Starcraft AI blog

How is the tournament going so far? Many games remain to be played, and bots have played different numbers, so all conclusions are tentative. But we can see some trends.

The top leaders at the moment by win rate are Bereaver 15-0, McRave 21-1, Tscmoo Random 17-1, Steamhammer 20-2, and KillAll at 25-3. Bereaver is a genuine candidate for a high finish, but most likely not #1. It has played relatively few games. McRave’s one loss is to Wuli. I think McRave is now the top candidate for #1 finisher. KillAll is the biggest surprise to me.

ICEbot at 13-2 is above expectations, but has also played few games. Iron has unexpectedly lost 3 games already and stands at 16-3. I won’t be surprised if its standing rises after more games. Killerbot by Marian Devecka is at 18-3 and can be expected to finish high. Microwave at 11-3 has a higher rate of losses than I expected. I may have overestimated it, as its author MicroDK said, but it hasn’t played many games yet. Microwave does have a win over Iron thanks to wall-busting skills.

CherryPi at 17-5 may be the bot in the tournament with the most smarts. Sometimes its play looks crisp and precise, with accurate reactions. But CherryPi is also immature, as you can guess from its slightly higher rate of losses. With less experience on SSCAIT, it is not ready for everything. It collapsed in the face of the cannon contain of Juno by Yuanheng Zhu, which the strongest bots all defeat easily. (Juno, I learned, builds a cannon contain not only at its enemy’s natural, but at every enemy expansion it finds. I hadn’t seen that before, though I’ve watched many Juno games from AIIDE.) Other CherryPi losses are to AIlien and to Steamhammer in strategically similar ZvZ games: CherryPi undertook a strategy of a rush-safe opening followed by attempted zergling domination (similar in idea to the ZvZ plan of Killerbot by Marian Devecka but with a less thoroughgoing execution), while its opponents chose less-safe hatchery first openings that in fact let them win the zergling war. Trying to win without risk is risky.

CherryPi showed up with a new version not long before the tournament. It reportedly did not show its strongest builds at first: If true, I take that to be a sign of lacking confidence. If you believe that your team, with its funding and top experts, has produced a better bot than all others, then you should also believe that others will be unable to catch up or to exploit its weaknesses, certainly not in a short time. I get the impression that the CherryPi team understands that their bot is not yet solid and mature.

Hannes Bredberg at 14-5 is impressing me as much improved. It used to scatter its marines to scout then gather them to attack, which was cool but not effective. Now it keeps its marines in formation and punches much harder.

Steamhammer is scoring at the level I predicted; it is now at #4 when I gave it places 4 through 8. The win over XIMP reassures me that I probably fixed the weakness that caused the recent test version to lose to XIMP. One point that worries me is that its losses are to MegaBot2017 which is much lower ranked, and to Neo Edmund Zerg which it should beat nearly 100% of the time. Except for CherryPi and XIMP, Steamhammer has not yet played most of its strongest opposition.

As always, the results will tell us. Now I have to hurry up and post this before the results change on me!