I have recently started replaying StarCraft 2:Wings of Liberty (Terran campaign). It is an awesome RTS video game that came out last year and was the long awaited sequel to the original Starcraft released in 1998. I am looking forward to the next two installments, Heart of the Swarm and Legacy of the Void, the Zerg and Protoss campaigns respectively.

I am not very good at the multiplayer probably because I am too lazy to put in a lot of effort. My APMs or actions per minute are very low, I am slow to respond to the other players strategies, I lose track of all of the map, and I don’t know all the counters.

I have an interesting idea on how to expand StarCraft 2’s play-ability which arose from my inability to micro well especially using units various special abilities and from the invention of auto-casting. Austo-casting was a blessing that let me use healers since I never had the ability to click on all the units I wanted healed. When auto-casting first showed up, I thought to myself, “why can’t all my units automatically do what I want so I can focus on macro”. I wanted to be able to right my own scripts so my army would respond the way I want e.g. cast psi-storm when there are a lot of marines in a group. I want to be able to write the script myself.

The idea of scripting to micromanage my army lead to the idea for an all AI league. The players would create their own AIs an pit them against each other. There would also be achievements for beating the different levels of Blizzard AIs. I am not sure how hard it is to script AI in StarCraft since the last time I dealt with AI was for a board game with discrete moves. I also don’t know how popular this feature would be but there have been plenty of complex custom maps created so I figure there are players willing to put in many hours of programming. The games would be shown like replays so that the programmers could see were their AIs need to be improved. Most games that I have watched had players only having one or two main armies with maybe some scouts. I would hope that the players could make sophisticated AIs where each unit might act like an individual or maybe act in squads so there could be simultaneous attacks on multiple bases or armies. It would be awesome if the AI editor could create complex AIs able to predict the opponents strategy and counter it. I also don’t know how the insane Blizzard AI is made so I don’t know how easy it would be to create an AI to beat it. Is it truly a “smarter” AI or does it get advantages like higher health or knowledge of its opponents.