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8882
2718 Posts
Obviously the Zerg bots like to use swarms of Mutalisks with perfect micro, terrans focus on fast tank pushes and protoss bots are usually quite primitive. To those who watch those AI competitions: what things could be improved for most bots concerning the build orders and strategies? | ||
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pebble444
Italy2497 Posts
Terran seems to be the most efficient; | ||
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Bakuryu
Germany1065 Posts
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Gerbilkit
United States32 Posts
Other than that just giving them some standard macro build orders would make them at least a bit more interesting. | ||
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Simberto
Germany11492 Posts
Those usually have subpar build orders, but that is based on the main problem when writing a bot, which is apparently decisionmaking. Bots are really bad at that. That means that they simply can't do a standard macro oriented build order, because a lot of decision making goes into that, usually based on limited scouting information and drawing conclusions from that with some intuition and experience. Bots suck at doing that. Their basic build orders simply HAVE to be safer then those for humans currently, because otherwise they would die to every single aggressive play, or randomly overreact to nothing at all. Take a look at any standard macro build order. And look at all the decisions that are being made, every game. Many small decisions, small variations, using specific units in a specific way at specific points in time to gather information. Now think of a way to teach all of that to a bot. The strategies bots use are obviously subpar. But the reason for that is not that bot makers don't know better strategies, it is that bots can't actually perform those strategies based on many different decisions a human can easily perform. The bots are currently better at performing those subpar strategies than they are at performing more complex human strategies, because they are very, very bad at making good decisions on limited information, and it is very hard to teach that to a bot. There is a lot of development going on with bots. I would greatly recommend watching a few videos on the SSCAIT youtube channel. | ||
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sabas123
Netherlands3122 Posts
 Computer learning can be insane, I don't see a reason why a self learning computer (think of alphaGO) can't become a top player like flash/bisu. | ||
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LetaBot
Netherlands557 Posts
On August 05 2016 07:17 sabas123 wrote: The thing it thinks is best after played 1x10^15+ games Computer learning can be insane, I don't see a reason why a self learning computer (think of alphaGO) can't become a top player like flash/bisu. They can, but unlike Google Deepmind nobody in the BW AI community has 650 million dollars to spend or 40 dedicated clusters available to them. | ||
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sabas123
Netherlands3122 Posts
On August 05 2016 10:35 LetaBot wrote: They can, but unlike Google Deepmind nobody in the BW AI community has 650 million dollars to spend or 40 dedicated clusters available to them. Thats true, How many games can you guys simulate at a time, and are they faster than normal game speed? | ||
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LetaBot
Netherlands557 Posts
On August 05 2016 22:07 sabas123 wrote: Thats true, How many games can you guys simulate at a time, and are they faster than normal game speed? Well, the BWAPI has the option to run at full speed (as fast as possible), but I only have one cheap laptop available to me. Since these bots are very CPU intensive, running two of them would mean that the game would run at about twice the speed of the speed you would play normally on ICCUP ( the fastest speed mode it is called). Since I need my laptop for other things as well, I don't really have the capabilities to run a lot of games. The SSCAI runs random bots vs each other, so your bot would only get about 3-5 games per day on there. | ||
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imp42
398 Posts
> What are the best strategies for a StarCraft bot? > I don't think that the programmers who write bots for the StarCraft AI competitions ever asked this question. You are mixing two different things here. Competitions like the SSCAI were created as a playing field for Artificial Intelligence students. A good Starcraft bot has probably very little Artificial Intelligence in it, rather it just follows a set of hard-coded rules. In other words: programmers of AI competitions don't ask themselves that question because a real AI should find out a good strategy and not just execute one it has been fed. That is the whole point of AI. Look at chess or go: programmers define the win condition, implement an optimized algorithm to find it, and let the program do the rest. They don't implement something like "go for a gambit because it is a good strat" Now to actually answer your question on a more abstract level: What would be a good strat for a Starcraft bot? A bot has very high APM but is usually rather poor at decision making. Therefore, a good strategy for a bot exploits APM and