Starcraft AI blog

The test version of Randomhammer has done well over its first 2 days. Its elo has crept above Steamhammer’s, and having watched the games, I think this Randomhammer may truly be better as random than the older Steamhammer is as zerg, even though its terran is still weak. Anyway, the important conclusion is that I didn’t introduce any major weaknesses this time. There are some new weaknesses, but they are more than offset by new strengths.

The worst bug came in a game against Krasi0, when Randomhammer randomly became terran and decided on its vulture drop strategy. I would have liked to see that, but when it came time to add the control tower to the starport, no control tower started. The vultures waited in vain for the dropship. Randomhammer fell into a production freeze, which ended only after it timed out—it’s a new feature to prevent permanent freezes, but the timeout has to be long, so it doesn’t help that much. Terran addons are finicky because the production code is not robust enough. I’ll work on it.

Some problems that I worried about did not come to pass. My work to make the army less distractible has made it more distractible (it’s not an easy problem to solve), but the changes seem to help on average. The bot is less willing to concentrate its forces when it should, but it is more skilled at splitting its forces when it should, and it appears to be a net gain. It’s another issue to work on.

Terran has a revamped tank opening that brings a stronger economy and includes a vulture and several marines in the early army. I think it should be more effective against most opponents: The marines and vulture should help early defense, and the stronger economy should mean that tank numbers build up faster. I was disappointed to find that the tank opening does not beat XIMP by Tomas Vajda, due to bad tactics. The mixed force arrives with 1 tank at the cannons and... sits there, unwilling to engage even though siege mode is finished. Only after more tanks arrive does Randomhammer siege down the cannons, and by then the carriers are nearly ready. Tanks are complicated.

Protoss still beats XIMP, now with dragoon-reaver instead of straight dragoons. A game with zerg versus XIMP hasn’t come up yet. I fixed the problem that caused Steamhammer to often skip spire against the carriers, so it should do better. I did not fix the problem that causes ultra-ling to seek out carriers and stand underneath them dying, though I have put infrastructure in place for the fix. After I get that one, surely XIMP will be toast.