• Log InLog In
  • Register
Liquid`
Team Liquid Liquipedia
EDT 09:57
CEST 15:57
KST 22:57
  • Home
  • Forum
  • Calendar
  • Streams
  • Liquipedia
  • Features
  • Store
  • EPT
  • TL+
  • StarCraft 2
  • Brood War
  • Smash
  • Heroes
  • Counter-Strike
  • Overwatch
  • Liquibet
  • Fantasy StarCraft
  • TLPD
  • StarCraft 2
  • Brood War
  • Blogs
Forum Sidebar
Events/Features
News
Featured News
Team TLMC #5: Vote to Decide Ladder Maps!0[ASL20] Ro8 Preview Pt1: Mile High14Team TLMC #5 - Finalists & Open Tournaments2[ASL20] Ro16 Preview Pt2: Turbulence10Classic Games #3: Rogue vs Serral at BlizzCon10
Community News
Classic wins RSL Revival Season 20Weekly Cups (Sept 15-21): herO Goes For Four2SC2 5.0.15 PTR Patch Notes + Sept 22nd update245BSL 2025 Warsaw LAN + Legends Showmatch4Weekly Cups (Sept 8-14): herO & MaxPax split cups4
StarCraft 2
General
SC2 5.0.15 PTR Patch Notes + Sept 22nd update Why Storm Should NOT Be Nerfed – A Core Part of Pr Classic wins RSL Revival Season 2 Question about resolution & DPI settings SC2 Weekly Cups (Sept 15-21): herO Goes For Four
Tourneys
Sparkling Tuna Cup - Weekly Open Tournament Prome's Evo #1 - Solar vs Classic (SC: Evo) Monday Nights Weeklies RSL: Revival, a new crowdfunded tournament series SC2's Safe House 2 - October 18 & 19
Strategy
Custom Maps
External Content
Mutation # 492 Get Out More Mutation # 491 Night Drive Mutation # 490 Masters of Midnight Mutation # 489 Bannable Offense
Brood War
General
BGH Auto Balance -> http://bghmmr.eu/ A cwal.gg Extension - Easily keep track of anyone Starcraft Beta Mod HELP!!!! BW General Discussion Old rep packs of BW legends
Tourneys
[ASL20] Ro8 Day 2 [ASL20] Ro8 Day 1 [ASL20] Ro16 Group D BSL 2025 Warsaw LAN + Legends Showmatch
Strategy
Simple Questions, Simple Answers Muta micro map competition
Other Games
General Games
Nintendo Switch Thread Stormgate/Frost Giant Megathread Liquipedia App: Now Covering SC2 and Brood War! Path of Exile Borderlands 3
Dota 2
Official 'what is Dota anymore' discussion LiquidDota to reintegrate into TL.net
League of Legends
Heroes of the Storm
Simple Questions, Simple Answers Heroes of the Storm 2.0
Hearthstone
Heroes of StarCraft mini-set
TL Mafia
TL Mafia Community Thread
Community
General
US Politics Mega-thread Things Aren’t Peaceful in Palestine Russo-Ukrainian War Thread The Big Programming Thread UK Politics Mega-thread
Fan Clubs
The Happy Fan Club!
Media & Entertainment
Movie Discussion! [Manga] One Piece Anime Discussion Thread
Sports
TeamLiquid Health and Fitness Initiative For 2023 Formula 1 Discussion 2024 - 2026 Football Thread MLB/Baseball 2023
World Cup 2022
Tech Support
Linksys AE2500 USB WIFI keeps disconnecting Computer Build, Upgrade & Buying Resource Thread High temperatures on bridge(s)
TL Community
BarCraft in Tokyo Japan for ASL Season5 Final The Automated Ban List
Blogs
[ASL20] Players bad at pi…
pullarius1
Kendrick, Eminem, and "Self…
Peanutsc
Too Many LANs? Tournament Ov…
TrAiDoS
I <=> 9
KrillinFromwales
Customize Sidebar...

Website Feedback

Closed Threads



Active: 1807 users

BoxeR: "AlphaGo won't beat humans in StarCraft" - Page 18

Forum Index > SC2 General
568 CommentsPost a Reply
Prev 1 16 17 18 19 20 29 Next All
rockslave
Profile Blog Joined January 2008
Brazil318 Posts
March 16 2016 17:29 GMT
#341
Please stop saying StarCraft is more complex than Chess or Go.

If you only look at strategy, StarCraft is absurdly simple. The number of possible tech paths and "general strategies" you can do is veeeeery small compared to these board games.

