made awful attacks and frittered its mutalisks away, then was unable to defend its natural and lost it. UPStarcraftAI did not know how to proceed and left its victorious army standing idle, and Steamhammer tried to help by suiciding drones and moving zerglings back and forth through the marine formation without fighting (it couldn’t decide which base to retreat to).

Steamhammer didn’t recover neatly, but it did recover. It cleared the idle terrans, built too many drones and took the map while getting upgrades, and finally realized that maybe an army would be useful after all and went ultra-ling, after which (despite some more bad play) the outcome was clear.

Another awful recent game is Steamhammer-DAIDOES (elo 1778), where Steamhammer lost its main but managed to power through its own stupidity—which included stopping at zergling tech level because of a stuck drone—and barely win after mining out.

Resilience against near-fatal disasters is good. Skill in one dimension can rescue blunders in another. The games saved are the ones that would have cost the most elo points—because against a stronger opponent, the game is not saved.