
To win at Starcraft, machines need to figure out how to lie - jonbaer
http://www.wsj.com/articles/computers-that-crush-humans-at-games-might-have-met-their-match-starcraft-1461344309
======
syllogism
I think the Starcraft pros tend to think about what separates top pros from
mediocre pros. They see these things, like better 'mind games', as what makes
Starcraft hard.

The thing is, a game needs to be very carefully balanced for these
scissor/paper/rock dynamics to emerge. This type of balance is not the default
--- it's the product of careful design, and empirical tuning.

In human vs AI, this balance will almost surely be broken. The AI will have
perfect control, even with APM constraints. Its attention can be split between
two attacks perfectly. It won't play at all like a human.

So, the resulting human vs AI gameplay is unlikely to be strategically deep.
If the AI can learn to play Starcraft at all competently, it will probably
crush. It will probably find a dominant strategy that it can re-execute
exactly the same every time, which the human can't stop.

Making the AI work well for Starcraft will be very difficult. In Chess and Go
the actions are discrete; in Starcraft the actions are all analog. But the
gameplay requires much deeper search than the Atari games Deepmind learned in
its early paper. So I think the game will be very difficult for the AI. But
not for the reasons people are talking about.

~~~
bad_user
Being able to have multiple battles at the same time is not terribly
interesting, because humans can scale this as well. Team up two humans and
they'll be able to do twice the work. Teaming two players to play a Go or a
chess game against a computer wouldn't do that much good though.

I've recently read Ender's Game and there was an interesting idea in there. In
the book it is hive queens controlling the Buggers fleet with exquisite
control, yet Ender is able to exploit this as a weakness, as every human is a
sentient being capable of thinking and acting independently, so as a commander
he was only giving high-level orders to his lieutenants and they did the rest.
Which is how humans have fought wars.

~~~
realharo
If you team up two humans, they need to be very well coordinated to work
together effectively, otherwise they'll just get in each other's way.

Starcraft 2 has a mode like this called Archon Mode, where two players control
the same units. The conflicts that can arise from this can be pretty fun to
witness.

~~~
duskwuff
A similar mode was present in the original Starcraft, albeit without the cool
name. (It was simply called "team melee".)

~~~
hobarrera
No, it's a completely different thing. In Archon Mode, two physical players
share control of a single in-game player. A lot more coordination is required
or they'll both be giving counter-orders most of the time.

~~~
duskwuff
It's been a long time since I played team melee, and I've never played
Starcraft 2 multiplayer, but reading back, I'm pretty sure they're the exact
same thing:

[http://starcraft.wikia.com/wiki/Team_Melee](http://starcraft.wikia.com/wiki/Team_Melee)

[http://starcraft.wikia.com/wiki/Archon_Mode](http://starcraft.wikia.com/wiki/Archon_Mode)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/starcraft/comments/314e28/archon_mo...](https://www.reddit.com/r/starcraft/comments/314e28/archon_mode_vs_team_melee/)

------
ctvo
What people miss is that StarCraft is a physical game primarily, with tactical
elements, not the other way around. There are a lot of fans who know the game
well and can make all the right decisions, but will never be able to execute
it in real time.

Execution of strategy is what separates the professional StarCraft players,
and in that way it's much closer to professional sports than Go / Chess.

~~~
stcredzero
What if the pace of gameplay were slowed down 5x? Would execution still be an
issue?

~~~
ctvo
This is like asking what basketball would be like if you weren't required to
dribble. It might be interesting to think about, but would probably result in
a different game.

~~~
stcredzero
_This is like asking what basketball would be like if you weren 't required to
dribble._

Not really. The "physical" aspect of Starcraft is an information input/output
feat. It's still arguably the same abstract _game_. Arguably, it's no longer a
_sport_ however. (And maybe it wouldn't be a "game" in the sense that
basketball and football are "games" for people.)

~~~
ctvo
Solving THAT game (where we get as close as possible to a brain -> machine
interface and it becomes completely strategic) is interesting, but it's not
StarCraft. Arguably it's the same abstract game, but when you bypass
constraints (applicable only to humans), you probably should have targeted
something else without those constraints in the first place. In our case, a
turn-based strategy game that is equally complex and with limited information
(Civilization?!).

------
raziel2p
Having played Starcraft at a somewhat high level, I don't agree. The very best
players will beat an inferior player without surprises, either just by knowing
when to be aggressive and when to be defensive, with smart tactical plays,
forcing an opponent into a position where they will be at a disadvantage later
on, or sheer multi-tasking. What machines lack is sheer intuition.

For example, it is possible to chip away at your opponent's economy by loading
units into a dropship and flying it into the back of your enemy's base. To
increase your chances of doing damage, you should probably set up multiple of
these at the same time, or attack the front while dropping, but you also need
to know that a dropship works best when it's fully loaded (8 small units, 4
medium units or 2 large units) - if it's not fully loaded, part of your
investment is wasted and your attack will be sub-optimal.

Learning this as an AI isn't going to be easy because there are lots of
scenarios when you can do a drop like described above perfectly and it'll
still lose you the game - maybe your opponent had some optimally placed anti-
air defenses, or they were just getting ready for a huge all-out frontal
attack just as you arrived, so their army is vastly superior.

