"so agents must interact with the game within limits of human dexterity in terms of “Actions Per Minute”."
I am really glad they are limiting APM because otherwise things just get stupid.
I am really glad they are limiting APM because otherwise things just get stupid.
The current board leader (krasi0) has a strategy similar to their predecessor (Terran Mechanical units: Tanks, Goliaths and Vultures). The alternative strategy I really enjoy watching is a Mutalisk heavy build by Arrakhammer.
The bots have styles and differing capabilities. tscmoo is one of the more fascinating ones to watch in this regard, as they mix it up better than anyone else (and tscmoop, the Protoss variation has the best High Templar storm going).
The AI APMs get into the 10k ranges at times. Watching the minimap can be like watching insects swarm.
If you want to see a game between two AIs in progress, you can watch: https://www.twitch.tv/sscait
While these AIs can pull off tactics a human player could not (what they can do with Vultures is incredible), at this point they wouldn't be able to compete with the professionals. Going back to an earlier example, I think I could use High Templars more effectively than any AI I've watched.
But I think that case analysis of what I've observed may be more telling.
Case 1, The AIs tend to over-react, or under-react. For example, when a Zerg player sees flying units they may start to go scourge heavy. If a human player notices this, they may build a Wraith or two, causing the Zerg player to waste a lot of money. This can happen naturally between AIs as well. Terrans depleting the Command Center's invisibility sweep too soon is another one... Something is getting hurt, but you may want to wait until after the Tanks are in siege mode before attacking (not while they are converting).
Case 2, Lack of Memory. This one happens a lot. You'll see an AI do something bad. Then, in a situation where circumstances obviously wouldn't have improved, try again a few seconds later. I'd want to blame the fog of war, but futile attacks on static towers is a common example.
Case 3, Fight or Flight. Sometimes you'll see units fleeing from a battle they cannot win. Sounds good. But sometimes they are being pursued by units that can pick them off during retreat. And they aren't fleeing for more support, they are just avoiding a bad situation. When in reality, those units are dead no matter what, might as well try to take down an enemy unit or two. The inverse can happen too, where units stand and fight in a situation they could run away from and get reinforcements. I've heard predicting combat outcomes is really difficult in SC.
Case 4, Under utilization. Vultures are the unit that stands out in my mind as one that an AI can handle better than a human. They are fast, have a great punch, and can deploy mines really effectively (some bots mine much of the map). What was a harassment unit becomes an offensive unit that can hold its own in a "fire/flee/repeat" pattern (imagine having 5 of them do that in the same area). High Templar are the opposite. I tend to expect AIs to do poorly when storming, it is currently a highlight/joy to see them utilize the ability effectively. But the ability is meant to discourage enemies from grouping units too closely together. Which allows for Carriers and Mutas to do a lot more coupling / damage than they would be able to otherwise do. Under current circumstances, it would be possible to see a dozen or more Mutas being crippled in a single storm. I rarely see nukes/Ghosts or Defilers used. Queens also seem to be under utilized.
Case 5, Target Prioritization. When you see a Carrier, kill it rather than the Interceptors. When you see a Medic or two, kill them before the Marines. Same with SCVs repairing in some cases (with sufficient firepower, the unit will be dead faster than it can be healed). One AI loves Carriers, and part of the reason their strategy works is that a lot of units go after Interceptors rather than Carriers, allowing the Carriers to retreat (the AI judges when to do this well) and rebuild.
It isn't that AIs can't play at a professional level, but this represents the current level of the bots. Looking over it... The AIs can pull off things we can't, but professional level situational awareness / judgement is tough.
I wouldn't be surprised if human Starcraft II play isn't so much limited by decision-making as by the translation of decisions into mechanical actions, which in turn dilutes the attention devoted to actual decision making.
As it stands now, most of the games I like have bad AI. Sure, it can be fun to play a hack and slash against lots of little, dumb minions, but FPS, RTS AI these days still don't cut it as savvy opponents. Often they have inhuman perception, direct knowledge of game state, or higher starting resources, but they make abysmal decisions.
Yes, I realize these are unlikely, expensive goals and incremental progress is how things are done. I just want to know if it's possible or desirable to emulate actual human reaction time.
Do you disagree this would in principle help separate strategy from godlike reflexes?
This blog is about creating AIs that interact with the game the same way humans do, the computer plays by the same rules and has no special access to the game state beyond what the player would have. With these constraints there are no existing bots for StarCraft or StarCraft 2 that can even beat the built-in rule-based AI. They aren't even close to beating professional players.