The complexity for the AI would be more on input/output, and that is assuming it won't run through an API like other AIs in BW (GTAI or the like).
What qxc said.
BazookaBenji1
Profile Joined February 2016
15 Posts
March 16 2016 17:59 GMT
#342
i gotta agree with lordsaul, we've all played computer on hardest setting (insane) and felt it was about gold league at best. As programmers continue to add fields to the AI which increase it's scope, depth, and understanding of the game. It will continue to get harder, and things like insane macro mixed with good harass and micro will make it harder each time, especially if the programmer is an accomplished sc player who is watching the games vs pro and ai, then can continue to make little adjustments accordingly, it's only gonna get harder.
BazookaBenji1
Profile Joined February 2016
15 Posts
Last Edited: 2016-03-16 18:01:36
March 16 2016 18:01 GMT
#343
rockslave you are insane if you think starcraft isn't more complex than any game in existence other than the ones that the bankers and corporations are playing with Global Economies and Governments. sc2 has infinitely more tech paths than chess or go did u forget to take your medications or something?
Monochromatic
Profile Blog Joined March 2012
United States998 Posts
March 16 2016 18:19 GMT
#344
On March 17 2016 02:29 rockslave wrote:
Please stop saying StarCraft is more complex than Chess or Go.

If you only look at strategy, StarCraft is absurdly simple. The number of possible tech paths and "general strategies" you can do is veeeeery small compared to these board games.

The complexity for the AI would be more on input/output, and that is assuming it won't run through an API like other AIs in BW (GTAI or the like).


I think you are extremely underestimating the difference between a real time and turn based game.

For example a chess game can be represented very quickly:
+ Show Spoiler +

1. e4 e5
2. Nf3 d6
3. d4 Bg4
4. de5 Bf3
5. Qf3 de5
6. Bc4 Nf6
7. Qb3 Qe7
8. Nc3 c6
9. Bg5 b5
10. Nb5 cb5
11. Bb5 Nbd7
12. O-O-O Rd8
13. Rd7 Rd7
14. Rd1 Qe6
15. Bd7 Nd7
16. Qb8 Nb8
17. Rd8#


This represents an entire game of chess, and you can read through it easily. There are only so many moves to simulate.

Compare this to starcraft: If each player has 100 APM, that means that there is 200 inputs to evaluate every minute. A 20 minute game has 4000 moves, so it is over 100 times more complex than chess.

Progamers with more APM also increase this number by a significant margin, and the differing lengths of games mean that there could be over 15000 possible moves for each game.

Add in the fact that there is three races and multiple maps, the amount that a program would need to learn is immensely more than chess. Not to mention randomness factors into starcraft, with spawning positions and build orders.

I'm not sure how machine learning works, but I'm willing to bet the time it takes to analyze a game increases exponentially with the possible number of moves. In that sense, starcraft is even harder than go.

The final nail in the Ai's coffin is that it has to analyze in real time. It can only look so far ahead before the future arrives, so it has to analyze extremely quickly. The amount of processing power required would be massive.
MC: "Guys I need your support! iam poor make me nerd baller" __________________________________________RIP Violet
Veldril
Profile Joined August 2010
Thailand1817 Posts
Last Edited: 2016-03-16 19:56:32
March 16 2016 19:25 GMT
#345
On March 17 2016 03:19 Monochromatic wrote:
Show nested quote +
On March 17 2016 02:29 rockslave wrote:
Please stop saying StarCraft is more complex than Chess or Go.

If you only look at strategy, StarCraft is absurdly simple. The number of possible tech paths and "general strategies" you can do is veeeeery small compared to these board games.

The complexity for the AI would be more on input/output, and that is assuming it won't run through an API like other AIs in BW (GTAI or the like).


I think you are extremely underestimating the difference between a real time and turn based game.

For example a chess game can be represented very quickly:
+ Show Spoiler +

1. e4 e5
2. Nf3 d6
3. d4 Bg4
4. de5 Bf3
5. Qf3 de5
6. Bc4 Nf6
7. Qb3 Qe7
8. Nc3 c6
9. Bg5 b5
10. Nb5 cb5
11. Bb5 Nbd7
12. O-O-O Rd8
13. Rd7 Rd7
14. Rd1 Qe6
15. Bd7 Nd7
16. Qb8 Nb8
17. Rd8#


This represents an entire game of chess, and you can read through it easily. There are only so many moves to simulate.

Compare this to starcraft: If each player has 100 APM, that means that there is 200 inputs to evaluate every minute. A 20 minute game has 4000 moves, so it is over 100 times more complex than chess.

Progamers with more APM also increase this number by a significant margin, and the differing lengths of games mean that there could be over 15000 possible moves for each game.

