Real-Time Strategy Game Competitions

106 AI MAGAZINE RTS games — such as StarCraft by Blizzard Entertainment and Command and Conquer by Electronic Arts — are popular video games that can be described as real-time war simulations in which players delegate units under their command to gather resources, build structures, combat and support units, scout opponent locations, and attack. The winner of an RTS game usually is the player or team that destroys the opponents’ structures first. Unlike abstract board games like chess and go, moves in RTS games are executed simultaneously at a rate of at least eight frames per second. In addition, individual moves in RTS games can consist of issuing simultaneous orders to hundreds of units at any given time. If this wasn’t creating enough complexity already, RTS game maps are also usually large and states are only partially observable, with vision restricted to small areas around friendly units and structures. Complexity by itself, of course, is not a convincing motivation for studying RTS games and building AI systems for them. What makes them attractive research subjects is the fact that, despite the perceived complexity, humans are able to outplay machines by means of spatial and temporal reasoning, long-range adversarial planning and plan