Starcraft AI blog

In one of the recent SSCAIT casts, Nepeta said that he had seen every Brood War spell used by one bot or another. He’s ahead of me. I still haven’t seen one building, one unit, and several spells from bots. Of course, I do have a bad memory (if I recall correctly). What have you seen that I have missed or forgotten?

Optical flare, aka blind. Krasi0 can use medic restoration. Have I missed optical flare because it is hard to notice?

Nydus canal. Pablo Garcia Sanchez used to make nydus canal starting points, but never connected them to end points.

Infested terrans. Garmbot infests command centers, but doesn’t use them.

Ensnare. Garmbot and Tsmoo zerg can use parasite, and I think all bots that make queens know broodling. I don’t recall having seen ensnare, useful against wraiths or marines that clump up. I would dearly love to attract a clump of marines to one spot with mutalisk attacks, ensnare them, and then move to attack somewhere else.

Maelstrom. I’ve seen dark archons feedback and mind control, but never maelstrom.

Hallucination. It could a difficult skill for bots to use well, because it’s about fooling the opponent. On the other hand, bots may be easy to fool. A good first use might be hallucinated zealots to clear mines without detection. Another good use would be to hallucinate carriers to soak up scourge—zerg bots will not catch on but will keep drawing down their gas.

Disruption web. Surely some bot uses this? Roman Danielis? I don’t remember having seen it.