DarkBlizz

Blizzard clearly did not make it very difficult whatsoever to crack the game vs AI - they are not a stupid developer and knew full-well that anyone without a beta key was gonna get on the cracked AI band-wagon since it only took about a week to crack this thing, its clear to me that Blizzard purposely made cracking offline play easy.


Battle.net 2.0 on the other hand - it may never be cracked, or at the least, it will take until a retail release and not the beta.  Currently Bnet sends a session unique authorization code when you connect to SC2 Beta servers, and until the crack devs can figure out A. the algorithm (if there is one), or B. the complete list of auth codes, we will not see online play cracked.


In the meantime lets all work together to get some real challenging AI going.

I will move my v5.1 reports to this thread.  Testing v5.5 reports in the morning.

Match: P v Z (Zerg AI)
Map: Desert Oasis (1v1)
Duration: 31 minutes, 38 seconds
Analysis 6:56 PM Eastern, March 1st, 2010
Result: Player Win


For the remainder of my reports I'm not going to be using a Good / Bad measurement, but rather simply state what the AI did, and comment on it


Report:


-Scouted at 1 minute 40 seconds to check build


-Scouted at 3 minutes for pre-rush


-At 6 minutes I had my 20 odd zealot rush ready, a couple of canonns up, tech ready for stalkers and immortals, and preparing my natural exapansion
   -I head to his base to attack and am met with solid resistance, 25-30 zerglings, and about 10 roaches


-Upon retreating to my higher ground at my base I was able to hold off the attack.


-At 12 minutes the AI returned with more zerglings and roaches, along with infestors and hydralisk in support
   -At this point my forces consist purely of Stalkers, Immortals, and Void Rays


-Stargates and higher end tech started at 16 minutes, met with Mutalisks, more many infestors, hydralisks, roaches, banelings


-The next 15 minutes of the game involve a back and forth battle in which I, low on vespene gas, continually hold off various Zerg pushes


-At 25 minutes came an end-game push for the AI, I had at this point, 8 immortals, 12 zealots, 6 carriers, Mothership, 3 Collosi, 10 Phoenix, 6 Stalkers, 4 Archons, 4 Dark Templar, 3 Void Rays
   -AI Army, 20 Mutalisk, a good couple dozen hydralisk, 10-12 roaches left over from mid game, 8-10 Ultralisks, Banelings, Infestors, and Overseers


-After a short battle I had cleaned up the remainder of the AIs forces, and then proceded for the remainder of the game to hunt down and kill numerous AI expansions


-I met with a small contingent of Hydralisks and Muties at his island expansion


Micro Specific:


Unit positioning for the zerg was much better than the Terran or the Protoss AIs I faced, but certaintly not spot-on.  When attacking my base it smartly used Mutalisk in order to take out my cannons, prior to bringing its remaining troops, however, it continued to do so even once I had a group of Phoenix tearing them up.


It always put its Ultralisks on buildings, and never once tried to take out my back line of Immortals (which Ultralisks dominate).


Banelings are morphed by the AI during combat, not prior to the battle. 


It did not use transports for in battle micro, nor did it use Nydus worms to send weakend troops back to the creep to burrow and regenerate.


Early game the AI allowed me to block 20 Zerglings in a nook in the wall, with only 6 Zealots, and my cannons made short work of the Zerglings.  However, it also surrounded my early game scout compliment of 3 zealots with its Zerglings, so it wasn't all bad.


The AI still has problems retreating and numerous times I picked off a half dozen Hydralisk upon its retreat.


Unlike the Protoss and Terran AI, the Zerg did not hesitate to attack at least, and made sure to bring its full force, or nothing at all.


Comments:


Zerg is far and away the best AI, while I was never troubled to defend its attacks, it certainly did a good job of keeping pressure on me and keeping my troops to low numbers.


Fast expansion was used by the AI, and it expanded once more for high-yield minerals, late in the game it put up 2 other expansions mostly to keep the match going.


Generally I was impressed with the performance the AI put out, however it did not really counter what I had, once the mothership carriers and collosus came out, rather than switch to corrupters and mutalisk, the AI continued to pump Ultralisks and Hydras, which would get mowed down in short order by the Collosus.


Where to go next?


I think the next course of action should be primarily to bring the Terran and Protoss AI's up to par with the Zerg AI, that way the playing field can at least be leveled so to speak, in that each AI will have comprable perforamnce.


Rushes - None of the AI's use the, while they are all capable of prodcuing a 6-9 minute early game push, none of them have a pre 5 minute rush, or assault of any kind.  Perhaps a script can be implemented where a certain percentage of the time, the AI will have a later first push attempt, and have an early rush instead.


Nydus Worms, Phase Prisms, Ravens - Never saw any from the AIs, would be a nice feature for a future version.