If the strategy abilities are so weak today that we can't even beat the tutorial AI then why introduce further arbitrary handicaps on the bots? How do those handicaps advance the state of the strategy layer? The AI has many potential advantages over the human player beyond just reaction time. Should we also limit the amount of data the bot considers to emulate the amount of inputs a human player can process? What about emulating human memory, can a human really learn from 60,000+ games? What about 1.5 million?
I do not think it is desirable to emulate human limitations in AI unless you are trying to create an artificial human. I think the advantage of creating an AI is to do something people can't already do so why should we impose our physical constraints on them?
I do not think it is important to separate reflex from strategy. Since every player has a different APM ability some strategies are more valid than others for each individual. If I do not have the reflexes of a professional player there are strategies I cannot employ. As long as StarCraft is not imposing APM limits on human players to maintain competitiveness the bots should also not have a limit.
StarCraft is precisely such universe. If you could micromanage units perfectly, you can do some amazing tricks. Here's an example of what I'm talking about: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKVFZ28ybQs
This is a different type of bot we're talking about here. A neural net could not learn to work with unlimited apm more easily than limited apm. That just doesn't make sense. That's like saying it's easier to compute 1000 hashes in a second than it is to compute one hash in a second.
Speed is in MPH or KPH, would it be better to go by m/s?
The convention in gaming is APM, so they're just using the nomenclature that is already understood.
An AI doesn't need to do this.
Source: Ex pro Starcraft (Brood War) gamer.
I always wondered why they do that, just spam meaningless things like open/close the stats window or click on the background. Some WoW PVPers did it too (like Laintime, I think it was - played a warrior and ran around spamming the character window open/closed an mashing 'weapon swap' even when there was no earthly reason to do so). I figured it was just the result of too much caffeine for 18 hours a day.
This sounds like it's more an equivalent of tennis players' dancing/hopping around, or martial artists doing their ducking/weaving thing?
Similarly, an APM limit wouldn't directly imply that the kind of "gaming" that you're talking about, where a user/agent simply has to have an average APM over a certain period to be in compliance.
Similarly, just because the units for APM contains a specific time-frame (minutes) doesn't mean the measurement must be made over a minute. A 150APM limit doesn't necessarily mean that the running average over a minute must stay below 150 actions any more than a 65MPH speed limit doesn't mean that the running average over an hour must stay below 65MPH. If a police officer catches you going faster than 65MPH even for a single second (or however long a radar gun takes), they can pull you over.
The units of a measurement do not dictate how the measurement is made.
The point of the APM limit is presumably to fairly emulate a human player, but the APMs for humans are obviously averaged over a minute.
However, for certain things humans can initiate actions in SC2 in quick succession that, if sustained over a greater time period, would yield a ridiculous APM rate. Think a Terran player highlighting the barracks and tapping "A" really fast, say with a 10ms delay, that would result in 600 APM.
Let's say a human can build 5 marines like that in quick succession. You're going to have to allow for temporary spikes in APM to not unfairly give the human player an advantage.
But if you do that the computer is able to really rapidly execute more complex actions that the human can't because he's limited by the SC2 UI, whereas every action via the API is equally difficult for the computer. E.g. moving 3 different subgroups of marines out of the way of a High Templar Storm. I doubt any human player could select 3 different subgroups of marines from one big group and move them out of the way in 3 different directions within the span of 60ms (10ms for each action of select/move for 3x groups).
So any "fair" APM limit really needs to be dynamic in some way, or at least take into account the complexity of actions (say highlighting a group v.s. tapping "A"). It's not at all obvious how to do this while retaining fairness and not giving either the human or the computer an unfair advantage.
This is wrong. I don't know the exact number, but APM is averaged over around a second. I suspect this is done because APM is a more meaningful compared to APS, for humans at least.
Here is a graph from Scelight that high lights this: https://goo.gl/photos/9cjNxDwWoB1pmWkg9
The units of the measurement do not dictate how the measurement is made.
You could decide to measure APM by saying that the time difference between any two actions extrapolated to sustaining that rate over a minute or seconds couldn't exceed the APM or APS, but as I've explained such a measurement would unfairly give the human player an advantage because humans are capable of bursts they couldn't sustain over longer periods.
I believe the reason they use APM over APS is because 3.4 APS isn't as meaningful as 204 APM.
Watson’s hand is pretty fast in terms of raw speed — it takes somewhere between five and ten milliseconds for Watson to activate the buzzer once it decides to answer. This delay is affected by the speed of the solenoid and other small, sometimes hard-to-pin-down delays inherent in the software stack.
http://www.kurzweilai.net/the-buzzer-factor-did-watson-have-...
I wonder if the human decision-to-buzzer time is much slower?
In Jeopardy, though, people can anticipate the moment the buzzer becomes active.
"......let me tell you about my mother...."