Starcraft evolution: Here comes SC2 Beta part 2

Like when you do something to ant nest. Ants increase their speed multiple times and the nest looks like it is boiling.
Few things happened a day before. The EU servers started to roll out newest patch and game upgrade. I have feeling that EU started first. The heat momentarily raised up. Americans used all available resources (despite B.net forum which was still closed) wandering what is happening at the moment. . But, it looks like North American B.net servers now started the game while we in Europe still waiting. Pieces of information is circling around, about new features, balance changes etc. Plenty of materials to keep forums full.


I am in Europe, and in great expectation. Just waiting patiently, considering one step at the time. I read that some ppl tried to tweak their installation, to get upgrade from another server, but so far they can only mess things up. Still better to wait for the destiny.

There is a rumour that SC2 BETA 2 will end 19th July. So part 2 will actually be a huge stress test, specially if it is true that there are some 8x8 maps.

I admit that I am very excited to try the AI levels of the game. It is not like playing against human, but as we know AI doesn't make mistakes like wrong clicking, getting units lost in the map. AI is timely perfect. So it will be very good for practicing fast and precise building orders. It also gives plenty of opportunities for experiment. Playing against 2 or more computers, at any level gives some grade of needed skills in matter of brute force strategy.

In BETA 1 it was not to hard to beat three computers on any map. It just takes more time, as computer doesn't do any special strategic or tactic decisions, no deceptions, no microing... pretty straight, predefined building order and attack patterns. Boring.

Now I wonder if AI scripts will be more imaginative, or patterns will just be faster and more complicated.
Did Blizzard use data from millions of games played in BETA 1 to "teach" AI "human tricks" like microing, choking, transitioning, proxy etc. I know that I may be disappointed, but who knows... we live in modern times of advanced prog(r)amming.

I remember BroodWar AI. It never did anything tricky, everything was brute force, it takes only split second to do thousands APM if needed, without moving around map. So it was unbeatable. Do you remember marine rush? Until you as a noob become fast enough, you can only wonder 'how can he get those marines so fast?'. Once you get over that brute force and speed, you can win in a long range. Placing good defense points saved you while you preparing for final attack. I remember that my favorite unit combination was group of bunker, siege tank and missile turret. Spreading this groups at good spots was pretty good as AI was to stupid to get more units, based on facts that his small groups was just wasted.

I hope that new AI difficulty levels will be worth to play (at least for practice) and worth of writing about it in some future time.