Add in the fact that there is three races and multiple maps, the amount that a program would need to learn is immensely more than chess. Not to mention randomness factors into starcraft, with spawning positions and build orders.

I'm not sure how machine learning works, but I'm willing to bet the time it takes to analyze a game increases exponentially with the possible number of moves. In that sense, starcraft is even harder than go.

The final nail in the Ai's coffin is that it has to analyze in real time. It can only look so far ahead before the future arrives, so it has to analyze extremely quickly. The amount of processing power required would be massive.


You can't really use chess to descripbe Alphago-type of AI, however. You can't even compare chess with go as go is million time more complex than chess. To compare chess with go is like you compare the easiness of landing on the moon with landing on other solar system's planet.

I feel like many people misunderstand what is Alphago-type AI is or how it works. Alphago is not AI that is hard coded to response to human's move or memorize pattern. If that's is its ability then it would not be able to defeat Lee Sedol in even a single game of go which has possible moves more than number of atoms in the universe. Considering the opening move of go has 361 position, the first five turns of go would come up with the total possible moves of 5,962,870,725,840. There's no way an AI can do that in a reasonable amount of time, yet Alphago has pretty much put in (at least) two moves that would go down in go's history as "God's Hand" that even 9-professional dan pros are in awe in less than 5 minutes. There is one move that it decides to play even it recognized that the chance of human playing this move is less than 1/10,000 but it decides that the human pros would be wrong.

The AI is not coded to just copy human move but it is coded to "learn the game" instead. This means that it learn to play the game like human would, by experimenting and learn from its mistake. It would learn to use heuristic to simplify their "thought process" and then reinforcing their decision making process by continuing practices the moves (or if in starcraft terms: build order, or army movement, positioning, etc.) millions of times to reduce the time they need to make a good move. It is build to learn how to play and with every game it will improve its decision making process. After the game, even Deepmind's people don't know why Alphago made some moves because

So if Deepmind decides to code their AI-system to learn Starcraft, it would not be putting in hard coding to to make it just respond to build order or blindly builds something. It will learn how to scout, how to count buildings and workers and predict what the build order would be. It will learn to recognize scouting patterns and timing that the scout arrive at the base to decide whether it is possible that the opponent is proxying or not. Then it will play out the possible scenarios (which is less complicated than go by a lot) ahead. And it will do by practicing with itself millions of times per day to find out what would the possible responses that would lead to a win be and learn from every single game. That's the scary part of this type of AI.
Without love, we can't see anything. Without love, the truth can't be seen. - Umineko no Naku Koro Ni
necaremus
Profile Joined December 2013
45 Posts
Last Edited: 2016-03-16 19:55:56
March 16 2016 19:53 GMT
#346
On March 17 2016 02:29 rockslave wrote:
Please stop saying StarCraft is more complex than Chess or Go.

If you only look at strategy, StarCraft is absurdly simple. The number of possible tech paths and "general strategies" you can do is veeeeery small compared to these board games.

The complexity for the AI would be more on input/output, and that is assuming it won't run through an API like other AIs in BW (GTAI or the like).


what?

starcraft is way bigger compared to these games: just count the possible "squares"(tiles) on the smallest starcraft map and compare that with a go or chess board.

"tech paths"? you know that fighting with 4 marines vs 5 marines is a total different situation, as fighting with 5 marines vs 5 marines?

now input, that each marine needs a tile to stand on. and each marine has to move to this tile while not blocking the path of another marine.

just a simple 1 rax vs 1 rax situation is way more complex than the whole game of chess.
/edit: 1 rax vs 1 rax would be around the same complexity as Go, just that you have a bigger "board"
“Never assume malice when stupidity will suffice.”
Veldril
Profile Joined August 2010
Thailand1817 Posts
March 16 2016 20:03 GMT
#347
On March 17 2016 04:53 necaremus wrote:
Show nested quote +
On March 17 2016 02:29 rockslave wrote:
Please stop saying StarCraft is more complex than Chess or Go.

If you only look at strategy, StarCraft is absurdly simple. The number of possible tech paths and "general strategies" you can do is veeeeery small compared to these board games.

The complexity for the AI would be more on input/output, and that is assuming it won't run through an API like other AIs in BW (GTAI or the like).


what?

starcraft is way bigger compared to these games: just count the possible "squares"(tiles) on the smallest starcraft map and compare that with a go or chess board.

