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DeepMind and Blizzard Open StarCraft II as an AI Research Environment

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Re: DeepMind and Blizzard Open StarCraft II as an AI Research Environment

#31

Post by ktRolster »

jahabrewer wrote: post #22
ktRolster wrote: post #3

When Watson won at Jeopardy, one of its prime advantages was the faster reaction time at pushing the buzzer. The fairness of that has already been hashed out elsewhere, but..... We already know that computers can have superior micro and beat humans at Starcraft through that(1). Is DeepMind going to win by giving themselves a micro advantage that is beyond what reasonable humans can do? (1) https://www.youtube.com/wat…

I wonder if limiting APM would be a simple way to make the AI's play more "human" and less exploit-y.

Limiting APM is definitely a step in the right direction, but there are ways to have super-human reaction times, beyond what a human can do, even while limiting APM.

So if we watch a match and see things that no human could physically do, we will know that the machine didn't win because of intelligence.

It would still be great, it just would be a simplification of the problem.

Re: DeepMind and Blizzard Open StarCraft II as an AI Research Environment

#32

Post by ajkjk »

daemonk wrote: post #6

Blizzard should put in an AI-assisted play mode where players are limited to X lines of code that can be launched with keyboard commands.

I know that, as a player, the high mechanical limitations of Starcraft are part of why it's such a difficult, high-skill-ceiling game. But.. I've tried to enjoy watching SC2 on Twitch, and while it's kinda fun, it's just so disappointing when a complicated strategic game is thrown away because a player doesn't react fast enough to workers being sniped or a drop being shot down.

I wish the individual units had some automatic behavior -- for example, marines would could run in spread out formations near tanks or banelings; workers would flee from hazards; flying units would avoid turrets unless specifically directed to fly over them. It would require a lot of rebalancing, of course, but it would make the game so much more tactical and strategic and (imo) enjoyable to watch.

Re: DeepMind and Blizzard Open StarCraft II as an AI Research Environment

#33

Post by keerthiko »

flamedoge wrote: post #18
obastani wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a citation? As far as I know, existing AIs do not stand much of a chance again humans [1]. My understanding is that even if AIs can beat humans is small skirmishes due to superior micro, they lose so badly at macro that it simply doesn't matter. [1] http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/artificial-intel...

it's not exactly macro.. AI can run perfect macro commands. humans right now have better priority model (in this case, protecting/killing workers) for which the AI in question wasn't trained.

Are you sure you're interpreting 'macro' correctly? 'Macro' in the context of RTS games isn't the same as 'macro commands' in scripting, but refers to basically all high level decisions. RTS is divided up into Macro, tactics and micro:

- Macro: resource prioritization (army vs expansions vs upgrades), scouting to understand the opponent's macro choices, choosing the right posture in response (defensive, harassment or offensive), and resource optimization (not getting supply blocked, scaling production with income, increasing income at the maximum possible rate, removing bottlenecks, etc), scouting the enemy army composition to prepare the ideal counter army composition

- Tactics: Grand army decisions - flanks, baits, sneak attacks, hiding composition, multiprong attacks, positioning of siege units, timing attacks, knowing when to retreat (hit & run), scouting to gain advance notice of your opponent's tactics

- Micro: optimizing unit lifespan and effectiveness within an isolated skirmish for the given goal (usually to 'win' the engagement) -- pulling back weakened units to avoid aggro while it still deals damage, healing, surface area for melee units, trapping enemy units with terrain or skills, optimizing spellcaster energy usage, prioritizing targets based on multiple parameters (range, damage, cost, count, follow-ups), etc.

AI can "run" macro well, but they are poor at the macro decision-making part, which includes priority model as you mention (the responsive posture choice above and others). Up to low grandmaster tier, being significantly better at macro than your opponent while close in tactics and micro is usually enough to win consistently. It is the most impactful part of an RTS (and is where most of the 'S' lies).

Re: DeepMind and Blizzard Open StarCraft II as an AI Research Environment

#34

Post by sidusknight »

keerthiko wrote: post #33
flamedoge wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's not exactly macro.. AI can run perfect macro commands. humans right now have better priority model (in this case, protecting/killing workers) for which the AI in question wasn't trained.

Are you sure you're interpreting 'macro' correctly? 'Macro' in the context of RTS games isn't the same as 'macro commands' in scripting, but refers to basically all high level decisions. RTS is divided up into Macro, tactics and micro: - Macro: resource prioritization (army vs expansions vs upgrades), scouting to understand the opponent's macro choices, choosing the right posture in response (defensive, harassment or…

Your definition of macro is a lot more encompassing than how I see it used in SC2. It normally refers to just spending resources properly (constantly producing units and workers, setting up infrastructure, etc).

