Chess and go are two diametrical strategic board games. In chess, at the beginning of the game it is very easy to clearly foresee how the game will develop in the next few rounds. Simply, the game is not complex at the beginning, while in more later stages it becomes almost impossible to clearly foresee the consequences of each actions. In GO, on the other hand, there is not a limited set of very rigid rules to follow at the beginning, though there are some guidelines that ought to be followed. In more advances stages, instead, intuition is substituted by clear logic of how one should move. How would you define SC2 with regards to these two types of game? Is SC2 more like chess or GO? I'm led to think that it is more like chess. The fact that there are disparate build orders guides on google is a piece of evidence in favor of this hypothesis. In addition,style and intuition take over later in the game. Nevertheless, since new build orders are "discovered" even after months or years the release of the game (bisu's cannon/stargate vs. zerg in BW is an example that comes to my mind), I wonder whether SC2 is really like chess or not. What's your opinion about this? Do you think a possible answer could be that SC2 is in the middle?
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I agree with blackbird. SC2 is a game of incomplete information and is therefore often compared to Poker. In fact, successful SC2 players are often also successful at Poker and vice-versa.
Out of these two options, Go is a better comparison, just look at TvT, that's exactly a Go game. And chess is just too simple compared to Go or starcraft.
I always consider SC more like chess mostly because in chess depending if you use Black or White pieces you could play aggressive or defensive, there many allin strats in chess that if your opponent dont anticipate you die, many openings that may give you advantage in the late or mid game, and basically observation and anticipation is the key to win, like I consider is the same in SC.
Wow surprised by the responses Guessing none are serious chess or go players Yes there are differences board games being turn based while RTS games being not but the similarities in the game game design are numerous. Chess is about using all the different "units" you have to kill your opponent's king. Certainly the unit use fits but SC2 has a vastly different goal Go however is, I feel, very similar to SC2 at its core. Both put strong importance on board/map control to gain economy/points. You have similar importance place on timings - also in chess though I feel its stronger in go - and of course like chess you have different opening "build orders"
It's like a mix of Poker, Chess, Boxing, Nascar (your skill comes from how well you control a piece of "machinery") and WWE (your personality means a LOT in sc2 ^_^ ).
the diffrence between chess and bw/sc2 is that it isn't artificially hinderd by mechaniques speaking from a point of strategy, which in sc is really strict when you get to a high level.
On April 27 2013 00:05 blackbrrd wrote: SC2 is a game of incomplete information, and is probably very unlike both games.
So is Chess. You dont know what moves your opponent will do, same as in SC2.
Incomplete information in game theory means you don't have full information about current state of the game, not future moves.
In SC, you don't know if your opponent has a dark shrine or not, that's current state of the game.
In chess, you know exactly where every piece is at right now, so you can deduce a set for possible next moves from opponent. In SC, you can't deduce that exact set.
On April 27 2013 00:42 Dangermousecatdog wrote: Neither, it is so far removed from chess or go, you might as wel ask whether sc2 is more like a cat or dog.
Chess is indeed complete information but many sort of think that means there is absolutely no guessing or predicting what your opponent will do. Time is the limiting resource really for what moves you can consider so there is definately some guessing as to what your opponent will do as a focussed search for good moves tends to be more fruitful than a board search. Chess computers basically narrow down the search by heuristics and so do humans. That also means there is some luck factor in predicting what sort of opening your opponet will do. I've heard chess pro's say they were lucky in correctly predicting opening X their opponent would do and then countering it by studying a certain variant that they think will do well against it plus being more familiar in that situation. In a way it's slightly comparible to the mindgames going on in high level Box sc2.
Of course I agree with most others, comparison between RTS and boardgames is very limited in many aspects.
On April 27 2013 00:26 AnomalySC2 wrote: It's like a mix of Poker, Chess, Boxing, Nascar (your skill comes from how well you control a piece of "machinery") and WWE (your personality means a LOT in sc2 ^_^ ).
The real-time element makes worlds of difference. More than you can imagine. Everything you know and like about SC is that way because it is real-time.
I've really got it. it isn't at all like chess or go. It certainly isn't like poker; its hardly even a strategy game. Its like moving something really heavy, too heavy for any reasonable person to even try to shift. Every time you play you are trying to move this really heavy object and sometimes you shift it a bit more than the other guy and sometimes it falls on your foot. Ultimately all you have done is compared how well you can do something impossible to how well some other guy can.
Well I would say both game games have certain comparisons to sc2 in that they are competitive games and have elements of strategy, but that is where the similarities end. I like RTS games and its a great test of many skills: mechanics, strategy, determination and reactions. Chess is a pure strategy game that has been developed for centuries and has had genius level minds playing it over the years.
I've always thought that SC2 has elements of both go and chess (among other games as everyone has pointed out).
The units do not all behave homogeneously and positioning matters a great detail. In that regard it's like chess. On the other hand, on a larger scale, carving out the map and controlling territories is akin to strategies in go.
On April 27 2013 00:26 AnomalySC2 wrote: It's like a mix of Poker, Chess, Boxing, Nascar (your skill comes from how well you control a piece of "machinery") and WWE (your personality means a LOT in sc2 ^_^ ).
Hah! I like that you managed to include Nascar & WWE in there, and made it actually work somewhat... :D
On April 27 2013 00:05 blackbrrd wrote: SC2 is a game of incomplete information, and is probably very unlike both games.
So is Chess. You dont know what moves your opponent will do, same as in SC2.
They just word it in a bitter tone, but right in the core. RTS games are about gathering informations and using those against your opponent. Chess and Go have god vision, they are not comparable apart from that you need to think. It is probably closer to Battleship then Chess.
And no Chess is not a game of incomplete information. You should know what your opponent will do, since you have all the time (well 7ish hours) and information you need to know what your opponent is trying to do. If you don't there is no chance of victory. It is more the decision how you use what your opponent does to get an advantage.
On April 27 2013 01:09 rEalGuapo wrote: Is grey more like 7 or orange juice?
7, because it's sort of a middle number (as far as typical start and end points go) and grey is sort of a middle shade. Yes, "orange juice," has a colour in its name, but that is superfluous to what orange juice is. I would similarly say that grey is more like 7 than like grey hair; 7 and grey have the same middling essence and they could easily be used to represent each other. Grey hair just happens to have grey as a property.
sc2 is like playing different types of chess (international, chinese, japanese, etc) on a large board. players must play with a hand on the forehead (like saluting) and only look at his or her own pieces.
The rest brought up an important point regarding perfect information and real time vs. turn base.
For the sake of discussion, I will give a rather informed answer on your question. (I had previously received professional training for both Chess and Go)
SC2 is more like Chess, because:
- Pieces in Chess have specific purposes and they do not move in the same way. Say a rook move horizontally and vertically, while a bishop moves diagonally. Units in SC2 have their own purposes and work differently, which is like the pieces in Chess. In contrast, the pieces in Go have the similar "fundamental" value.
- Losing an important piece without trading for something of equal relative value could snowball and lose you the game in Chess. You do not want to trade a Queen for a Pawn, all else being equal. Similarly, you do not want to trade a Colossus with a Marine. This is relatively more abstract in Go in terms of relative value.
- There are several ways to evaluate who is in the lead in SC2, Go and Chess. In SC2, it could be determined by supply, number of bases, tech, positioning and upgrades. This is closer to Chess than Go. The positioning in Go is more abstract than Chess. In Chess, you sometimes see players sacrifice pieces to gain positional advantage which is common TvT. Tech is more similar to the logic of Chess's important pieces vs minor pieces. Supply can be argued both ways for Chess and Go. The number of bases is closer to Go (I will mention it later). Upgrade is quite irrelevant in this context, unless you want to consider promoting a pawn to a queen. Overall, the evaluation of the "state of the game" is closer to Chess.
SC2 is more like Go, because:
- The "space" on a Go board decreases as the game goes by since more pieces are placed on the board. On the other hand, the "space" on a Chess board increases as the game goes by since more pieces are removed from the board. In SC2, more bases are taken when game gets into the late game, and the movement of the units gets more restricted because the map is often "cut-half".
- Chess opening is relatively less flexible than Go. You can compare the first ten moves of high quality games in Chess, and the first ten for Go. You will notice that Go diverges much more than Chess after the first four moves. This is quite similar to SC2. For e.g. you will get a pylon then gateway etc. before you start to diverge.
- More specifically, it is harder to make opening changes in Chess in comparison to Go because the moves are often regarded as the best "consequences". It is harder to argue that the moves being set in sandstone for ages is not the best move for a specific opening than Go. In Go, the opening is more "elastic", as the "consequences" are often considered as "options", and these options are often debated by top pros in terms of which is the best move. In Go pro games, you will realise players often come up with new moves to beat the metagame as the opponent might not be as prepared than the other in terms of the "consequences". This is closer to SC2 in terms of the metagame changes, as you often see pros make minor changes to be ahead in the metagame. There is this saying, "Opening teaches you opening, late game teaches you Chess."
- In SC2, players have to expand, and the battles often revolve around limiting opponent's number of mining bases, while trying to expand yourself. This is quite similar to the fundamental aim of Go, whereby every move is aimed to limit opponent's territory while trying to increase your own.
On April 27 2013 00:18 eScaper-tsunami wrote: Neither because both go and chess have a finite of moves you can compute.
SC2 also only has a number of finite moves. And with current computation power we can compute neither SC2 nor Go (and Chess only endgame iirc).
I think Blizzard could absolutely design an AI to win 100 games out of 100, assuming the AI knows the build order you're going for of course. There is no perfectly safe build in the game, there is a hard counter to everything.
People are so hung up on incoplete information. If you know how to play rock-paper-scissors you understand how to handle incomplete information.
The big difference between chess and go seems to be specifics vs more general understanding. In chess you almost always lose because of some simple error. There's just so much stuff to look at that one player is bound to miss something 'simple'.
Go games OTOH are more often decided on judgement or one player having a better overall understanding, rather than one player specifically misreading something. At least that's how I see it, I'm not very good at Go at all.
In that sense chess seems to be a closer match than Go. BTW, poker isn't a perfect analogy either. Once strategies are completely revealed there's almost no play left in poker. I.e 95% of the play is centered around misleading your opponent and figuring out his strategy (the other 5% is coming up with an optimal response based on their strategy). In SC2 there's plenty of play left when both players have essentially complete information. If anything, only a small minority of games are decided by mind games.
I have to agree with people who say it's "like" SC:BW. That would be the baseline comparison, and the thing to expand upon.
Comparing it to poker / chess / GO or anything like that is pretty ridiculous, IMO. They're turn-based and have no elements of information gathering. Considering the fact that there are decades of RTS titles to compare the game to, comparing it to anything else is silly. You can explain the concept of tactics / strategy through chess, or explain the concept of incomplete information and risk by mentioning poker, but they're just over-simplifications of something that is best compared to other strategy games.
You want to explain SC2 to someone? Tell them it's an economy-based real-timestrategy game in a sci-fi setting. If they ask what it's like, tell them Age of Empires, or SC:BW. If that's not enough, they probably don't really want to know.
On April 27 2013 00:26 AnomalySC2 wrote: It's like a mix of Poker, Chess, Boxing, Nascar (your skill comes from how well you control a piece of "machinery") and WWE (your personality means a LOT in sc2 ^_^ ).
This question used to come up pretty regularly, I'm glad its died down now. Artosis was the first one to think that SC2 was anything remotely similar to chess, I guess because he wanted really badly to make SC2 seem like an intellectual game. And I'm sure it does have that aspect as build orders can be very precise. But the lack of information throws a wrench into the whole equation. When you see pro-gamers lose to some rush that they didn't expect, you think: No, this is not like chess. These ridiculous "surprise" rushes don't happen, and lack of information doesn't leave a player crippled or produce an outright loss. Same with losses due to not having 300 APM that can handle amazing micro or macro.
Furthermore, I don't think there are quite as many twelve year old grandmaster/masters players as there are in the highest echelons of chess. The ones that did get that high (Magnus Carlsen) actually deserve it as they are true prodigies. So the difference in intellectual challenge is massive, which is a direct consequence of the game play, which clearly emphasizes the difference between SC2 and real strategy games like Chess or GO. Sorry if that sounded elitist, but there is a pretty big difference. I guess it just feels a bit insulting to compare one of the greatest board games of all time, that has stumped and been enjoyed by some of the greatest thinkers throughout history, being seriously compared to SC2. Its like Transformers to a great work of cinema, it just shouldn't happen
Chess and go are two diametrical strategic board games. In chess, at the beginning of the game it is very easy to clearly foresee how the game will develop in the next few rounds. Simply, the game is not complex at the beginning, while in more later stages it becomes almost impossible to clearly foresee the consequences of each actions. In GO, on the other hand, there is not a limited set of very rigid rules to follow at the beginning, though there are some guidelines that ought to be followed. In more advances stages, instead, intuition is substituted by clear logic of how one should move.
You are wrong about chess imo, chess is in the beginning just as complex as it is after 20 moves if not more. It is just that there is alot of knowledge stored about the beginning of the game wich can be studied,but that does not make it less complex in anny way though, you can even argue that chess becomes less complicated the further the game goes, where the endgame allows for verry deep calculations due to the limited posibilities every move (less pieces), you are right about go though imo. Annyway: if have to choose between chess and go i think sc is more similar to go in the sense that it is impossible to make calculations by logic (completely impossible in sc if you consider every pixel to be a field/square/point) and players thus skip calculations and use their positional judgement.
"It's like a mix of Poker, Chess, Boxing, Nascar (your skill comes from how well you control a piece of "machinery") and WWE (your personality means a LOT in sc2 ^_^ )."
Nice comparison, control is extremely important in sc and is absolutely not important in chess or go, noone has problems moving their pieces or placing their stones. Maybe it can be compared to playing lightning chess or go, where you have to move the pieces or place the stones with some robot operated by your keyboard.
Are chess and GO really diametric? I guess the board technically has a diameter but I wasn't aware they were referred to as such. Huh - I guess you could call SC2 diametric then also because of the fixed (in-game) map size. Weird!
Edit: Actually do squares have diameters? I think thats a stretch.
idk about go, but it's nothing like chess. the closest a game of sc2 could come to chess is a mirror matchup with both players seeing the whole map including the opponents base/units. and even then it would be miles away from chess.
I think it is a fun comparison. I think SCII is closer to go than chess. Chess is matching the same units against one another, and attempting to find imbalances within the units themselves. GO is far closer to SCII in that it is a positioning battle. The clear difference is the vision piece. Fun question, obviously the internet decided to bring out all the knives because of the subtle differences between each game, but hey, interesting question!
The biggest difference is in the fact that chess and go are purely intellectual games, whereas SC2 is mainly dexterity/multitasking, the intellectual part plays much smaller role.
EDIT:Although of course comparisons can be made. People saying that it is like comparing oranges and apples. They are both fruit and comparisons can be made, it just must be clear at what level of abstractions we are making them.
In my personal experience, it's closest to snooker - it takes incredible precision - both physical and mental, as well as high intelect and prediction ability.