"tech paths"? you know that fighting with 4 marines vs 5 marines is a total different situation, as fighting with 5 marines vs 5 marines?

now input, that each marine needs a tile to stand on. and each marine has to move to this tile while not blocking the path of another marine.

just a simple 1 rax vs 1 rax situation is way more complex than the whole game of chess.
/edit: 1 rax vs 1 rax would be around the same complexity as Go, just that you have a bigger "board"


1 rax vs 1 rax is far from the complexity of Go because the position of each unit is not as important and can be simplify to possible area that units can be that would give similar results. A marine on a pixel away would not means a lot in the local fight, let alone the bigger picture of the whole game. In contrast, a single move of a stone from one point to another in go can make a difference between a win and a loss of a game.

And Alphago-type of AI is taught to think and use heuristic similar to human's thought process. So it will be able to simplify and use shortcut to their thinking that would make their decision process fast enough.

Without love, we can't see anything. Without love, the truth can't be seen. - Umineko no Naku Koro Ni
loppy2345
Profile Joined August 2015
39 Posts
March 16 2016 20:26 GMT
#348
On March 17 2016 04:25 Veldril wrote:
Show nested quote +
On March 17 2016 03:19 Monochromatic wrote:
On March 17 2016 02:29 rockslave wrote:
Please stop saying StarCraft is more complex than Chess or Go.

If you only look at strategy, StarCraft is absurdly simple. The number of possible tech paths and "general strategies" you can do is veeeeery small compared to these board games.

The complexity for the AI would be more on input/output, and that is assuming it won't run through an API like other AIs in BW (GTAI or the like).


I think you are extremely underestimating the difference between a real time and turn based game.

For example a chess game can be represented very quickly:
+ Show Spoiler +

1. e4 e5
2. Nf3 d6
3. d4 Bg4
4. de5 Bf3
5. Qf3 de5
6. Bc4 Nf6
7. Qb3 Qe7
8. Nc3 c6
9. Bg5 b5
10. Nb5 cb5
11. Bb5 Nbd7
12. O-O-O Rd8
13. Rd7 Rd7
14. Rd1 Qe6
15. Bd7 Nd7
16. Qb8 Nb8
17. Rd8#


This represents an entire game of chess, and you can read through it easily. There are only so many moves to simulate.

Compare this to starcraft: If each player has 100 APM, that means that there is 200 inputs to evaluate every minute. A 20 minute game has 4000 moves, so it is over 100 times more complex than chess.

Progamers with more APM also increase this number by a significant margin, and the differing lengths of games mean that there could be over 15000 possible moves for each game.

Add in the fact that there is three races and multiple maps, the amount that a program would need to learn is immensely more than chess. Not to mention randomness factors into starcraft, with spawning positions and build orders.

I'm not sure how machine learning works, but I'm willing to bet the time it takes to analyze a game increases exponentially with the possible number of moves. In that sense, starcraft is even harder than go.

The final nail in the Ai's coffin is that it has to analyze in real time. It can only look so far ahead before the future arrives, so it has to analyze extremely quickly. The amount of processing power required would be massive.


You can't really use chess to descripbe Alphago-type of AI, however. You can't even compare chess with go as go is million time more complex than chess. To compare chess with go is like you compare the easiness of landing on the moon with landing on other solar system's planet.

I feel like many people misunderstand what is Alphago-type AI is or how it works. Alphago is not AI that is hard coded to response to human's move or memorize pattern. If that's is its ability then it would not be able to defeat Lee Sedol in even a single game of go which has possible moves more than number of atoms in the universe. Considering the opening move of go has 361 position, the first five turns of go would come up with the total possible moves of 5,962,870,725,840. There's no way an AI can do that in a reasonable amount of time, yet Alphago has pretty much put in (at least) two moves that would go down in go's history as "God's Hand" that even 9-professional dan pros are in awe in less than 5 minutes. There is one move that it decides to play even it recognized that the chance of human playing this move is less than 1/10,000 but it decides that the human pros would be wrong.

The AI is not coded to just copy human move but it is coded to "learn the game" instead. This means that it learn to play the game like human would, by experimenting and learn from its mistake. It would learn to use heuristic to simplify their "thought process" and then reinforcing their decision making process by continuing practices the moves (or if in starcraft terms: build order, or army movement, positioning, etc.) millions of times to reduce the time they need to make a good move. It is build to learn how to play and with every game it will improve its decision making process. After the game, even Deepmind's people don't know why Alphago made some moves because

So if Deepmind decides to code their AI-system to learn Starcraft, it would not be putting in hard coding to to make it just respond to build order or blindly builds something. It will learn how to scout, how to count buildings and workers and predict what the build order would be. It will learn to recognize scouting patterns and timing that the scout arrive at the base to decide whether it is possible that the opponent is proxying or not. Then it will play out the possible scenarios (which is less complicated than go by a lot) ahead. And it will do by practicing with itself millions of times per day to find out what would the possible responses that would lead to a win be and learn from every single game. That's the scary part of this type of AI.