Re: DeepMind and Blizzard Open StarCraft II as an AI Research Environment

#35

Post by jbob2000 »

ajkjk wrote: post #32
daemonk wrote: post #6

Blizzard should put in an AI-assisted play mode where players are limited to X lines of code that can be launched with keyboard commands.

I know that, as a player, the high mechanical limitations of Starcraft are part of why it's such a difficult, high-skill-ceiling game. But.. I've tried to enjoy watching SC2 on Twitch, and while it's kinda fun, it's just so disappointing when a complicated strategic game is thrown away because a player doesn't react fast enough to workers being sniped or a drop being shot down. I wish the individual units had some au…

You would like Company of Heroes 2, the units require much less micro and the game is a bit slower paced. If your infantry come under fire, they all dive into cover to protect themselves. Defense is a bit more automated (you can set artillery to automatically return fire on enemy artillery once it's exposed) and you have more options for static emplacements to defend critical areas without needing your attention.

I have the same complaints about SC2 as you - way too fast and intense - and I really enjoy Company of Heroes. The whole game is basically set up to get rid of "nags" so you can just play around with the units and have fun.

Re: DeepMind and Blizzard Open StarCraft II as an AI Research Environment

#36

Post by wfunction »

tgb wrote: post #29
dpflan wrote: post #17

Related : Today I learned that a group of AI researchers has released a paper called: STARDATA: A StarCraft AI Research Dataset . According to one of the authors: "We're releasing a dataset of 65k StarCraft: Brood War games, 1.5b frames, 500m actions, 400GB of data. Check it out!" > Article: https://arxiv.org/abs/1708.02139 > Github: https://github.com/TorchCraft/StarData

The great thing about this is that it includes the game state throughout the game. It's been pretty easy to find lots of Starcraft replays, but the replays only include enough information to recreate the game (basically just the player actions). If you wanted to know what was happening in the game at the time the player made an action, you had to load up Starcraft and simulate out the game until that point. This data…

Is it that much computation to simulate an entire game? You obviously don't need to render the graphics or anything, it should just be a list of events that occur, which doesn't seem all that slow to process.

Re: DeepMind and Blizzard Open StarCraft II as an AI Research Environment

#37

Post by [deleted] »

flamedoge wrote: post #15
obastani wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that in a full match, AIs still have no hope against humans, since even though they can crush humans at micro, their macro is still abysmal [1]. I'm not aware of a match where any AI has beat a pro human player at Starcraft -- I'd be interested in learning otherwise! [1] http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/artificial-intel...

would you love to be proven wrong?

[deleted]

Re: DeepMind and Blizzard Open StarCraft II as an AI Research Environment

#38

Post by mattnewton »

ktRolster wrote: post #3

When Watson won at Jeopardy, one of its prime advantages was the faster reaction time at pushing the buzzer. The fairness of that has already been hashed out elsewhere, but..... We already know that computers can have superior micro and beat humans at Starcraft through that(1). Is DeepMind going to win by giving themselves a micro advantage that is beyond what reasonable humans can do? (1) https://www.youtube.com/wat…

That example might be misleading because I assume the AI has perfect information- I don't know how it could know which zergling was targeted before the tank fire landed without knowledge of the game's internal state.

In any case I saw in the comments above they are planning on limiting the APM. But right now they're not at the stage where they can compete with the in-game rules based AI, so it may be a little while.

Re: DeepMind and Blizzard Open StarCraft II as an AI Research Environment

#39

Post by figgis »

cm2012 wrote: post #27
keerthiko wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the guy is talking about I don't want to be overly semantic or PC on HN, but just saying the GP may be female, judging by their name on profile. Being misgendered could be very offputting and discourages participation, so you may have wanted to say "this person" even if it doesn't sound as offhand as you'd have liked it to come across.

In the NorthEast US, guy is often a gender neutral term. It's totally fine to say, "Hey you guys" to a group of only women.

Personal experience tells me it's a pretty common thing across the US.

> I don't want to be overly semantic or PC on HN

Proceeds to be overly semantic or PC on HN...

Re: DeepMind and Blizzard Open StarCraft II as an AI Research Environment

#40

Post by gwern »

wfunction wrote: post #36
tgb wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The great thing about this is that it includes the game state throughout the game. It's been pretty easy to find lots of Starcraft replays, but the replays only include enough information to recreate the game (basically just the player actions). If you wanted to know what was happening in the game at the time the player made an action, you had to load up Starcraft and simulate out the game until that point. This data…

Is it that much computation to simulate an entire game? You obviously don't need to render the graphics or anything, it should just be a list of events that occur, which doesn't seem all that slow to process.

Until today's release of the headless Linux client, you still had to run the full StarCraft program, which gets expensive fast. And it massively complicates the workflow to have to play through every game serially to recreate the state rather than simply reading random rows of data from a 300GB dataframe on disk.
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