{"type":"ScholarlyArticle","title":"Stratified Strategy Selection for Unit Control in Real-Time Strategy Games","authors":[{"name":"Levi H. S. Lelis","slug":"levi-h-s-lelis","given":"Levi H. S.","family":"Lelis","affiliation":"Departamento de Informática , Universidade Federal de Vic ¸osa , Brazil"}],"abstract":"In this paper we introduce Stratified Strategy Selection (SSS), a novel search algorithm for micromanaging units in real-time strategy (RTS) games. SSS uses a type system to partition the player's units into types and assumes that units of the same type must follow the same strategy. SSS searches in the state space induced by the type system to select, from a pool of options, a strategy for each unit. Empirical results on a simulator of an RTS game shows that SSS employing either fixed or adaptive type systems is able to substantially outperform state-of-the-art search-based algorithms in combat scenarios with up to 100 units.","doi":"10.24963/ijcai.2017/522","url":"https://ijcai.org/proceedings/2017/522","pdf":"https://ijcai.org/proceedings/2017/0522.pdf","markdown":"https://ijcai.org/proceedings/2017/522.md","bibtex":"https://ijcai.org/proceedings/2017/bibtex/522","volume":{"slug":"2017","title":"Proceedings of the Twenty-Sixth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence","short_title":"IJCAI 2017","url":"https://ijcai.org/proceedings/2017/","year":2017,"location":"Melbourne, Australia","dates":"19-25 August 2017","editors":"Carles Sierra","isbn":"978-0-9992411-0-3","publisher":"International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence Organization","doi_prefix":"10.24963/ijcai.2017"},"section":"Multidisciplinary Topics and Applications","track":"Main track","number":522,"pages":{"first":3735,"last":3741},"keywords":["Agent-based and Multi-agent Systems: Multi-agent Planning","Multidisciplinary Topics and Applications: Interactive Entertainment","Planning and Scheduling: Real-time Planning","Multidisciplinary Topics and Applications: Computer Games"],"videos":[],"references":[{"position":1,"raw":"[Balla and Fern, 2009] R-K. Balla and A. Fern. Uct for tac- tical assault planning in real-time strategy games. In Inter- national Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, pages 40-45, 2009.","title":"Uct for tactical assault planning in real-time strategy games","authors":"R-K Balla, A Fern","year":"2009","venue":"International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence","doi":null,"url":null,"internal_url":"/proceedings/2009/18"},{"position":2,"raw":"[Betzalel et al., 2015] O. Betzalel, A. Felner, and S. E. Shi- mony. Type system based rational lazy IDA. In Symposium on Combinatorial Search, pages 151-155, 2015.","title":"Type system based rational lazy IDA","authors":"O Betzalel, A Felner, S E Shimony","year":"2015","venue":"Symposium on Combinatorial Search","doi":null,"url":null,"internal_url":null},{"position":3,"raw":"[Chen, 1992] P.-C. Chen. Heuristic sampling: A method for predicting the performance of tree searching programs. SIAM Journal on Computing, 21:295-315, 1992.","title":"Heuristic sampling: A method for predicting the performance of tree searching programs","authors":"P.-C Chen","year":"1992","venue":"SIAM Journal on Computing","doi":null,"url":null,"internal_url":null},{"position":4,"raw":"[Chung et al., 2005] M. Chung, M. Buro, and J. Schaeffer. Monte Carlo planning in RTS games. In IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence and Games, 2005.","title":"Monte Carlo planning in RTS games","authors":"M Chung, M Buro, J Schaeffer","year":"2005","venue":"IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence and Games","doi":null,"url":null,"internal_url":null},{"position":5,"raw":"[Churchill and Buro, 2013] D. Churchill and M. Buro. Port- folio greedy search and simulation for large-scale combat in StarCraft. In Conference on Computational Intelligence in Games, pages 1-8. IEEE, 2013.","title":"Portfolio greedy search and simulation for large-scale combat in StarCraft","authors":"D Churchill, M Buro","year":"2013","venue":"Conference on Computational Intelligence in Games","doi":null,"url":null,"internal_url":null},{"position":6,"raw":"[Churchill and Buro, 2015] D. Churchill and M. Buro. Hier- archical portfolio search: Prismata's robust AI architecture for games with large search spaces. In AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertain- ment, pages 16-22, 2015.","title":"Hierarchical portfolio search: Prismata's robust AI architecture for games with large search spaces","authors":"D Churchill, M Buro","year":"2015","venue":"AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment","doi":null,"url":null,"internal_url":null},{"position":7,"raw":"[Churchill et al., 2012] D. Churchill, A. Saffidine, and M. Buro. Fast heuristic search for RTS game combat sce- narios. In AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment, 2012.","title":"Fast heuristic search for RTS game combat scenarios","authors":"D Churchill, A Saffidine, M Buro","year":"2012","venue":"AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment","doi":null,"url":null,"internal_url":null},{"position":8,"raw":"[Justesen et al., 2014] N. Justesen, B. Tillman, J. Togelius, and S. Risi. Script-and cluster-based UCT for StarCraft. In IEEE Conference on Computational Intelligence and Games, pages 1-8, 2014.","title":"Script-and cluster-based UCT for StarCraft","authors":"N Justesen, B Tillman, J Togelius, S Risi","year":"2014","venue":"IEEE Conference on Computational Intelligence and Games","doi":null,"url":null,"internal_url":null},{"position":9,"raw":"[Knuth and Moore, 1975] D. E. Knuth and R. W. Moore. An analysis of alpha-beta pruning. Artificial Intelligence, 6(4):293-326, 1975.","title":"An analysis of alpha-beta pruning","authors":"D E Knuth, R W Moore","year":"1975","venue":"Artificial Intelligence","doi":null,"url":null,"internal_url":null},{"position":10,"raw":"[Kocsis and Szepesvári, 2006] L. Kocsis and C. Szepesvári. Bandit based monte-Carlo planning. In European Con- ference on Machine Learning, pages 282-293. Springer- Verlag, 2006.","title":"Bandit based monte-Carlo planning","authors":"L Kocsis, C Szepesvári","year":"2006","venue":"European Conference on Machine Learning","doi":null,"url":null,"internal_url":null},{"position":11,"raw":"[Korf et al., 2001] R. E. Korf, M. Reid, and S. Edelkamp. Time complexity of Iterative-Deepening-A * . Artificial In- telligence, 129(1-2):199-218, 2001.","title":"Time complexity of Iterative-Deepening-A *","authors":"R E Korf, M Reid, S Edelkamp","year":"2001","venue":"Artificial Intelligence","doi":null,"url":null,"internal_url":null},{"position":12,"raw":"[Kovarsky and Buro, 2005] A. Kovarsky and M. Buro. Heuristic search applied to abstract combat games. In Ad- vances in Artificial Intelligence: Conference of the Cana- dian Society for Computational Studies of Intelligence, pages 66-78. Springer, 2005.","title":"Heuristic search applied to abstract combat games","authors":"A Kovarsky, M Buro","year":"2005","venue":"Advances in Artificial Intelligence: Conference of the Canadian Society for Computational Studies of Intelligence","doi":null,"url":null,"internal_url":null},{"position":13,"raw":"[Lelis et al., 2013a] L. H. S. Lelis, L. Otten, and R. Dechter. Predicting the size of depth-first branch and bound search trees. In International Joint Conference on Artificial Intel- ligence, pages 594 -600, 2013.","title":"Predicting the size of depth-first branch and bound search trees","authors":"Lelis","year":"2013","venue":"International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence","doi":null,"url":null,"internal_url":"/proceedings/2013/95"},{"position":14,"raw":"[Lelis et al., 2013b] L. H. S. Lelis, S. Zilles, and R. C. Holte. Predicting the Size of IDA*'s Search Tree. Artificial Intel- ligence, pages 53-76, 2013.","title":"Predicting the Size of IDA*'s Search Tree","authors":"Lelis","year":"2013","venue":"Artificial Intelligence","doi":null,"url":null,"internal_url":null},{"position":15,"raw":"[Lelis et al., 2013c] L. H. S. Lelis, S. Zilles, and R. C. Holte. Stratified Tree Search: a novel suboptimal heuristic search algorithm. In Conference on Autonomous Agents and Mul- tiagent Systems, pages 555-562, 2013.","title":"Stratified Tree Search: a novel suboptimal heuristic search algorithm","authors":"Lelis","year":"2013","venue":"Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems","doi":null,"url":null,"internal_url":null},{"position":16,"raw":"[Lelis et al., 2016] L. H. S. Lelis, R. Stern, S. Zilles, A. Fel- ner, and R. C. Holte. Predicting optimal solution costs with bidirectional stratified sampling in regular search spaces. Artificial Intelligence, pages 51-73, 2016.","title":"Predicting optimal solution costs with bidirectional stratified sampling in regular search spaces","authors":"L H S Lelis, R Stern, S Zilles, A Felner, R C Holte","year":"2016","venue":"Artificial Intelligence","doi":null,"url":null,"internal_url":null},{"position":17,"raw":"[Liu et al., 2016] S. Liu, S. J. Louis, and C. A. Ballinger. Evolving effective microbehaviors in real-time strategy games. IEEE Transactions on Computational Intelligence and AI in Games, 8(4):351-362, 2016.","title":"Evolving effective microbehaviors in real-time strategy games","authors":"S Liu, S J Louis, C A Ballinger","year":"2016","venue":"IEEE Transactions on Computational Intelligence and AI in Games","doi":null,"url":null,"internal_url":null},{"position":18,"raw":"[Ontañón and Buro, 2015] S. Ontañón and M. Buro. Adver- sarial hierarchical-task network planning for complex real- time games. In International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, pages 