Considering the performance of the Protoss, I believe I'll wait until v6 to do a proper report on them (If a dev wants specific tips about making Protoss AI better PM me)


-Elvish

I have tested the Terran on StarCrack v5.1 go to the link below to take a look at my report. My report on Zerg AI is also available.  The Terran in v5.1 was certainly not a pushover, it beat me, of course it was T v T, and that is by far my worst match up.


Link:http://darkblizz.org/Forum2/ai-scripts/a-i-v5-0/30/


-Elvish

Given the fact that the first version of the AI came out Saturday at about 12:30 AM, the devs have come very far in a short period of time.  As Goosie pointed out however, many of the AI commands that will be in the full version of the game are not even coded into the beta, so it will take a good number of iterations while the devs build up the command list to be appropriate for competitive play.

Could we please get a Mod to close this thread and bury it so as to avoid confusing.

I hear that on the protoss AI, Zerg and Terran are much further along.  I will have all my reports up by tomorrow.

Alright just got done a TvT, and the comp beat me!!! - Actually this is quite an easy feat since I was terrible with Terran in BW, however, the computer definitely showed marked improvement.  Going to spam restart until I get my best race (Protoss) then I'll see what the challenge level is really at.  Report below.



Match: T v T
Duration: Approx. 18 minutes
Analysis: 5 PM Eastern, March 1st, 2010
Result: AI Win


Good:
-Scouted base within first minute
-Attacked with marines, tanks, and marauders at 10 minutes
-Expanded at 12-15 minutes
-Teched and began to pump battlecruisers
-When I made vikings to counter the cruisers, it also made vikings
-AI also kept attacking which was good, and greatly improved over previous versions does not dance on the edge of the fog of war
-Tank harrasement


Bad:
-While the AI did continually attack it really didn't seem to keep up the pressure, or encourage a fast paced 1 on 1 game
-The AI still waits to have a massively superior army to attack, it waited for 8 battlecruisers before using them, instead of adding units into the army as they are produced
-Other than a one-minute in SCV scout the AI had a non-existent late game, a rush would have defeated it easily


On Micro:
RAVENS - The computer is terrified of Ravens and thier point defense drones and turrets, every time I dropped them down it would run away, even when it had Battlecruisers
Having the AI focus fire the turrets should be implemented.


Tanks - AI sets up tanks to siege buildings well, but does not siege them when in battles, also it tended to dance the tanks at the front lines, taking heavy damage


Battlecruisers - The AI does not focus fire with its cruisers, but simply auto-attacks, also did not move any of them back when focused with 8+ Vikings


Infantry - The AI continually uses infantry as fodder, does not focus fire, or make medievacs - There was no attempts to remove its marines and marauders from combat even though I had 6 siege
tanks pounding on em.






Comments:
For the most part it seems you guys have got the build orders down now, the computer used most of its minerals, and most importantly was not idle at all during the game.
Currently I did not really see any direct counters, the AI essentially stuck with a set strategy and forced me to counter what it was making - which is good, but doesn't
necesarily emulate human play.  Keep up the good work devs! Zerg, and Protoss Analyses soon.


-Elvish

Testing 5.1 now will reply within the hour with a detailed report on what I find.


-Elvish

In BW I would start with the standard 4 zeal to dragoon rush, after which I simply make whatever I need to counter the opponent.


SC2 I've been experimenting with mass stalkers to void ray / immortals (pump phoenix if you need AA).


Build order is really simple 10 probes > pylon/assimilator > gateway / 4 probes for gas > keep pumping probes non stop while you get cyber core and zeals (same as BW you want approximately 2 per mineral cluster) > second gateway > start stalker pumping > 2nd assimilator > robotics facility > expansion > stargate > immortals > phoenix


Bottom line is its all in the micro, 20 stalkers can take out 30 marauders if you blink and focus fire appropriately.

First off I'm new here, and would like to open my first post by saying a very big thanks to all the development teams that have worked on the crack(s), hacked maps, and AI.  StarCraft Brood War is essentially my favorite game of all time, and being able to play, even against weak AI, on SC2 is something I thought would never happen.


In any case I have played all of Blizzard's games, but more importantly, I reached a semi-professional level in WarCraft 3.  So to that end I have made an account after watching this forum for the past week and half, in order to help make the AI as challenging as possible.


I am not very versed in computer coding, however, I do understand some basic languages (HTML, CSS, a little PHP).  What I would like to provide in terms of AI is not the code, but rather the strategy and micro choices the AI should make and so on.  I will be posting my complete topic later today in which I will outline 5 different build orders for each race, and how to execute a win from each build order, and more importantly how to adapt real counters to attacks from each build.


I'm sure the dev teams already have experience players, and I would simply like to provide my additions on strategy.  Of course, even the best AI that can be produced will never provide the same challenge as facing a human opponent, we can at least try to get it as close as possible.


Thanks again to all the hard work from the teams thus far


-Elvish