On April 27 2013 00:26 AnomalySC2 wrote: It's like a mix of Poker, Chess, Boxing, Nascar (your skill comes from how well you control a piece of "machinery") and WWE (your personality means a LOT in sc2 ^_^ ).
I hope someone will write a comprehensive article on game theory and starcraft 2, so that we can just refer to that article instead of having these threads all the time.
"Is *real time game with incomplete information X* more like *turn based game with full vision Y* or *turn based game with full vision Z*?" is a stupid debate.
In a way SC2 is turned based. This is assuming both players are playing mechanically close to perfection, turns are taken based off of which build order are vsing which. I guess the later into the game it goes the further it gets away from that loose comparison, but yeah, maybe someone understands what im getting at...
Yea. I guess, if your just asking 'what is it closest to'. Then your gonna get mixed results because SC2 uses certain skillsets that both Chess and Go use.
But really, if you need to compare sc2 to something else, theres no reason to abandon the RTS genre. If somebody is asking you 'wtf is this game your always playing' and your like 'dude its like chess' then your kinda lieing. Just say its an RTS similar to Age of Empires, Warcraft 3, Broodwar, Dawn of War, etc. Compare it to the games that are comparable imo because they are all on the same Genre.
Now if you want some off the wall comparison, then i guess you could say: SC2 is kinda sorta like a mix between 1v1 Risk, Chess, Go, Poker, etc. But nobody is going to be like 'oh thats what the game is like' when you give like 5 different things SC2 is similar to, yet dont actually put anything from the same genre in your answer. You would just end up confusing people
On April 27 2013 03:40 AnomalySC2 wrote: In a way SC2 is turned based. This is assuming both players are playing mechanically close to perfection, turns are taken based off of which build order are vsing which. I guess the later into the game it goes the further it gets away from that loose comparison, but yeah, maybe someone understands what im getting at...
This is really of no significance. Theoretically, every game could be considered turn based if you make turns sufficiently short. Then in every single turn player would either do some action or pass a turn.
That, however, has only theoretical impact. In practice turn based games give you time to decide what to do.
SC2 is not at all like Chess or Go. Tic Tac Toe is much more similar to chess/go, though much simpler.
I have no idea about GO, but I'm 100% sure it is absolutely not a bit close to chess. I mean, is as close to chess as any 1v1 competitive game. Chess is a sport.
On April 27 2013 03:40 AnomalySC2 wrote: In a way SC2 is turned based. This is assuming both players are playing mechanically close to perfection, turns are taken based off of which build order are vsing which. I guess the later into the game it goes the further it gets away from that loose comparison, but yeah, maybe someone understands what im getting at...
This is really of no significance. Theoretically, every game could be considered turn based if you make turns sufficiently short. Then in every single turn player would either do some action or pass a turn.
That, however, has only theoretical impact. In practice turn based games give you time to decide what to do.
SC2 is not at all like Chess or Go. Tic Tac Toe is much more similar to chess/go, though much simpler.
It takes a first year computer science student to call SC2 turn based. :/ Let's not care that this is a game played by humans who don't operate on computer time, that by pretending it's turn based you hit very real computational limits within the second, that there are many ways to model the game to reduce complexity (whether in micro or build order wise) etc.
Starcraft is clearly more like chess than Go. In my mind, nothing matches the beauty of Go's complexity from simplicity.
The one thing that Go has in common with Starcraft is building and base placement, as well as army positioning: as in Go, it's important to think in advance and place your first buildings at places that later connect with other places to form strong arcs, and similarly with flanking in battles.
But structurally, chess all the way, Go is a unique gem.
P.S. I believe if there was no Fog of War in Starcraft, it was going to look more like Go than it is now - in terms of picking bases. Currently it's way too risky to take distant bases first, because the opponent can just show up with his army there and you won't be able to defend or punish him in time. However, if the whole map was visible, you could react and thus taking forward bases and later connecting them becomes more viable. The game would be completely different though, and probably would require economic flow with many more bases per map, thus base-picking would become fundamental.
You can draw analogies to poker and chess and such, and it works in some regards.
However none of them are great because those are turn based games whereas SC2 is not, that's a huge difference that makes comparisions really difficult to turn based games.
There are aspects of both games in chess.
Poker: Incomplete information, using what info you do know to make deductions about what your opponent probably has and will probalby do, and tailoring your strategy accordingly, comes up alot in SC2.
Chess: Positioning your pieces to best counter their pieces, maximizing your pieces utility, attacking weaknesses in a position, etc., comes up alot in SC2.
so yeah, there are common elements between the games but none of them are exactly the same clearly.
imo there are things that are very similar between chess and sc2. Like openings(build order), control and even castling.
castling - I consider castling as walling in sc2, why? Because it protects you from being defeated or losing control early on the game. Castling is made because you want to protect your king from threats of your opponent and you do walling because you don't want to have swarms of opponent's units inside your base that can cause you the game.
openings - there are tons of openings invented in chess, like ruy lopez, frence defense, indian bishop and many more.. In sc2/bw this openings are considered as build orders like 12 nexus(15 in sc2), BBS, 6 pool etc. Even cheese exist in chess(Legall's mate, Fool's mate, 4 move checkmate)
control - Yes, control in chess exist, every piece in chess are capable of controlling the field, knights acts like drops because it is the only piece that are capable of skipping some pieces. The knight can do a check while threatening to take a piece at the same time without having a threat of being taken. Bishops and rooks and queen act like siege tank/swarm host because they can control your move in the chess board.
I believe there are more things that sc2/bw and chess are alike, but because I only have a little knowledge of chess, i can't make any more similarities.
On April 27 2013 00:10 Atlasy wrote: it's more similar to Poker imo
Definitely agree here. Though, I think SC2 is better than Poker since there is a lot more influence from the player than Poker has. Chess and Go are pure strategy games. There are no elements of randomness in them. There is no blind guessing. You have everything you need to know to play a perfect game. It's up to you to do it. With SC2, one could blindly assume the other player was going CC first and so did a double reaper build. Turns out the other player didn't CC first and could defend the reaper build, setting the reaper guy behind. Now, fortunately, you can still win games by outplaying your opponent in other aspects even when behind economically due to build orders. I would say SC2 is a mix between Poker and WC3, as silly as that may sound. WC3 didn't have the same issues SC2 has with FoW (lack of information). But Poker does!
As some others mentioned, Stratego could be compared to SC2. Stratego may actually be the closest board game to SC2 in fact. If you consider the placement of your pieces as a build order, then both games have blind "build order" wins. You always try and make the best decision, but when you don't have any way of getting that information, sometimes you just have to guess. You send a scout to test the waters (find out the placement of pieces and bombs) just like an SCV. Though, scouts are used much better defensively in Chess and Stratego than SCVs are in SC2. But, both rely heavily on them (scouts and SCVs)
While threads like this have existed before, don't be asshats and say "hurr durr, SC2 is more like ping pong." It's actually interesting to look at SC2 and see what makes it a strategic game. How is it any different from a strategic board game? Aside from the micro/macro aspects, it has FoW which prevents one from having complete knowledge. Is that a good thing? Or would SC2 be a better strategy game if you actually know what your opponent was doing?
It's positioning of units and formations in engagements comes out like a chess engagement speed up x8 but the way you hide and develop information/strategy comes out like a professional poker player.
On April 27 2013 05:59 dreamsmasher wrote: is pizza more like a tomato or bacon.
