Reading Literature

Sorts: A Human-Level Approach to Real-Time Strategy AI

The goal of our research is to understand and create human-level intelligent systems.

RTS games are distinguished by the following characteristics:

1. A dynamic, real-time environment. In an RTS, a player must respond quickly to environmental changes.

2. Regularities at multiple levels of abstraction. Just as militaries organize soldiers and armaments into squads, platoons, battalions, and regiments, and strategize over these units of varying granularity, RTS games exhibit salient strategic patterns at many different levels.

3. Multiple, simultaneous, and interacting goals. RTS games require players to manage their army’s resources and production capabilities simultaneously with engaging in battles or defending bases.

4. Knowledge richness. Players control a wide variety of combative and support units that have distinctive performance characteristics.

5. Large amounts of perceptual data. Each player can control hundreds of units at once, and data about each unit is simultaneously available to the player.

6. The dominance of spatial reasoning. A player must reason about space to explore the map, defend its home base, and organize its troops during an attack.

AI should control units under the same constraints as a human player who can issue only one command to a unit or group of units at a time.

Game Engine: ORTS