Skip to main content

A Competitive Combat Strategy and Tactics in RTS Games AI and StarCraft

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
Advances in Multimedia Information Processing – PCM 2017 (PCM 2017)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 10736))

Included in the following conference series:

Abstract

This paper presents a competitive combat strategy and tactics in RTS Games AI. To put it simply, if a player is building up base, he is losing out on creating an army and If he is building up his army, he is losing out on having a strong base. The key to winning, in StarCraft or any other RTS game is to balance strategy, tactics, macro and micro. To improve the game, one has to be able to keep track of everything that’s going on over the entire map. And one must be able to give orders quickly and efficiently so in this paper we propose a competitive battle strategy with the help of a plot and decision tree. We simulate the strategy in MicroRTS developed in java EE by conducting a game-play between human player and MicroRTS AI (Game AI), though our proposed strategy out-performs the Game AI rarely as we did not account game playing-speed that makes a huge difference in victory but at least we succeeded in introducing a strategy that could well compete the Game AI and may defeat it but rarely.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 129.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 169.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

References

  1. Robertson, G., Watson, I.: A review of real-time strategy game AI. AI Mag. 35(4), 75–104 (2014)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Si, C., Pisan, Y., Tan, C.T.: A scouting strategy for real-time strategy games, pp. 1–8 (2014)

    Google Scholar 

  3. Ontanón, S., et al.: A survey of real-time strategy game AI research and competition in StarCraft. IEEE Trans. Comput. Intell. AI Games 5(4), 293–311 (2013)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Preuss, M., et al.: Reactive strategy choice in StarCraft by means of fuzzy control. In: 2013 IEEE Conference on Computational Intelligence in Games (CIG). IEEE (2013)

    Google Scholar 

  5. Farooq, S.S., et al.: StarCraft AI competition: a step toward human-level AI for real-time strategy games. AI Mag. 37(2), 102–107 (2016)

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  6. Stanescu, M., et al.: Predicting army combat outcomes in StarCraft. In: AIIDE. Citeseer (2013)

    Google Scholar 

  7. Waltham, M., Moodley, D.: An analysis of artificial intelligence techniques in multiplayer online battle arena game environments. In: Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the South African Institute of Computer Scientists and Information Technologists. ACM (2016)

    Google Scholar 

  8. Barriga, N.A., Stanescu, M., Buro, M.: Building placement optimization in real-time strategy games. In: Tenth Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment Conference (2014)

    Google Scholar 

  9. Si, C., Pisan, Y., Tan, C.T.: Understanding players’ map exploration styles. In: Proceedings of the Australasian Computer Science Week Multiconference. ACM (2016)

    Google Scholar 

  10. Barriga, N.A., Stanescu, M., Buro, M.: Game tree search based on non-deterministic action scripts in real-time strategy games. IEEE Trans. Comput. Intell. AI Games, PP(99), 1 (2017). 10.1109/TCIAIG.2017.2717902

  11. Stanescu, M., et al.: Evaluating real-time strategy game states using convolutional neural networks, September 2016

    Google Scholar 

  12. Chen, W., et al.: GameLifeVis: visual analysis of behavior evolutions in multiplayer online games. J. Vis. 20, 651–665 (2017)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. Lara-Cabrera, R., Cotta, C., Fernandez-Leiva, A.J.: A review of computational intelligence in RTS games. In: 2013 IEEE Symposium on Foundations of Computational Intelligence (FOCI), pp. 114–121 (2013)

    Google Scholar 

  14. Sourmelis, T., Ioannou, A., Zaphiris, P.: Massively multiplayer online role playing games (MMORPGs) and the 21st century skills: a comprehensive research review from 2010 to 2016. Comput. Hum. Behav. 67, 41–48 (2017)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Ontanón, S.: The combinatorial multi-armed bandit problem and its application to real-time strategy games. In: Proceedings of the Ninth AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment. AAAI Press (2013)

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgement

Thanks for the support provided by CSC and Department of Computer Science, HIT Harbin, China.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Adil Khan .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2018 Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature

About this paper

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this paper

Khan, A. et al. (2018). A Competitive Combat Strategy and Tactics in RTS Games AI and StarCraft. In: Zeng, B., Huang, Q., El Saddik, A., Li, H., Jiang, S., Fan, X. (eds) Advances in Multimedia Information Processing – PCM 2017. PCM 2017. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10736. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77383-4_1

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77383-4_1

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-77382-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-77383-4

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics