Starcraft AI blog

A new version of Iron has been uploaded. It’s definitely different; the .dll file is about 25K larger, which makes it about 1.6% larger than the previous version. That’s a significant amount of code. But what is new? I played a few games and compared the binaries briefly, and so far I haven’t identified any specific differences. I searched them thar intertubes for discussion online, and came up empty. Does anybody know? I can’t tell whether it’s new code, or something like a difference in compiler settings that has no effect on play.

When I played Steamhammer versus Iron, the games went as I expected. Nothing was visibly different. I also played the 2 Iron versions against each other, though only for 2 games. They played exactly the same opening, with only the usual small timing differences caused by different starting positions and such. I could not identify anything new in the play. Each version won 1 game. To me, they looked the same.

Maybe somebody has heard from author Igor Dimitrijevic, or has more time than I do to compare for differences.

TitanIron is, as all signs indicated, a fork of Iron. It forks from the latest Iron, the AIIDE 2017 Iron. The Iron that played in CIG 2018 was carried over from the previous CIG 2017 tournament, and is an earlier version.

#15 TitanIron crashed in 30% of its games. Its win rate was 51.46% overall, or 73.59% in non-crash games. #6 Iron itself (an earlier version) finished with 74.31% win rate, so TitanIron does not seem to be an improvement, even discounting poor code quality. Curious point: #9 LetaBot upset Iron, because LetaBot copes well with vulture and wraith harassment. But TitanIron upset LetaBot. Another curious point: TitanIron performed poorly on the map Andromeda and strongly on Destination, and about equally well on the other 3 maps. Andromeda seems a surprising map to have trouble with.

I watched some replays. In Iron-TitanIron games, the two played identical build orders until the first factory finished, when Iron made 1 vulture first while TitanIron immediately added a machine shop to get the vulture upgrades faster. The bigger difference came later, when Iron built a starport and made wraiths while TitanIron did not. I got the impression that TitanIron rarely or never goes air. The expense of going air puts TitanIron ahead in vultures for a while, so that it won some games, but it seemed that if the vulture pressure did not push Iron over the edge, then Iron would strike back and take the advantage. I watched only 1 game Locutus-TitanIron, because Locutus’s proxy pylon trick misled TitanIron just as it does Iron, and Locutus won easily. I watched a strange game against AIUR where TitanIron built a second command center far from its natural, slowly floated it over, left it in the air, and built a new command center underneath. Not all the bugs are crashing bugs. In the picture, TitanIron is losing to AIUR. Notice the nicely spaced tanks, the spider mines directly next to one tank, the barracks floating in an unhelpful position, and the spare command center in the air.

Overall, my impression is that TitanIron’s play is often similar to Iron’s. Unlike Iron, it does not make air units (it seems to have drop skills, but I didn’t run into any games with drop). Against protoss, TitanIron makes more tanks and uses them more cautiously and often clumsily. TitanIron also seems a bit fonder of expanding and growing its economy.

TitanIron adds over 4,000 lines of code to Iron. It was made by a team of 10, so that’s not an excessive amount of new code. The crash rate and the score suggest that the team was not disciplined enough in code quality and testing (of course Steamhammer crashed even more, so I don’t get to brag). Read on and you’ll see what most of the new lines of code do. I question the choices of where to spend effort. I’m not sure what the plan behind TitanIron was supposed to be.

openings

Iron does not play different openings as such. Conceptually, I see Iron as playing one opening which it varies reactively. TitanIron adds a directory opening with code which allows it to define specific build orders. The build order system is loosely modeled on Steamhammer’s, using similar names (which are not the same as UAlbertaBot’s names)—some members of the team have worked on Steamhammer forks.

TitanIron knows 3 specific build orders, named 8BB CC (1 barracks expand), SKT (tanks first), and 5BB (marines). Based on watching replays, TitanIron retains and uses Iron’s reactive opening, with modifications.

opponent-specific strategies

Iron does not recognize opponents by name. TitanIron recognizes 2 specific opponents: Locutus and PurpleSwarm. The zerg PurpleSwarm is a curious choice, since it did not play in CIG. Maybe they found it an interesting test opponent? In any case, Locutus is the main focus. It is recognized in 4 strategy classes, Locutus, SKT, TankAdvance, and Walling. In Iron’s codebase, any number of strategies can be active at the same time, and other parts of the code check by name which strategies are active to suit their actions to the situation.