The thing is Starcraft is based in real time, and has to be played as such. If an AI tries to play itself, it will have to learn by itself what the win condition is. Assuming it eventually manages to play games in 10 minutes on average, it will be able to play 144 games each day, so 52,560 games in one year. Let's just say arbitarily that it has to play 1 million games before it reaches pro level, it will take 18 years. Realistically, it will take probably billions or trillions of games, which would be millions of years.

Therefore this trial and error approach just won't work in starcraft, unlike go or chess where it can play games against itself in fractions of seconds.
beg
Profile Blog Joined May 2010
991 Posts
March 16 2016 20:33 GMT
#349
Yea, I was wondering if there was a way to speed up SC:BW games, so DeepMind could have faster games ...
Maybe they have a reasonable approach with many games running parallel. Don't know if that would work. It'd probably be a novelty, eh?


Wish they gave some insight. This is so exciting.
necaremus
Profile Joined December 2013
45 Posts
Last Edited: 2016-03-16 22:08:14
March 16 2016 21:46 GMT
#350
On March 17 2016 05:03 Veldril wrote:
Show nested quote +
On March 17 2016 04:53 necaremus wrote:
On March 17 2016 02:29 rockslave wrote:
Please stop saying StarCraft is more complex than Chess or Go.

If you only look at strategy, StarCraft is absurdly simple. The number of possible tech paths and "general strategies" you can do is veeeeery small compared to these board games.

The complexity for the AI would be more on input/output, and that is assuming it won't run through an API like other AIs in BW (GTAI or the like).


what?

starcraft is way bigger compared to these games: just count the possible "squares"(tiles) on the smallest starcraft map and compare that with a go or chess board.

"tech paths"? you know that fighting with 4 marines vs 5 marines is a total different situation, as fighting with 5 marines vs 5 marines?

now input, that each marine needs a tile to stand on. and each marine has to move to this tile while not blocking the path of another marine.

just a simple 1 rax vs 1 rax situation is way more complex than the whole game of chess.
/edit: 1 rax vs 1 rax would be around the same complexity as Go, just that you have a bigger "board"


1 rax vs 1 rax is far from the complexity of Go because the position of each unit is not as important and can be simplify to possible area that units can be that would give similar results. A marine on a pixel away would not means a lot in the local fight, let alone the bigger picture of the whole game. In contrast, a single move of a stone from one point to another in go can make a difference between a win and a loss of a game.

And Alphago-type of AI is taught to think and use heuristic similar to human's thought process. So it will be able to simplify and use shortcut to their thinking that would make their decision process fast enough.



the position of each unit is not as important? if you have the same number of marines (for example 5 vs 5), but one "player" has his marines positioned, so that all 5 can focus fire a target at the same time, in the same instant, while the other one has 3 marines in front an 2 marines behind -> only 3 marines can fire on initiation of the fight, the other 2 will join the "2nd round" of the fight. who do you think wins this fight?

clearly the one who uses all 5 marines in the instant the fight starts.
(i would guess he would be left with 2-3 marines, while the other one has none left)

and this is only 1 tile difference in position: imagine you used a marine to scout! he would never be able to join the fight, making it essential a "4v5" although both players would have the same amount of possible marines.

/edit: and i didn't even consider the layout of the map, concrete: line of sight. put 5 marines on top of a ramp and try to break through with 5 marines... good luck.
“Never assume malice when stupidity will suffice.”
necaremus
Profile Joined December 2013
45 Posts
Last Edited: 2016-03-16 21:52:05
March 16 2016 21:51 GMT
#351
On March 17 2016 05:26 loppy2345 wrote:
The thing is Starcraft is based in real time, and has to be played as such. If an AI tries to play itself, it will have to learn by itself what the win condition is. Assuming it eventually manages to play games in 10 minutes on average, it will be able to play 144 games each day, so 52,560 games in one year. Let's just say arbitarily that it has to play 1 million games before it reaches pro level, it will take 18 years. Realistically, it will take probably billions or trillions of games, which would be millions of years.

Therefore this trial and error approach just won't work in starcraft, unlike go or chess where it can play games against itself in fractions of seconds.

this is not entirely true. to be honest: it is far from reality: you ever heard of parallel processing? the AI could play multiple games at the same time (just like they did with go), and they could easily adjust the game-speed to something faster, if they wished.

