Korean Starcraft 2

For Christmas I bought my brother the Korean version of Starcraft 2. I had student last semester who also plays Starcraft 2, and he traveled to South Korea over the break to get some dental work done and so he offered to buy a copy for me while there.

If you read this blog, you've probably seen that while I suck at Starcraft 2 and could probably be beaten by Wildebeast playing Zerg on 1 Base vs. me on 3 base as Protoss, my brother Jeremy (or Kuri) is pretty good at the game, and sometimes appears in the Top 200 of North American players (last week he was #108). He'd probably be higher on the ladder, but 10 - 15% of his games were lost because of disconnects, because GTA's idea of high speed DSL, means that there is a 50% chance that you're internet connection won't get snapped if someone picks up the phone.

I wanted to get him the Korean version of the game so he could play on the Korean Ladder, which is considered to be the best ladder our there. For those who don't know although Starcraft 2 is meant to be a global game, you don't really play a pool of players from around the world, but instead you are grouped into regional ladders, such as South East Asia, Taiwan, North America, Europe, South Korea, etc, and you play against those who have a copy of the game from that same region. In order to play people from other areas, you have to buy a copy of that version, and you usually lag like crazy when you play on it.

I have heard plenty of stories about the Korean ladder, and Artosis is always making interesting generalizations about how people are playing on the ladder there and how things are or aren't evolving (primarily about zerg tactics), and so I wanted Kuri to test his might there. Even though the players are supposed to be better, I'm sure that doesn't mean less cheesy, but maybe just as much (if not more cheese)but maybe with better micro?

He hasn't started playing the Korean version yet, mainly because he's trying to fight his way to the top of his Masters League division right now (he's number 11). He also apparently needs a South Korean Social Security number in order to activate the Korean version, and so if anyone out there has a spare SS# to lend to us, we'd really appreciate it!

TTPP v ZZZZ

I played in an epic 4 v 4 earlier tonight. 4 VH AI versus me, two of my students and a VH AI ally.

The map was Megaton, which isn't too difficult a map to play on. It is easy to wall in and later expand out into your naturals. Within five minutes however one of my students had disconnected, leaving us his minerals, but nothing else, except taking up some space in our main. My computer ally seemed determine to constantly all in rush and so for the first ten minutes he just led a stream of zealots, sentries and stalkers to their deaths. Eventually the computer, who was 4 zergs countered. We beat them back, just the three of us and when it seemed safe enough we started to expand. The computer, as if to accentuate that he had no ability to be a team player, took two expansions at once, leaving me with the one closest to my starting point, but also right in the path of the roaring river of zerg units trying to wipe us out.

I built my nexus, set up some quick pylons and canons to defend and moved out four immortals and two colossi to defend. My puny army was no match for the massive wave of hydras, roaches and infestors that came. I lost my nexus and was forced to retreat back to the main. Once we had beat them, I built again. Lost it again. Built again, lost it again. By this point the computer was aggressively encroaching on me. Hitting my buildings with brood lords, mutalisks and roaches sniping my probes as they minded what little minerals I had left.

At this point, 20 mins into the game, I suggested to my remaining student that we quit and start over. I have no qualms about giving up on losing battles, especially when my gashed open and bleeding carcass is now the battlefield. My student however, much to my surprise, ha na'gof manman yu' when he suggested that we could somehow win it. I said, ok, secretly hoping that once he had felt the pain of being sniped on all sides by irritating zerg units he wouldn't be so hopeful. The only thing which was actually helping at this point was the fact that zerg would be focusing on my buildings, allowing my student's small fleet of vikings and growing line of siege tanks to come in and slowly take out their advance units.

I saw that the computer was only attacking on the left side of the map, leaving the rght side almost completely open. I snuck my remaning forces out through the northern ramp and built my new nexus (with 400 of my remaining 500 minerals) at the closest northern high yield expansion. My gamble paid off. While my student and the mainly taisetbe computer ally fought literal building to building battles in the main, I gathered up slowly my minerals. Built a set of new gateways and a Twilight council, chrono boosted zealot charge and started trying to take the pressure off the main by sniping their northen set of two expansions.

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One thing which I've learned about the computer ai is that even at its most insane levels it does not ever leave units to guard its expansions. Every once in a while you'll find spore crawlers or missile turrets, but rarely any mobile units.

It ended up working. With the pressure off, my student was able to expand and start building up quick M and M and M forces to start harassing the southern expansions. It took a while but we slowly pushed them back, prevented them from getting new minerals and forced the creation of smaller, more easily manageable clusters of units, as opposed to that horrid, ungodly varied unit mass that the AI somehow always makes.

As we mopped up the remaining structures of the 4 zerg, I realized that I need to stop saying that we should give up the moment something goes wrong and that you won't rally successfully every single time, but sometimes you might, and when you do it is truly epic.