On January 17 2011 08:49 asin wrote: Thanks Fyndor,
I downloaded the maps with the script imported but still I can't seem to choose the AI difficulty level?
you have to search for them on battlenet, search for fyn. then select the map and open a custom game on it. then u can select the difficulty as usual. if u want to use the maps offline, download the mappack i uploaded some posts above, open the map in the editor. then go to file -> basic settings/settings (dunno exactly, im using the german version.) alternatively press ctrl + shift + alt + P. in the popup menu, select the field "test map". there on u can select the difficulty to use while testing files. then u just have to press ctrl + F9 to play the map.
On January 17 2011 08:49 asin wrote: Thanks Fyndor,
I downloaded the maps with the script imported but still I can't seem to choose the AI difficulty level?
If I remember correctly you play on SEA. I believe our good friend n3wb13 as already posted them to SEA. Go in to a custom game and search for "fyn" and you should find the maps. You are more than welcome to play them offline, but it would be much easier to play them on battle.net.
On January 17 2011 09:23 dunc wrote: I don't know what people are saying about it not being better in higher leagues, this AI definitely plays better than most Platinum players on Medium.
Having lots of fun with it so far!
actually no, im a platinum player myself and pretty easily defeat the medium AI most of the time.
On January 17 2011 09:23 dunc wrote: I don't know what people are saying about it not being better in higher leagues, this AI definitely plays better than most Platinum players on Medium.
Having lots of fun with it so far!
actually no, im a platinum player myself and pretty easily defeat the medium AI most of the time.
Different opinions. I have no problem beating the medium AI, but it plays better than most people from Platinum league I meet at least.
On January 17 2011 09:23 dunc wrote: I don't know what people are saying about it not being better in higher leagues, this AI definitely plays better than most Platinum players on Medium.
Having lots of fun with it so far!
actually no, im a platinum player myself and pretty easily defeat the medium AI most of the time.
Different opinions. I have no problem beating the medium AI, but it plays better than most people from Platinum league I meet at least.
well, it depends. it has good macro and expanding patterns, but its unit composition and micro sometimes are lacking. in particular, it is very bad at dealing with unknown situations. if i mass up a terran deathball of tank/thor/viking with some marines or hellions mixed in, it just doesnt know how to deal with it. it doesnt abuse mobility issues against a slowpush.
but obviously stuff like that is very hard to implement in an AI, no criticism for that. the sad fact is that research on "true" artificial intelligence is stagnating since many years.
This AI have a few commander which randomly executes different strategies most the time. So it force me to scout the AI most the time while macroing/defending harass so that i dun get caught with some annoying strategies (2port cloak banshee/fast bc etc). It also a good warm up before i went for laddering so i just dun waste my 1st few ladder game trying to get into mood .
In short mostly i treat this AI as "practice partner" (pity me... fren list is 1-hand-counted...) which at the same time i give myself some objectives like 10mins 3 base/ 200/200 in 13 mins / no-attack-consume-map, something like what funday monday does I dun actually play this AI to win, but to train myself to become a better player... (lol... quote day[9])
Thanks this is a great practice tool. Am currently a Gold player and have no troubles beating the medium AI, but the hard AI give me a hard time, haven't been able to win against it yet (macro style play with zerg)
mind you only starting playing it yesterday
whats everyones experience with the hard ai? is it equivalent to platinum players u think?
