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DeepMind StarCraft II Demonstration [video]

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Re: DeepMind StarCraft II Demonstration [video]

#71

Post by codeflo »

devilmoon wrote: post #53

I'm not proficient in Starcraft, but if they have to make Pros play against 5 different agents for a Bo5 is it because the same agent would merely repeat the same game overall and the human player would be able to see through its strategy? AFAIK at least for Go/Chess DeepMind wasn't handpicking agents to send against human opponents, but it was simply a trained agent who would try its own strategy and respond to the…

There's a rock-paper-scissors like aspect to StarCraft openings where you essentially have to randomize your strategy so that the other player can't blindly counter what you're doing. I assume each of their agents learns one particular strategy; in that case, they could simply create a "meta-agent" that acts like one of their trained agents at random (probably using some weighted distribution).

Re: DeepMind StarCraft II Demonstration [video]

#72

Post by [deleted] »

plaidfuji wrote: post #51

This is mad impressive, for sure. With most AI problems, I can at least comprehend the approach, and the necessary combination of models. Not so much here. My first question is what is the input to the AI? Is it the raw pixel array of the display? Or does it get API-level readouts of what’s happening? Because implementing the CV just to segment the display output in real time is crazy enough. I would assume the latte…

[deleted]

Re: DeepMind StarCraft II Demonstration [video]

#73

Post by [deleted] »

samfriedman wrote: post #22
candiodari wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In all of the games Alphastar was slower than TLO in the build order. I agree that TLO could have been faster, but this was definitely not the deciding factor. I think the main factor was Alpha* just had incredibly accurate assessment of exactly what part of it's army it needed to defend/attack and was very careful.

The DeepMind folks on stream just mentioned that Alphastar's inference speed is about 50ms from observation to action.

[deleted]

Re: DeepMind StarCraft II Demonstration [video]

#74

Post by Veedrac »

Buttons840 wrote: post #21
candiodari wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In all of the games Alphastar was slower than TLO in the build order. I agree that TLO could have been faster, but this was definitely not the deciding factor. I think the main factor was Alpha* just had incredibly accurate assessment of exactly what part of it's army it needed to defend/attack and was very careful.

What's AlphaStar's APM. Can it just move every single unit perfectly in a single frame?

https://youtu.be/cUTMhmVh1qs?t=3218

Re: DeepMind StarCraft II Demonstration [video]

#75

Post by devilmoon »

1258989fdg wrote: post #70

The AI makes some awful decisions, such as building five observers. This calls into question its "understanding" of the game. It looks like a lot of its ability comes from micro, which it's unsurprising a computer can do better than a human. This is impressive, but with a lot of caveats. DeepMind's work on chess and go was impressive with no caveats whatsoever.

I do believe the live match was with a newer version of the agent that hadn't been tested against human yet

Re: DeepMind StarCraft II Demonstration [video]

#76

Post by kzrdude »

Topgamer7 wrote: post #66
gambler wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stuff like that is why StarCraft is not a very good game to test AI on. It's good for publicity, because it is well-known and has a pro scene so you can claim to "beat humans", but it's too complex in some ways (ruleset) and too simplistic in others (mostly just killing stuf). APM and micromanagement are huge, while long-term strategies are fairly limited compared to many other strategy games. With all of this, it's…

There are limitations they put on the AI to try ti restrict to human levels. Such as having an action counter. And in the demonstration they filmed today, they actually limited the information the AI knows about to the screen space, which is probably along the lines of what you were wanting.

Their action counter rationale seemed fallacious, allowing 300 actions per minute sounds like it would give the bot an edge, presumably the bot has a much better ratio of meaningful actions vs all actions.

Re: DeepMind StarCraft II Demonstration [video]

#77

Post by dllu »

samfriedman wrote: post #49
kmnc wrote: post #45

Very impressive... but it seems like the AI relies entirely on abusing blink stalkers which with perfect micro is basically impossible to counter. It is no surprise it can crush pros when it has perfect timing and zero mistakes in using these units. I think the coolest thing is how the play of AI mirrors a similar style to how pros have developed (Micro harrasing early, early expansions, a very good understanding of…

As the commentators mentioned, it's no use building units to counter your enemy's army (Immortals over Stalkers) when the enemy can control their army so much more effectively. I have to wonder if future competitive games will need to take into account the abilities of reinforcement learning algorithms when releasing balance patches.

But there IS use building units to counter your enemy's army. In the last live match when Mana won, his immortal archon zealot composition was what sealed the deal in the end.

Re: DeepMind StarCraft II Demonstration [video]

#78

Post by Dylan16807 »

kmnc wrote: post #45

Very impressive... but it seems like the AI relies entirely on abusing blink stalkers which with perfect micro is basically impossible to counter. It is no surprise it can crush pros when it has perfect timing and zero mistakes in using these units. I think the coolest thing is how the play of AI mirrors a similar style to how pros have developed (Micro harrasing early, early expansions, a very good understanding of…

It had a variety of strategies, not always making a lot of stalkers. And humans can do some really impressive blink micro too up to a certain number of units.

So that's one aspect of it but isn't the main strength.

Re: DeepMind StarCraft II Demonstration [video]

#79

Post by johnmoberg »

triangleman wrote: post #62
plaidfuji wrote: post #51

This is mad impressive, for sure. With most AI problems, I can at least comprehend the approach, and the necessary combination of models. Not so much here. My first question is what is the input to the AI? Is it the raw pixel array of the display? Or does it get API-level readouts of what’s happening? Because implementing the CV just to segment the display output in real time is crazy enough. I would assume the latte…

Blizzard released a client with an output accessible to machines, but still preserving fog of war. See here: https://deepmind.com/blog/deepmind-and-blizzard-open-starcra... Here's what I want to know, were these agents developed from scratch a la AlphaZero in chess, or did they have to create a number of abstractions in order to get the AI to start learning the game? In the initial demonstration they could hardly get…

They mentioned that they initially used imitation learning on human replays.

Re: DeepMind StarCraft II Demonstration [video]

#80

Post by gambler »

Topgamer7 wrote: post #66
gambler wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stuff like that is why StarCraft is not a very good game to test AI on. It's good for publicity, because it is well-known and has a pro scene so you can claim to "beat humans", but it's too complex in some ways (ruleset) and too simplistic in others (mostly just killing stuf). APM and micromanagement are huge, while long-term strategies are fairly limited compared to many other strategy games. With all of this, it's…

There are limitations they put on the AI to try ti restrict to human levels. Such as having an action counter. And in the demonstration they filmed today, they actually limited the information the AI knows about to the screen space, which is probably along the lines of what you were wanting.

>There are limitations they put on the AI to try ti restrict to human levels. Such as having an action counter.

Which is exactly why StarCraft is not a very good game to test AI on. It's absurd to put arbitrary limitation on something to make the game "fair" and then pat yourself on the back simply because the algorithm won. If it can already win through pure micromanagement, why

There are tons of strategy games which don't revolve around micromanagement where APM simply doesn't matter. All turn-based games, for example. Or real-time games where building stuff is more important than combat.

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