Starcraft AI blog

I wasn’t planning to work more on defiler play for the time being, but then I discovered two more sets of bugs affecting defiler play. Since defilers are bugs, does it follow that you can’t have defilers without bugs? First, my additions to FAP to understand dark swarm had multiple errors in determining which units can hit under swarm. That could cause Steamhammer to cast swarm over its units, then needlessly retreat from under it. Second, there was an unbelievable bug which assigned defilers not only to the defiler controller, but to the melee unit controller at the same time. In between their regular orders, defilers were being interrupted with nonsense orders to act like zerglings. How did defilers ever work? Because in the buggy live version, defiler play is, somehow, already valuable.

Rule of thumb for the upcoming tournament version: If Steamhammer survives to the late game and has defilers out, it is probably winning.