	Locutus::Locutus()
	{
		std::string enemyName = him().Player()->getName();
		if (enemyName == “Locutus” || enemyName == “locutus”)
		{
			me().SetOpening(“SKT”);
			m_detected = true;
		}
	}

SKT (defined in opening/opening.cpp) builds a barracks and refinery on 11, then adds 2 factories and gets tanks before vultures. It sounds as though it should refer to the “SK terran” unit mix of marines and medics with science vessels and no tanks, but it doesn’t. The Locutus strategy turns itself off (if I understand the code’s intent correctly) after all 4 dark templar of Locutus’s DT drop are dead, or after frame 13,000. Various buildings (barracks, factory, e-bay, turret) recognize when the Locutus strategy is active and carry out scripted actions. The name “Locutus” also activates the TankAdvance strategy which seems to first guard the natural and then perform a tank push, and deactivates the Walling strategy after frame 11,000 or when above 12 marines, causing the barracks to lift and open the wall.

TitanIron scored a total of 1 win out of 125 games against Locutus, so the special attention does not seem to have paid off.

PurpleSwarm gets less attention. (The question is why it got any.)

	Purpleswarm::Purpleswarm()
	{
		std::string enemyName = him().Player()->getName();
		if (him().Race() == BWAPI::Races::Zerg &&
			(enemyName == “Purpleswarm” || enemyName == “purpleswarm” || enemyName == “PurpleSwarm”))
		{
			me().SetOpening(“5BB”);
			m_detected = true;
		}
	}

5BB (also defined in opening/opening.cpp) builds barracks on 10 and 12, later adding a third barracks and training marines up to 30. I don’t see any other cases where TitanIron uses this opening. The rest of the code has no special instructions for PurpleSwarm or 5BB.

other new files

Besides the opening directory, TitanIron adds 16 files in the strategy and behavior directories, defining 8 strategies and behaviors. The added strategies are:

• GuardNatural
• Locutus
• PurpleSwarm
• SKT
• TankAdvance

These are remarkable for being all and only the classes used when Locutus or PurpleSwarm is recognized. Do they have any other purpose? I didn’t dig into it, but I suspect that GuardNatural and TankAdvance may be used more widely against protoss.

The added unit behaviors are:

• GuardLoc - guard a location
• HangingBase - carry out drops
• SKTAttack - related to SKT

GuardLoc has some connection with GuardNatural, but seems to be a general-purpose behavior, as far as I can tell. I’m not sure how HangingBase got its name.

The new opening directory and the newly added strategy and behavior files account for about 2/3rds of the lines of code added to Iron. The rest is scattered through the code and not as easy to inventory, but surely much of it must be uses of the new openings, strategies, and behaviors. I do see a lot of changes related to expanding.

Locutus is doing great. What I find more interesting is that Microwave is also doing great since its update yesterday. In particular, Microwave seems to have improved enough to beat Iron consistently. I thought the most interesting game was the most recent one.

Furthermore, Microwave played more than one opening against Iron in its recent winning streak. Its favorite, though, seems to be 9 pool with a fast 2nd hatchery. The game plan has not changed much, only the execution is improved. Early zerglings hammer on the terran wall, occasionally breaking it down but usually only sapping the terran income. The lings don’t care if the wall is open, or if they come under fire, they only want to hit those supply depots. Microwave defends against the vulture runby with sunkens up front plus a sunken in the main. Iron usually appears surprised by the sunken in the main and fails to cope with it. Microwave follows up with hydralisks and later mutalisks, switching flexibly between hydras and mutas and preventing Iron from gathering its forces—especially targeting tanks so that they don’t build up to large numbers. Eventually Microwave reaches a critical mass of hydras and wins.

Even if you are as good as Iron, that is what happens if you always play the same and don’t update for a long time.

Locutus and Microwave are both Steamhammer forks. I’m pleased that they’re doing well. I see it as partly my success, too.