Bad analogy since pizza sauce generally has tomato's lol : P so it's obviously tomato. You should have said is a pizza more like a hammer or a cloud? Each instance it makes no sense, if that was the joke you were trying to put over : D
On April 27 2013 02:51 radscorpion9 wrote: This question used to come up pretty regularly, I'm glad its died down now. Artosis was the first one to think that SC2 was anything remotely similar to chess, I guess because he wanted really badly to make SC2 seem like an intellectual game. And I'm sure it does have that aspect as build orders can be very precise. But the lack of information throws a wrench into the whole equation. When you see pro-gamers lose to some rush that they didn't expect, you think: No, this is not like chess. These ridiculous "surprise" rushes don't happen, and lack of information doesn't leave a player crippled or produce an outright loss. Same with losses due to not having 300 APM that can handle amazing micro or macro.
Furthermore, I don't think there are quite as many twelve year old grandmaster/masters players as there are in the highest echelons of chess. The ones that did get that high (Magnus Carlsen) actually deserve it as they are true prodigies. So the difference in intellectual challenge is massive, which is a direct consequence of the game play, which clearly emphasizes the difference between SC2 and real strategy games like Chess or GO. Sorry if that sounded elitist, but there is a pretty big difference. I guess it just feels a bit insulting to compare one of the greatest board games of all time, that has stumped and been enjoyed by some of the greatest thinkers throughout history, being seriously compared to SC2. Its like Transformers to a great work of cinema, it just shouldn't happen
You fall into a similar trap as artosis in your second paragraph. You can't access any accurate appraisal of how intellectual Starcraft is because the abstract side of the game is limited by mechanical performance. The intellectual aspect is in an envelope defined by dexterity and speed. Because of this, you can't really get an accurate picture of the true highest skill Starcraft.
On April 27 2013 03:34 Grumbels wrote: I hope someone will write a comprehensive article on game theory and starcraft 2, so that we can just refer to that article instead of having these threads all the time.
"Is *real time game with incomplete information X* more like *turn based game with full vision Y* or *turn based game with full vision Z*?" is a stupid debate.
You can draw a lot from both games though in terms of strategic thinking or approaches to analysis.
Eg all 3 games are well learnt through the use of proverbs as general heuristic devices.
Also you cannot possibly argue that sc has the same depth as go if you have got to a high level at go. Skill levels in go are also quantitivley measured - the difference between a 3d and a 5d is mindblowing. The difference between 5k and 1k is also staggering
Go is about really deep reading and even then you have to make large 'vague' judgement calls after you have finished, sc is about finesse with units once your mechanics are down. You simply dont have the tiem in sc2 to explore a situation in game as you do in go. SC2 is solved outside of the game. You dont just come up with an amazing build on the spur of the moment mid game wheras you constantly do that in go - yet the basic fundemental knowledge required to not be a noob at go requires at least a couple of years of hard hard study - more than 4 in most peoples cases.
As for saying you cant judge the intellectual aspect of sc i disagree. Most people reading this - me included - probably cant because we haven't nailed the mechanics. that doesn't mean that statement is true for everyone.
hmmmm great post really excellent question, thank you so much for putting time/money/effort into this deep deep question...
To answer it, i would have to say that starcraft is kind of like, age of empires, or rise of nations or warcraft... It is not a turn-based style like chess or go, but a real-time strategy game..
there you go, lets make a new thread now about toiletseats and if they are anything similar to a regular chair in any way!! come on its gonna be fun
Backgammon. The rolls of the dice are the luck of the draw. You spot the drop, you went robo against blinik, you fast expanded and he thought you were allinning. The game board and how you use the dice is strategy and game sense. You put yourself in a great position to use further dice rolls. You macro hard. You see a path towards victory and set yourself up for it.
You want the game board such that you can play off luck. This is similar to scouting for opponent tech so you can better respond to the opponent's army. Spread observers or overlords or sensor towers can help respond to drops, though occasionally some get through or hit with unexpected strength. You react to your opponent in similar ways in both games. You play with the current game state and try to limit his good moves.
Mechanics don't really figure in, and I see others blending a board game or card game with things like Boxing and Nascar.
This game has hard counters for each piece, and more importantly, game starts off with all pieces distributed randomly, and covered (for some moves you will have to open the pieces up)
But I think other than the incomplete information that other people is mentioning on the thread, I think the more important aspect of RTS is the mechanics. If you cannot execute things fast enough, and produce more than your opponent by proper multitasking, the incomplete information becomes irrelevant.
I guess this needs to be pointed out. The question was not "What game do you think SC2 is like?" nor was it "How similar is SC2 to Go or Chess?" And certainly it was not "How do you think the skill/depth required in Go and Chess compare to the skill/depth required in SC2?" The Question was "Is SC2 more like Go or Chess?"
All three are strategy games and share at least that core concept. I find it impossible to imagine that you seriously cannot compare these games on any level and must give up, lamenting how it is as if you are being asked to compare SC2 to unrelated animals, colors, or numbers. That is completely silly.
While I'm not an expert player of any of these 3 games, my thought would be that it is most similar to Go. If you think of TvT's in particular, the territory control and map domination plays out in a similar manner. More similar at least than in Chess in my opinion.
On April 27 2013 07:10 Befree wrote: I guess this needs to be pointed out. The question was not "What game do you think SC2 is like?" nor was it "How similar is SC2 to Go or Chess?" And certainly it was not "How do you think the skill/depth required in Go and Chess compare to the skill/depth required in SC2?" The Question was "Is SC2 more like Go or Chess?"
All three are strategy games and share at least that core concept. I find it impossible to imagine that you seriously cannot compare these games on any level and must give up, lamenting how it is as if you are being asked to compare SC2 to unrelated animals, colors, or numbers. That is completely silly.
While I'm not an expert player of any of these 3 games, my thought would be that it is most similar to Go. If you think of TvT's in particular, the territory control and map domination plays out in a similar manner. More similar at least than in Chess in my opinion.
it's a stupid question because RTS doesn't have moves the way a turn based game does. execution is the most important skill, not game theory or knowledge. what little game knowledge there is in terms of how to react to your opponent is trivial. sc2's more similar to poker because every "move" in sc2 is playing the odds and trying to guess your opponents position.
On April 27 2013 07:10 Befree wrote:While I'm not an expert player of any of these 3 games, my thought would be that it is most similar to Go. If you think of TvT's in particular, the territory control and map domination plays out in a similar manner. More similar at least than in Chess in my opinion.
One other reason to side with Go is that Chess is a game of very limited number of moves. You can map them, etc. Go is still a game of limited number of moves, but the limit is so high it's nearly continuous, and exploring every possible move is completely impossible. SC2 goes even further in this direction, because you can always refine your play, at any resolution you want: the game possibilities are continuous, both because of the continuous battle ground and and time. In that sense, it's far away from Chess AND Go, but the logics of approaching and studying Go is more applicable than the one used with Chess since you can't map and study every possible move. SC2 is clearly analysable with patterns like go (both local and global patterns, aka "limited engagements with a given composition, with a given outcome if each player goes for the optimal play", and "larger scale builds composed of those smaller scale executions bringing to a global result").
The biggest difference, though, is that, because of real time and the infinity of possibilities, SC2 plays are way less refined than Go ones. You often have to take decisions on the fly and based on limited informations, and you can't have perfect execution, making for "errors", or non-perfect reading of the patterns. This makes the patterns extremely hard to study compared to Go.
But if we had players playing with no reflexion delay and at an extreme level, SC2 would look a lot like Go, with patterns and developments unfolding and being readables (with perfect scouting, for example, the information is very close to total, and with perfect execution, a given engagement would always end in a given result with the same decisions being made). The human factor is way too big for it to be the case in real starcraft games though, and that's what makes the game so enjoyable to watch and so hard to play.
