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Mastering Stratego

deepmind.com

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Re: Mastering Stratego

#21

Post by machina_ex_deus »

dtdynasty wrote: post #12
keithnz wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

in dota the tactics is to do with the execution of abilities, often times in coordination with other agents in execution of their abilities to get combo effects while adapting to the situation as it unravels.

As an avid dota player I wouldn't agree with your characterization that 70% of dota 2 is your definition of tactics. What I've noticed differentiates player MMR the most is the strategy applied to each context. It's rarely the execution that's the problem as you can gain such overwhelming advantages through strategy.

There's barely any long term strategy in Dota, only meaningful strategic decisions are items and heroes. Even ultimate usage has like 2 minute window of importance. Wards too. And maybe the decision to push high ground because of how many times games are lost because of it, but it's the tactical errors usually making most of the difference there.

What's your MMR, out of curiosity?

Re: Mastering Stratego

#22

Post by sdwr »

clolege wrote: post #13

It's interesting to watch the videos they link of deepmind playing against the top-level Stratego masters [0]. I usually find Stratego to be a bit of a dull game (less elegant and more drawn out than Go and chess), but I'm a sucker for watching top-level AIs play. Its skills for bluffing are both fascinating and a bit scary. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HaUdWoSMjSY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-9ZXmyNKgs h…

Watched some of the first game. I'd bet stratego favors defence, advantage to the AI that has no/minimal concept of the value of time.

Re: Mastering Stratego

#23

Post by dtdynasty »

machina_ex_deus wrote: post #16
ghostbrainalpha wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is Tactics the same thing as execution? Like is it just the speed of your clicking? Or is it more than that, like the most basic kinds of strategic decisons?

It's from things like properly last hitting creeps, good reaction timing, good reaction decisions, coordinating real time actions with teammates in milliseconds resolution. It's obviously not about clicking fast, but it is about timing, sometimes 100 milliseconds reaction time make huge difference in outcome. It is usually making decisions on very small time scales. Do you retreat or continue? Use ability or hold it?…

There are larger strategic decisions that are significant in dota. Which area of the map to play, which objectives are important and when, what type of fights will we win (fast and bursty) and when will we take them. Often times these are thought of at the beginning of the game and effect gameplay throughout.

Re: Mastering Stratego

#24

Post by sdwr »

ep103 wrote: post #17
clolege wrote: post #13

It's interesting to watch the videos they link of deepmind playing against the top-level Stratego masters [0]. I usually find Stratego to be a bit of a dull game (less elegant and more drawn out than Go and chess), but I'm a sucker for watching top-level AIs play. Its skills for bluffing are both fascinating and a bit scary. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HaUdWoSMjSY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-9ZXmyNKgs h…

Are these games against stratego masters? I'm watching the first one, but it doesn't say who they're playing against

Dont think the player pool is very deep, doubt there are many masters around..

Re: Mastering Stratego

#25

Post by zaptrem »

dr_faustus wrote: post #20

Call me a cynic but the fact that after almost 10 years of AI hype we are still working our way down the list of popular board games is a bit of a downer for me. I mean, having AIs to play Stratego, Risk, Go, Diplomacy and what have you against sure is nice. But there are literally billions of dollars spent on these projects and I really come to the point where I just don't believe anymore that the current AI approac…

Have you tried this out yet? https://chat.openai.com/

It's been providing real value to me over the past day for practicing Spanish, explaining Machine Learning concepts, and doing fancy write-ups in LaTeX. And this one can't even use Google yet! (other research teams have already created models capable of doing so, it's only a matter of time until these innovations are brought together in one place)

Re: Mastering Stratego

#26

Post by VHRanger »

dr_faustus wrote: post #20

Call me a cynic but the fact that after almost 10 years of AI hype we are still working our way down the list of popular board games is a bit of a downer for me. I mean, having AIs to play Stratego, Risk, Go, Diplomacy and what have you against sure is nice. But there are literally billions of dollars spent on these projects and I really come to the point where I just don't believe anymore that the current AI approac…

AI remains better than humans at anything that has well defined rewards and small time gap between action and feedback mechanism (either naturally, like poker, or by value function engineering, like Go or Chess)

The problem here is that it's missing the "glue" to more real world applications. This is where more humdrum software engineering comes in.

Diplomacy in this is much more interesting than Stratego or beating the next video game - it mixes cooperative game theory with NLP and reinforcement learning.

Re: Mastering Stratego

#27

Post by runarberg »

dr_faustus wrote: post #20

Call me a cynic but the fact that after almost 10 years of AI hype we are still working our way down the list of popular board games is a bit of a downer for me. I mean, having AIs to play Stratego, Risk, Go, Diplomacy and what have you against sure is nice. But there are literally billions of dollars spent on these projects and I really come to the point where I just don't believe anymore that the current AI approac…

There was a time when I thought that maybe there was something more to AI then a fancy statistical model when you need to fit non-linear data. But I’m solidly on the belief now that AI is precisely a very powerful statistical tool. I honestly think there was never any real strategy of getting AI to anything more then specialized learning for deeper inference using a lot of computational power.

Don’t get me wrong, using AI for that purpose is pretty amazing (but can also lead to some sketchy results if you don’t know what you are doing[1]) but pretending it will lead to some “general AI” is nothing but hype IMO. And teaching AI to play these board games better then a grandmaster only serves to increase that hype.

1: https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/8/15/20806384/social-media-h...

Re: Mastering Stratego

#28

Post by adgjlsfhk1 »

Tenoke wrote: post #11
jstummbillig wrote: post #2

Can anyone shed light on in what way this is more challenging than the starcraft or dota agents, which also had to work with imperfect information?

Starcraft and Dota benefit a lot from having good micro. Stratego seems to be only macro. Micro is easyish for AI and requires less long-term thinking to get benefits from.

Starcraft especially only resembles a strategy game in GM (and maybe high masters). Below that, the strategy is mostly macro better so you have more units.

Re: Mastering Stratego

#29

Post by VHRanger »

clolege wrote: post #13

It's interesting to watch the videos they link of deepmind playing against the top-level Stratego masters [0]. I usually find Stratego to be a bit of a dull game (less elegant and more drawn out than Go and chess), but I'm a sucker for watching top-level AIs play. Its skills for bluffing are both fascinating and a bit scary. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HaUdWoSMjSY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-9ZXmyNKgs h…

FWIW one of the big things poker AI taught humans is massive overbets (eg. going all in for $200 over a $15 pot).

This is scary to do well in practice, because the mathematically optimal bluff frequency approaches 50% as you increase the overbet size.

Re: Mastering Stratego

#30

Post by clolege »

sdwr wrote: post #22
clolege wrote: post #13

It's interesting to watch the videos they link of deepmind playing against the top-level Stratego masters [0]. I usually find Stratego to be a bit of a dull game (less elegant and more drawn out than Go and chess), but I'm a sucker for watching top-level AIs play. Its skills for bluffing are both fascinating and a bit scary. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HaUdWoSMjSY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-9ZXmyNKgs h…

Watched some of the first game. I'd bet stratego favors defence, advantage to the AI that has no/minimal concept of the value of time.

Yeah this is one of the reasons why I find it more dull than chess.

There is an incentive to just not move your pieces, so that the other player thinks they're bombs. As a result, players only activate 2-3 pieces at a time.

In chess, on the other hand, you are constantly moving your pawns to the other side to promotion, or otherwise trying to activate/coordinate all of your pieces for an attack.

It makes me think that if deepmind for Stratego was trained to not lose instead of win, then the top strategy might be shuffling pieces and letting the enemy come to attack. No human would ever have the patience to play that way though.

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