Starcraft AI blog

Today’s game Randomhammer vs Flash is unbelievable. What I mean is, if I didn’t know that the replay was generated automatically by bots playing, I would assume that it was a setup. That should not happen!

Randomhammer rolled protoss and opened with 1 gate and dragoons. Flash put down 2 gates and made zealots, so of course Flash had more units. Randomhammer had an easy defense in principle: Make a fighting withdrawal with the dragoons, to buy time and to put some bruises on the zealots. When and if the zealots reach its base, Randomhammer should have enough dragoons to outmicro the zealots, and it can run probes if necessary.

Randomhammer has no understanding of any of that. The only withdrawal it knows is headlong retreat, and instead of running probes it fought with them. When the surviving zealots were finally driven off, only 2 probes survived. Furthermore, the 2 probes were collecting gas and had no ability to switch to mining minerals, so Randomhammer had zero income for the rest of the game. “Game over,” I thought. It was 6 Randomhammer dragoons, versus an opponent that was briefly behind in units, but now had its own dragoons and 2 running bases.

As I expected, Flash soon rivaled Randomhammer’s army size. But I could hardly trust my eyes when I saw the fight. Flash had just started dragoon range, and could not cope without it! The 5 ranged dragoons (1 froze in the middle of the map) outmicroed Flash’s dragoons and remaining zealots by an extreme margin, with Flash rarely getting shots off. Randomhammer smacked down the army and a long stream of reinforcements which came in piecemeal.

Then Flash showed that it is every bit as careless with probes as Randomhammer, and instead of mining safely in the main and building up a ramp defense force while the natural was slowly flattened, kept transferring probes. Randomhammer finished the game with 4 dragoons, having lost only 2 against a much larger number of enemies. Not plausible, only true.

The next Steamhammer version will turn off gas collection for terran and protoss when there is reason to, as it always has for zerg. It’s a simple feature, and I think it will make a difference.

Next: The theoretical right way to analyze the enemy’s build.