If you find a game which is not a videogame that requires knowledge on economic and gameplay level, being blindfolded for the most part of it while you also play a piano with one hand and ping pong with the another, i will say that game is pretty close to sc2.
I don't see why people compare turn based games with real time games. They are different beasts and require different areas of expertise.
I have played both Go, Chess and Starcraft and I would have to say Go. In Go you have territories, balance between offense/defense, direction of play and invasions, which can be applied in Starcraft in a similar fasion. But thats just how I interpret the gameplay.
I would go with Chess simply because of the different kinds of pieces is slightly more analogous. Board control and positioning is important in both, but Go has a more important timing aspect as well. I'd still go with Chess in the end, though.
On April 27 2013 00:18 eScaper-tsunami wrote: Neither because both go and chess have a finite of moves you can compute.
The number of possible moves in Chess and Go are so large that this comparison really doesn't matter.
On April 27 2013 00:21 Charlie.Sheen wrote: Out of these two options, Go is a better comparison, just look at TvT, that's exactly a Go game. And chess is just too simple compared to Go or starcraft.
On April 27 2013 00:05 blackbrrd wrote: SC2 is a game of incomplete information, and is probably very unlike both games.
So is Chess. You dont know what moves your opponent will do, same as in SC2.
Are you serious? Do you play either game? Do you play any games? In SC2, you don't necessarily know what moves your opponent has done, or even is doing. Whereas in EVERY GAME IN EXISTENCE you don't know what moves your opponent will make.
SC2 is like poker crossed with ping pong crossed with day trading crossed with juggling crossed with fencing crossed with some sort of professional speed-typing championship.
On April 27 2013 11:42 Inimic wrote: Man, I like your thread but... can you not break up your OP into paragraphs? It hurts my head to even look at that block of text...
For real, there's an edit button...
Anyway, Flash learned to play Go in order to improve at SC2, and he was allegedly very talented at it. The more you know.
You can see elements of GO play in his mech play in BW especially in TvT.
I played a bit of GO and when I saw Flash take out the right bottom corner on the opposite side of the map against Fantasy I was like holy shit that's just like a move you would do in GO.
He started on the top left corner with Fantasy on the bottom left. The rate of tank production is roughly the same so you can think of it as like a turn based game of GO with finite pieces over time. Fantasy put most of his pieces in the middle and controlled the center. So Flash created light influence on the top and right hand side of the map and then used that to sneak a defensive perimeter on the bottom right corner and putting a lot of his pieces there. Taking a base which was very difficult to attack simultaneously causing Fantasy to have to expend a lot of pieces to expand in the normal direction and reduce his influence in the center.
If I had to pick it would be chess. Go piece/unit being identical really just throws it off for me.
but sc2 is a class of its own. elements of chess and go are definitely found in sc2 but there elements in sc2 which simply do not exist in chess or go. First, element of mechanic involving micro(same unit/piece but varying capacity when handled by different players) and macro(resource management and creation of units/pieces) do not exist in chess/go I'd say. Also in terms of strategy,units/piece do not have strict counters in chess, its just about positioning.
edit: well I guess there is new unit creation aspect in go, duh
As a chess master ("National Master" or "Life Master" is the official title technically) these kind of threads always give me an entertaining read.
You can try to draw similarities between the the two but you can do that with just about anything. My point is that they are completely different games/sports outside of the whole strategy element. The closest similarity I usually draw on this subject is comparing memorizing opening theory in chess to memorizing build orders in SC2. Past that the two really diverge into completely different beasts.
Cool topic! There are fascinating comparisons to be made here. Like some others, I'm surprised by how many folks either aren't interested in the topic or don't think there are significant comparisons to be made.
Chess and Go have a lot of similarities between them, and I think SC shares many of these. Setting Go aside, since I know less about it, consider Kasparov's diagnosis of chess as a game about material (number and strength of units), quality (how much space do those units control and what is the value of that space), and time (how well is one developed, how safe are the king and other assets of the position, how exposed is the opposition's king, etc). The value of a position is a function of these factors. One rough way to think about these in SC might be that one's units are one's material, their tech and upgrades are their quality, and time is function of one's economy, production, and mobility. Or you could think of mobility as part of quality, or production as part of material, etc. etc. The point is not that these categories are completely precise, but that they are useful heuristics in chess and seem to be potentially useful heuristics for understanding SC as well.
I've never played go, but Starcraft 2 is really nothing like chess at all, other than drying extremely broad comparisons like "they both involve strategy" and "you have a plan at the beginning".
On April 27 2013 13:08 GolemMadness wrote: I've never played go, but it's really nothing like chess at all, other than drying extremely broad comparisons like "they both involve strategy" and "you have a plan at the beginning".
I disagree. Here are some cool similarities between them: the essence of strategy in both of them involves generating counterplay in the part of the board you are strong and your opponent is weak, maximizing the maneuverability/flexibility of your forces, and balancing security with space control. I think these are just a few of the interesting similarities.
Here's another: there seems to be an important sense in which strategical and tactical viewpoints demand to be balanced. In Go, one must know and be able to recognize common tactical sequences involved in Ko, killing a unit (as in the "ladder"), and using the edges and corners of the board. This is like Chess in which the discovered attack, pin, and fork are just basic tactical motifs one must know. But there are also strategical elements: in Chess, weakened squares, king safety, and the general concepts I mentioned in my last post about material, quality, and time. The importance of the corners early, then sides, then middle is one analog in Go.
To come back to starcraft, I'm sure it's quite evident that strategy and tactics are closely related to macro/micro. Of course the analogy is not perfect--that's why SC is a fascinating game in its own right!
On April 27 2013 13:08 GolemMadness wrote: I've never played go, but it's really nothing like chess at all, other than drying extremely broad comparisons like "they both involve strategy" and "you have a plan at the beginning".
I disagree. Here are some cool similarities between them: the essence of strategy in both of them involves generating counterplay in the part of the board you are strong and your opponent is weak, maximizing the maneuverability/flexibility of your forces, and balancing security with space control. I think these are just a few of the interesting similarities.
Here's another: there seems to be an important sense in which strategical and tactical viewpoints demand to be balanced. In Go, one must know and be able to recognize common tactical sequences involved in Ko, killing a unit (as in the "ladder"), and using the edges and corners of the board. This is like Chess in which the discovered attack, pin, and fork are just basic tactical motifs one must know. But there are also strategical elements: in Chess, weakened squares, king safety, and the general concepts I mentioned in my last post about material, quality, and time. The importance of the corners early, then sides, then middle is one analog in Go.
To come back to starcraft, I'm sure it's quite evident that strategy and tactics are closely related to macro/micro. Of course the analogy is not perfect--that's why SC is a fascinating game in its own right!
The same thing could be said about tons of things. In hockey, you often generate plays where you're strong and your opponent's weak, maximizing the maneuverability/flexibility of your players and balancing security with space control.
Strategy and tactics are not at all related to macro/micro. Tactics are calculating exact sequences of moves that force something which improves your position/gains you material. Micro is your ability to quickly and accurately move units around. Strategy is extremely broad and encompasses a lot of things. Macro is quickly building units/buildings at the right times. To compare these things is a HUGE stretch.
On April 27 2013 13:08 GolemMadness wrote: I've never played go, but it's really nothing like chess at all, other than drying extremely broad comparisons like "they both involve strategy" and "you have a plan at the beginning".
I disagree. Here are some cool similarities between them: the essence of strategy in both of them involves generating counterplay in the part of the board you are strong and your opponent is weak, maximizing the maneuverability/flexibility of your forces, and balancing security with space control. I think these are just a few of the interesting similarities.
