Starcraft AI blog

I am still narrowing down my AIIDE plans. I don’t know how long steps will take, so it makes no sense to plan in detail, but I want to lay down enough priorities that I don’t leave important stuff until too late.

I have optimistically given the next Steamhammer the provisional version number 2.0, on the theory that I’ll make that much progress. I may roll it back to 1.5, we’ll see!

So far, I have implemented defilers—not the most urgent skill, but an essential skill that will help. As it stands, they are modestly effective, enough that I tweaked the queen’s nest timing to get the hive a little sooner. The code to plague clumped enemies and avoid our own units worked on the first try, and was very satisfying. Once I add a few micro skills and teach FAP about dark swarm, defilers should revolutionize Steamhammer’s late game.

I will also choose at least one new skill to put on pressure in the early or middle game. Most bots are not prepared for runbys, that would be a logical choice for the early game. For the middle game, no bot does large drops, or proper lurker contains (though OpprimoBot does try to contain with 4 lurkers). I have other ideas.

I also need to do a bunch of ordinary micro improvements and weakness fixes. It’s a large amount of work in total, but it breaks into pieces so it’s easier to fit in.

Do it right, don’t do it fast is still the principle that I instinctively want to follow, especially after I’ve deliberately deviated from it and come face to face with crashes and poor play. Going with defilers shows that attitude. Meanwhile, the overall development plan says that now is the time for more tactical and micro skills, because strategy skills are stalled waiting for them.

What I most want to do is offline machine learning for strategy, operations, tactics, and micro. (The opponent model uses online learning.) I have selected my method and I’ve been reading up on it, and I’ve written about half the code I need to start playing with it. It is not a priority for AIIDE. The first offline learning feature will be the easiest and the most foundational, an evaluation function “am I winning?” It will be fun for stream watchers, and it will be good for opening selection and unit mix decisions—strategy items that are not chief next steps. Also, offline learning will take many days of computer time while Steamhammer crunches games and tries to draw conclusions from them, and I might have to spend that large amount of time repeatedly to get industrial-strength results. I’ll keep working on it because it’s what I want to do, but I shouldn’t let it distract me too much.

A tactics sequencer would be good for clearing map blocks, breaking through backdoor entrances, complex drops, taking islands, planning how to expand against opposition (instead of sending drones out to die), and other stuff that takes multiple steps. I may do that, it’s tempting.

More urgent is probably a tactics analyzer that is better at figuring out how to organize forces, how to maneuver, where to attack, and especially when to retreat and where to retreat to. Steamhammer loses a lot of games to mistakes on those points. Unless I think of a cheap fix to the major problems, that will be my choice for AIIDE. It’s a big enough feature to justify a 2.0 version number.