1652-1658, 2015.","title":"Adversarial hierarchical-task network planning for complex realtime games","authors":"S Ontañón, M Buro","year":"2015","venue":"International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence","doi":null,"url":null,"internal_url":null},{"position":19,"raw":"[Ontañón et al., 2013] S. Ontañón, G. Synnaeve, A. Uriarte, F. Richoux, D. Churchill, and M. Preuss. A survey of real- time strategy game AI research and competition in Star- Craft. IEEE Transactions on Computational Intelligence and AI in Games, 5(4):293-311, 2013.","title":"A survey of realtime strategy game AI research and competition in Star-Craft","authors":"S Ontañón, G Synnaeve, A Uriarte, F Richoux, D Churchill, M Preuss","year":"2013","venue":"IEEE Transactions on Computational Intelligence and AI in Games","doi":null,"url":null,"internal_url":null},{"position":20,"raw":"[Ontañón, 2013] S. Ontañón. The combinatorial multi- armed bandit problem and its application to real-time strat- egy games. In AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment, pages 58-64, 2013.","title":"The combinatorial multiarmed bandit problem and its application to real-time strategy games","authors":"S Ontañón","year":"2013","venue":"AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment","doi":null,"url":null,"internal_url":null},{"position":21,"raw":"[Preuss et al., 2013] M. Preuss, D. Kozakowski, J. Hagelbck, and H. Trautmann. Reactive strategy choice in starcraft by means of fuzzy control. In Conference on Computational Intelligence in Games, pages 1-8. IEEE, 2013.","title":"Reactive strategy choice in starcraft by means of fuzzy control","authors":"M Preuss, D Kozakowski, J Hagelbck, H Trautmann","year":"2013","venue":"Conference on Computational Intelligence in Games","doi":null,"url":null,"internal_url":null},{"position":22,"raw":"[Sailer et al., 2007] F. Sailer, M. Buro, and M. Lanctot. Ad- versarial planning through strategy simulation. In IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence and Games, pages 80-87, 2007.","title":"Adversarial planning through strategy simulation","authors":"F Sailer, M Buro, M Lanctot","year":"2007","venue":"IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence and Games","doi":null,"url":null,"internal_url":null},{"position":23,"raw":"[Tavares et al., 2016] A. Tavares, H. Azpúrua, A. Santos, and L. Chaimowicz. Rock, paper, starcraft: Strategy se- lection in real-time strategy games. In AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertain- ment, pages 93-99, 2016.","title":"Rock, paper, starcraft: Strategy selection in real-time strategy games","authors":"A Tavares, H Azpúrua, A Santos, L Chaimowicz","year":"2016","venue":"AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment","doi":null,"url":null,"internal_url":null},{"position":24,"raw":"[Usunier et al., 2016] N. Usunier, G. Synnaeve, Z. Lin, and S. Chintala. Episodic exploration for deep deterministic policies: An application to StarCraft micromanagement tasks. CoRR, abs/1609.02993, 2016.","title":"Episodic exploration for deep deterministic policies: An application to StarCraft micromanagement tasks","authors":"N Usunier, G Synnaeve, Z Lin, S Chintala","year":"2016","venue":null,"doi":null,"url":null,"internal_url":null},{"position":25,"raw":"[Wang et al., 2016] C. Wang, P. Chen, Y. Li, C. Holmgård, and J. Togelius. Portfolio online evolution in StarCraft. In AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment, pages 114-120, 2016.","title":"Portfolio online evolution in StarCraft","authors":"C Wang, P Chen, Y Li, C Holmgård, J Togelius","year":"2016","venue":"AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment","doi":null,"url":null,"internal_url":null},{"position":26,"raw":"[Xie et al., 2014] F. Xie, M. Müller, R. Holte, and T. Imai. Type-based exploration with multiple search queues for satisficing planning. In AAAI Conference on Artificial In- telligence, pages 2395-2402, 2014.","title":"Type-based exploration with multiple search queues for satisficing planning","authors":"F Xie, M Müller, R Holte, T Imai","year":"2014","venue":"AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence","doi":null,"url":null,"internal_url":null},{"position":27,"raw":"[Zahavi et al., 2010] U. Zahavi, A. Felner, N. Burch, and R. C. Holte. Predicting the performance of IDA* using conditional distributions. Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research, 37:41-83, 2010.","title":"Predicting the performance of IDA* using conditional distributions","authors":"U Zahavi, A Felner, N Burch, R C Holte","year":"2010","venue":"Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research","doi":null,"url":null,"internal_url":null}],"license_note":"Copyright International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence."}