Locutus, an AI bot created by Bruce Nielsen from Denmark, won the 2018 IEEE CIG StarCraft AI Competition. It used simple learning to choose openings based on past success, and strong macro strategies like forge expanding vs zerg. PurpleWave from the US placed second using strategies taken from pro play to exploit enemy weaknesses. McRave from Canada placed third, focusing on winning small battles to maintain an advantage. Locutus had a 92.06% win rate over 43,875 games against 27 entrants from 14 countries in the full round robin style competition.

1. IEEE Conference on Computational Intelligence and Games
2018 IEEE CIG
StarCraft AI Competition
Seonghun Yoon, Kyung-Joong Kim
Cognition and Intelligence Lab (http://cilab.sejong.ac.kr)
Sejong University, Seoul, Republic of Korea

2. StarCraft
(Blizzard, 1998)
• StarCraft is the real-time strategy game to win the enemy with limited resource in
the specific maps.
• This real-time strategy (RTS) game has been known as one of the most difficult
video games to solve.
• People think that this game might be the next target for AI researchers after
oriental Go success (Alpha Go).
2
StarCraft Brood War StarCraft Remastered
[1] M.-J. Kim, K.-J. Kim, S.-J. Kim, and A. K. Dey, “Evaluation of StarCraft Artificial Intelligence Competition Bots by
Experienced Human Players,” ACM CHI (Late-Breaking Work), 2016
CIG 2018

3. ~2018
Now three annual AI Competition
2011
𝟏 𝒔𝒕 Student StarCraft AI(SSCAIT)
Competition
2017
StarCraft II API released
2010
𝟏 𝒔𝒕
IEEE CIG StarCraft AI Competition
𝟏 𝒔𝒕
AIIDE StarCraft AI Competition
History of StarCraft AI
http://www.cs.mun.ca/~dchurchill/starcraftaicomp/history.shtml
3
2009
BWAPI was developed
CIG 2018

4. Competition
Setup
• StarCraft Brood War
• BWAPI (Brood War Programming Interface)
• C++ or JAVA or Proxy Bot (any programming
language)
• Full-round robin style competition
• Winner is the one with highest win ratio
• 5 maps used using seed number of
participants(randomly selected from official
maps)
• 125 rounds (351 games/round)
• Total 43,875 games (25 days using 14 VMs)
• Open-source policy
4
CIG 2018

5. 5
Submissions
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018
10 10
8
13 14 16
20
27
The Number of Submissions
CIG 2018

6. 27 Entrants from 14 Countries
6
New Entries Upgrade from 2017 Version
Re-entrance of
2017 Version
# of
Entries
9 7 11
Bots
Korean (Korea)
TitanIron (China)
Locutus (Denmark)
CUNYbot
ISAMind
Stormbreaker
Ecgberht (Spain)
Microwave
Steamhammer (USA)
ZZZKBot (Australia & UK,1st in 2017)
tscmoo (Norway,2nd in 2017)
PurpleWave (USA,3rd in 2017)
LetaBot (Netherland, 4th in 2017)
McRave (Canada)
MegaBot (Brazil)
Tyr (Netherland)
Ziabot (Korea)
Iron (France)
Sling (Korea)
Aiur (France)
Bonjwa (Vietnam)
OpprimoBot (Sweden)
Salsa (Spain)
TerranUAB (Poland)
UAlbertaBot (Canada)
Overkill (China)
SRbotOne (Canada)
CIG 2018

7. 7
Race Distribution
CIG 2018
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018
4 4
6
10
4
6
8 8
7
8
4
7
4
3
5
7
1
2 2
Zerg Terran Protoss Random

8. 8
Year Winner
2018 ?
2017 ZZZKBOT
2016 TSCMOO
2015 ZZZKBOT
2014 ICEBOT
2013 SkyNet
2012 SkyNet
2011 SkyNet
Race Distribution
CIG 2018
Zerg
Terran
Protoss
Random
Race of Winner
2
2
3
Zerg
Terran
Protoss
Random

9. # of Players Maps
Two Players
Map
(2)Destination1.1
Three Players
Map
(3)TauCross1.1 (3)GreatBarrierReef1.0
Four Players
Map
(4)Andromeda1.0 (4)Python1.3 9
Competition Maps
CIG 2018

10. 10
0
10000
20000
30000
40000
50000
2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018
40
4050 2500 4680 2730
14800
47500
43875
Total Games Played
CIG 2018

11. The Trend of Bots
CIG 2018
4
198
2017 2018
# of Bots using the File I/O
Non-Use
Use
2
7
10 12
2017 2018
# of Bots using the Machine Learning
• FILE I/O is allowed AI Players can save experience over rounds to adapt strategies
33.34%
100%
36.84%
16.67%

12. AI Bots
12
CIG 2018

13. CIG 2018
Bot AI techniques
PurpleWave Task network : High-level decision-making
McRave BFS pathfinding, minor learning : choosing build orders
Korean Custom pathfinding
LetaBot MCTS, A*
CUNYbot Genetic Algorithm : Standard economic models
ISAMind Neural network : An enemy strategy prediction
Stormbreaker Deep convolution Net as the actor function and critic function
MegaBot MinimaxQ-learning
Ecgberht UCB-1, Gaussian MeanShift clustering, behavioural trees
ZZZKBot Greedy search algorithm
Tyr A few state machines
13
The Overall AI Techniques of Bots

