looking forward to CoG 2020
Results of this year’s CoG tournament will be announced later this month. I am later than usual with my take. The new participants of CoG 2020 will be these 7:
- Stardust (see yesterday)
- PurpleWave
- Microwave
- Mikhail Golovach (random bot apparently named after its author)
- BananaBrain
- McRave
- ZZZKBot
The only unknown newcomer is random Mikhail Golovach, who is listed as a hobbyist. Most brand new bots from individual programmers turn out to be weak, but there are occasional startling exceptions like Bereaver. At a minimum, going random shows ambition, so we can hope it’s strong and interesting!
I predict #1 Stardust, #2 PurpleWave, #3 BananaBrain as the most likely top winners, based on past records plus my look at Stardust yesterday. But there are surprises every tournament. I think McRave cannot be counted out for the #3 place because it is strong at PvP, and of course Mikhail Golovach is an unknown.
There will also be 3 carryover bots from last year:
- MetaBot
- BetaStar
- XiaoYi
These 3 bots are pretty good, especially BetaStar which is a Locutus fork, but opponents will be prepared. I expect most of the 7 new entrants to perform well against them.
That makes 6 protoss, 2 zerg, 1 terran, 1 random. Protoss outnumbers all others together. Protoss dominance is becoming entrenched. I don’t like that, I should work harder on Steamhammer.
I wrote earlier about the CoG 2020 map pool. Now the specific 5 maps to be played have been selected from the pool.
• (2)Blue Storm has 2 exits toward the center of the map from each base. One is direct but narrow, only passing small units; dragoons and lurkers don’t fit, for example. The other is wide but the path is longer. Only bots with size-sensitive pathfinding will maneuver their armies correctly in long games; others risk getting units stuck. Do any bots have size-sensitive pathfinding? I don’t know of any, but I haven’t looked.
• (3)Alchemist has a circular layout with 2 entrances to each base, so you can go around the map in either direction to reach the enemy. Since it’s a 3 player map, one direction is short and the other is long. This map has appeared in past CIG tournaments, where the 2 entrances confused many bots and led to bad games. On the other hand, I predict that the map will cause little trouble in PvP games, which will be the majority this tournament.
• (3)Great Barrier Reef has mineral lines around the edge of the map that can be mined out to open new paths. Any bot that knows how to take advantage of this map feature may gain an advantage. Bots that can’t take advantage will probably be OK in most games, though; the edge paths are longer, so no matter whether you rely on native pathfinding or roll your own, you should normally find perfectly adequate paths through the center.
• (4)Andromeda is familiar from SSCAIT.
• (4)Luna the Final is a classic macro map, as standard as they come, sometimes criticized for leading to boring standard games. Bots should be fine on it.
Update: An anonymous commenter points out that McRave is playing zerg, not protoss. Oops, I didn’t pay enough attention! I changed the coloring in the list of entrants to reflect that, but did not update the commentary. To correct the counting, protoss is half of the total pool of participants and equal with zerg among the new entrants.
Comments
Anon on :
Jay Scott on :
Jay Scott on :
McRave on :
MicroDK on :
McRaveZ also added size-sensitive pathfinding. He actually helped me with updating BWEB and implementation. :D
Jay Scott on :
Jay Scott on :
McRave on :
Bruce on :
For Stardust I haven't made the pathing size-aware, so it will avoid the narrow chokes for all units. Looks silly to send probes and zealots the long way round, but not as silly as dragoons stuck in the natural! Dragoons in combat may still try to go through the narrow chokes since movement is sometimes done with normal move commands.
I'm happy that they removed a lot of the old bots - there was no real point in having buggy bots with 5% win rates competing every year - though it's sad that bots like Iron were lost. They also accidentally announced the map pool a few weeks before the submission deadline, which I think was a nice quality-of-life bonus for the developers, since preparing for 19 maps that mostly aren't going to be played isn't fun.