well i just tried the FYN ai on blistering sands on very hard. and it started of getting 5 minerals like me. but it was raising all the time. a few min into the game he was getting 6 then 7 and at the end of our 11 min long game it was getting 10 mineral while i was getting 5. ive never had trouble beating the insane ai but this one was really hard to beat even on very hard in a macro game. however without its mineral cheats it wouldnt been any better than a silver player. the ai unit loses was almost twice as high as mine so was its income on the same amount of workers. but yea its micro is definantly better than the blizzard ai. and its probably better practice for bronze-silver players. but be aware that it starts getting twice the income of you at 10 minuttes. if you dont believe me check your replays
On January 19 2011 08:42 khazgore wrote: well i just tried the FYN ai on blistering sands on very hard. and it started of getting 5 minerals like me. but it was raising all the time. a few min into the game he was getting 6 then 7 and at the end of our 11 min long game it was getting 10 mineral while i was getting 5. ive never had trouble beating the insane ai but this one was really hard to beat even on very hard in a macro game. however without its mineral cheats it wouldnt been any better than a silver player. the ai unit loses was almost twice as high as mine so was its income on the same amount of workers. but yea its micro is definantly better than the blizzard ai. and its probably better practice for bronze-silver players. but be aware that it starts getting twice the income of you at 10 minuttes. if you dont believe me check your replays
I believe you, that is exactly what happens The Insane AI starts at a rate of 2, hard and very hard ramp up to 2 over a 10 minute period. I would not think a bronze player would have any business playing even hard AI, that should be way beyond them Hard on Fyn has no correlation to Hard on Blizz AI. In fact I would bet you would probably find Very Easy Fyn AI is probably better than Very Hard Blizz AI (thats not saying much). There are plenty of things it does that can be improved for sure. In some situations it gives away units completely for free. Sometimes it does stuff that is just plain silly. For instance yesterday I did a gas steal against toss AI and as I expected it took its zealot and attacked the gas, but then because the build said it needed a second gas at that time it added the second gas...at the expansion that had no nexus at it. Not sure if it ever made use of it until it expanded but it was totally retarded. It will also waste units running in to cannons sometimes as well and for other reasons I can't think of at the moment. Luckily I can see ways of fixing a lot of the dumb things it does to waste units. First though I am going to focus redoing the openers so that they are more standardized to what most people do. After that I am going to focus on improving scouting so it has the right info to make good decisions. That is probably the stage in development where I will see if I can knock out some of the worst blunders it makes.
Also I forgot to mention, much of what makes it challenging for a player like me is that it expands more than Blizzards AI, so eventually it will have good enough macro to counter what you make (in my experience) as long as it survives past its initial decision of a randomly chosen build order. One of the things it could really use is the ability to make early game build decisions based on what your opponent does. I would image that would improve its play dramatically. But as I said before, first things first, I am going to try to make it play more "standard" using starting build orders based on map, race matchup, and possibly starting location. Then from there I think I will let it be more open ended like it is now and have a wide variety of late game build that work with the starting builds and maybe based on what the enemy army makeup is.
Terran Plat player here (though with my losing streak from last week, maybe I'm just a high gold...bleh)
This AI is a great tool. I remember reading somewhere that the difference between a platinum player and a diamond player is that the diamond player knows the timing of when to drop the third base. While the unit comps of this AI might be lacking, it is a beast at macroing. It forces you to learn when to drop your third AND fourth, or you WILL lose even with the terrible unit comps. I have attempted medium at first and have lost every time(only twice, both times barely.)
If your biggest problem is macroing and timing your third base, this is a great AI tool for you. If you want to learn how to micro, play a map geared towards microing. Of course, it's always better to play in 1v1s against capable opponents, but this is a great tool. This AI plays on the level of a very high platinum player not doing any ridiculous cheese.
Fyndor, you should be paid money for this AI. Excellent, excellent work!
This might be a stupid question, but is there any risk of getting banned using this or the regular 'green tea' ai? The green tea website ( http://sc2.nibbits.com/assets/green-tea-ai/ ) talks about importing things into SCII and I thought anything that messed with game files could get you banned.
On January 19 2011 16:01 Bizarro252 wrote: This might be a stupid question, but is there any risk of getting banned using this or the regular 'green tea' ai? The green tea website ( http://sc2.nibbits.com/assets/green-tea-ai/ ) talks about importing things into SCII and I thought anything that messed with game files could get you banned.
