Starcraft AI blog

Looking at the entrants to CIG 2016, I think the Terran Renaissance is confirmed. The authors of terran bots have been pushing hard to get into the forefront, and I think they’ve passed the other races and succeeded. Protoss and zerg have not been putting in the same effort to reach the serrated leading edge.

I think terrans Iron and Letabot have the best chances to come in #1. Tscmoo terran can never be counted out, especially since it seems to have gotten a last-minute update (the neural network diagram got bigger; apparently it can remember more in its long short-term memory). I judge that zerg 4-pooler ZZZKBot still has a chance to make it into the top 3. Random UAlbertaBot and zerg Overkill haven’t been updated and seem a cut below. If Krasi0 were playing, I would forecast a terran sweep, though not with full confidence.

Protoss XelnagaII boldly gives itself a new version number, so I consider it an unknown. Protoss MegaBot has mixed results in early going on SSCAIT, but its description emphasizes strategy so maybe it’s an opponent-modeling bot that will do better in a long tournament (I can hope, anyway). And there’s no telling what other bots may have updates that I don’t know about.

We learned that Sungguk Cha’s bot is called Navinad, and Johan Kayser’s bot is called SRbotOne. OpprimoBot is (as in past tourneys) listed as playing terran, not random—I assume that’s its best race, though I would have guessed zerg.

Salsa has the best shot at the bottom of the score chart, with Bonjwa runner-up for the caboose. Not that I would discourage either of them. Salsa learned to play on its own from scratch—that’s an achievement in itself, just not the kind that the tournament is trying to measure.