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?
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?