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Tscmoo’s crazy hydra rush

Tscmoo zerg was reuploaded today and plays at least 2 crazy new rushes. The one that caught my eye was a hydralisk rush that has defeated SAIDA 3-0 so far: Tscmoo opens spawning pool on 8 supply, then 7 gas, 6 hydra den, and sends 1 drone to scout (which may or may not ever return), leaving 4 to mine both minerals and gas. Then it sends out unupgraded hydras as fast as it can! It constantly juggles drones onto and off of gas, stopping gas as soon as the available vespine goes over 50. 4 mining drones are not quite enough to produce hydralisks without losing the occasional larva spawning opportunity, but Tscmoo comes as close as it can. (I have a source that claims you need 6 on minerals and 1 on gas to produce hydras non-stop from 1 hatchery. I haven’t done the measurement myself, but I’m pretty sure that 5 or 6 drones total are enough if you can juggle the gas like Tscmoo.)

Here are the 3 wins over SAIDA. Maybe SAIDA looks at Tscmoo’s base and concludes “I see a hydra den, therefore it is not a fast rush and I have nothing to worry about.” Or maybe SAIDA doesn’t worry about fast rushes at all, since its worker defense is so strong, and concludes “the drone count is low, I have nothing to worry about.” In any case, SAIDA continues with its usual greedy build and falls into a hole when the hydras appear and sweep away the first marine and first vulture. The worker defense skills against zerglings are no use, and SAIDA does not appear to adapt its build order at all. In the one game where SAIDA was not overrun altogether, its build got discombobulated and it let thousands of minerals stack up as it tried to counter the hydras with tanks—then lost to mutalisks. The 3 games show no sign that SAIDA was trying to adapt to the danger.

The hydra rush is genuinely crazy. It can only work against a greedy build like the one SAIDA thinks it can get away with (and usually can), and then only if the opponent doesn’t understand what’s happening and adapt. Tscmoo also tried the rush against terran Tyr by Simon Prins, which played a slightly less greedy build and won. All that was needed was to keep making marines.

The hydra rush is unlike any strategy I have seen before. It is also not efficient as played. It didn’t take me long to code up a small family of related rushes to try out in Steamhammer. I got one version that starts the hydras at the same time as Tscmoo and produces them faster, and another that starts them earlier and still produces them faster (at the cost of needing to do more damage to be able to transition to a midgame build). Plus in some circumstances you can increase the punch by mixing in a few zerglings. I will likely end up keeping 2 or 3 variants permanently, for occasional use. It will be a fun challenge to get strategy adaptation to use them at appropriate times.

Still next: Longer-term plans for Steamhammer. It is taking me longer than I expected to gather my thoughts.

Update: I tested one of my variants, which I named 7-7HydraLingRush, against a few opponents. Though stronger than Tscmoo’s build, it scores less than 50% against the built-in terran AI—it is utterly weak against an opponent that makes units early. But—I love the contrast—it also breaks Iron bot like a toothpick. In a typical game, Iron smells it coming and walls in. Steamhammer hammers through the wall, killing the barracks and/or both supply depots and any SCVs that come to repair, then repeats the performance on the mineral line and command center while Iron’s few units shy out of range, unable to engage. Even in a test game where Steamhammer got confused and failed to attack, it held Iron in its base and won. I’ve configured it as a regular counter-factory opening; the development version of Steamhammer now has 6, up from 4 in the current release.

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Comments

Tully Elliston on :

Situationally strong but unsound crazy rushes are great tools for punishing rigid behaviour.

Bots mostly don't do a good job of either crazy all-ins or reactive all out defense - look how long Stone remained scary.

The threat of being able to pull out these behaviours is probably more useful than the behaviour itself - the possibility forces some honesty onto greedy builds.

Jay Scott on :

I love this game plan. Tscmoo beats SAIDA and loses to Tyr terran, Steamhammer beats Iron and loses to the built-in AI—only strong opponents think they can get away with a greedy build, weaker opponents are more cautious and stay out of trouble.

jtolmar on :

Niche nonsense all in builds are a great tool; every opponent is probably weak to a few. But learning to pick them seems hard. A big enough library to cover all of them would take forever to learn using the usual game result based learning. But the distinctions that let them through is surprisingly subtle too - SAIDA handles early aggression and hydralisks just fine, but apparently not early hydralisks. I don't know what a mid game analysis that figures that out even looks like.

Jay Scott on :

Hmm, you can’t tell when the opponent might foresee events and react correctly. There isn’t enough information. But I see enough information to judge when an opponent might be vulnerable.

Tully Elliston on :

Learning could separately track the success of all-ins Vs each opponent easily enough

Jay Scott on :

True. The issue is that Steamhammer’s AllIn strategy combo currently lists 13 openings (and it deliberately leaves some out; for example, it doesn’t include all the different one-base lurker variants). Only in a very long tournament could Steamhammer try all of them against an opponent.

The answer has to be to remember the events of past games and analyze them to try to tell what the opponent may be vulnerable to. Some combination of that and reacting to the events of the current game.

Arrak on :

I think it's a matter of figuring out a Timing and a Unit Composition, which could maybe be achieved by doing combat simulation versus plausible unit compositions (for both sides, given current estimated game state and prior known opponent habits). Generation of plausible unit compositions and combat simulation could likely be done relatively quickly.

Jay Scott on :

I will be writing up my ideas later.

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