/edit: they only need a smart way to merge the data they got out of the games :edit/

the question is: do they have the resources to do so? for go they used about the energy of a middle big city over a few month.

if they want to compete in starcraft, they would have to expand this.
“Never assume malice when stupidity will suffice.”
Quesadilla
Profile Blog Joined October 2007
United States1814 Posts
March 16 2016 23:25 GMT
#352
Seems like most people are already echoing my thoughts too. Unless the AI is limited with the APM/mechanics, no way a person could win.
Make a lot of friends. Wear good clothes. Drink good beer. Love a nice girl.
StarscreamG1
Profile Joined February 2011
Portugal1653 Posts
March 16 2016 23:38 GMT
#353
On March 17 2016 08:25 Quesadilla wrote:
Seems like most people are already echoing my thoughts too. Unless the AI is limited with the APM/mechanics, no way a person could win.

Agree, but with restrictions the test wouldn't make sense.
bo1b
Profile Blog Joined August 2012
Australia12814 Posts
March 16 2016 23:39 GMT
#354
People who think that ai's that play chess/go are doing it differently to each other are hilarious. As is the insecurity that all go players seem to display whenever they feel compelled to tell the world just how many possible combinations there are.

Everyone thinking that Starcraft is unsolvable for an ai has completely missed the point that these ai's aren't memorising every possible option in chess/go (completely impossible with current technology), they're simply learning the game. Starcraft is significantly less complex then both go and chess, and to assume that asinine things like all possible positions of a marine on a map is going to make a significant impact is laughable. In fact, given how quickly machine learning operates, I'd bet that positioning is probably the very first thing that is mastered by it in the grand scheme of strategy.
jinorazi
Profile Joined October 2004
Korea (South)4948 Posts
March 16 2016 23:48 GMT
#355
i'd be impressed and hope to see within my lifetime.

hell, even i'm confident i can beat whatever AI available at the moment but obviously, this is talking about future.

i just cant fathom how the AI would work to understand a game like starcraft and be able to decide what to do.
age: 84 | location: california | sex: 잘함
loppy2345
Profile Joined August 2015
39 Posts
March 17 2016 00:18 GMT
#356
Also I think the map choice is going to seriously mess up the AI, if it was a plain map with no obstacles, etc..., then it would obviously be a lot easier for the AI than a map with lots of cliffs. It would be very easy to design maps that would completely screw over the AI, whereas obviously humans would be able to understand the map a lot quicker.

I think it's definitely possible to develop an AI that could beat the best pro's consistently, but would probably take a team of 10 world class programmers 20 years or so to do it, and that's not really worth the money and effort.
Veldril
Profile Joined August 2010
Thailand1817 Posts
Last Edited: 2016-03-17 00:49:26
March 17 2016 00:45 GMT
#357
On March 17 2016 08:39 bo1b wrote:
People who think that ai's that play chess/go are doing it differently to each other are hilarious. As is the insecurity that all go players seem to display whenever they feel compelled to tell the world just how many possible combinations there are.

Everyone thinking that Starcraft is unsolvable for an ai has completely missed the point that these ai's aren't memorising every possible option in chess/go (completely impossible with current technology), they're simply learning the game. Starcraft is significantly less complex then both go and chess, and to assume that asinine things like all possible positions of a marine on a map is going to make a significant impact is laughable. In fact, given how quickly machine learning operates, I'd bet that positioning is probably the very first thing that is mastered by it in the grand scheme of strategy.


Well, the AIs that play chess and Alphago are doing thing completely different, though. In chess, AIs can look for combination of the overall board positions without using Alphago's policy technics but Go is too complex for that. If the same type of AIs that are used in chess can work in go then the top go players would be defeated by AI a long time ago (no human can win against AI in chess since around 2006-2007). It is not really an insecurity if it is a fact that is back up by concrete evidences.

On March 17 2016 06:46 necaremus wrote:

the position of each unit is not as important? if you have the same number of marines (for example 5 vs 5), but one "player" has his marines positioned, so that all 5 can focus fire a target at the same time, in the same instant, while the other one has 3 marines in front an 2 marines behind -> only 3 marines can fire on initiation of the fight, the other 2 will join the "2nd round" of the fight. who do you think wins this fight?

clearly the one who uses all 5 marines in the instant the fight starts.
(i would guess he would be left with 2-3 marines, while the other one has none left)

and this is only 1 tile difference in position: imagine you used a marine to scout! he would never be able to join the fight, making it essential a "4v5" although both players would have the same amount of possible marines.

/edit: and i didn't even consider the layout of the map, concrete: line of sight. put 5 marines on top of a ramp and try to break through with 5 marines... good luck.


As long as one pixel/tile differences would not lead to a different result, then those differences would not matter and would be heuristically group into clusters of positions instead. When pro players play, they don't think about positioning each unit on each tile, they think about position units in a general area as long as that cluster of area is where the units should be in. Alphago-type AI is also taught to think this way like human so it will learn how to emulate how human pro think but will be made to think faster.