Here's another: there seems to be an important sense in which strategical and tactical viewpoints demand to be balanced. In Go, one must know and be able to recognize common tactical sequences involved in Ko, killing a unit (as in the "ladder"), and using the edges and corners of the board. This is like Chess in which the discovered attack, pin, and fork are just basic tactical motifs one must know. But there are also strategical elements: in Chess, weakened squares, king safety, and the general concepts I mentioned in my last post about material, quality, and time. The importance of the corners early, then sides, then middle is one analog in Go.
To come back to starcraft, I'm sure it's quite evident that strategy and tactics are closely related to macro/micro. Of course the analogy is not perfect--that's why SC is a fascinating game in its own right!
The same thing could be said about tons of things. In hockey, you often generate plays where you're strong and your opponent's weak, maximizing the maneuverability/flexibility of your players and balancing security with space control.
Strategy and tactics are not at all related to macro/micro. Tactics are calculating exact sequences of moves that force something which improves your position/gains you material. Micro is your ability to quickly and accurately move units around. Strategy is extremely broad and encompasses a lot of things. Macro is quickly building units/buildings at the right times. To compare these things is a HUGE stretch.
I guess you are right that micro/macro really is different than strategy/tactics. Point taken there.
Nevertheless, I don't think it diminishes the comparison between Go/Chess and Starcraft to point out that other things are similar to them as well. I would happily agree that hockey shares many of the similarities I've mentioned. Is the idea that because the same thing could be said about tons of things that it is a trivial point--that chess/go and starcraft have no more in common than any games involving strategy?
I think the similarities I've pointed out indicate deeper structural similarity relations between chess/go/sc than those I've pointed out. But maybe they don't, who knows?
On April 27 2013 13:08 GolemMadness wrote: I've never played go, but Starcraft 2 is really nothing like chess at all, other than drying extremely broad comparisons like "they both involve strategy" and "you have a plan at the beginning".
Well. I find it depends on your race. Like Tasteless once said, Terran plays more like chess, as in they must protect important pieces (the siege tank, medivacs and so on), whereas zerg plays more like go as they control a lot of space through creep tumors and a lot of zerglings.
In reality though it's quite different from either.
So much bs in this thread... Why do you guys keep bringing up RTS genre or incomplete information (it's not comparing apples to oranges, it's comparing driving a car to riding a motorcycle, they both are games and even strategy games I might add, so a quite good analogy can be made, even if playing them feels different or requires slightly different skillset)? Does that even matter? Multi table tournaments in poker is compared to be extremely similar to chess, but you can also find weak arguments that apply to that analogy ("it's incomplete information", "it's based on luck", etc.). E.g. Magic the Gathering big field tournaments are closer to go than chess instead (especially late game (before the elimination) I feel, where if you have better general knowledge you are more likely to get to the top 8).
As far as SC2 goes I feel it's exactly like chess and quite far from go:
In GO better general understanding wins (probes and pylons), but in SC2 that doesn't hold the cheese and you might need specific answers for some timings (if we don't take lower leagues into consideration).
Go early game is all over the place and (if you are worse than your opponent) it is possible to lose big groups to your opponent, whereas in SC2 if you mined out your natural and lose that infrastructure you are likely not even slightly set back.
In chess instead of capturing the board you can consider the area you control, you start with a very small one and you expand control into mid game, whereas in late game you are likely to have less control as more of the board doesn't matter much anymore (which is similar to most matchups in SC2, e.g. harassment might still hurt late game on your tech, but not as much on your mining bases, where you can remake workers fast, but mid game it allows you to get more control of the map).
SC2 has roughly defined early game, mid game, late game like chess. Go diverges early game way too fast and too early, whereas in chess and sc2 depending on what your opponent does, your build most likely has some specific answer.
While it is possible to tweak sc2 openings it's more likely to be because it isn't a figured out game like chess (as far as early game goes) or even BW.
Finally, might I point out that chess has draws and cheeses (everyone who didn't know about it has probably lost at least (or at most) once by turn 5 in chess and the hopefully knows how to defend it)?
On April 27 2013 13:08 GolemMadness wrote: I've never played go, but Starcraft 2 is really nothing like chess at all, other than drying extremely broad comparisons like "they both involve strategy" and "you have a plan at the beginning".
You don't have a "plan" when you start a go game
I have to disagree, you do have a plan (for example, if you are black : going for the low chinese opening, playing cross corners, if you are white: approaching his corner instead of taking one to stop him from setting up a kobayashi or something etc.) Depending on the opponent you might even have a more specific plan. Naturally as the game progresses your plan changes as well.
For me SC2 is more like poker, perhaps with less luck, but still a significant amount of luck as far as I can perceive for when you're playing at the highest level - and of course unfortunately based on current balance of the game.
It makes it more boring for me when luck, balance and random occurence causes wins.
Regardless it's hard to compare SC2 to a simple game, because it is not. It is not like "Running 100m", or high jumping, where there are very very few variables, randomness and luck. SC2 is highly advanced, which unfortunately also brings in all the "randomness luck factors".
So I suppose, maybe slightly comparable to some other board game, but probably not..
On April 27 2013 13:08 GolemMadness wrote: I've never played go, but it's really nothing like chess at all, other than drying extremely broad comparisons like "they both involve strategy" and "you have a plan at the beginning".
I disagree. Here are some cool similarities between them: the essence of strategy in both of them involves generating counterplay in the part of the board you are strong and your opponent is weak, maximizing the maneuverability/flexibility of your forces, and balancing security with space control. I think these are just a few of the interesting similarities.
Here's another: there seems to be an important sense in which strategical and tactical viewpoints demand to be balanced. In Go, one must know and be able to recognize common tactical sequences involved in Ko, killing a unit (as in the "ladder"), and using the edges and corners of the board. This is like Chess in which the discovered attack, pin, and fork are just basic tactical motifs one must know. But there are also strategical elements: in Chess, weakened squares, king safety, and the general concepts I mentioned in my last post about material, quality, and time. The importance of the corners early, then sides, then middle is one analog in Go.
To come back to starcraft, I'm sure it's quite evident that strategy and tactics are closely related to macro/micro. Of course the analogy is not perfect--that's why SC is a fascinating game in its own right!
He said other than extremely broad comparisons lie "they both involve strategy" and here you come and try to contradict him with another broad comparison.
Wow, when will people drop this ridiculous comparison? SC2 is nothing like either of those games. If you just list try to list the differences and the similarities, you will see that it is absolutely pointless to say they are even remotely close. People who do just look silly.
It's like Chess, but with a timer, where if you didn't make the move in time, you lose your turn and meanwhile a green beeper button screams at random times and the player to hit it, gets to take an additional move.
On April 27 2013 13:08 GolemMadness wrote: I've never played go, but Starcraft 2 is really nothing like chess at all, other than drying extremely broad comparisons like "they both involve strategy" and "you have a plan at the beginning".
You don't have a "plan" when you start a go game
I have to disagree, you do have a plan (for example, if you are black : going for the low chinese opening, playing cross corners, if you are white: approaching his corner instead of taking one to stop him from setting up a kobayashi or something etc.) Depending on the opponent you might even have a more specific plan. Naturally as the game progresses your plan changes as well.
Ok maybe fuseki can be called a plan but well... for me a plan is a "I will win the game this way", fuseki don't make you win game x)
I disagree SC2 is very similar to Poker. Being a poker player for numerous years, those skills didn't translate towards SC2 very much at all.
