Starcraft AI blog

As its opponents have long since noticed, ForceBot has become a 5 pooler. It does an economic followup, so there is some interest.

The picture shows Oyvind Johannessen’s base from ForceBot versus Oyvind Johannessen. Random Oyvind Johannessen ended up zerg, and was ready for the rush. Unfortunately, the defending zerglings chose to follow a circling overlord, so Oyvind lost its opportunity to return the pressure.

ForceBot is trying to catch up in workers. As you can see in the minimap, it is 3 bases versus 2. Although it was ZvZ, neither side played aggressively, and the game went on for 45 minutes. It was fun, for a low-level bot game.

Oyvind barely defended itself while the zerglings were suffering from overlord fascination, and ForceBot started to dominate. ForceBot went hydra-lurker and took the map, rather a change from the 5 pool opener.

Oyvind understood how to hold on in a desperate situation. See all the blood? ForceBot could not coordinate an attack to climb the ramp. Oyvind is long-distance mining its natural and eventually retook it, while ForceBot went passive and sat around with its maxed army. The game ended when Oyvind mined out its natural and crashed. I expect that ForceBot would have won on points after the game time ran out.

This version of ForceBot seems to play similarly against all races: 5 pool, try to build an economy, lair, hydra-lurker. It’s quite different from the AIIDE 2017 ForceBot. It seems to have some added defensive smarts; it doesn’t appear to make pre-emptive sunkens willy-nilly any more, at least not often.