14. Results Announcement
14
CIG 2018

15. 15
RankRank Bot NameBot Name WinWinRaceRace LoseLose Win RateWin RateGameGame
Result ( 𝟏 𝒔𝒕
~ 𝟑 𝒓𝒅
)
CIG 2018
11 LocutusLocutus 3,2503,250 29922992 258258 92.06%92.06%
Congratulation!
Winner of 2018 IEEE CIG
StarCraft AI Competition
Locutus by Bruce Nielsen
from Denmark
Locutus is simple learning for choosing openings, based on what
has worked in past games. ( Using a weighting factor. )
Macro , forge expand vs. zerg are the strongest aspects.
22 PurpleWavePurpleWave 3,2503,250 29622962 288288 91.14%91.14%
Most are taken from study of pro play.
exploiting the weaknesses of the enemy bot.
Forming ad-hoc combat squads using a Fast clustering algorithm
33 McRaveMcRave 3,2503,250 26682668 582582 82.09%82.09%
Winning small battles and maintain an advantage as soon as possible.
Some minor learning for choosing build orders using multi-armed bandit.
BFS pathfinding for every combat units.

16. Result ( 𝟏 𝒔𝒕
~ 𝟏𝟎 𝒕𝒉
)
16
22 PurpleWavePurpleWave 3,2503,250 29622962 288288 91.1491.14
33 McRaveMcRave 3,2503,250 26682668 582582 82.0982.09
RankRank Bot NameBot Name WinWinRaceRace LoseLose Win RateWin RateGameGame
11 LocutusLocutus 3,2503,250 29922992 258258 92.0692.06
55 ISAMindISAMind 3,2503,250 26102610 640640 80.3180.31
66 IronIron 3,2503,250 24152415 835835 74.3174.31
44 tscmootscmoo 3,2503,250 26422642 608608 81.2981.29
88 MicrowaveMicrowave 3,2503,250 21072107 11431143 64.8364.83
99 LetaBotLetaBot 3,2503,250 20672067 11831183 63.663.6
77 ZZZKBotZZZKBot 3,2503,250 22452245 10051005 69.0869.08
1010 MegaBotMegaBot 3,2503,250 19881988 12621262 61.1761.17
OccupationOccupation
PublicPublic
Young
Professional
Young
Professional
PublicPublic
Young
Professional
Young
Professional
2017 bot2017 bot
PublicPublic
PublicPublic
StudentStudent
PublicPublic
StudentStudent
CIG 2018

17. PublicPublic
2017 bot2017 bot
Result ( 𝟏𝟏 𝒕𝒉
~ 𝟐𝟎 𝒕𝒉
)
17
1212 TyrTyr 3,2503,250 18601860 13901390 57.2357.23
1313 EcgberhtEcgberht 3,2503,250 17161716 15341534 52.852.8
RankRank Bot NameBot Name WinWinRaceRace LoseLose Win RateWin RateGameGame
1111 UAIbertaBotUAIbertaBot 3,2503,250 19691969 12811281 60.5860.58
1515 TitanIronTitanIron 3,2503,250 16721672 15781578 51.4551.45
1616 ZiabotZiabot 3,2503,250 16601660 15901590 51.0851.08
1414 AiurAiur 3,2503,250 16751675 15751575 51.5451.54
1818 OverkillOverkill 3,2503,250 11271127 21232123 34.6834.68
1919 TerranUABTerranUAB 3,2503,250 11181118 21322132 34.434.4
1717 SteamhammerSteamhammer 3,2503,250 11321132 21182118 34.8334.83
2020 CUNYbotCUNYbot 3,2503,250 959959 22912291 29.5129.51
OccupationOccupation
CIG 2018
PublicPublic
Young
Professional
Young
Professional
2017 bot2017 bot
Young
Professional
Young
Professional
2017 bot2017 bot
2017 bot2017 bot
2017 bot2017 bot
PublicPublic
Young
Professional
Young
Professional
StudentStudent

18. 2017 bot2017 bot
2017 bot2017 bot
Result ( 𝟐𝟏 𝒔𝒕
~ 𝟐𝟕 𝒕𝒉
)
18
2222 SlingSling 3,2503,250 862862 23882388 26.5226.52
2323 SRbotOneSRbotOne 3,2503,250 792792 24582458 24.3724.37
RankRank Bot NameBot Name WinWinRaceRace LoseLose Win RateWin RateGameGame
2121 OpprimoBotOpprimoBot 3,2503,250 881881 23692369 27.1127.11
2525 StormbreakerStormbreaker 3,2503,250 690690 25602560 21.2321.23
2626 KoreanKorean 3,2503,250 250250 30003000 7.697.69
2424 BonjwaBonjwa 3,2503,250 766766 24842484 23.5723.57
2727 SalsaSalsa 3,2503,250 5050 32003200 1.541.54
OccupationOccupation
CIG 2018
StudentStudent
2017 bot2017 bot
Young
Professional
Young
Professional
2017 bot2017 bot
2017 bot2017 bot

19. • 추가 사항 : 라운드 별 승률 (FILE I/O) AIIDE 2017 참고
CIG 2018
Win Percentage Over Time
Locutus ( Ranked #1 )
tscmoo ( Ranked #4 )
Overkill ( Ranked #18 )
ZZZKBot ( Ranked #7 )
PurpleWave ( Ranked #2 )

20. Highlight Video
CIG 2018

21. Dave Churchill
Organizer of AIIDE StarCraft AI Competition
Acknowledgements
Michal Certicky and his team
Organizer of Student StarCraft AI Tournament
21
CIG 2018

22. Thank You
Email: starcraft.aic@gmail.com
www.cilab.sejong.ac.kr/sc_competition
22
CIG 2018