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breaking scouting assumptions

Working on scouting reminded me: There is a trick that terran can play to mightily confuse the opponent’s early scout. At the start of the game, make SCVs as usual, then when it nears time for the opponent’s scout to approach, lift off the command center and move it out of sight. Of course you have to build any supply depots or other buildings out of sight too, or away from your base (you could proxy 8 rax, or build your first depot in an empty main base). It can only conceivably be a good idea if there is another base close by to land the command center at, so the trick should be saved for maps like Electric Circuit which have an inside “backdoor” base near the main.

The opponent will scout every main base and see you at none of them.

This trick has been used in one pro game to my knowledge, Boxer versus Yellow from 2003, where the CC move was meant to keep the proxy barracks unknown; a base without barracks would have given it away. If it were a good trick it would have been used since then. It’s objectively bad, and human players who see that all bases are empty are able to figure out what happened. But in bot play, you might fool your opponent into doing something nonsensical or even cause it to crash.

When UAlbertaBot’s scout is looking for the enemy base and finds an enemy building in a starting base region, is assumes that that marks the location of the enemy base. Steamhammer inherited the heuristic and still uses it. So a low-cost way to fool these bots is to build a supply depot or pylon next to the ramp of an empty main base before it is scouted. Zerg could build an extractor at the empty base, if the gas is toward the ramp. 50% of the time, the scouting worker will find the decoy building first and will not scout other bases. Nobody has tried this trick yet, as far as I have seen.

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Sq on :

That's a possible use for opponent learning - try one stupid trick per game until you've found one that works on that opponent or run out of ones to try on them.

Jay Scott on :

It is a good idea, and I may do it someday. I notice the stable ranking of cannon rush bot Jakub Trancik: For 2 years, as bots improve left and right, the cannon rush keeps working about as well as it ever has. Jakub Trancik has held a middle ranking the whole time. Only a few top authors can try to eliminate all the weaknesses their bots show.

LetaBot on :

When that happens, just switch to a rush defence. If no rush is coming you can put pressure onto the bot and you will be ahead.

Jay Scott on :

Sure, responding is easy. I’ve given up the secret and people know the trick exists, but how many authors will put a moment’s effort into something so rare? How many bots do you think will respond soundly, and how many will rally their army to the empty main that they happened to scout last? Somebody should try it and find out!

krasi0 on :

I'd be curious to know the result if you decide to execute this trick (as a human player) against my bot. :)

PurpleWaveJadien on :

Yep. 1,200 commits into PurpleWave I still hadn't bothered to add any proxy defense. I probably still wouldn't have it if Juno (Yuanheng Zhu) weren't in AIIDE. Everything is prioritization.

Kevin on :

We can check the mineral patch to see if it's mined.

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