Beside, losing a group of marines do not matter at all in the bigger picture. If by sacrificing a group of units would lead to a better game positions (i.e. strengthening overall board positions in Go or opening up counter attack path to base in Starcraft) then AI would be willing to sacrifice units. It will also learn how to react and what can it do to maximize its chance to win if units are caught out of position.

On March 17 2016 05:26 loppy2345 wrote:
The thing is Starcraft is based in real time, and has to be played as such. If an AI tries to play itself, it will have to learn by itself what the win condition is. Assuming it eventually manages to play games in 10 minutes on average, it will be able to play 144 games each day, so 52,560 games in one year. Let's just say arbitarily that it has to play 1 million games before it reaches pro level, it will take 18 years. Realistically, it will take probably billions or trillions of games, which would be millions of years.

Therefore this trial and error approach just won't work in starcraft, unlike go or chess where it can play games against itself in fractions of seconds.


That's true but I would say that if the AI can use parallel processing to learn, then it could play more than 144 games a day.

On March 17 2016 09:18 loppy2345 wrote:
Also I think the map choice is going to seriously mess up the AI, if it was a plain map with no obstacles, etc..., then it would obviously be a lot easier for the AI than a map with lots of cliffs. It would be very easy to design maps that would completely screw over the AI, whereas obviously humans would be able to understand the map a lot quicker.

I think it's definitely possible to develop an AI that could beat the best pro's consistently, but would probably take a team of 10 world class programmers 20 years or so to do it, and that's not really worth the money and effort.


You can say that with any game though. What is the point of making AI that beating people in chess and go? What was the point of spending billion in building Alphago? The point is that it is for research on how human learning process work, then people will do it, like what happen with Alphago. If by beating pro Starcraft players by AI would give us answer how people decision making process or learning process in using asymmetric information is, or improve the decision making process of AI; then people will do it.
Without love, we can't see anything. Without love, the truth can't be seen. - Umineko no Naku Koro Ni
Kerm
Profile Joined April 2010
France467 Posts
March 17 2016 11:13 GMT
#358
Interesting blog on gamasutra on this subject.

http://gamasutra.com/blogs/BenWeber/20160314/267956/DeepMind_Challenges_for_StarCraft.php
What i know is that I know nothing - [http://twitter.com/UncleKerm]
unholyflare
Profile Joined August 2014
42 Posts
March 17 2016 11:27 GMT
#359
On March 13 2016 03:24 Charoisaur wrote:
Show nested quote +
On March 13 2016 03:17 lordsaul wrote:
I think people massively underestimate what perfect mechanics does to the game It depends on the rules/limitations placed on the AI, but imagine

* Every Medivac always picking up units about to be hit by a stalker and immediately dropping it for the next shot
* Marines that always maintain their range advantage on roaches
* Tanks that always target the banelings first
* Marines that always perfect split v banelings (you can find that online already)
* Weak units that always rotate out of the front line
* Medivacs healing the most important target in range, rather than the closest
* Perfect charges vs tank lines (single units charging ahead of the main attack
* ...to name a very few basic micro tricks

And while all this happens, perfect macro? Humans overestimate themselves . Computers won't even need "good" strategy to beat humans, just a large number of difficult to handle micro tricks and beastly macro. The "AI" that will need to be added is just to stop the computer glitching out against weird tricks (e.g. somehow tricking the AI into permanent retreat based on units trying to find perfect range.

Edit: Humans are actually at an advantage in Chess and Go, because they are put under far less real time pressure

people don't underestimate that. they know the AI would have to be limited for it to be a fair challenge.
the point is to show that bots are more intelligent then humans not that they have better mechanics.


This was never the point? Certainly as far as chess engines go, they are superior simply because they can brute force calculate in the way that humans can't. Humans have to "teach" engines strategy by assigning values to various strategic aspects.

The brute force calculation power of machines in chess/go I would say is roughly the equivalent to mechanics in SC2. It's part of the deal.
Elentos
Profile Blog Joined February 2015
55554 Posts
March 17 2016 11:33 GMT
#360
On March 17 2016 08:38 StarscreamG1 wrote:
Show nested quote +
On March 17 2016 08:25 Quesadilla wrote:
Seems like most people are already echoing my thoughts too. Unless the AI is limited with the APM/mechanics, no way a person could win.

Agree, but with restrictions the test wouldn't make sense.

