Starcraft AI blog

Earlier I wrote up a game proxy versus proxy of Steamhammer and Krasi0P, where Krasi0P played its cannon contain strategy. To show Krasi0P’s other choice, here’s a game where Steamhammer played similarly and Krasi0P played its defensive cannon strategy, like so:

In the picture, Steamhammer has calmly morphed its proxy hatchery into a lair and started spawning drones in what it sees as a perfectly normal expansion. Never mind that the lair should be morphed where it won’t be seen immediately, and where it is less likely to be destroyed in passing. It happened to turn out well, since the lair had more HP. In the minimap we can see that zerg has also made a third hatchery at its natural. No hurry, after all protoss made cannons so a nice slow macro game should be in the cards, Steamhammer seems to believe. And in fact Krasi0P is adding another cannon beside its nexus for no apparent reason, and making its cyber core. First tech, then act, is its plan.

When zealots arrived, Steamhammer still had not made an army to handle them, much less a sunken as you would expect at a proxy hatchery. The drones had the sense to run away, and the zealots had the foolishness to chase them instead of focusing down the lair. They chased drones that they could not catch (almost all drones fleeing the proxy reached the zerg natural), and the proxy survived to keep making units.

Spawning drones that will soon have to make a run for it across the width of the map... is not objectively good. But it happened to turn out well, it distracted the enemy from what it should have done. That’s the story of this game, bad moves that worked.

Steamhammer chose lurkers as its first tech. It could not immediately cope with the corsairs, because most of its hydralisks morphed into lurkers. A number of overlords were shot down, and overlords were needed on the scene because dark templar were out for protoss. The lurkers succeeded regardless, though, because Krasi0P never answered them. Protoss made no observers, and the lurkers were in little danger from dark templar because they know not to unburrow when an undetected enemy is around to hit them.

Steamhammer not only narrowly saved its lair, it upgraded it to a hive. Proxy hive, have you seen that before? Once overlord speed finished, Steamhammer’s strong economy and steady upgrades meant that the day of corsairs and dark templar was over; the overlords accompanied an army strong enough to protect them; overlords were relatively safe and protoss with no expansion was outnumbered. Zerg busted the ramp cannons while starting to take additional bases, and the rest was cleanup.

Neither side had the skills to play the situation correctly. Krasi0P’s mistakes were more serious: It failed to kill the lair, it failed to counter lurkers, and it failed to send out a probe to expand to a more distant base. (Look at the mineral and gas counts. Krasi0P’s higher supply is because it has excess probes, enough for 2 bases even though it never expanded.) Steamhammer’s aggressive opening followed up with a macro game plan risked a quick loss, but because of protoss mistakes, it ended up putting zerg far ahead.

Well, I posted this game to have fun showing silly stuff. But I can’t help analyzing it.