Have you ever faced a computer oppenent that you could swear was playing by a different set of rules or knew what moves you were making? I have. I'd decided to break out my dad's copy of Starcraft, and oh my god does the AI in a custom match cheat or at the very least, has an unfair advantage.
The way me and my RTS ethusiest friend figured this out was after a few matches. From the camera angle I thought that there was only one way into my base, which I had fortified with bunkers and missle turrets. Infortunately there was a small path from behind some raised land that the Zerg poured though first try, they never saw the defenses I had set up.
What also raised a few hairs was when I was playing on crystalysis, I was never attacked and made a shitload of defenses, when I roll into the enemy base I see they didn't set a damn thing up aside from the Zerg equivilent to a barracks, because the crystals blocking the path didn't trigger them to make air based units they were simply harvesting resources.
But the worst example came from my latest game. I decided to fight Terrans this time, I had a slight problem with a marine rush when my defences weren't up, but I got my bunkers up. Unfortunately, the AI was aware I haden't build any detectors for some reason (seriously, I haden't been attacked in a good long while) and I kept getting nuked by his fucking ghost. I eventually rage quit when I realized how the game itself helps the AI.
For starters you can only select 12 units at a time and to my knowledge you cannot hotkey different groups, this makes it difficult to use large armies as a human, but the computer shows no issue with controlling large groups. Second of all is the way the computer can do multiple things (IE set up buildings) in what a human could call a single click. Finally it's the way they can use builders, they can set them on different resource nodes in again, a single click. It seems to me that Starcraft was successful for it's multiplayer because the two players have at least the same capabilities as one another.
So what AI in what game to you seems to be cheating or has an advantage a human has no chance of replicating?
The way me and my RTS ethusiest friend figured this out was after a few matches. From the camera angle I thought that there was only one way into my base, which I had fortified with bunkers and missle turrets. Infortunately there was a small path from behind some raised land that the Zerg poured though first try, they never saw the defenses I had set up.
What also raised a few hairs was when I was playing on crystalysis, I was never attacked and made a shitload of defenses, when I roll into the enemy base I see they didn't set a damn thing up aside from the Zerg equivilent to a barracks, because the crystals blocking the path didn't trigger them to make air based units they were simply harvesting resources.
But the worst example came from my latest game. I decided to fight Terrans this time, I had a slight problem with a marine rush when my defences weren't up, but I got my bunkers up. Unfortunately, the AI was aware I haden't build any detectors for some reason (seriously, I haden't been attacked in a good long while) and I kept getting nuked by his fucking ghost. I eventually rage quit when I realized how the game itself helps the AI.
For starters you can only select 12 units at a time and to my knowledge you cannot hotkey different groups, this makes it difficult to use large armies as a human, but the computer shows no issue with controlling large groups. Second of all is the way the computer can do multiple things (IE set up buildings) in what a human could call a single click. Finally it's the way they can use builders, they can set them on different resource nodes in again, a single click. It seems to me that Starcraft was successful for it's multiplayer because the two players have at least the same capabilities as one another.
So what AI in what game to you seems to be cheating or has an advantage a human has no chance of replicating?