Why not? I'm pretty sure it's easier to create an AI that can beat the best SC players with humanly impossible mechanics than it is to make an AI that can beat them strategically with human-like mechanics. But the 2nd one is way more interesting.
Every 60 seconds in Africa, a minute passes.
Prev 1 16 17 18 19 20 29 Next All
Please log in or register to reply.
Live Events Refresh
Wardi Open
11:00
PTR Open Cup
WardiTV1004
TKL 262
IndyStarCraft 232
Rex135
Liquipedia
[ Submit Event ]
Live Streams
Refresh
StarCraft 2
TKL 262
IndyStarCraft 232
PiGStarcraft228
Rex 135
StarCraft: Brood War
Britney 48565
Calm 9185
Rain 4479
Bisu 3842
Shuttle 1984
Horang2 1889
GuemChi 1380
actioN 1050
Hyuk 836
BeSt 654
[ Show more ]
Mini 421
Light 416
Barracks 339
Larva 324
ZerO 273
firebathero 262
Leta 253
Zeus 222
Soma 184
Soulkey 170
Hyun 167
JYJ150
sSak 142
hero 136
ggaemo 132
sorry 95
Rush 93
Backho 92
Mind 67
PianO 66
Sea.KH 50
ivOry 50
Sharp 46
sas.Sziky 41
Movie 39
soO 32
Yoon 28
Free 27
GoRush 20
Sacsri 18
Aegong 17
Noble 17
ajuk12(nOOB) 16
Hm[arnc] 15
Terrorterran 8
Dota 2
Gorgc5005
qojqva2321
Dendi1005
XcaliburYe222
BananaSlamJamma216
Fuzer 201
Counter-Strike
olofmeister1828
zeus662
markeloff173
oskar105
edward105
Super Smash Bros
Chillindude16
Heroes of the Storm
Khaldor149
Other Games
B2W.Neo1262
hiko925
crisheroes370
Pyrionflax295
RotterdaM181
Happy170
ToD89
NeuroSwarm58
Trikslyr31
ZerO(Twitch)6
Organizations
StarCraft 2
IntoTheiNu 15
Blizzard YouTube
StarCraft: Brood War
BSLTrovo
sctven
[ Show 16 non-featured ]
StarCraft 2
• intothetv
• AfreecaTV YouTube
• Kozan
• IndyKCrew
• LaughNgamezSOOP
• Migwel
• sooper7s
StarCraft: Brood War
• iopq 2
• Michael_bg 1
• BSLYoutube
• STPLYoutube
• ZZZeroYoutube
Dota 2
• lizZardDota2146
League of Legends
• Nemesis5142
• Jankos1522
Other Games
• WagamamaTV220
Upcoming Events
PiGosaur Monday
10h 3m
LiuLi Cup
21h 3m
OSC
1d 1h
The PondCast
1d 20h
CranKy Ducklings
2 days
Maestros of the Game
3 days
Serral vs herO
Clem vs Reynor
[BSL 2025] Weekly
4 days
[BSL 2025] Weekly
4 days
BSL Team Wars
5 days
Wardi Open
5 days
[ Show More ]
Sparkling Tuna Cup
6 days
Liquipedia Results

Completed

2025 Chongqing Offline CUP
RSL Revival: Season 2
HCC Europe

Ongoing

BSL 20 Team Wars
KCM Race Survival 2025 Season 3
BSL 21 Points
ASL Season 20
CSL 2025 AUTUMN (S18)
Maestros of the Game
StarSeries Fall 2025
FISSURE Playground #2
BLAST Open Fall 2025
BLAST Open Fall Qual
Esports World Cup 2025
BLAST Bounty Fall 2025
BLAST Bounty Fall Qual
IEM Cologne 2025
FISSURE Playground #1

Upcoming

IPSL Winter 2025-26
SC4ALL: Brood War
BSL 21 Team A
BSL Season 21
RSL Revival: Season 3
Stellar Fest
SC4ALL: StarCraft II
EC S1
ESL Impact League Season 8
SL Budapest Major 2025
BLAST Rivals Fall 2025
IEM Chengdu 2025
PGL Masters Bucharest 2025
Thunderpick World Champ.
CS Asia Championships 2025
ESL Pro League S22
TLPD

1. ByuN
2. TY
3. Dark
4. Solar
5. Stats
6. Nerchio
7. sOs
8. soO
9. INnoVation
10. Elazer
1. Rain
2. Flash
3. EffOrt
4. Last
5. Bisu
6. Soulkey
7. Mini
8. Sharp
Sidebar Settings...

Advertising | Privacy Policy | Terms Of Use | Contact Us

Original banner artwork: Jim Warren
The contents of this webpage are copyright © 2025 TLnet. All Rights Reserved.