~~~
SeanDav
Intuition can be simulated with algorithms and massive computing power.

------
PhearTheCeal
It seems like most people in this thread are claiming that high APM and the
ability to have perfect control over everything happening on the map will give
the AI an advantage that will force a win.

Here is a video of one of the best current StarCraft bots losing to an D-rank
(low skill) human player. The bot's APM is ~5500 while the human's is ~200.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztNYOnx_YQo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztNYOnx_YQo)

The fact is, no AI has ever beaten even an amateur player in a tournament.
Even with great micro, if your play is too predictable then the human will
learn it and exploit it.

I, for one, am very excited to see the development of new StarCraft AIs. And
especially SC2 AIs so that it can challenge the current world champions.

------
stonith
'Eugene Kim' should be Yoo-Jin Kim aka SoS.

~~~
Flammy
> An advanced human player might, for example, feign weakness on one side of
> the playing field while mustering a pack of mutalisks—fire-breathing dragon-
> like creatures—on the other side of the board.

Fire-breathing? I must have not been paying attention...

~~~
Rexxar
[http://eu.battle.net/sc2/en/game/unit/mutalisk](http://eu.battle.net/sc2/en/game/unit/mutalisk)

No fire-breathing : "Weapon: Glave Wurm"

~~~
Flammy
I know. I was pointing out the... creative... journalism.

------
touristtam
> But some of the world’s biggest nerds are confident that machines will meet
> their Waterloo on the pixelated battlefields of the computer strategy game
> StarCraft.

Er .... sorry, but Waterloo was a decisive battle that lead to the dismissal
of a pan european empire. I don't think we will see the end of the "machines"
any time soon. A better comparison would have been Austerlitz (but then it
isn't much celebrated in the Anglo-Saxon world).

------
andrewclunn
The AI had better be able to interact using a mouse and keyboard. Any time I
see the "AI wins!" headline, for anything real time, it was invariably given a
superior interface. Watson getting a text file sent to it instead of having to
read the screen or listen to Alex read the answer for example. If the machine
isn't watching a monitor and forced to use the same input methods as the
players, then sure it will "win," but it will be a cheat, not a triumph of AI.

~~~
ggggtez
You are missing the point of man vs machine competitions. It's unbalanced on
purpose. The aim is to see if an AI with all its unique advantages can best a
human with their unique advantages. It is not to create a physical robot that
has to mimic the disadvantages of a human.

That's not cheating, it's a agreed upon rules. Making an AI that can beat a
human is already very hard. Next you'll add other arbitrary requirements, like
limiting the wattage to what the human brain uses...

~~~
andrewclunn
I'm not missing the point. If you have to modify the game itself to allow the
AI to compete, then it's cheating. It would be like self driving cars that
required specialised roads.

~~~
lukeschlather
What you're suggesting is that an AI can't really drive unless it's operating
the car the same way a human does, i.e. with a steering wheel and pedals
rather than having a direct digital interface into the car.

~~~
andrewclunn
No. I even said what the analogy would be for self driving cars. I'm calling
out the BS of the marketing scams for investment dollars that are these
contests. Point out that and a bunch of people get butt hurt because they need
that investment money.

~~~
ggggtez
Bullshit, a human only has 2 eyes, but a self driving car can see in all
directions at once. You are just making up arbitrary rules.

------
dsjoerg
Terrible headline; machines are already great at "lying"; recent progress in
poker, for example.

~~~
dang
We changed the headline to the subtitle last night because the main title is
so baity. If that's not good enough, the best way to explain that is to
suggest a better title—i.e. an accurate and neutral title that preferably uses
representative language from the article. When users do this, we're happy to
use their suggestions.

