What are the fastest ways to beat Elite AI on 1vs1 game mode?

General Discussion
1

I mean “vs AI” on the 1vs1 game mode
(as you can gain terran/zerg/protoss level experience that way)

The fastest I could do was below 3 minutes playing zerg. Actually I can do it every game in under 3 minutes against any race Elite AI on most maps with best time of 2:43 when I accept the AI conceding. This strategy is the only effective one I played vs real players (compared to the below two) as that specific build counter the current metagame and is an auto-counter against cheese builds (such as cannon rush or proxy rax/gate) although it is a cheese build itself.

As terran I do proxy 5 rax that kills it in about 4~5min
As protoss 1gas proxy 3 gate also around 4~5min

I’d love faster ideas when playing terran or protoss.

2

Took it as a fun challenge :smiley:

  1. Terran: proxy 3 rax gasless, TvT, Acropolis LE, 2:58
  2. Zerg: 12 pool with proxy hatchery, ZvP, Thunderbird LE, 3:01
  3. Protoss: proxy 4 gate gasless, PvT, Cyber Forest LE, 3:17

Zerg and Protoss could probably be optimized (especially Zerg), and in PvP Cannon Rush might be faster.

EDIT: improved Zerg time by 43 seconds.

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3

I can’t remember the details since its been a while (and they miight have improved the AI since), but when I was trying to get the AI Elite achievements, I always cannon rushed. You can take advantage of the AI once you know how they prioritize pulling drones/probes. You can effectively get them to stop mining, while preventing them from attacking you as well (I think there was a cetain range from their main base where they will not attack your building cannons with workers.

Not sure if somthing this cheesy is what you are looking for though :slight_smile:

4

I’m talking about the worst case scenario not the best time achieved; which means even when the AI goes for 4 gate adepts/4 rax marauders/fast roach you still win at 4minute. 4 gate zealot only attack can fail and lengthen the game to 7min+ such that I changed the build a bit to chronoboost adepts and stalkers out to support 3~5 zealots on 3 gates, that will reliably win the first engagement against any tactic used by the AI (the AI tactic is random afterall).

I don’t think you can force the AI to concede faster with cannon rush, it probably takes longer although you can reliably win blocking the exit of their natural or stop them from mining by exploiting the AI flaw mentioned above.

One important thing about this kind of ALL IN is that you seek to win the first engagement at 2:30~2:50, which implies that workers production should stop by around 1:20 as you would not have gained back the investment on the worker when the last unit joining the attack was queued.

Each worker cost 62.5 minerals, with terran cost even higher because of the mining time lost for building supply depot.
For terrans it may be even beneficial to use the supply depot upgrade because it instantly equates to 120 minerals (supply depot and lost mining time) instead of slowly gaining you back the resources calling down a mule, allowing you to up your marine count eariler.

5

The thing is, if you want to kill your opponent as fast as possible, you need to sacrifice the notion of progressing up the tech for more combat units. The goal here is to overwhelm the opponent with combat units. That will usually leave you with no resources to progress in tech as you’d be churning out Marines/Zealots/Zerglings constantly in order to get that early mass you need, and if you sacrifice, for example, 1 gate and 2 Zealots to get Cyber Core and 1 geyser with Probes, your attack is slowed down.

Now, beauty of the Elite AI is that it doesn’t know the proper responses to all-in as long as you don’t make proxies too close to AI (such as natural) to trigger a worker response. That means even if it sees your proxy, it will continue to do what it set out to do, and it also means that it won’t do any micro the way human opponents would. This makes killing it with proxy a level of magnitude easier, as even if your attack was slow enough for your units to face their counters, a simple a-move will still kill them if you have enough units and are able to constantly reinforce.

Now, the times I’ve posted are the best ones I’ve attained, but none of them are on my first try.

  • First proxy rax I’ve botched so hard that AI killed me with a counterattack.
  • First Protoss attempt was a LotV variation on ye olde Korean 4gate from WoL. It was significantly slower, but it still killed Zerg AI in around 5 minutes despite AI having Roaches by simply sending out constantly wave after wave of Zealots.
  • First Zerg attempt was a botched up version too, in that I went for Pool and 8 Lings first before putting down a proxy. However, unlike with my Protoss attempt, time lost was merely 43 seconds.
  • There’s also a question of how “stubborn” is AI. An AI opponent that doesn’t surrender even after you mow down more than half of its workers can add plenty of time.