minimizes decision making. I would argue that acting requires less decision making than reacting. The sole fact that you minimize possibilities by actively choosing a specific branch supports this argument. Therefore an aggressive strategy is superior to a defensive one. A timing push might work very well, coupled with a build that is safe against most lower-level cheese. Also, micro-intensive situations favor the bot against human players. To give you one example, in BW hydras die like flies to tanks. But a bot would be able to completely eliminate splash damage from any tank hit, therefore standard unit balance does not apply anymore. There are videos on youtube showing off perfect zergling micro against tanks in SC2, if you want to get an impression of what's possible. + Show Spoiler + The above mentioned timing push should therefore use units that benefit greatly from micro and exploit the fact that standard balance does not apply anymore (for bw a muta flock comes to mind, for SC2 maybe oracles). HTH | ||
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Andre
Slovenia3523 Posts
Also I think the best thing would be to use cheeses and one base plays. This eliminates the millions of possibilities that can happen with every passing minute. It's still hard to do, but if you give the AI perfect micro it's doubtful any human can defend against rushes. | ||
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LetaBot
Netherlands557 Posts
On August 06 2016 18:28 Andre wrote: Every time this discussions happens people should first ask themselves what kind of input the AI gets to use. Is it the BW API? Is it a simulation of real keyboard+mouse usage? Is it complete access to the game? Also I think the best thing would be to use cheeses and one base plays. This eliminates the millions of possibilities that can happen with every passing minute. It's still hard to do, but if you give the AI perfect micro it's doubtful any human can defend against rushes. Nope, I tried that. Even if you would have perfect micro, a C level player would still be able to hold it. You might be able to do it 1 game to trow the opponent off, but if you do it every game they can hold it easily. | ||
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Probemicro
3708 Posts
On August 06 2016 11:43 imp42 wrote: The winner of the 2015 SSCAI tournament actually did quite decent macro. That is, expanding quickly and massing hydra (against a two-base protoss turtle attempting to max on carriers, easy 3-0 victory). > What are the best strategies for a StarCraft bot? > I don't think that the programmers who write bots for the StarCraft AI competitions ever asked this question. You are mixing two different things here. Competitions like the SSCAI were created as a playing field for Artificial Intelligence students. A good Starcraft bot has probably very little Artificial Intelligence in it, rather it just follows a set of hard-coded rules. In other words: programmers of AI competitions don't ask themselves that question because a real AI should find out a good strategy and not just execute one it has been fed. That is the whole point of AI. Look at chess or go: programmers define the win condition, implement an optimized algorithm to find it, and let the program do the rest. They don't implement something like "go for a gambit because it is a good strat" Now to actually answer your question on a more abstract level: What would be a good strat for a Starcraft bot? blah blah HTH starcraft is a completely different genre compared to chess and go, for all their crazy mechanics the AI is stuck at D level even till now ever wonder why? i bet the programmers who do not even have fundamental competitive understanding of the game will not. all the crazy marine splitting will not help you if the AI cannot even do something "simple" and intuitive to humans like walling and using mineral walking to defend rushes. also AI do need to at least start emulating human metagame by adopting standard macro BOs. for example in TvT AI should never ever go bio in midgame (which i shockingly see in the last AI TvT i witness). this is not sc2, marines are weaker, naturally clump together when engaging and no amount of splitting will offset the fact that mech is simply superior here. | ||
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sabas123
Netherlands3122 Posts
On August 05 2016 23:59 LetaBot wrote: Well, the BWAPI has the option to run at full speed (as fast as possible), but I only have one cheap laptop available to me. Since these bots are very CPU intensive, running two of them would mean that the game would run at about twice the speed of the speed you would play normally on ICCUP ( the fastest speed mode it is called). Since I need my laptop for other things as well, I don't really have the capabilities to run a lot of games. The SSCAI runs random bots vs each other, so your bot would only get about 3-5 games per day on there. I have a decent cpu (i5-6500, not great by any means), and would happily lend some of its power if you can give me an easy to use version. | ||
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sabas123
Netherlands3122 Posts
