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Game theory article from a professional Starcraft player/caster.
11–20 of 85 posts
Re: Game theory article from a professional Starcraft player/caster.
#12Sean "Day[9]" Plott (the author of the article) is probably the best analytical Starcraft II caster around. His "Day[9] Dailies" cover everything from the absolute fundamentals ("here's how you set up your hotkeys, here's how you keep your money low") to more advanced topics like build orders, expanding, tactics, and micro. He also throws in "Funday Mondays", where beginner and experienced players alike try to win wi…
Slightly unrelated but Day9 also had a really good daily on what it is to dedicate yourself to something for a very long time. Great bits and pieces for any entrepreneur and worth watching if you even know anything about starcraft:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJztfsXKcPQ
Edit: 0:28:45 - On strategy and execution
Re: Game theory article from a professional Starcraft player/caster.
#13My little brother, quoting a noted SC personality: when you're ahead, get more ahead. It is probably the most important strategic lesson in the game: if you have a temporary 5 pct material advantage, you can still easily get outplayed if you force a fight. Better to turn that into a 10 pct material advantage, etc, and force a fight only after you've already won. The other game I play a lot of is League of Legends, an…
"Sun Tzu said: The good fighters of old first put themselves beyond the possibility of defeat, and then waited for an opportunity of defeating the enemy.
To secure ourselves against defeat lies in our own hands, but the opportunity of defeating the enemy is provided by the enemy himself.
[...]
Hence the skillful fighter puts himself into a position which makes defeat impossible, and does not miss the moment for defeating the enemy."
* * * * *
I think the spirit of what is being said in 'The Art of War', is the same principle that's being discussed in the article: Don't rush into striking before you are sure of victory, and lose everything; instead use the advantage to build yourself into an invincible position, with less risk.
* * * * *
'The Art of War' has been around a long time.
If there's a lesson here, its that strategy gamers might benefit from doing some reading.
I liked the article, and thought it was good; but it comes across that the author has no education in either (economic) game theory, or the study of game playing AI (e.g. minimax, search based AI techniques like you'd see in a chess AI etc). (Two related, but sometimes separate fields).
Which is fine - but there's a lot of good work in those fields, that strategy gamers, that seek to understand games analytically, as well as intuitively, would do well to read.
Re: Game theory article from a professional Starcraft player/caster.
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your brother is quoting the author of this article, in fact.
I thought he was quoting Dan 'Artosis' Stemkoski? Although both Day9 and Artosis are great analytical commentators and have a great knowledge of the game, but I believe Day9 usually cites Artosis on this.
Yep, that's Artosis's line, not Day[9]'s.
Re: Game theory article from a professional Starcraft player/caster.
#15If I remember correctly from my college AI days, thinking about upcoming turns and minimizing your opponent's gains is called minimax: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimax I'm surprised that there was only one AI in the competition that did this. We were all expected to use this strategy in my class. Once everybody's figured this out, it becomes a game of: - Who can think ahead the most turns? - Who has the best "am…
I agree, the Mancala backstory sounds quite strange and unbelievable. To me it looks like it's made up (maybe partly on some vague recollection of the author) to serve as an introduction for the rest of the article.
The behavior of AI programming winning by 1 point does exist in real life for Monte-Carlo based agents calculating winning probabilities. You can see it in computer go games.
Re: Game theory article from a professional Starcraft player/caster.
#16As many of the sc2 players here might know, the guy who wrote this (day9) is one of the famous person in esports right now. He used to be a professional player of sc, but since sc2 appeared (2010) he dedicated to analyze the game, and has even a daily show about it. The interesting thing about starcraft is that it's played _so_ much (in s. korea is a profession, kids actually go to live in "pro houses" were they play…
The game is played at a high level, sure, but I'd call this a slight exaggeration. 1% of a player's income is less than a single worker even in the late game (when most players have around 70 workers), and a single worker kill never really makes a huge difference.
Re: Game theory article from a professional Starcraft player/caster.
#17My little brother, quoting a noted SC personality: when you're ahead, get more ahead. It is probably the most important strategic lesson in the game: if you have a temporary 5 pct material advantage, you can still easily get outplayed if you force a fight. Better to turn that into a 10 pct material advantage, etc, and force a fight only after you've already won. The other game I play a lot of is League of Legends, an…
What's your Elo?
Re: Game theory article from a professional Starcraft player/caster.
#18Day9 hosted an event called The After Hours Gaming League in which eight tech companies will compete each other for charity. The event has just finished its first season with team Microsoft crushing everyone else. Zynga is the runner up and Google claimed third place.
Games: http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=ahgl Homepage: http://afterhoursgaming.tv/
There are a number of interesting game theory articles on competitive Starcraft. This is one: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=258... (and my comment to it: https://plus.google.com/116918963723558831013/posts/A8DRTY11...).
Re: Game theory article from a professional Starcraft player/caster.
#19As many of the sc2 players here might know, the guy who wrote this (day9) is one of the famous person in esports right now. He used to be a professional player of sc, but since sc2 appeared (2010) he dedicated to analyze the game, and has even a daily show about it. The interesting thing about starcraft is that it's played _so_ much (in s. korea is a profession, kids actually go to live in "pro houses" were they play…
The game is played at a high level, sure, but I'd call this a slight exaggeration. 1% of a player's income is less than a single worker even in the late game (when most players have around 70 workers), and a single worker kill never really makes a huge difference.
Killing a single mining worker can make a difference very early in the game if they're using a very timing-heavy strategy, but that's really only at the very tip-top levels of play.
Re: Game theory article from a professional Starcraft player/caster.
#20The author stated, "Third, a good competitive game should test a player’s skills and minimize the element of chance or luck. Ideally, the probability of a weak player defeating a good player should be as close to zero as possible."
Do you think this is always the case? I'm thinking about texas hold 'em, which has short-term variability but the stronger players win over the long run with a better strategy. Does chance have a place in competitive gaming?