Starcraft AI blog

Igor Dimitrijevic has uploaded a new version of Stone, a version which attacks buildings instead of workers. I guess it’s because worker defense has been steadily improving, but many bots still don’t react when a building comes under attack.

Steamhammer doesn’t react to attacks on buildings. Even so, its usual anti-rush opening defended successfully in this game. Buildings have a lot of hit points, so the spawning pool finished before it was destroyed. In the picture, the spawning pool is about to die before any zerglings are spawned, but the sunken colony is already morphing.

The sunken protected the hatchery completely, so there was little risk. Steamhammer replaced the spawning pool in the same position, which was not safe because the sunken protection extended to only one side of the pool. Stone did not seem to understand the range of the sunken, and half the SCVs sent to attack the pool were killed while standing just inside the danger zone. Steamhammer actually won the game more easily than against the older Stone version, because Stone threw away so many SCVs. Stone did point out weaknesses. Steamhammer should defend buildings which are in danger of being lost, and it needs better building placement.

This game versus Skynet by Andrew Smith was fun. Skynet, ahead of its time as usual, does react when buildings are attacked, and pulled many probes to defend. Skynet was unworried by the skirmishes and calmly continued with its build: Late gateway, gas, cyber core... all before the first combat unit.

My impression is that the change to Stone has left it weaker overall. Buildings are too hard to kill. Still, it does easily wipe out some opponents, and every change is a new challenge.