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Frame from Automaton 2000 Micro - Marine Split Battle vs IMMvp Plays via YouTube's privacy-enhanced embed

Automaton 2000 Micro - Marine Split Battle vs IMMvp

Automaton2000Micro
Demos
YouTube
Cited on HN 4 times, 2016–2018, never outright recommended score 0
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026

Cited in StarCraft AI threads to show how much perfect micro matters, though one commenter finds such play boring.

A short demo of Automaton 2000 Micro, a StarCraft bot built in Blizzard's World Editor that splits marines perfectly against banelings. It shows inhuman unit micromanagement with zero losses.

“anyone who says that advantage in micromanagement is not a big thing should see "Automaton 2000" videos” (HN, 2016)

3 citations · 1 critical · Demos

4 Hacker News comments

From the HN archive; up to 20 kept per video, favoring different commenters. Recommendations first.

@Monory Mar 2016 Cites it
on HN thread DeepMind Challenges for StarCraft
Well, anyone who says that advantage in micromanagement is not a big thing should see "Automaton 2000" videos. Given that automaton is a map script and thus can have virtually unlimited APM, it beats people from a horribly disadvantageous positions (40 banelings vs 21 marine [1], or 100 zerglings vs 20 sieged tanks [2]). [1]: [this video] [2]: [link]
Bot with perfect micro beats banelings with marines
@nickpsecurity Nov 2016 Cites it
on HN thread Show HN: DeepRhyme (D-Prime) – Generating dope rhymes with machine learning
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It's possible but it's a lot more context-driven than you think with a human involved. The bots do great against each other with their strategies and muscle-memory stuff. Throw a human in the mix, they start noticing patterns in how the units are managed, what strategies are likely, etc. They've exploited these in the competitions to hilarious effect. Here's the main site on prior work & results at the competitions: [link] Here's a few examples of how the muscle-memory approach, esp if focused on unit vs unit, can fail against humans. " In this example, Bakuryu (human) notices that Skynet's units will chase his zerglings if they are near, and proceeds to run around Skynet's base to distract Skynet long enough so that Bakuryu can make fying units to come attack Skynet's base. This type of behaviour is incredibly hard to detect in a bot, since it requires knowledge of the larger context of the game which may only have consequences 5 or more minutes in the future. " (2013) Note: At this point, they also sucked at building and expansion strategies which surprised me since I thought a basic planner would be able to do that. The constraints between rate of expansion, where to place stuff, what units to keep/build, and so on get really hard. The other thing they weren't good at was switching strategies mid-game based on what opponents are doing. " despite Djem5 (pro) making the bots look silly this year... they were able to defeat D-ranked, and even some C-ranked players. After the
Example of bot micro

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