On August 07 2016 16:23 Probemicro wrote: starcraft is a completely different genre compared to chess and go, for all their crazy mechanics the AI is stuck at D level even till now ever wonder why? i bet the programmers who do not even have fundamental competitive understanding of the game will not. all the crazy marine splitting will not help you if the AI cannot even do something "simple" and intuitive to humans like walling and using mineral walking to defend rushes. also AI do need to at least start emulating human metagame by adopting standard macro BOs. for example in TvT AI should never ever go bio in midgame (which i shockingly see in the last AI TvT i witness). this is not sc2, marines are weaker, naturally clump together when engaging and no amount of splitting will offset the fact that mech is simply superior here. The idea is that eventually, the AI will keep changing and eventually will come to the most optimal solution, this includes things like walling, scouting, correct unit compositions ect. However that will require quite a lot of time to come to. | ||
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Simberto
Germany11492 Posts
On August 07 2016 18:33 sabas123 wrote: The idea is that eventually, the AI will keep changing and eventually will come to the most optimal solution, this includes things like walling, scouting, correct unit compositions ect. However that will require quite a lot of time to come to. I am pretty sure that that is not how SC AI works currently. And no, AI does not need to adopt the standard human metagame, if it is unable to play in the way a human can. BW AIs are currently very bad at understanding terrain and making (for humans) very easy decisions. Meanwhile, AIs are very good at controlling each unit individually. That means that for a BW bot, marines are a lot better than they are for a human, and tanks are a lot weaker than they are for a human. It is quite important to understand that bots are not humans. They have completely different strengths and weaknesses. A bot will never care that you can only select 12 units. Control groups are an irrelevant concept for bots. A bot can clump 90 Mutas without a problem, and it can theoretically instantly select the irradiated one and move it in a different direction. But a bot sucks at guessing what the enemy does, it often has problems making incredibly intuitive decisions like "A bunch of enemies just killed my scouting scv, now might not be the best time to push out." | ||
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imp42
398 Posts
On August 07 2016 16:23 Probemicro wrote: starcraft is a completely different genre compared to chess and go, for all their crazy mechanics the AI is stuck at D level even till now ever wonder why? i bet the programmers who do not even have fundamental competitive understanding of the game will not. all the crazy marine splitting will not help you if the AI cannot even do something "simple" and intuitive to humans like walling and using mineral walking to defend rushes. also AI do need to at least start emulating human metagame by adopting standard macro BOs. for example in TvT AI should never ever go bio in midgame (which i shockingly see in the last AI TvT i witness). this is not sc2, marines are weaker, naturally clump together when engaging and no amount of splitting will offset the fact that mech is simply superior here. the problem with your post is that you actually didn't read/understand the part that you bluntly replaced with "blabla" when quoting me. (hint: tips for creating a good Starcraft bot != tips for creating a good Artificial Intelligence). You don't know who you're talking to, so don't make any wrong assumptions. And no, Starcraft is not a "completely different game". You'd be surprised how many challenges can be reduced to the same problem. Maybe this helps you: http://graphics.stanford.edu/~mdfisher/GeneralGameLearning.html | ||
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ninazerg
United States7291 Posts
The bot will need to have access to a database of what I'm going to refer to as "scripts" (I think that's what they're called in StarEdit, from what I rmbr) and "sub-scripts". The bot will analyze the game, and then send a query to the database for which script should be run. Each script contains a set of instructions for how the computer will act in that given situation. One way to think about this is a giant series of "if / else if" statements with the argument being passed being a separate 'strategy' or 'tactic' that is predetermined in the script. Let's assume our bot is Zerg Did the Protoss place a pylon at their natural? Yes + Show Spoiler + Run "Protoss fast expand script" No + Show Spoiler + Did the Protoss place a pylon in their main? Yes + Show Spoiler + Run "1-base Protoss script" No + Show Spoiler + Did the Protoss place a pylon on the map? Yes + Show Spoiler + Run "Proxy gate script" No + Show Spoiler + Is the player going 9 nexus to try and juke out the bot? Yes + Show Spoiler + Make continuous Zerglings and attack / build expansion No + Show Spoiler + Does the player have a probe that is not mining anywhere on the map? Yes + Show Spoiler + Kill them with lings; it's too late for them to stop what is coming No + Show Spoiler + wtf are u afk? Each "script" will follow a similar set of if/and/or/else statements and break down into sub-scripts for smaller scenarios, and how the computer will adjust to deal with them. As you can imagine, this will balloon very quickly into a giant tree of separate scripts. Rather than having 500 different