While you can make comparisons between SC2 having incomplete information and the better you are, the more information you can decipher, in Poker the depth and variation I think is of a grander scale. Now I haven't played SC2 at a professional level (not poker either for that matter, so I can't say that for sure, but I think a lot of people overestimate the amount of strategy in comparison to Macro/Micro in SC2 based of off how much easier it is than BW.
Macro/Micro are things that does not apply to Poker in any way, and that is one of, if not the most deciding factor as to whether or not you will win a Starcraft 2 game.
I wouldn't say the comparion is totally out of whack though. At the very highest levels, metagame plays a large role in both Poker and SC2, but for 99% of the people playing Poker, it's almost all about math, which is not the case for SC2.
On April 27 2013 18:53 Scootaloo wrote: Dunno, can you cheese in Go?
Technically, yes. You can overplay in the opening, which if the opponent doesn't answer with a strong move will result in an almost certain loss.
You can also invade everywhere and just hope that you will live, which is also very similar to a cheese.
Definition of cheese: a risky opening that if you scout it falls apart. There is only one opening in chess that is cheese and that's Scholar's mate, an attack so obviously telegraphed it will only work versus a beginner.
If those are the only two options, then it's a lot more like Chess - there are a HUGE range of possible openings, but the good ones are very well-known and predictable.
But it's really not very much like chess. It's like blindfolded chess where the blindfold sometimes comes off except that there's no turns and you can move stuff as fast as you can physically do it. It's like Starcraft, that's basically it. If you were going to choose non-video games it's like, the most apt description would be Poker + Chess + some sort of game where you draw with one hand and play piano with the other.
On April 27 2013 00:05 blackbrrd wrote: SC2 is a game of incomplete information, and is probably very unlike both games.
So is Chess. You dont know what moves your opponent will do, same as in SC2.
Only that in chess you see all the pieces all the time and you can estimate what your opponent will do. In SC2 you have to scout to see this information.
It's most like monopoly. Do you rush hotels on the first quarter of the board along old kent road, do you go for midgame and start collecting strand and fleet street or do you go for mayfair?
You go mayfair against guy who goes old kent road, you're going to have a bad time ^_^
Also, people feel very strongly about which piece they play as, even though it's the player skill that determines the game. Some people get downright viscious, battleship against wheelbarrow? nerd rage inc
There's a strong element of chance and snowballing ensures that mistakes are punished.
On April 27 2013 13:08 GolemMadness wrote: I've never played go, but Starcraft 2 is really nothing like chess at all, other than drying extremely broad comparisons like "they both involve strategy" and "you have a plan at the beginning".
On April 27 2013 23:48 dirtydurb82 wrote: Starcraft II is actually a lot like war, without the suffering. I just might have a pretty large blog post to this effect someday soon...
SC2 is actually a lot like a war game. Wait, it is a war game. And has as much in common with a real war as most of war games.
Comparing sc2 to strategy games, I suppose its more like chess. Go is a game that even with a clear winner the game won't end until the very end. Chess can be decided by move 3. It may be a simple way to look at it but thats my take.
There is a fog of war in Starcraft 2. In Chess all information is revealed, and since it's Turn Based, requires only visionary thinking, not mechanics and quick reactions, which Starcraft 2 is mainly based
On April 27 2013 18:53 Scootaloo wrote: Dunno, can you cheese in Go?
Technically, yes. You can overplay in the opening, which if the opponent doesn't answer with a strong move will result in an almost certain loss.
You can also invade everywhere and just hope that you will live, which is also very similar to a cheese.
Give example please
edit : playing invasions move that doesn't is a strategical move (aji) or ko or just stupidity, not a cheese x)
The best comparison to cheese in go would be some sort of trick play. Maybe the famous 19point trick play, or any variety of low pincers off invading a 5-3 opening. Also there are many trick plays in challenging joseki variations like the famous one used against shusaku in the taisha variation.
As for my reply, sc2 is much more like go in that your strategy can adapt and change in much more dynamic ways than in chess. Overall though, the games are very different although they share some similarities that are shared amongst most strategy games. (direction of play, positioning, timing, etc.)
It's a combination of the probabilities/incorrect information of poker, positional strategy with limited pieces and long-term planning of chess, and the mechanical and endurance requirements of an instrument or even something like fencing.
I was curious and read wikipedia article on this and Go is considered one of the most complex games ever.
It has been claimed that Go is the most complex game in the world due to its vast number of variations in individual games.
Sounds like a badass game.
On April 27 2013 20:04 althaz wrote: If those are the only two options, then it's a lot more like Chess - there are a HUGE range of possible openings, but the good ones are very well-known and predictable.
But it's really not very much like chess. It's like blindfolded chess where the blindfold sometimes comes off except that there's no turns and you can move stuff as fast as you can physically do it. It's like Starcraft, that's basically it. If you were going to choose non-video games it's like, the most apt description would be Poker + Chess + some sort of game where you draw with one hand and play piano with the other.
That's a good point. If we're talking about which one is more similar in terms of strategy, it is definitely more like Chess in the sense that there are only a few number of optimal openings/build orders.
Go is really opened ended it seems compared to Chess and SC (in terms of strategy).
I never really knew anything about Go before I searched it.
Are there like bonjwas in Go (a consistent top player that dominate everything for a certain period of time)?
If you give me to choose between Chess and Go and nothing else i would choose Go, but mixed with chess, in the sense that the battles are Chess like, both start with big armies and they have to avoid losing as much pieces as posible in the engagements, but in a bigger scale the game is more silimar to Go where you have to control space while harasing your oponent.
Starcraft 2 is a combination of very fast tetris and poker to me. Poker, because you dont really know what your opponent has, you can just guess or make educated guesses and speed tetris because of the mechanical aspect.
On April 28 2013 08:06 Holy_AT wrote: Starcraft 2 is a combination of very fast tetris and poker to me. Poker, because you dont really know what your opponent has, you can just guess or make educated guesses and speed tetris because of the mechanical aspect.
cooking Milk on the stove - takes at least 5 minutes to get somewhat interesting, and can overflow at any time or Using a hairdryer in a bathtub - Constant suspense from the beginning - you never know who is going to win untill the end
Personally i would akin sc2 to a box of chocolates, as you never know which one your going to get.
It's not like poker. "Luck" factor is 10x smaller in SC2. Also, if you are good enough you can see their "cards" while in poker you can never be sure of anything, even against an idiot who plays for the first time.
On April 29 2013 01:31 Inertia_EU wrote: Is SC2 more like Go or chess? What the hell is go?
Google would have answered that question very quickly, but anyway it's a really, really good and deep strategy game. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_(game)
On April 27 2013 00:05 blackbrrd wrote: SC2 is a game of incomplete information, and is probably very unlike both games.
So is Chess. You dont know what moves your opponent will do, same as in SC2.
Incomplete information in game theory means you don't have full information about current state of the game, not future moves.
In SC, you don't know if your opponent has a dark shrine or not, that's current state of the game.
In chess, you know exactly where every piece is at right now, so you can deduce a set for possible next moves from opponent. In SC, you can't deduce that exact set.
Further, knowing all future moves and the optimal strategy would make it solved, like checkers.
On April 27 2013 00:18 eScaper-tsunami wrote: Neither because both go and chess have a finite of moves you can compute.
SC2 also only has a number of finite moves. And with current computation power we can compute neither SC2 nor Go (and Chess only endgame iirc).
I think Blizzard could absolutely design an AI to win 100 games out of 100, assuming the AI knows the build order you're going for of course. There is no perfectly safe build in the game, there is a hard counter to everything.