Steamhammer-Iron is the first game in which Steamhammer played its AntiFactory opening, which counters Iron’s vulture runby skill (as well as other stuff that opponents could try with a mech opening, and some opponents do try). If Steamhammer started with no history, it would counter Iron on the second game. In fact it started with all its past game records on SSCAIT since version 1.4, so it thought AntiFactory was just another opening to explore, more important than the average opening because it counters the predicted enemy plan, but still just another opening and not worth special attention. Since it lost, it probably won’t try the opening again for a while (though there is a lot of randomness in the decision).

If you’re familiar other Steamhammer-Iron games, like that one, you’ll notice that in this game the AntiFactory opening stops Iron’s early vulture pressure more or less neatly and gets mutalisks in time to break up the next attack, the followup that adds marines and 1 tank. Then Steamhammer starts to flounder. The mutalisks neither defend efficiently nor attack the enemy base efficiently, and zerg desperately wants a 3rd base and sends drone after drone to die. Still, it was a tough fight and Iron only gradually took the upper hand. With this opening, Steamhammer has a moderate chance to beat Iron.

Steamhammer needs more skills to beat Iron regularly.

• Place the initial sunken correctly. It makes a surprisingly big difference.
• Don’t send drones directly into enemy forces. If you can’t expand safely, make a macro hatchery in your base instead.
• Once another base is up, defend it. Steamhammer tends to lose all the drones there.
• Play more incisively with the mutalisks. Don’t hesitate in front of defenses, immediately switch to another target. Be more eager to pick off tanks and less willing to chase fleeing vultures and SCVs.

I think those 4 skills would be enough to win most games against Iron, and only 1 of them is a complex skill. Likely even 2 of them, any 2, would put the win rate over 50%. Tilt the game a tiny bit, and it rolls your way over time. More skills would help more. For example:

• Don’t lose overlords like an idiot from Idiot City, even if you are one. Steamhammer regularly flies into turrets.
• When it’s time to expand, coordinate actions: Clear any blocking spider mine, push attackers away, if necessary escort the drone to the expansion site.
• Use scourge properly.
• Clear spider mines systematically. Steamhammer has the infrastructure to track spider mines that it has seen once, but doesn’t use it; units ignore mines that are not detected at that moment.

Am I going to actually work on any of these skills soon? Maybe. Overlord safety is high on my list, because it is a critical weakness in all matchups. For the more complex skills, I am waiting for the revamp of squad structure, which won’t start for months yet. Priorities are hard.

Next: Priorities in light of the AIST competition.

I ran a 15 game match of this year’s tournament Steamhammer versus last year’s tournament Iron. This is a true year-over-year comparison. By comparing the 2017 SSCAIT Steamhammer versus the 2016 SSCAIT Iron, we can get a measure of how much Steamhammer has improved.

Over the course of 2017, Iron has consistently stayed well ahead of Steamhammer, fixing weaknesses before Steamhammer was able attack them properly. I think Iron has even pulled ahead a little, which is impressive because Iron is stronger and therefore harder to improve. Last year’s Iron versus last year’s Steamhammer goes to Iron with a few losses, this year’s Iron versus this year’s Steamhammer goes to Iron with maybe a couple losses, maybe none.

It turns out that Steamhammer has more than caught up with last year’s Iron. The score was 10-5, new Steamhammer over old Iron. Steamhammer won both with mutalisks (which Iron at the time thought it was ready for) and with lurkers (which old Iron was not prepared for). 2016 Iron was already tough, so it’s a good result. The result table here is from Steamhammer’s point of view.

