Starcraft 2

The having fun last run on Hard is over as of about half an hour ago.

I'm surprised how easy All In was this time. There's a huge difference between Hard and Brutal. Picked the air route, reached 200/200 at about 30% and never dropped below 180/200 after that point. Never made anything other than Marines and Vikings; didn't need to. Defense was three bunkers in the north, three bunkers in the south, all with Marines and Marauders, plus two Siege tanks and two Psi Disruptors. Only lost ONE bunker in total.

I think the easy time was due to the fact that I killed the Leviathan as soon as it appeared; I remember when I tried this mission on Brutal once, the Leviathan was crapping out units so fast that I couldn't move the Vikings anywhere else to respond to Brood Lord attacks elsewhere. Another breather was the fact that although I got attacked from the rear a few times, only the last few waves contained Brood Lords and although they eventually took out my mineral line, by that point they couldn't really stop me from winning.

Oh, well. On to Heart of the Swarm tomorrow!

Two sessions down so far.

Damn, how convenient it is to be able to just 0-S-V-V-V-V-V whenever I get supply blocked without having to take my eyes off of the action for even a second! That, and rally-pointing the hatchery to Kerrigan means I can just keep the pressure on without having to fall back to regroup. This is awesome and I already know I'm gonna miss this in Legacy of the Void. This game just has everything perfect. This is how a hero unit should be: right in the thick of the action pitching in, no Hero Must Survive crap.

In Lot V, you'll at least be able to drop units right on the front lines with that power field. It won't be quite the same, but it'll still be easier than with the Terrans.

Managed to get all Wings of Liberty achievements on Hard. Made real good use out of those Hive Mind Emulators and got hordes of Mutalisks to help me out. It was a close call, as my base was close to being overrun a number of times.

I never used Hive Mind Emulators. Ever. Even when I picked it, I never actually built it because I simply didn't feel the need to.

Psi Disruptors, on the other hand, I spammed the fuck out of in Brutal All In and it saved my hide.

I always used Hive Mind Emulators, never Psi Inhibitors. Can't resist the urge to capture an Ultralisk or a crap ton of Mutalisks, now, can I?

Like I said, never captured anything and manually ordering the emulator around is too much pain. If I could just set it to autocast, I might consider it, but not like this.

I'm not the type of guy who constantly microes his entire army. More like "A-move next to target and micro only as needed because there's too much action going on to pay attention to everything and framerate's too low due to difficulty-enforced game speed to react in time".

That tactic almost bit me in the ass when I played The Reckoning on Normal: I had my Hatcheries rallypointed at Kerrigan cranking out Roaches and Hydralisks in a 2:1 ratio, but she kept running out of troops in the thick of it anyway because the reinforcements decided that trying to run through the enemy camp next to Raynor is a faster route than the right flank Kerrigan already wiped completely clean of enemies. They did a fair bit of damage due to stopping to shoot back every time I F2-attack-moved, though.

edited 20th May '18 10:29:26 AM by amitakartok

I guess I have the opposite playstyle. I use abilities whenever I see fit. Simply moving and attacking is too boring for me.

Do note that I'm currently attempting a Hard run of Heart of the Swarm to get the mastery achievements.

I lost count how many times I restarted Rendezvous and Harvest of Screams, but eventually got both.

• Rendezvous required me to realize that massing Swarm Queens was the way to go, not Zerglings. There's just too many flamethrowers for 'lings to work.
• Harvest of Screams required me to be really swift with micro at the beginning. Picking the movement speed mutation for Zerglings helped, but wasn't enough: if I waited until the second flash freeze to destroy the first target, I ran out of time. I ultimately ended up destroying literally nothing but the targets and the optional objectives because I literally did not have time for anything else.

Tried the next Kaldir mission too, no dice. Even with three hatcheries crapping out units all the time, I simply don't have enough to go on the offensive because every shuttle escort kills half my Hydralisks and I don't have enough resources to go beyond 140 supply before the next wave.

Okkkay, scored Shoot the Messenger mastery at long last. Key was spamming the left and center warp conduit with 8-10 Spore Crawlers each so that I don't have to use my troops to intercept; the right conduit is only used once and once I intercept that attempt, I have enough troops to attempt attacking the bases. Still took a couple of tries and only got it with a few seconds to spare.

Old Soldiers mastery almost got me headbutting the screen, what with my starting troops repeatedly dying in arm's reach of the target with 20 seconds left. Eventually got it by the skin of my teeth.

The others I didn't have nearly as much difficulty with. Not even Supreme mastery. So that's the Char, Kaldir and Zerus masteries done.