I can share replays if you want :wink:

By the way, out of boredom, I tried killing Elite AI in as many weird ways possible with all 3 races. Making a Planetary Fortress in AI’s main was the most hillarious way to kill him XD

6

A quick tip: you can put down an offensive building at their natural (pylon, bunker, spine crawler or creep tumor) to force their workers to attack, I think this is the major reason why I can kill the AI under 3 minutes when playing zerg because I invaded the enemy natural with a proxy hatch 52~53 seconds into the game.

Build is drone-pool-hatch-drone-overlord-zerglings (13 pool and proxy hatch at 12, moving out a drone to proxy after returning the first or second mineral batch), where the first larva from the proxy hatch would morph into a drone, and that drone will start a crawler. As you start a crawler under the ramp, AI will panic pull everything to engage the proxy base, your queen would come out from the proxy hatch at this timing, and they will quickly lose enough workers to your lings+queen and concede before the spine crawler finish which is reliably under 3 minutes.

I think I will try bringing the proxy probe to build pylon below the ramp to lure them out, but not too positive about building a terran bunker, as workers can drive off small number of marines if they are really desperate for a fight, and the scv is vulnerable when constructing.

I kind of looking for specific build and tricks that can reliably force the AI to concede under 3:20 or even 3:10 against all possible Elite AI build order, which is the worst possible time you win using one build, executing it repeatly without dependence on luck.

7

Did a couple of runs.
Proxy 4 rax reliably “kills” AI in 3:10.
Proxy 4 gate reliably “kills” AI in 3:00.

Add couple of seconds if AI refuses to surrender immediatelly. Had one situation where I walked in with 7 Zealots into his main, killed most of his Drones, and only then it surrendered…

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8

This is nice stuff, but is there a way to beat the elite ai without cheesing? All the YT vids I 've seen are of cannoning rushing or proxy rax or zergling rushing.

9

There is. Any kind of standard play will take down Elite AI easily. Heck, anything will take down if you know what you’re doing (decent macro and so on).
It won’t take it down as fast as cheeses, though.

So, it depends on how skilled you are. Anecdotal example: I can take down Elite AI using Protoss or Zerg and doing the stupidest things I can think of, but am still struggling using Terran and playing standard as my grasp on Terran is not as good as the grasp on the other two.

Yesterday, out of fun as a practice, I was playing vs Elite AI with one goal in mind: by playing a macro game and with a few self-imposed rules (no cheesing and so on), defeat AI using nothing but Marines/Zerglings/Zealots. I was thinking of making a thread on that “challenge”.

10

I’ve improved the protoss build order to better match that of the zerg, that allowed me to have best time 2:44! Against another protoss! This proxy 3 gate all in that is more insane than ever:

Build:
12 probe
Move one probe out to the outside court of the enemy natural
13 pylon at open ground (make sure you stay in a position that can rapidly start 3 gates without delay)
13 instantly drop 3 gates as pylon finish, move probe back to base
13 pylon at own base ramp
13 assimilator
When gate finish, 3x zealot and chronoboost two of them
Cybercore at your ramp
Transfer 2 probes to harvest gas
Continue to produce zealot, attack into their base immediately when the first 2 zealots come out.

I’ve concluded that killing the elite AI zerg roach build with terran around 3 minutes is impossible afterall. So… goodluck and have fun cheesing ;D

11

as a zerg you can do 12 pool and attack together with workers.
as a terran you can do 4 proxy barracks with marines.
as a protoss 4 proxy gateways with zealots
every strategy always beat elite ai in less 3 minutes (terran takes few more seconds), really good to farm warchest if you got no time

12

I’ve done more calculations and concluded that getting the 14th probe was worth it and that will not slow down the build.

Although I have foreseen that terrans to have the worst early game defense, I was actually very surprised that the elite terran AI conceded before 2:30. It was quite a break through :sunglasses:

https://i.imgur.com/DGL6xOT.png