map	opening	w/l	notes
Benzene	OverhatchLateGas	0	A mass zergling opening with slow tech. It can’t touch Iron’s vulture build.
Destination	4PoolSoft	0	Iron has zergling rushes down cold.
Heartbreak Ridge	9PoolSpeed	1	Steamhammer struggled with the map, as it often does, but eventually won with lurkers.
Moon Glaive	ZvT_2HatchMuta	1	Smash.
Tau Cross	OverhatchLateGas	0	Bad luck for this inappropriate opening to come up a second time. Steamhammer plays it in 1% of games.
Andromeda	ZvT_3HatchMutaExpo	1	A bit of a struggle, but the mutalisks prevailed.
Circuit Breaker	9PoolSpeed	1	Iron defended too cautiously, pulling excess SCVs, letting Steamhammer draw ahead in macro. Zerg won with lurkers.
Electric Circuit	ZvT_3HatchMutaExpo	1	Smash.
Empire of the Sun	OverpoolSpeed	0	Steamhammer got lurker tech but decided to make no lurkers. It went hydra and lost after the tank numbers built up.
Fighting Spirit	ZvT_3HatchMutaExpo	1	Smash.
Icarus	2HatchLurker	1	Iron was not ready. Spider mines and wraiths eventually cleared the lurkers, but the command center was already lost. Mutalisks finished the game.
Jade	ZvT_3HatchMutaExpo	1	The most hard-fought game of the match. Iron held on with good turret repair and its vulture containment, but Steamhammer slid drones past the contain to take the map and eventually win with hive tech.
La Mancha	ZvT_2HatchMuta	1	Another hard fight going to hive tech.
Python	3HatchLurker	1	Smash.
Roadrunner	ZvT_13Pool	0	One of Steamhammer’s classic openings, but objectively weaker. The initial pressure looked good but was never enough to tip Iron down the slope.

The games were varied, especially considering that Iron plays a single strategy, and both sides got to show their strengths. Some were one-sided smashes for one player or the other.

Steamhammer was able to prevent too much damage from Iron’s standard 3 vulture runby with zerglings. Iron’s vulture micro at the time was not slick enough to keep the vultures safe from speedlings in the zerg base. Or to say it differently, Steamhammer’s micro has improved enough to nab the vultures when they get stuck on a building or take a wrong turn.

In a number of games, Steamhammer won by getting ahead of Iron in workers. When mutalisks fly in, Iron has turrets ready and works hard to keep them repaired. Steamhammer likes to pick off the repairing SCVs. It’s costly in mutalisks and reduces the immediate pressure, but zerg gets ahead in macro and can win later in the game.

Iron’s forward turrets protecting its vulture contain sometimes confused mutalisks and distracted them from what they should be doing, but I don’t think the effect was decisive in any game. Loss of drones that tried to exit through the vulture contain was a problem, though.

It was striking that old Iron did not scout the map in the middle game. If Steamhammer squeezed a drone past the vulture containment and the game continued long enough, zerg could set up additional bases that remained safe throughout. It happened in both of the hive tech games.

What do the last 2 days’ results mean? In the SSCAIT 2016 round robin phase, Steamhammer 0.2 finished tied for places 16-17, and the latest Steamhammer is stronger than its much-improved successor Steamhammer 1.0. Iron finished 5th with 89% win rate, and the latest Steamhammer is stronger. Steamhammer improved tremendously in 2017, so much that it would have likely have finished in the top 4 last year if we sent it backward in time. Where did I leave that time machine?

We’ll see how it does this year. The tide has risen all around. Still, 2018 had better watch out!

I thought this picture was funny. In a game yesterday against Iron, McRave fast expanded and walled off one of the bridges to its natural, but left the other bridge open. Vultures cannot pass the wall, but they happily took the other bridge and Iron won easily.

McRave seemed to mess up its build, getting dragoons too late. (The underlying mistake may have been taking gas at the natural instead of the main.) But the idea is sound. McRave is narrowing the entrance to its natural, making it easier to defend against vultures. A small number of dragoons can block a narrow entrance, either early in the game when there are only a few dragoons on the map, or later when the main army is away and the only dragoons around are those rallied from the gateways.

Its next game against Iron was on Roadrunner. McRave won using the same idea of narrowing the entrance.

McRave’s dragoons beat Iron, so they played well by bot standards. But I see room for improvement. Vultures can pass either left or right of the upper gateway. I think the first 2 dragoons should plug the gaps so that vultures are physically blocked. Iron will lay mines to force its way in, and then the dragoons can retreat to the defense line McRave actually held, the gap between the lower gateway and the nexus. The farther away the vultures and their mines are kept from the probes, the better.

Randomhammer earned another upset, this time with protoss against Iron. The game is not too interesting, just a dark templar rush that Iron wasn’t ready for. Iron could have held by landing its barracks to close the wall until mines and turrets were done, but didn’t. Even so, it shows that Steamhammer can defeat any opponent with any race—at least occasionally when it gets lucky.

