Starcraft AI blog

This game Tscmoo protoss vs. Steamhammer went back and forth, with both sides repeatedly decimating the other’s workers. On the one hand it’s kind of entertaining, but on the other it shows how weak both bots still are. Steamhammer was much too hesitant with its mutalisks, and Tscmoo did not make the right units to keep control of the situation. They both made plenty of mistakes.

Tscmoo went for a forge expand build, much safer than the bare expansions it has been opening with recently. Steamhammer opened 12 hatchery and got away with it because tscmoo didn’t scout early (if protoss scouts it in time the scouting probe can delay the hatchery, and even if that fails protoss can pull ahead economically by starting the nexus before any cannons, since zerglings will be delayed). Steamhammer has a partial understanding of how to counter forge expand, and it made extra drones and went up to 4 bases. But zerg was also clumsy around the cannons and lost zerglings unnecessarily.

Tscmoo built up zealot numbers while teching. It got a templar archives and high templar, plus a stargate that it never used (but which zerg had to prepare against). Steamhammer started with hydraling on the ground since hydralisks are good against cannons, but seeing the zealots it switched to mutalisks. Zerg started its carapace upgrade shortly after protoss started attack +1, which was correct timing, and later in the game drew ahead in upgrades.

The mutalisks cleaned up probes in the protoss main, apparently putting zerg well ahead. Notice the red zealots in the middle on the minimap.

But the zealots were too strong for the ground army and returned the favor. The mutalisks indecisively moved back and forth, taking occasional swipes at protoss stuff but reacting late to the zealots. Here zerg seems to be fighting back, but at the 3 o’clock expansion zealots are ravaging drones with little opposition.

Zerg ingeniously transferred drones between bases during the fight and lost more than it should have. When the smoke cleared, zerg had 9 workers and protoss had 12. By the numbers, zerg was narrowly ahead in army, but protoss was merging archons and if the archons maneuvered well then Steamhammer would have to back off while both sides rebuilt. The game was still on.

Well, the archons did not maneuver well. The first one tried to engage the mutalisks by itself, instead of retreating to the cannons to wait for the second archon. That would have been a difficult move for a bot to find. Protoss lost more probes and the templar archives came under fire.

At the same time, zealots returned and killed more drones. This time Steamhammer had the sense to defend its natural with a sunken, and the zealots could not land a killing blow. Steamhammer was able to restore a modest economy while Tscmoo kept losing probes, and archons, and high templar before they could merge, and finally buildings.

Tomorrow: Steamhammer wants opening learning 2.