Just want to check before installing anything
Thanks
First off you are being a little bit too paranoid, but I guess normally that is healthy. You are safe to use this mod/map. For one this, is published to Battle.net (atleast thats how i use it, it can be run standalone). If you think about it, since the only way to get stuff on to Battle.net is through Blizzards own Map Editor tool, they have the ability to restrict w/e they want. In fact there are certain reserved files that are not allowed to be overwritten and if I try to import a new version of them it will not let me. You may be a bit confused with what you do with this AI. It is an AI that you can add to a map to replace the original AI. But to do this with Blizzard maps or any map that I didn't create myself, what I do is get a copy of the map then republish the under a different name with the AI added. I get these copies from the Map Editor itself, not through some hack, and I can only download maps that were marked by the publisher as "unlocked". All the Blizzard maps are unlocked so I can copy them. These modified maps are only used in custom games. It has no effect on ladder or any other maps is the game. The only thing affected are the custom maps I publish to Battle.net. All changes are only made to COPIES of maps, not the original maps, not any game files. Trust me you are safe.
Granted, we very recently saw where Blizzard took action against a map called World of Starcraft that was being developed (). This is the only issue I personally have heard of so far, and though Blizzard has not elaborated yet as far as I know as to what the problem is, the issue they are likely taking to that "map" is that they probably consider the name a trademark infringement. There is speculation that they may not want it published, because their next MMO may be starcraft related or other similar conspiracy theories, and their license allows them free will to do whatever they please with Battle.net. So it is technically possible that if for whatever reason Blizzard decided they didn't like people using custom AIs in custom games that they could remove the maps. That is likely the extent to what would happen though if they should choose eliminate custom AIs beyond patching the editor to not allow stuff like that to be published, but at that point a lot of custom maps will be gone and I don't see that happening. Custom AI in custom maps poses no threat to Blizzard or the community and I am pretty sure they know it and agree. If anything I can see them taking some of the code in good AIs and incorporating it in to their stock AI. At least that is what I would do if I were them
On January 19 2011 12:28 boredrex wrote:While the unit comps of this AI might be lacking, it is a beast at macroing.
Hopefully in the next few months I will have totally reworked starting builds and overall unit comp choices, though part of the changes that will need to be made will have to be improved scouting so that it can make good decision about unit comp and those changes likely come after the build redesign.
It forces you to learn when to drop your third AND fourth, or you WILL lose even with the terrible unit comps.
At this point that is what I am trying to get from the AI as well. I am not skilled enough to know whether these are reasonable expansion timings it uses yet, but I know it works against me : / So far the only problems I can certainly see for sure with the way it expands is its choice of expansion location is sometimes not the best and it apparently doesn't know that it should cancel building an expo if is about to die before completing. Do players normally try and take the shared 3rd on Metalopolis?
Fyndor, you should be paid money for this AI. Excellent, excellent work!
My current contributions to this codebase are actually minimal thus far, but soon I hope to earn that statement.
Speaking of the future, after reading this article about a Starcraft 1 AI competition and what the winners did to make a good AI, my mind is now blown and racing with ideas. I don't know what I can accomplish as a single AI hobbiest vs the small team of grad students and PhD professors that wrote that AI, but I am certainly inspired to try and reproduce some of the concepts they used to build a robust AI. Doubly so after reading that the specs for the machines running the bot software for the competition were not super computers, but rather mediocre laptops. + Show Spoiler +
Dell XPS laptop Windows XP Service Pack 3 Intel Core 2x @ 2.0 GHz 2G RAM NVidea GeForce Go 7950 GTX, 512 RAM (No CUDA)
In other words, if a strong Starcraft 1 AI can be run on a crappy laptop, then it is not out of the question to make an equally good Starcraft 2 AI run on standard end user hardware. Projects like this always worry me, because you never quite know when you get started whether you can pull it off because of the complicated nature of the problem. Now I know for sure a small team was able to build a fairly robust AI for a similar game within a 1 year time frame. I have no illusion I can match what they did with the time and resources available to me, but I do think I can do better than what I shown you so far and implementing some of the concepts from that team's AI would certainly be a great improvement.
EPT
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fren list is 1-hand-counted...) which at the same time i give myself some objectives like 10mins 3 base/ 200/200 in 13 mins / no-attack-consume-map, something like what funday monday does 
I dun actually play this AI to win, but to train myself to become a better player... (lol... quote day[9])