Today Steamhammer 1.0 got to try, for the first time, its planned strategy versus Iron (Brood War replay file). It worked as intended, and Steamhammer won quickly. In the screenshot, Iron placed both its marines on the ramp, which made it easy. In my tests, the ramp still breaks and the bunker falls if Iron gets marines into the bunker.

I’m sure Igor Dimitrijevic will update Iron before long, but for the moment Iron loses to a standard 9 pool speedling opening—an opening that Steamhammer also plays 10% of the time versus other terrans, with fair success. Iron’s zergling defenses at that timing are not enough; the lings overwhelm the blocking SCVs and the bunker. Try the same against LetaBot and you will die!

By the way, getting zergling speed is critical versus terran. Zergling speed gives tactical and micro advantages against all races, but bots play poorly and don’t gain full value from the advantages versus protoss or zerg. But terrans have ranged units, and the gain from spending less time under fire before reaching the target is giant. It takes many more marines to overpower fast zerglings; marines should be unable to move out onto the map at all until academy tech. My suggestion: By the time you have 6 or more zerglings versus terran, you should at least be collecting gas to start Metabolic Boost. I think the main exceptions are unusual low-economy builds and zerglings for immediate emergency defense.

The SCCAIT round of 8 was played last week as 4 best-of-3 matches. The loser of each match is out and the winner moves on. Today I’ll go over the first 2 matches of the 4, from the first video.

LetaBot vs WuliBot

This match was easy to call and I don’t have much to say about it. The forecast: LetaBot will wall in and zealot-heavy Wuli will be unable to cope.

As it turned out the first game was even less interesting—Wuli froze up and died with one pylon to its name. The second game went to script. Wuli’s zealot rush is strong but risks being hard countered, and that’s what happened.

ZZZKBot vs Iron

ZZZKBot’s 4 pool also risks a hard counter. And Iron knows a counter, but it is not as hard as it could be. When Iron sees the danger it stops any tech beyond barracks (often canceling gas) and pulls SCVs to block its entrance. As soon it can it builds a bunker behind the SCVs, and if it succeeds in getting marines in, it is usually safe.

As always, Iron knows some excellent micro tricks. When it has enough SCVs blocking, it will sometimes mineral walk damaged front SCVs back through its own blockade to the mineral line. That means that the SCV right-clicks minerals so that it passes through any intervening units, allowing Iron to rescue damaged units in front without opening its blockade.

Game 1 was on the level-ground 2-player map Heartbreak Ridge, ideal for the 4 pool. Iron saw it coming in time, got the bunker up, and got a marine into it, pulling nearly all SCVs to block. It was close, but Iron held and had more income. When it was safe, Iron switched back into its usual aggressive strategy and won easily.

Game 2 was on Icarus, a 4-player map with ramps which is not as good for the 4 pool. But the bases turned out to be close together, which is favorable for the rush. Both bots scouted each other in time. This time ZZZKBot broke the ramp and won—Iron got a bunker up but could not get a marine into it. ZZZKBot showed impressively smart targeting with its lings, switching smoothly between hitting the empty bunker and chasing away any terran units that came close. At one point zerg split its lings into 2 groups, one to chase the last marine and one to disrupt mining.

The deciding game 3 was on Empire of the Sun, a 4-player map but without ramps and with a wider entrance to defend than Heartbreak Ridge. ZZZKBot sent its overlord scout the right direction and did not need to make an extra drone to scout, which strengthens the rush slightly because 2 more zerglings fit under the supply limit. 3 drones mining are enough to keep up constant zergling production; more drones produce extra resources that are only useful if the rush fails, when the rusher is generally lost anyway.

But in any case, this time Iron narrowly held and won. Apparently the result depends more on random factors than on favorable or unfavorable conditions!

With good worker micro, it is more efficient to hold the rush in the mineral line, rather than at the entrance. Tscmoo knows how to do it. In pro games, attacking zerglings have to be cautious around workers and only pick off stragglers, because the workers fight so effectively.

Tomorrow: The second half of the round of 8. Maybe I’ll catch up with real time by the time the finals broadcast on Saturday!

