DarkBlizz

Quote from: hd on March 08, 2010, 10:47:09 PM
Yes we can. why would you even post a thread like this?

Did you even read it? I posted it because it's something that none of the AIs I've seen are taking advantage of. They could be much stronger and play much more intelligently.

edited... oops!

All of the AIs I've seen only control what units the AI makes, so they just attack with wave after wave after wave. All you have to do to come out ahead economically is build some units that counter the opponents... their army dies and most of yours survives. It's so efficient that I can easily beat the 6.1 cheating AI in every matchup (and I'm only a D+ iccup player) by doing nothing other than making a few units, beating the first attack, then counterattacking before they rebuild for wave two.

Let me make an analogy to starcraft 1 ZvT, for those of you familiar with the matchup. Terran can push out with their first 10ish marines and medics, forcing the zerg to put down sunkens to defend. This hurts the zerg economically. Now instead of throwing his marines pointlessly to their death, the terran upgrades them, uses them to defend against mutas, and then pushes out with a much stronger army before lurkers come out.


Now let's talk about ZvP in starcraft two. Currently the protoss AI seems to always do this big 3 gate zealot attack. All I have to do is make a queen and expand while making roaches. I can kill the entire protoss army before it gets to my base with 6-10 roaches with hit-and-run target fire, and then either kill him or keep him in his base until I have an overwhelming advantage. A smarter protoss would make a few zealots early (force me to make the roaches instead of just greedily expanding with drones), but instead of investing in a useless army, gets immortals and crushes me with a combined zealot/immortal army in the midgame. Again if it seems like I saw it coming and will be able to kill him, he keeps his army on the defense and gets high templar or something that counters my counter.


tl;dr version: attacking in waves is stupid and encourages me to turtle (i.e. teaches bad habits). Is there any way to code in more advanced tactics so the AI keeps their army alive until it actually has a chance of winning the battle?

The protoss 3 gate zealot rush is brutally annoying. No good player would do this since they're totally screwed (no expansion, no tech) if you beat it, and being required to beat it severely limits your early-game options. Them doing such an all-in attack forces you to play responsively and makes XvP games very one-dimensional.

Is there any way to program the AI to not engage if it looks like you will be able to defend? This is one very big aspect of competitive gaming. For example terran/protoss can make some units and THREATEN to attack zerg, in order to force the zerg player to make spine crawlers, zerglings, roaches, or some combination. This causes the zerg to have less drones than they would have otherwise. By not attacking, the other player not only weakened the zerg, but doesn't lose his army in the process and will have a stronger midgame army.

This enables you to program the AI to do strong timing attacks like immortal pushes that aren't possible of the protoss threw away all of his zealot support earlier. I'm not sure if more advanced programming like this is possible at this level, but it would certainly create a much more dynamic game than simply survive consecutive waves of attacks while getting strong enough to kill the AI. Boooring

I love the work you are doing! Very impressive so far, already much better than SC1s AI

I'm annoyed playing against protoss though... they seem to always just do this massive 3 gate zealot attack... so if you prepare for that with units (e.g. roaches) that counter them, then you just counterattack and win easily (even against cheating AI). Perhaps it might be possible for the protoss AI to use a strategy that isn't so silly? It's not very fun to play against, since your opening options are very limited by the ridiculous strategy he chooses.