( only table-bases exist for most endings,involving more than a few pieces, which does not mean they are completely factored in many circumstances , but have access to the exhausted heuristics and diagrams .
That being said most definitely a computer could easily be designed to own human players in SC2 with a near 100 percent win-rates as this is a mechanics and micro-intensive game. Both strategy and micro curve toward infinite importance as game play approaches near-perfect rates. I do not think the build order trees are even in the same realm of chess or go, or even checkers has way more build order permeation , the point being it would not be difficult to make a bot that had every current optimal strategy and response factored.But the mechanics would be the real problem for humans to deal with . It would never miss injects, never miss a mule in perfect time , have unreal multitasking , and an apm a human could never compete with as we have arms and physical limitations which cause delay between us and the gameplay . in any event dejavu
its more like a video game played on the PC platform of the RTS genre where there are only 3 factions (but they are very different from each other) with about 15-20 units each.
On April 27 2013 00:25 Meatex wrote: Wow surprised by the responses Guessing none are serious chess or go players Yes there are differences board games being turn based while RTS games being not but the similarities in the game game design are numerous. Chess is about using all the different "units" you have to kill your opponent's king. Certainly the unit use fits but SC2 has a vastly different goal Go however is, I feel, very similar to SC2 at its core. Both put strong importance on board/map control to gain economy/points. You have similar importance place on timings - also in chess though I feel its stronger in go - and of course like chess you have different opening "build orders"
Chess is all about positioning and map control lol cool example:
On April 29 2013 01:12 KingAlphard wrote: It's not like poker. "Luck" factor is 10x smaller in SC2.
Good one, very funny. Maybe you weren't watching all the blind counters at Dreamhack yesterday.
SC2 is like a video game. That's all. You guys need to stop trying to legitimize your hobby by appealing to the status of other hobbies.
I didn't say there's no luck factor in sc2. But it's still WAY smaller than in poker.
a bit smaller, but there's either more luck than you think in SC2 or less luck than you think in poker
the luck versus skill in poker and sc2 becomes apparent the more sample hands and games one sees, still it probably takes more sample hands in poker than sc2 games for this to be realized.
On April 29 2013 01:12 KingAlphard wrote: It's not like poker. "Luck" factor is 10x smaller in SC2.
Good one, very funny. Maybe you weren't watching all the blind counters at Dreamhack yesterday.
SC2 is like a video game. That's all. You guys need to stop trying to legitimize your hobby by appealing to the status of other hobbies.
I didn't say there's no luck factor in sc2. But it's still WAY smaller than in poker.
a bit smaller, but there's either more luck than you think in SC2 or less luck than you think in poker
the luck versus skill in poker and sc2 becomes apparent the more sample hands and games one sees, still it probably takes more sample hands in poker than sc2 games for this to be realized.
depending of course on the disparity of skill. A pro sc2 player would only need 1 game versus most rankings
On April 29 2013 01:12 KingAlphard wrote: It's not like poker. "Luck" factor is 10x smaller in SC2.
Good one, very funny. Maybe you weren't watching all the blind counters at Dreamhack yesterday.
SC2 is like a video game. That's all. You guys need to stop trying to legitimize your hobby by appealing to the status of other hobbies.
I didn't say there's no luck factor in sc2. But it's still WAY smaller than in poker.
a bit smaller, but there's either more luck than you think in SC2 or less luck than you think in poker
the luck versus skill in poker and sc2 becomes apparent the more sample hands and games one sees, still it probably takes more sample hands in poker than sc2 games for this to be realized.
depending of course on the disparity of skill. A pro sc2 player would only need 1 game versus most rankings
SC2 is like a ship it sails along the ocean of eSports and the players are like the captains that are steering the ship, all trying to get to their destination of fame and fortunte. Its all unchartered waters and thats what makes it exciting to watch... there is no fruit on the ship neither is the ship like chess or go.... SC2 is like a ship
I can never understand why people insist on comparing it to poker because of "incomplete information" - the two games aren't even remotely comparable since poker is a game of misdirection rather than anything else. Misdirection is one of a number of tactics you can employ in Starcraft but it is a relatively minor one at best.
Instead, Starcraft and games similar to it should be compared to fighting. You can rush all out (power through, punch on the inside) where your defense is weaker but you're relying on hitting someone at a bad time. You can box defensively and wait for a weakness or for your opponent to tire. You can evade and counterpunch, your mentality plays a huge role. There is room for fighters that just rely on sheer physical power (macro), technique (micro) but the best fighter is a combination of both. There is even room for misdirection, almost constantly, as anyone who has any fighting expertise whatsoever will remind you.
Kind of makes sense, considering you're basically fighting a real time mini war on your computer screen.
I don't think that blizzard could design an agent that would have 100% winrate or something near to that. It is not possible in Go because the trees are to big if I recall correctly. The problem is that Starcraft is also a speed based game, there would be too much tree traversal that would have to be done in a very short time period, to find the optimal action at every moment. Ofc, you could make the computer scout perfectly in the early game and chose an appropriate all-in, but that is not what we want... Also, I don't know how the computer could adapt to a change of metagame.
On April 27 2013 00:25 Meatex wrote: Wow surprised by the responses Guessing none are serious chess or go players Yes there are differences board games being turn based while RTS games being not but the similarities in the game game design are numerous. Chess is about using all the different "units" you have to kill your opponent's king. Certainly the unit use fits but SC2 has a vastly different goal Go however is, I feel, very similar to SC2 at its core. Both put strong importance on board/map control to gain economy/points. You have similar importance place on timings - also in chess though I feel its stronger in go - and of course like chess you have different opening "build orders"
You say that nobody is a serious chess or go player, but the only comparisons you draw between chess and Starcraft 2 is that they both involve "units," both involve controlling the board/map, and both have planned strategies at the beginning of the games...? You could something similar about football, LoL, monopoly, etc.
On April 30 2013 21:24 Saumure wrote: I don't think that blizzard could design an agent that would have 100% winrate or something near to that. It is not possible in Go because the trees are to big if I recall correctly. The problem is that Starcraft is also a speed based game, there would be too much tree traversal that would have to be done in a very short time period, to find the optimal action at every moment. Ofc, you could make the computer scout perfectly in the early game and chose an appropriate all-in, but that is not what we want... Also, I don't know how the computer could adapt to a change of metagame.
First of all, the way the computer would adapt to changes in the metagame would be changes to its programming. Secondly, it wouldn't even really need to. All it'd need to do would be to survive the early game with a decent position, and then it'd simply destroy anyone because of its infinite APM.
On April 27 2013 03:27 algue wrote: typical Sc2 game
On April 28 2013 08:06 Holy_AT wrote: Starcraft 2 is a combination of very fast tetris and poker to me. Poker, because you dont really know what your opponent has, you can just guess or make educated guesses and speed tetris because of the mechanical aspect.
I dunno, battleship is pretty close too... although having played tetris very quickly and studied poker, I would say that Holy_AT is indeed quite accurate.
You nitwit, what the **** is that gif on the front page? Are you so incompetent you cannot format your OP even a little? My friend with mild autism can write a better thread. How clever are you?
Instead of editing your thread and making it readable, you added a stupid poll and a retarded gif troll-face?
You actually deserve applause to be honest: you managed to keep your thread open this long! Well done!
(I posted earlier about how unreadable the OP was due to bad formatting. I was more polite that time by far. At this point, this thread is actually hurting the ability of intelligent people to exchange intelligent ideas on in media.)
EPT![[image loading]](http://i287.photobucket.com/albums/ll125/SophiaMaria023/Tumblr/LOLOLOL.gif)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/a4zSJX5.jpg)