Among SSCAIT tournament watchers, the talk of the moment is of Iron’s two surprise defeats against zergs Steamhammer by me and GarmBot by Aurelien Lermant. Iron got unlucky 2 games in a row.

In the Steamhammer game, Iron became overcautious against the few early zerglings, bunkered its ramp, and was late with its vulture attack. Provoking reactions like that is one of the reasons Steamhammer makes zerglings. When the mutalisks came out, they soon had enough numbers to safely break the bunker and then were free to ravage Iron’s base (they could have gone ravaging from the start, but they were obsessed with the bunker). Iron’s vultures moved in and quickly wiped out every drone, but the mutalisk swarm split up, some cleaning vultures and the rest cleaning the terran base. Steamhammer won with empty bases but unchallenged air supremacy. In my testing, Steamhammer has never won against Iron with this build order—Iron got unlucky, or perhaps a late change weakened its play in this situation.

In the GarmBot game, GarmBot randomly expanded to Iron’s natural and built a sunken that covered the ramp. Iron was again overcautious: It double bunkered its ramp and blocked with vultures and many SCVs, and sent no vultures past the sunken. It seemed in no hurry to get tanks and blow away the sunken. Mutalisks showed up and started picking at a supply depot; nothing stopped them. But the lethal blow did not come until lurkers arrived and burrowed in good position on the ramp. There was no detection. Lurkers defeated the blocking units and cleared the bunkers while mutalisks killed the engineering bay, and then there was no hope. Iron reacted poorly to GarmBot’s bizarre expansion and GarmBot followed up well.

It’s a hard game! Even a bot as well-rounded as Iron is not prepared for everything.

I have a feeling that some of the new behavior of Killerbot is designed specifically to counter Iron. Well, I could be wrong. It seemed interesting so I played some games between the two locally, with the 1 December version of Iron and the 27 November version of Killerbot. It was also a chance to see how the two cope with maps outside the SSCAIT pool.

This version of Iron scouts immediately, with one of its first SCVs. That’s a hit to its economy. I guess author Igor Dimitrijevic decided it was important to start adapting to the enemy’s build as soon as possible.

On many maps Iron tried its signature 3-vulture runby. When the runby succeeded, Killerbot could eventually clear the intruding vultures with mutalisks, but was far behind and lost every time. On the map Gladiator, which has an up-ramp out of the low-ground main, Iron felt the need to bunker its ramp and tried the runby later than usual. Killerbot had placed sunkens well and Iron aborted the runby in mid-flight (a skill in itself!). But then Killerbot was ahead and could even expand to the precariously-placed mineral only, with a winning advantage.

In some games, like on Match Point, Killerbot added a sunken in its main. I’m not sure what triggered the extra defense. That blunted the runby, even when the sunken was poorly placed, because Iron was not clever enough at working around it. On Match Point, Iron still gained some advantage and ended up winning a tense game.

I notice that Iron favors citadel defense: It builds heavy static defenses that cover a small area. With repair, the static defenses (bunker or turrets) are expected to hold without reinforcement. Pros usually favor the lightest possible static defense and reinforce with mobile units when needed—that’s more demanding, obviously.

Iron builds its first factory in a distant corner of its base. That way when it gets rushed early, the factory is likely to be overlooked and can get vultures out, which is usually enough to hold off the rush. It’s a clever trick that works well against bots. But later when Iron comes under mutalisk attack, the factory is outside the citadel of turrets and becomes hard to defend.

Killerbot’s mutalisks are attracted to turrets and do not fight them efficiently. In this picture most mutas are attacking the rightmost turret. They surrounded it and are taking fire from all sides, when they should have attacked from an angle where not all turrets were in range. Meanwhile, a couple mutas do not play well with others and attack different turrets on their own.

On Arcadia II, Killerbot surprised me with a strategy I hadn’t seen it play before. It opened with its usual 3 hatcheries and then, I can’t guess why, took drones off gas after 100 and went all-in speedlings. Iron saw it coming and bunkered its ramp, but it was not enough. The mass zerglings surged over everything. The red lines on the minimap are more zerglings on the way, far more than Iron can hope to save itself from after the bunker falls. I won’t be surprised if this strategy features more prominently in the next tournament version of Killerbot!

