The Highest Ranked StarCraft II BOTS Are INSANE

#harstem #SC2 #StarCraft2

[AldiePezeh]

20.000 APM, defeated by burrowed lings. The irony.

[AnimeLOVER-uwjs]

Harstem: drones should be pulled at this point
Eris:Bro I have 29.000 of apm

[Galahad]

The text tags are to help the developers see how the game is going without watching the entire game. Since these are not usually AI, there behaviors, although complex, does not self-adapt. It is possible to have multiple builds, and dump a build once another bot adopts a good counter to your bot build. True learning takes enormous computer resources, and then may just do blink stalkers or other 10K APM strategy. For a while the top bots were coded in C++, but Eris and Deimos are both python, the same as most basic bots. There are 699 bots uploaded to the site, but only 75 are in the main competition. Mine is currently ranked 39 of 75, even though it's been untouched since July 2019. (Top ranking 3 - it's just a zergling rush bot).

[Volteer]

Love how this makes the matches feel more "realistic" in the sense that with an APM this high it's basically as if each unit is actually acting as an independent actor in a coordinated army instead of a mindless blob just following direct orders or doing nothing otherwise.

[Cellus]

My guess is the tags are there to timestamp for the bots on small executable strategies.

For example you can see the Bane Drop was executed regardless of the state of the game, which makes sense because as a designer you'd need to code the baneling drop separately to anything discreetly necessary to win (injects, making drones, expanding, etc).

So if the bane drop is like an executable for Eris, having it say when it starts the executable will make it much easier to debug

[ikilly]

3:11 Holy shit Im laughing my ass off at the drones staying always a perfect circle away from the adept it looks so fucking silly, love it

[xIcarus]

16:41 lmao those stalkers on the right upper side avoiding the lurker spikes like it's nothing

[KnownAsKenji]

@5:43 I like how the mutas swing and swerve around while assaulting a base, looks funnily enough like a Starcraft cinematic animation.

[enlightenerr]

2024 and a bot does not get a fourth base because of a burrowed zergling. Furstrating

[oOOoOphidian]

I played some games against Eris and it's insanely hard to beat. The speed mining just means it has so much more stuff than a human ever can and it uses that to also harass a lot with burrow at expansions and tunneling claws roaches among other things. My only wins were from camping a bit on 6 bases and starving it out with late game compositions.

[jeffreywilliams]

Some context on this game: Deimos is actually a very new bot, Eris is much older and has more fleshed out scripting, thats why you see Deimos just sit on Stalker/Immortal all game, that's the only thing it has right now. AS mentioned by Harstem, rushing burrow to block all expansions is indeed something almost every zerg bot does and its difficult for even the higher tier bots to respond to, also Roaches with burrow/tunneling are an absolute terror on the bot ladder, and requires specific responses that many bots dont have.

[JFox]

Dude, roach burrow micro is so legit, I don’t understand how that isn’t utilized at high level. It’s not always applicable in every matchup or scenario, but there has to be opportunities we are missing. Burrow in general is underutilized, whether it’s banelings, burrow micro to save strong units, spotter lings, denying bases, burrow harass…there’s so much room for burrow to be a bigger part of the game in the future.

[lodthefraud]

So happy to see bots again! I love these casts.

[miza]

I think my first harstem video was a bot video about 2 years ago, and almost a daily viewer since. hope this one is as popular and brings in new folks for you.

[miza]

If both bots have unlimited api and max out that function, it effectively turns into a pure strategy game as mechanical skill is no longer relevant.

[Tekki_]

is the deepmind still a thing? i remember them implementing as "alphastar" or like that years ago to get the sense of strats etc. btw im so hyped for the rank roulette coming up, love the series ^^

[albertschmitz]

Legitimately, wouldn't a competitive hybrid human/bot competition be fun? Like a player trains with an bot in archon mode or a mod of it, it gets tailored to that players style, and then the player and their bot play together in a tourney.

[kevinrineer]

Haha i love how the protoss boy has an optimization to utilize shields even if they arent fighting (the phoenixes) and the zerg has an optimization to take out individual units which is more important than using all its units to fight. Really fun video.

[shadowlordalpha]

Tags are literally tags for the bot replays, we have a system that takes these chat messages and adds the tags to the replays for download so we can search a set of replays for specific tags and such.

[alexsimkin]

It is really interesting to see a bot game. It would be interesting to see how they improve in the future if other games become available.