
StarCraft Pros Are Ready to Battle AI - jonbaer
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/607888/starcraft-pros-are-ready-to-battle-ai/
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mattbgates
Once upon a time, when I was young, and staying up all night for no reason, in
the original StarCraft, multiplayer, someone created this map called "The 40
Islands". You could not do anything because you and everyone else were
separated by water. You had to harvest your island, than move on to a new
island, harvest more resources, and keep building. There were about 5 or 6 of
us and 2 computers. We spent 8 hours playing this... a few people were quickly
eliminated. We managed to eliminate a computer. Then another guy went down. It
was me, another player, and the computer. By then, the computer had grown so
massive, taken over at least 10 islands, while we both had about 5 to 7
islands. The last guy I was playing the game with lasted another hour before
he said, "Good luck" and quit. It was me and this computer... battling it out
for another 3 or 4 hours. Unfortunately, all 40 islands had been harvested,
and we could no longer kill each other, because we had nothing left to attack
each other with. That was a great game and probably the last time I ever
played a major multiplayer campaign like that.

~~~
jonbaer
I wonder if that is based on Knights of the Forty Islands,
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knights_of_Forty_Islands](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knights_of_Forty_Islands)
... sounds like a great map, there are some similar ones in 0AD (play0ad.com),
it's quite a challenge when the resources are unbalanced on each island and
you need to figure out which one is worth the gamble to explore/exploit.

~~~
mattbgates
That is interesting.. maybe someone did base it off that. I thought maybe they
had just come up with this map and decided 40 islands was a good number.

