I'll try to give another translation. Overall, OpenAI excelled at short term thinking, but showed weaknesses in some areas of the game that demand long term thinking. This is not to say that it was bad at all kinds of long game thinking -- it seemed to do a good job at deciding what areas of the map they should prioritize or deprioritize.
For the jargon, the Liquipedia glossary might be helpful: https://liquipedia.net/dota2/Glossary
Dota is a 5v5 game where each player controls a single hero unit. The playing field has three paths that connect the opposing bases, and an endless source of dumb computer-controlled units march along these paths to try to destroy the opposing base (in a perpetual stalemate). The objective of the game is to power up your hero units (by defeating enemy heroes and computer-controlled units) until you have an overwhelming advantage, by which point you can mount an attack on the enemy base.
> 1. terrible at warding and dewarding
Dota has a fog-of-war system, inherited from its real-time-strategy roots. There are two main game mechanics that interact with the fog of wr: wards and smokes. Wards are stationary units that can be placed at a spot on the map to provide vision around them. Smokes are a consumable resource that can temporarily make your team invisible, so you can sneak through your opponent's wards undetected.
In regular Dota play, map vision is highly valued, to the point that there is a hardcoded limit on how many wards and smokes each team is allowed to use.
For all intents and purposes, OpenAI seemed to have no idea what it was doing with these mechanics. It placed wards at low-value places (instead of high value map intersections), and often wasted them by placing multiple wards on the same spot.
> are terrible at using spell spam to farm.
Farm in Dota means collecting resources to power up your hero by defeating dumb computer-controlled units (as opposed to by defeating the enemy heroes). The slang is because it is a relatively peaceful and patient way of acummulating resources. Farming is all about establishing control of a region of the map so that your team can defeat the computer controlled units there but your opponents can't.
OpenAI showed that it was very good at using their heroes' abilities to fight enemy heroes head on, but it wasn't as good at playing the "economic game" and using their spells to accumulate resources when there was no fighting going on.
> don't understand bouncing spells like the lich nuke
A handful of spells in Dota "jump" to nearby enemies after the first one, like a hot potato. Usually you want t ouse them when multiple enemies are next to each other but OpenAI was more willing to use these spells een when they didn't give an extra bounce.
I think that this might be a side effect of the AI's self-play. OpenAI has superhuman reaction times and is very good at positioning and moving around to avoid getting hit by those additional "jumps", so it wouldn't value them very highly.
> Bad at non-nuky/long running ultimates
Some hero abilities in Dota can be used very often (once every few seconds) while others have a longer cooldown time (once every 2 or 3 minutes).
In regular Dota play, you only want to use these major spells when contesting an important objective against your enemy, because if you "waste" them, the enemy team can take advantage of the time when your heroes aren't at their full strength.
OpenAI seemed to do a bad job at this kind of long term thinking. It would use some of its powerful abilities against computer-controlled units and then not have them available for an important fight vs the humans.
> Bad at judging Roshan respawn.
Roshan is a powerful computer-controlled monster that appears at the middle of the map. It takes a team effort to defeat, but the team that does so receives a very high reward.
After Roshan is defeated he shows up again after 8 to 11 minutes. Good players know that they can ignore Roshan for these first 8 minutes but that after that they must pay close attention to the area around its cave to prevent the enemy team from sneaking there undetected and defeating Roshan uncontested. OpenAI didn't seem to have learned this timing behavior. They would constantly check if Roshan was present in his cave, even in times when it was mathematically impossible.
> Are bad at juking.
Juking is trying to "break your opponents ankles" when they are chasing you around the map, by exploiting the fog of war. Enemies can't see higher ground or behind trees, so you can use those opportunities to quickly change the direction you are running in an attempt to evade who is chasing you.
OpenAI seemed to do a bad job of timing these direction changes. Ideally you turn to move in a different direction as soon as you enter the fog of war, no sooner and no later.
> not good at prioritizing cores over supports
In the later portions of a typical Dota game, 3 of the five heroes in each team will be very strong at fighting (the cores) and 2 will be weaker (the supports). Usual strategy is that it is more important to prioritize defeating the strongest heroes in the enemy team. OpenAI was more willing to go for the weaker enemies first, but I am not sure that is a bad thing actually.
> terrible at dealing with split pushes.
The most direct way to attack the enemy base in Dota is to defeat the enemy team in a head on fight and use the window of time when they are incapacitated to attack the undefended base.
Split pushing is a strategy where you try to attack the base when you think the enemies are grouped up far away from it and can't defend it immediately. The humans successfully used this strategy to delay the game, by forcing the bots to abort their frontal assaults and retreat to defend their base.
> bad at properly utilizing buybacks.
In Dota, heroes are incapacitated for a brief time after they are defeated. In the later parts of the game it is around 1 or 2 minutes in the sidelines.
There is an option to spend some resources (sacrificing future strength) to immediately return your hero to action.
This is a very high-risk high-reward play that needs to be timed appropriately to be worth the investment. The bots made some questionable plays around this game feature.