Starcraft AI blog

Working on the opponent model today, I made one of the key changes for the next version:

    "UseEnemySpecificStrategy" : false,
    "EnemySpecificStrategy" :
    {
    },

No more openings hand-configured for known opponents. Steamhammer has to figure out everything on its own. I’ve been working toward this for a long time, and it’s good to finally take the step. I expect play to become more varied—Steamhammer is likely to discover surprising solutions for some opponents. Play should also become stronger, especially in tournaments where opponents like to prepare specially against select enemies. They’ll have to look for ways to exploit Steamhammer’s tactical and micro mistakes, because the game plans will be too adaptive.

I also wrote the terran vulture-first recognizer for the plan recognizer today. It recognizes a plan called Factory that can only be followed by terran, and Steamhammer zerg is configured to counter the plan with the AntiFactory opening. Testing against Iron, it worked perfectly: The first game, Iron won easily. The second game, Steamhammer countered and fought back hard (and happened to win). That’s how it’s supposed to work.

The recognizer was easy to write. Maybe I should write a few more recognizers and counters.

Iron should be a good test case, because Iron is strong enough to usually defeat the counter—AntiFactory puts up a tough battle, but still mostly loses. Opening learning success looks like this: Steamhammer realizes that AntiFactory is probably best, though not all that good, and explores other openings sometimes but not too often. I think I should be able to get that right.

Will playing better games against Iron entice voters on SSCAIT? I think it might happen. If so, I will quickly grow bored with similar Iron-Steamhammer games, but stream watchers may be pleased. Iron would likely lose a few elo points to Steamhammer on average, instead of gaining as it does now.

The upcoming version 1.4.2 has important improvements for all races, including some improvements I haven’t mentioned. Strategy, macro, and micro are better. Look forward to higher rankings for Steamhammer and Randomhammer.