end-game scripts, the computer will have basically one end-game script, and all of the other scripts should run until the computer gets to the end-game. Because the end-game in StarCraft is so based around decision-making, i.e., where to send your army, when to send your army, how much food to spend on workers, when to play aggressively, when to play defensively, how to manage heavy losses, etc., it can be difficult to build an AI to accommodate all of these possibilities, and so the designer needs to decide how the computer is going to behave beforehand. Maybe the computer will just be programmed to build nothing but ultralisks and slam them into Protoss bases until they run out of money. Point being - the bot should have a specific end-game goal, such as "Have 6 bases" and then do something very general. I suppose it would be possible to have the bot do cool things, like send zerglings to one location to lure the player and then do a doom drop, but that would be very hard to write out. I'm trying to imagine the easiest bot possible for playing a full game. | ||
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imp42
398 Posts
On August 08 2016 05:58 ninazerg wrote: For a bot to somewhat emulate human behavior, I would propose the following: The bot will need to have access to a database of what I'm going to refer to as "scripts"[...]. Of course this approach has very little to do with Artificial Intelligence, which is perfectly fine. But: basing the bot on a large number of pre-defined scripts is very fragile. In your P FE example, a human could just place a low-ground pylon to trick the bot into thinking it's a FE. If you want to account for this and for all other possible situations you will end up with a such large number of scripts that it won't be feasible anymore. To bring another chess analogy (although some people criticize the comparison), the script approach has been successfully applied to all end-game situations with 7 or less pieces in total. But that was a huge effort for only the very last part of the game. I agree with your statement that the bot should have a specific end game goal. As stated previously being active rather than reactive eliminates a lot of the difficult decision making. | ||
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LetaBot
Netherlands557 Posts
On August 08 2016 05:58 ninazerg wrote: For a bot to somewhat emulate human behavior, I would propose the following: The bot will need to have access to a database of what I'm going to refer to as "scripts" (I think that's what they're called in StarEdit, from what I rmbr) and "sub-scripts". The bot will analyze the game, and then send a query to the database for which script should be run. Each script contains a set of instructions for how the computer will act in that given situation. One way to think about this is a giant series of "if / else if" statements with the argument being passed being a separate 'strategy' or 'tactic' that is predetermined in the script. Let's assume our bot is Zerg Did the Protoss place a pylon at their natural? Yes + Show Spoiler + Run "Protoss fast expand script" No + Show Spoiler + Did the Protoss place a pylon in their main? Yes + Show Spoiler + Run "1-base Protoss script" No + Show Spoiler + Did the Protoss place a pylon on the map? Yes + Show Spoiler + Run "Proxy gate script" No + Show Spoiler + Is the player going 9 nexus to try and juke out the bot? Yes + Show Spoiler + Make continuous Zerglings and attack / build expansion No + Show Spoiler + Does the player have a probe that is not mining anywhere on the map? Yes + Show Spoiler + Kill them with lings; it's too late for them to stop what is coming No + Show Spoiler + wtf are u afk? Each "script" will follow a similar set of if/and/or/else statements and break down into sub-scripts for smaller scenarios, and how the computer will adjust to deal with them. As you can imagine, this will balloon very quickly into a giant tree of separate scripts. Rather than having 500 different end-game scripts, the computer will have basically one end-game script, and all of the other scripts should run until the computer gets to the end-game. Because the end-game in StarCraft is so based around decision-making, i.e., where to send your army, when to send your army, how much food to spend on workers, when to play aggressively, when to play defensively, how to manage heavy losses, etc., it can be difficult to build an AI to accommodate all of these possibilities, and so the designer needs to decide how the computer is going to behave beforehand. Maybe the computer will just be programmed to build nothing but ultralisks and slam them into Protoss bases until they run out of money. Point being - the bot should have a specific end-game goal, such as "Have 6 bases" and then do something very general. I suppose it would be possible to have the bot do cool things, like send zerglings to one location to lure the player and then do a doom drop, but that would be very hard to write out. I'm trying to imagine the easiest bot possible for playing a full game. That is what Dennis Soemers did. He text mined the build orders from liquidpedia, including the hard and soft counters. I got them as well, and added some things from CardinalAllin as well. Still have to fully add them to the bot though. | ||
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