Starcraft AI blog

I rewrote Steamhammer’s lurker micro. Now lurkers fight well enough rely on. They don’t burrow and unburrow too often, unlike most bots’ lurkers. They do tend to be clumsy getting into position in a narrow space, and a side effect of not unburrowing too often is that they may cooperate poorly with other units, but one step at a time. I’m adding lurker support to the strategy boss, because it was past time.

So far I’ve written only 1 lurker opening. I’ll start slow. But as soon as there is a choice of what lair tech to aim for, Steamhammer is faced with the decision. Choosing randomly will lead to mistakes.

Against a terran that goes straight infantry, as many do, lurkers are a strong choice. Against factory units, lurkers are a poor choice (though they can be good for drops and surprise attacks). The majority of terran bots go one way or the other, though some can do either or both. If the opponent’s unit choice can be predicted, then Steamhammer can choose an optimized counter-build from the start. It won’t have to lose time scouting and reacting.

Against protoss, both lurkers and mutalisks counter zealots; any lair tech works. And dragoons are useful against both lurkers and mutalisks; zerg wants zerglings and hydralisks to combat dragoons. So the opponent model tells whether to hurry up and get a lair and how soon to take the second gas. It’s less valuable than against terran, but useful.

Against an opponent that doesn’t bring detection, lurkers are strong against any ground unit mix. The opponent model can remember that too.