AlphaStar: Mastering the Real-Time Strategy Game StarCraft II

DeepMind AI AlphaStar goes 10-1 against top 'StarCraft II' pros

The only true advantage it had over the human competition was that it had a total view of the map (that it's own units had revealed through the fog of war, no "view all" cheats), and that it's average actions were around 277 APM - far higher than most players, but not beyond that of a Pro Starcraft player. Oh, and the game still has some limitations; it apparently only learned how to play well on a single map as the Protoss, Catalyst in particular, and they needed to play a slightly outdated version of SC 2 which the Alpha Star AI had familiarized itself with.

And the AI's micro-skill is just as nasty as we thought it could be - that thing can micro like nobody else, especially with Stalker mechs.

I would expect an AI to be exceptional at micro, while human players would be more creative with strategies.

Wonder how long will it be until someone gets the idea of an AI-on-AI branch of E-Sports between AI programming teams. If their skills would be as good as this AI's, glorious two-way Xanatos Speed Chess would ensue.

Well, some games have already gotten mileage out of that. For example, the Civilization franchise has on several occasions streamed all-AI matches, which can go on for quite a while.

The problem with incredibly complex games like Starcraft is that the AI must be highly complex as well, and so the resources needed to create and maintain it would be correspondingly high. If we try to make it into a competitive exercise, evolution will rapidly give us at most a handful of core algorithms that are maintained by well-heeled developers, with competitors tweaking them to suit their particular styles.

It wouldn't be like you or I can whip up a Starcraft bot in our bedrooms at night and have it be competitive.

It would probably be fun to watch, though.

You basically just described what the Deep Mind team did to create Alpha Star: made it watch a TON of human replays to collect data, hold a self-contained AI league bracket against dozens of it's own AI variations, then continuously weed out the losing variants while promoting the winners until only five were left. Those five were further refined, and eventually pitted against the Starcraft pro community as a single AI capable of learning even from the very matches it just finished competing in.

Edited by SgtRicko on Jan 25th 2019 at 9:18:00 PM

Since the thread for Starcraft 1 has been inactive for a while I guess I shall migrate here.

I find playing against Protoss AI in custom games to be the toughest of the three. The AI likes to push a dozen Zealots early game that can be a loss to someone inexperienced. The AI is fairly good at Storm too. They are also the only AI race where M&M + tanks cannot win against.

Tv T AI is simply terrible. It loves to send Marines and Firebats upramp against a line of tanks. It also rarely researchs Siege Mode. I find it possible to get zero casualty when playing maps where the main base is surrounded by high ground.

...you sure about the Terran AI never researching Siege mode? Cause, it's like one thing I can guarantee upon seeing Siege tanks on the battlefield - the moment they have enough range or run into base defenses, you'd best get ready for them to pop out the big guns.

It does when I fight them as Zerg and Protoss, but I never see it putting its tanks in siege mode when my M&M marches to its door.

It's Brood War AI, btw, in case you confuse it with SCII.

Edited by RAlexa21th on Mar 31st 2019 at 10:48:53 AM

Nope, SC 1 Brood War, even on the Nintendo 64. Never played too much of SC 2 since I quickly learned to steer FAR away from the multiplayer aspect due to the ludicrous learning curve. But from what I do remember, it certainly improved at micro-managing the Siege tanks - it would immediately un-deploy if any melee units got within point blank range, relocated more frequently, ran away from aircraft, etc.

Edited by SgtRicko on Apr 1st 2019 at 4:20:21 AM

In Brood War, sometimes the Terran AI script will not research Siege Mode. It will also never build Missile Turrets or upgrade their infantry attack/armor.

The key to knowing this is looking for an Engineering Bay. If the AI doesn't have it and their infantry are 0/0 in upgrades, it's running that pathway.

Curiously, that pathway can be a pain because that way LOVES to spam Battlecruisers. If you play a money map, they can be mighty pains to defeat without a fleet of your own.

Why not just use Goliaths?

That particular AI path loves to build upwards of 10 or more Battlecruisers at a time, sometimes they even send a half dozen plus at once.

Goliaths may be good against aircraft, but they are rather weak units against the rest of the Terran arsenal. Even without Siege Mode, Siege Tanks will defeat Goliaths almost 2 to 1.

Necro: Kotaku rumor: Blizzard cancelled a Starcraft first-person shooter in order to focus on Diablo 4 and Overwatch 2.

A Starcraft FPS has been rumored for ages and has never seen the light of day. That said, we're confirmed to be getting Diablo 4? Hot dog!

So another Starcraft Ghost, huh? Shame, I bet that could have been fun.