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Game theory article from a professional Starcraft player/caster.

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Re: Game theory article from a professional Starcraft player/caster.

#71

Post by tripzilch »

monkeypizza wrote: post #55

The new 4-5dan go-playing bots on kgs (zen19d, crazystone) use this strategy extensively. When they're ahead they play to consolidate their biggest weakness, and when they're behind they play more and more risky moves to try to come back. In the endgame the calculate the score exactly, and will play negative point value moves as long as they are ahead on the board. It makes for a really tough game, cause if you do ge…

Yeah I read the advice in this article years ago in a beginner's Go tutorial, something about "you just need one more point than the opponent to win".

Lot of little zen-like lessons in learning that game, is why I love it.

Re: Game theory article from a professional Starcraft player/caster.

#72

Post by eavc »

sireat wrote: post #54
andfarm wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's almost certainly based on the author's experience in Harvey Mudd's CS 151 (Artificial Intelligence) course, in which developing a Mancala AI is a standard project.

I believe Day 9 did indeed get his masters this year from Harvey Mudd. (original article was written 4 years ago)

Masters this year from USC, undergrad at Hervey Mudd.

Re: Game theory article from a professional Starcraft player/caster.

#73

Post by Read_the_Genes »

monkeypizza wrote: post #55

The new 4-5dan go-playing bots on kgs (zen19d, crazystone) use this strategy extensively. When they're ahead they play to consolidate their biggest weakness, and when they're behind they play more and more risky moves to try to come back. In the endgame the calculate the score exactly, and will play negative point value moves as long as they are ahead on the board. It makes for a really tough game, cause if you do ge…

Interesting that they use this strategy. Essentially, high variance is good when the expected value of the game is negative. It increases the chances of success in a bad situation.

The maths of this can be found in the article "A Rule of Thumb (not only) for Gamblers." Currently, this article is available free here: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.55.3...

Re: Game theory article from a professional Starcraft player/caster.

#74

Post by aidos »

monkeypizza wrote: post #55

The new 4-5dan go-playing bots on kgs (zen19d, crazystone) use this strategy extensively. When they're ahead they play to consolidate their biggest weakness, and when they're behind they play more and more risky moves to try to come back. In the endgame the calculate the score exactly, and will play negative point value moves as long as they are ahead on the board. It makes for a really tough game, cause if you do ge…

My Go teacher once told me that the truely great players will hold a game in near perfect balance throughout. Concerningy, are the computers really at 4 dan now? I ain't never going to beat the machines.

Re: Game theory article from a professional Starcraft player/caster.

#76

Post by larrik »

seri wrote: post #56
bz wrote: post #26

The concepts outlined are pretty good, but I want to make a counterpoint against heuristics in general. Distilled ideas like these are certainly useful for trying to grasp a complex system, but they do not, for the non-expert player, represent game knowledge. Let me explain why. The pitfall for the average viewer/player is to take these mantras and apply them directly to what they see. They see a game where T apparen…

That was awesome, sir. I love the attention to details in the scenario you described and your analysis. I only picked up the hobby of watching Starcraft about 6 months ago (I watch more Broodwar than Starcraft II), but I used to play a lot, albeit at an amateur level. I watched popular casters like diggity, Klazart, Nuke, and moletrap. However, sometimes I don't quite understand why the winner wins even though I have…

Day[9] (the author of the original essay), is easily the "go to" place for this sort of thing. He has a great amount of analysis scattered throughout his dailies, but here is a link to his most recent daily focusing on "how did I lose" (assuming I remember this daily correctly).

http://blip.tv/file/5460268

Also,

http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/Day9_Daily

has a good list of his videos, with their subject, etc.

Re: Game theory article from a professional Starcraft player/caster.

#77

Post by eru »

feral wrote: post #49
JerkyTreatz wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Studying pure game theory isn't going to help the SC2 player, at least not in any tangible way, the same with current AI practices. The point he's trying to make is that truly great (in his view: competitive) games are those that the most advanced AI algorithms won't have any real competitive edge, so that game "theory" would back-up game "reality" of winning with a marginal advantage is more advantageous than winnin…

It'd definitely help people wanting to write articles analyzing starcraft. There's definitely things the author doesn't get, that'd seem obvious if he'd read this stuff. Anyway, I think most people study pure game theory, not because its directly applicable; they study it because there are some surprising results from it, that inform their strategic thinking - not because they apply it to evaluate their specific stra…

> It is desirable property in a game, that there is no obvious strongly dominant pure strategy.

Unless it's a game of skill. E.g. you win a race by running faster than other people. That can still be fun.

Re: Game theory article from a professional Starcraft player/caster.

#78

Post by monkeypizza »

aidos wrote: post #74
monkeypizza wrote: post #55

The new 4-5dan go-playing bots on kgs (zen19d, crazystone) use this strategy extensively. When they're ahead they play to consolidate their biggest weakness, and when they're behind they play more and more risky moves to try to come back. In the endgame the calculate the score exactly, and will play negative point value moves as long as they are ahead on the board. It makes for a really tough game, cause if you do ge…

My Go teacher once told me that the truely great players will hold a game in near perfect balance throughout. Concerningy, are the computers really at 4 dan now? I ain't never going to beat the machines.

yeah, they have really gotten good in the last year. They've gone from better than 90% of players who have ever played go, to better than 95%+. They are great to watch, too, merciless and play interesting moves.

Check out crazystone's stats: http://kgs.gosquares.net/index.rhtml.en?id=CrazyStone&y=...

72% win percentage as a 4d.

Re: Game theory article from a professional Starcraft player/caster.

#79

Post by feral »

eru wrote: post #77
feral wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It'd definitely help people wanting to write articles analyzing starcraft. There's definitely things the author doesn't get, that'd seem obvious if he'd read this stuff. Anyway, I think most people study pure game theory, not because its directly applicable; they study it because there are some surprising results from it, that inform their strategic thinking - not because they apply it to evaluate their specific stra…

> It is desirable property in a game, that there is no obvious strongly dominant pure strategy. Unless it's a game of skill. E.g. you win a race by running faster than other people. That can still be fun.

Yes, sure, fair point. I was talking about strategy games as such - but you are right that there's large elements of execution skill in many games, even in an RTS like starcraft, which is also fun to compete on.

Re: Game theory article from a professional Starcraft player/caster.

#80

Post by jasonlotito »

endtime wrote: post #51
algorias wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Killing a worker early is subject to compound interest, so that 17% (or 10% more realistically) of an early worker kill is going to grow exponentially all game long.

>an early worker kill is going to grow exponentially all game long. That's a very unrealistic claim, though yes, losing a worker very early can have a measurable effect. But that pretty much never happens, outside of all-in cheeses like 6 pool or proxy 2 rax/gate. Are you defending the original claim that games are decided over affecting 1% of one's opponents economy?

> the original claim that games are decided over affecting 1% of one's opponents economy?

The original claim wasn't that the game was decided over 1% of someones economy. Rather, that games were decided over many small advantages gained, things like affecting someones economy by 1%. You do that 5-10 times throughout the game, and that's a good 5-10% of their economy.

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