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Comment by Raidion | Hacker News Reader

In SC there are time constraints in that you're getting resources at a certain rate. You have to grow your capacity to pull resources and at the same time be building units to defend yourself. If you allocate resources poorly, you'll find yourself losing. AlphaGo can't ignore that, but...

I think AI does have an advantage once it starts to be competent, especially if it's interacting through APIs exclusively and not the interface, which means that it's actions per minute could be astronomically higher than a human player, with unheard of levels of micro. At the same time, I think machine learning is almost an idea solution to figuring out build orders. It's gonna be fast and smart. Question just is how long?

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For human vs AI there will have to be APM rate limits otherwise the AI can win with no real strategy[0].

For AI vs AI it could be interesting to see what strategies develop with two opponents with the ability to perfectly microcontrol their units.

[0]Zerglings vs Siege Tanks when controlled by AI with perfect micro.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKVFZ28ybQs

I think even with unlimited APM, humans can still beat AI using cheese strategies, like an undetected cannon rush, since you can't really micro your workers against cannons (the projectile isn't dodge-able like the one from siege tanks).

Otherwise, you make a fair point and that video is amazing. AI vs AI strategy with unlimited APM would be very exciting to watch.

It is generally assumed that SC and SC2 are not actually just Rock Paper Scissors. That is, you're not obliged to guess your opponent's strategy and counter in the dark but can instead "scout" and figure out what they're doing and overall this can beat a "blind" strategy like cannon rush that doesn't respond to what the opponent's strategy is.

For example the "All ravens, all the time" Terran player Ketrok just responded to the surge in popularity of Cannon Rushes by making a tiny tweak to his opening worker movement. The revised opening spots the Cannon Rush in time to adequately defend and thus of course win.

> especially if it's interacting through APIs exclusively and not the interface, which means that it's actions per minute could be astronomically higher than a human player, with unheard of levels of micro

There's no way they'll compete under unlimited APM rules, it wouldn't even be remotely interesting. We're trying to match wits with the AI, not the inertia and momentum of super slow fingers, keys, and mouse.

I'm sure they'll come up with an "effective APM" heuristic which compares similarly to top pros, and feed it as a constraint to the AI.

There's also the fact that an action you trigger now (build unit) doesn't have immediate payout (building takes time). In Chess it can evaluate the current board as is, and it gets immediate feedback on each move.

I'd be interested to see if it can "plan ahead". Maybe a Chess variant where you have to submit your next move before the current player moves, or something like that.

Given the success with Go and chess, I would guess less than a year.

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