L.O.S.E.R. (Learning Operational Strategy Electing Robot)

A Starcraft 2 AI

Proposal and Report

Here

Setup

This setup assumes you are using a machine running a Linux operating system and are running python 3.5+

Setting up Starcraft 2 Headless Environment

Go to the Blizzard sc2 github and follow their instructions on installing the protobuf environment. Since the headless enviroment is version specific, you must install version 3.17

Install Python Dependencies

Note: Make sure you install all dependencies to the right python version

• pip3 install --upgrade tensorflow
• pip3 install keras
• pip3 install matplotlib
• pip3 install numpy
• Ubuntu: sudo apt-get install python3-tk, Arch:sudo pacman -S tk, or the equivalent to your linux system

Install pysc2

Install pysc2 from: https://github.com/deepmind/pysc2 or run pip3 install pysc2

Install python-sc2 with Starcraft 2 Viewer

Install python-sc2 with starcraft viewer (We found that this works the best when you clone the repo to the following path: ~/StarCraftII/:

git clone https://github.com/dbelliss/python-sc2
cd python-sc2
sudo  python3.6 setup.py install

IMPORTANT SIDE NOTE

If you have already installed the Dentosal python-sc2 repository, go into the installed location and do the following before the above:

sudo rm -rf sc2/

Testing the Installation

python3.6 examples/cannon_rush.py

Running our bot

In the terminal, run: python3 agent_selector.py -r <random or specific race> -d <difficulty> -n <desired # of runs> ex: python3 agent_selector.py -r protoss -d easy -n 2 will play against protoss on easy for 2 games Difficulty settings are defined by the starcraft 2 protobuf as the following:

• veryeasy
• easy
• medium
• hard
• harder
• veryhard
• cheatvision
• cheatmoney
• cheatinsane

Current issues:

• Error messages printing with certain operations like building extractors
• Moving the camera around in game has a chance to crash the agent
• This bot is designed only for 1v1's with only a single enemy starting position

How it Works

Our main agent is designed to choose one strategy from a pool of strategies (attack, defend, scout, harass), and one build from a pool of builds (For example Zergling and Baneling). After certain intervals of time, the agent will evaluate it's current fitness, and if it is below a certain threshold, it will input the game state (unit composition, enemy unit composition, minerals, vespene gas, etc.) into a a neural network to determine the next strategy it should choose, and input the same data into a different neural network to determine the build to use.

LoserAgent

All of these classes derive from LoserAgent. Loser agent is the only agent that implements strategy functions. LoserAgent also has it's own build order, but this is only to quickly test the base agent.

AgentSelector

AgentSelector is the agent that learns and swaps between strategies.

Strategies

Possible strategies an agent can use are:

• Heavy Attack - Send all army units towards the enemy base, and whoever gets there first attacks
• Medium Attack - Send all army units towards the enemy base, but try to group some army units together before moving forward
• Light Attack - Send all army units towards th enemy base, but only advance towards the enemy base if almost all untis are together
• Heavy Scouting - Send out all army units to random locations
• Medium Scouting - Send out 50% of all army units to random locations
• Light Scouting - Send out 50% of all army units to random locations, and have a unit return to base if it is damaged
• Heavy Defense - Recall all army units to the main base and build 4 spinecrawlers, 4 sporecrawlers, and 10 lurkers
• Medium Defense - Recall all army units to the main base and build 3 spinecrawlers, 3 sporecrawlers, and 5 lurkers
• Light Defense - Recall all army units to the main base and build 1 spinecrawlers, 1 sporecrawlers, and 3 lurkers
• Heavy Harass - Send mutalisks to attack the enemy's workers form the side, and attack with other army units
• Medium Harass - Send mutalisks to attack the enemy's workers form the side, attack with other army units, and return to base if damaged to 50% health
• Light Harass - Send mutalisks to attack the enemy's workers form the side, attack with other army units, and return to base if damaged at all

Builds

Possible builds an agent can use are:

• Drone and Overlord
• Mutalisk and Zergling
• Roach and Hydralisk
• Hydralisk and Zergling
• Zergling and Baneling

LOSER's Performance

Graphs

After completing a game, graphs will automatically be generated along the following respective path: LOSER/agents/graphs/ which will have a directory with the time stamp from when you ran the bot. Inside that directory you will find more information about the bot performance including overall fitness, overall agent and strategy selection, win loss ratio, and individual game statistics on fitness, agent selections, and strategies.