Killerbot depends on an easily-defensible natural expansion. On Outsider, a rather weird map, it didn’t even try to defend its wide natural and soon lost all drones. Fantasy and Jaedong played a famous game on this map in 2009. I think it is a difficult map for bots; you need to understand mineral jumping and drop play.

I even laid in a game on Jungle Story, an old-school map from before modern macro play was invented. The map was cool at the time but today is very non-standard. It has no close natural; the closest next base is an open mineral-only. The game was hilarious: Killerbot took the center gas expansion and defended it with 1 sunken. That base has 2 openings and Iron could have harassed through the opening not covered by the sunken. Or Iron could have bypassed the expansion and headed for the main. Instead Iron ran by the sunken, through the expansion, and toward the main, losing 2 vultures of the 3 for nothing! Apparently its decision-making is tuned for standard maps. Killerbot’s mutalisks erased the terran main.

Usually when Iron worked up to wraiths, Killerbot found itself unable to defend both its overlords and its mineral lines: Pick one, give up the other. Killerbot would benefit from scourge for air defense, or maybe a spore colony in the mineral line at some bases (it already makes an evo chamber).

Overall conclusion: It was fun because both bots are super-aggressive. Iron has better micro and a deadly runby tactic, and usually wins. But when Iron blunders, Killerbot takes over. Both bots could benefit from more geometry smarts in figuring paths and placements. I was surprised that Killerbot does some basic research very late. It fights more than I expected with slow zerglings and slow hydralisks.

Last year, Killerbot was clearly the best around. If it hasn’t kept up, that is a sign of how much progress we’ve seen this year. Here’s to another year of progress!

Here are a couple of updates on top bots before I return to Overkill’s reinforcement learning.

Iron

For a while now, Iron has been playing a different strategy against protoss, going 2 barracks plus academy and attacking early with marines and medics rather than its traditional vultures. I’m a bit slow, but I finally realized why: It was having trouble against dragoons. Dragoons, adding observers in time to detect mines, are a strategically sound counter to Iron’s early vulture play, where tanks come late. Bereaver was handing Iron a string of losses with dragoon play. Time to switch it up!

Bereaver poked with 2 zealots but was unable to land a single hit against accurate micro.

Bereaver expanded early. I thought its force of 4 dragoons plus probes could have held off the marines, but it would have needed coordination and micro beyond the state of the art. Instead Bereaver lost its natural and was set back.

Iron tried to force the ramp while expanding, but didn’t have a big enough edge and was pushed back. Bereaver counterattacked and tried to get ahead with a double expansion, but tanks came out and Bereaver was never able to catch up. Bereaver strangely made a robo support bay early but did not build any reavers until much later, adding to its disadvantage—this game was played before the reupload below.

The dragoon opening is still sound against barracks play. Dragoons are versatile. But fighting the infantry calls for excellent micro with focus fire, and even Bereaver is lacking. Skynet is fairly skilled, but Iron’s new opening smashes it.

Bereaver

Bereaver was reuploaded yesterday. The new version’s first game was against Tyr by Simon Prins, and I immediately saw plays I hadn’t seen it make before. Bereaver went double robo.

Bereaver’s shuttle-reaver micro is not fluid like ZerGreenBot’s, but sharply goal-directed. Tyr vainly struggled to save itself, not realizing that it had to cover the reaver drop zones and come up with some kind of air defense. Every time Tyr unsieged, the reaver dropped, fired, was picked up instantly, the scarab skirted around the minerals—boom. By the time the second shuttle appeared with 1 zealot inside, it was already too late for terran.

The tanks at the top are approaching, too late to defend. As for reaver shots, sometimes they dud out. And sometimes they do this.

Reaver drop is crazy complicated. In time, I expect Bereaver to learn how to drop in the teeth of sieged tanks: Drop a zealot first. Tanks fire. Zealot says “ow!” Reaver drops and has time to fire before the tanks can reload. Terran defense has to be on the ball!

Back in March, one of my early blog posts was about a game between Iron and Killerbot in which Iron successfully ran by Killerbot’s static defenses with vultures and SCVs and cleaned out the main. At the time Iron didn’t have the skills to seal the win, but it was a promising start.

