StarCraft Brood War - Improve AI in LAN Game

Solution 1:

There is an old reddit post

The place for Brood War AI was http://broodwarai.com/ but that site is currently down.

The Brood War AI scripts can still be found at: http://www.entropyzero.org/BroodwarAI.html http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/brood-war/46293-bw-ai-project-gosu-update

The other possibility is using a BWAPI bot. These bots are a lot better than the non-cheating scripted AI, but do require an external tool (Chaoslauncher) to run. You can find out how to run them here: http://www.sscaitournament.com/index.php?action=tutorial

Keep in mind that the BWAPI bots can only be used on private servers like ICCUP or through Direct IP.

I was able to download a rar from the teamliquid.net site, however the files are dated 2006. Based on the information on the entropyzero.org site, that would be outdated for patches that came afterwards, but I suppose you could try it.

However, searching for BWAI lead me to this:

http://sc.nibbits.com/assets/bwai-launcher/

A GUI program that allows you to play against many different AIs in Starcraft Broodwar 1.16.1.

Solution 2:

I have a project that attempts to improve the default AI by better emulating the current human metagame:

https://github.com/jncraton/BWMetaAI

This project seeks to create an AI that provides a unique experience in each game while closely mirroring builds and unit compositions used by humans today.

This provides a much stronger learning experience for new players compared to the Blizzard AI. Players are encouraged to scout, learn what the AI is doing, and adapt instead of turtling up. The AI tends to avoid all-in strategies in favor of economic builds, but it also includes a number of rushes to make scouting and early defense important.

My goals are not to make the AI harder, but rather to make it more interesting to play against. I believe that this AI ends up being harder than the default in most match ups, but it could be more difficult if my goal was just to make it hard.