Game theory article from a professional Starcraft player/caster. • Hacker News Board

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

#81

Post by eru » Tue, Sep 06, 2011, 10:49 AM UTC

feral wrote: post #79

eru wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Yes. Though even games that have dominant pure strategies in theory, like chess or go can be fun to compete in. Because humans don't have access to the optimal strategies, execution skill and gambling creep in.

(Gambling in the sense: You can create more or less complicated situations. There's more or less apparent entropy in the game you are playing then.)

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

#82

Post by Triumvark » Tue, Sep 06, 2011, 12:40 PM UTC

This article correctly notes that those in the lead should play to conservatively extend their marginal advantage.

The corollary, for those in behind, is that they should attempt more gambits.

The principles of variance are strange. Sometimes, if you're in behind, you reduce your chance of losing by adopting what looks like a "losing" strategy (according to naive expected value calculations). With a wild all-or-nothing strategy, your chance of winning from behind likely won't exceed 50%, but by acting more like the 'risky amateur,' you might up your chances from 10% to 30%.

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

#83

Post by nickknw » Tue, Sep 06, 2011, 6:42 PM UTC

ido wrote: post #63

feral wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You have to play sc2 or similar games for years before that kind of advice becomes applicable (since there is so much basic skill to pick up before the game becomes that strategic), and by the time you know the game well enough to find the correct analogy to something written in The Art of War you've probably already discovered it yourself. You seem to be saying that by the time they are playing at a level where gen…

You seem to be saying that by the time they are playing at a level where general strategic advice becomes applicable, they'll already have learned it. This is a little circular. Can you point where the circularity comes in? I said that by the time the advice that can be learned from reading TAOW becomes useful they would have already learned it from their "battle" experience. What I am saying is that reading it in bo…

> 80% of players are at platinum league or less

By definition, platinum or below is the bottom 80% of the player base. No matter how good the sc2 population gets, around 80% will ALWAYS be platinum or below.

That doesn't necessarily mean that the skill level for platinum or below will always be static though. For example, the korean server is generally regarded as more difficult. A platinum player on the NA server might only reach gold there (or might still be platinum but lose more).

But you are definitely correct that their mechanics are the main thing that separates most top players. I would emphasize macro as being much more important than micro though.

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

#84

Post by nickknw » Tue, Sep 06, 2011, 7:13 PM UTC

patio11 wrote: post #2

My 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…

Didn't know you were interested in SC at all, patrick. Would you like to play some time?

I'm a platinum zerg, and don't play super often, but really enjoy the game.

My email is on my HN profile if you are interested.

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

#85

Post by endtime » Wed, Sep 07, 2011, 3:10 AM UTC

jasonlotito wrote: post #80

endtime wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Well that's not actually how games are decided these days. It's often something like "did Z have queens blocking his ramp before the blue flame hellions got there?" or "did P get scout the tech lab on the starport and put down a robo in time?", even at the pro level. A lot of other games end with a two-base timing attack (e.g. fast blink stalkers). Good games will have some eco harass, but more along the lines of dropping 8 marines and killing several workers, or totally taking out an expo with infested terrans. I don't think I've ever seen a single worker kill be significant, or even multiple instances of similarly small magnitude. The APM and attention it costs to harass often isn't worth killing a single worker.

There's a lot of depth to SC2, but I think it's a mischaracterization to say that it's a game of such tiny advantages, at least at the level it's played today.