Yesterday, the final two matches of the Probots round of 8 were played. The first match was between SeeBot and DmytroBot. The second match was played between HjaxAI and YoBot. Again, these are best of three. Let’s see what these bots can do!
SeeBot(P) vs dmytrobot(P)
SeeBot is a protoss bot that makes heavy use of stalkers. It tends to put on constant pressure while getting a good number of bases and macro up. dmytrobot has a number of different strategies. His signature strategy is a probe rush, similar to the probe rush from Tyr. It micros back the damaged probes to conserve them and regenerate its shields.
Match 1
In the first game, dmytrobot uses its probe rush. This version of SeeBot doesn’t have any defense against worker rushes, so its probes just keep mining while they are all killed.
dmytrobot wins a very uneventful game one. Interestingly, the version of SeeBot currently on the ladder does have worker rush defense, and would not have fallen so easily. The bots for Probots are quite a bit outdated by now though.
Match 2
This time dmytrobot goes for a more standard build. It gets up two stalkers and goes for the attack. SeeBot has more units though and he easily kills the stalkers. For the rest of the game, SeeBot builds up its army. When it goes for the attack dmytrobot only has a single Immortal.
The biggest problem with dmytrobot seems that it doesn’t know how to spend its resources. By the end of the game it has 1200 minerals, 400 gas, 4 Gateways and a Robo, but it has managed to produce only two stalkers and one Immortal during the entire game.
Match 3
Match 3 is a repeat of game 1. dmytrobot does the worker rush and simply steamrolls SeeBot. dmytrobot wins 2-1.
HjaxAI(Z) vs YoBot(P)
HjaxAI is a solid macro zerg bot. It won the first season of Probots. Its author has made a rewrite of his bot in Java, however this was not ready for the tournament, so this is still his old bot playing. YoBot is much the opposite of HjaxAI. It builds proxy gateways and goes for a Zealot rush.
Match 1
HjaxAI scouts the proxy from YoBot. It responds appropriately by building three Spine Crawlers at its natural. They are enough to hold the first wave of Zealots, only losing one Spine Crawler in the proces.
For the next wave of Zealots, HjaxAI has more Zerglings up. It loses a lot of Zerglings, but no Spine Crawler goes down this time. Each wave of Zealots HjaxAI holds a bit better and has a bigger army left. By this point HjaxAI has two bases while YoBot is still on one. HjaxAI doesn’t actually mine from its expand though. Finally HjaxAI takes a third and also transfers some drones to its natural. YoBot doesn’t know to take another base and stays on the single base for the entire game. Finally HjaxAI moves out and takes out YoBot.
Match 2
The second match, HjaxAI doesn’t manage to get its natural up. He is contained in his main by the proxy from YoBot. HjaxAI holds off the attacks from YoBot easily. He steadily builds up his force. For some reason however, he never moves out with his army. Eventually he mines out, while YoBot starts long distance mining. The Zealots from YoBot are however, unable to do anything against the mass of Roaches from HjaxAI. The second game is declared a draw.
Match 3
Game three has more back and forth. HjaxAI does try to get up its natural base, but YoBot manages to take it down multiple times.
Eventually HjaxAI gets it up. Once the base is established and the defenses are up for HjaxAI there is nothing the Zealots from YoBot can do. HjaxAI builds up his army and eventually moves out to kill YoBot.
We have dmytrobot and HjaxAI going on the the round of 4. What is interesting is that HjaxAI, like SeeBot, doesn’t have any worker rush defense. The author, Hjax, does have a Java version of his bot that does have worker defense, but he is not allowed to use it, as it is technically a different bot. If he wants to win the next round, he will have to modify his old bot so that it can defend against the worker rushes as well.
Tyr 