Co-evolving Real-Time Strategy Game Micro

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that competitive co-evolution effectively generates high-quality unit micro-management in real-time strategy games, outperforming simple co-evolution when combined with techniques like fitness sharing and hall of fame.

Contribution

It introduces a co-evolutionary approach to evolve micro-management strategies for RTS units without needing a predefined opponent, improving efficiency and quality.

Findings

Co-evolution produces better micro than simple evolution.

Combining co-evolution with fitness sharing and hall of fame enhances results.

Co-evolution is viable for generating effective unit micro-management.

Abstract

We investigate competitive co-evolution of unit micromanagement in real-time strategy games. Although good long-term macro-strategy and good short-term unit micromanagement both impact real-time strategy games performance, this paper focuses on generating quality micro. Better micro, for example, can help players win skirmishes and battles even when outnumbered. Prior work has shown that we can evolve micro to beat a given opponent. We remove the need for a good opponent to evolve against by using competitive co-evolution to evolve high-quality micro for both sides from scratch. We first co-evolve micro to control a group of ranged units versus a group of melee units. We then move to co-evolve micro for a group of ranged and melee units versus a group of ranged and melee units. Results show that competitive co-evolution produces good quality micro and when combined with the well-known techniques of fitness sharing, shared sampling, and a hall of fame takes less time to produce better quality micro than simple co-evolution. We believe these results indicate the viability of co-evolutionary approaches for generating good unit micro-management.