Soon after, author Igor Dimitrijevic turned off the runby feature. I suppose his development strategy was to get the basics down before adding such a risky skill. But more recently the runby feature is back. I saw Iron do runbys in September already.

Here’s a game played today where Iron rolled Krasi0. Iron opened with two factories making vultures followed by a starport. Krasi0 made a barracks and then immediately expanded behind a bunker. With repair, the bunker can stop most early game harassment. It’s a good opening.

The moment that Iron gathered 3 vultures outside Krasio’s natural, it ran by the bunker and into the main, like so.

1 vulture was lost in the attempt. The other 2 stopped all mining in the main. Notice the kill count—that vulture got 8 SCVs and 1 newly-made Krasi0 vulture.

Meanwhile, wraiths from the starport flew over as they were made and also stopped mining in Krasio’s natural. Krasi0 specializes in defense, but could make only feeble attempts to ward off the attack.

Runbys still rule, especially if you have aggressive micro skills like Iron. Lessons for the defender!

1. If you see a runby coming at you, you may be able to pull workers to physically block the runby. Then your static defense will drive it off. It’s an advanced skill, though.
2. You can place buildings to restrict the path for the runby. Krasi0 could have landed its barracks and/or built a depot near the bunker. Stopping runbys is one of the ideas behind IceBot’s building placement. Killerbot also has anti-runby building placement, though it’s not enough in itself to stop a runby.
3. Krasi0 could have defended better after the runby. The SCVs were too fearful. Krasi0 needed to gather resources and produce defenders to defeat the few attacking units; it’s no use to retreat SCVs at the cost of resources needed to win. In recent years I notice that pros increasingly often leave workers at work when a base is under attack, instead of running them, and I assume that’s their reasoning.

Games of Iron against different versons of LetaBot have been entertaining me. Iron has learned the same trick as Tscmoo of killing tanks by laying mines next to them. LetaBot often suffers unnecessary mine hits when it sieges up just as a mine triggers. On the other hand, LetaBot also has micro skillz and likes to kill mines after they trigger—I’ve seen it kill a mine with two fast-reacting SCVs!

The games go back and forth, but Iron has the upper hand for now. Iron has become strong against other bots. LetaBot could improve by sieging more cautiously, which is part of the terran technique of inching units forward to force a minefield. Or it could scan for mines. Scanning intelligently for mines is not that easy because the bot has to keep track of where mines are likely or possible, which seems like a lot of coding work to support a single skill.

in other news

Rob Bogie has uploaded MaasCraft (originally written by Dennis Soemers) to SSCAIT, and it plays like the replays I watched last month. MaasCraft is scoring poorly—the opposition is a lot stronger than in 2014. He also re-uploaded it, which sounds like an update. Is MaasCraft going to see major updates under its new ownership? I haven’t yet noticed any changes to its play.

PS Making slow progress on the website improvements. I chose a hard road for myself.

Today Iron learned how to keep expanding. I watched it starve out ICEbot, which is exactly how a contain is supposed to work. It’s moving fast, and may yet go over 90% win rate.

Update: I also watched a tense close game against XIMP. For half the game XIMP had no probes and 30 minerals but 8 carriers, while Iron had many bases that it could not defend. Would the carriers have to stay home to resist the pressure, or could they relieve it enough to go marauding? XIMP won, but I was unsure until near the end.

SSCAIT has binary bot downloads on the Bots & Results page. Binaries are of course most safely executed inside a virtual machine.

Iron has continued to make progress but hasn’t yet lived up to its author’s hopes. It can now expand to its natural, though not beyond. Its game plan amounts to setting an elastic containment outside the enemy base, but its unit mix is not adaptive. An enemy that finds the right counter-mix and keeps pressure up can push the contain back and either break through or starve Iron out. Aggressive tscmoo zerg can’t be contained at all.

Tscmoo terran now knows how to kill tanks by laying mines next to them. The technique seems deadly effective. I also saw it chase down overlords with Napoleonic vigor, though only after the zerg was already toast.

Krasi0 and especially Tyr have both been playing more strongly after updates. I can’t pin down what they’re doing better, though.

Hmm, 4 terrans. Are we in for a terran renaissance?