I would really like to see this for Age of Empires II. I think AOE has far more races and is a far more complex game ( although I'm biased because I haven't played SC2 as much as AOEII ).
I have played both games and a fan of both. Starcraft is definitely more complex than AoE for AI development and that's why the researchers must have chosen it. The complexity of AI depends on how many potential decisions you can make at any point of time. Here are a few reasons why:
1) Starcraft races have completely different build trees and different advantages. This has a large cascading effect of early decisions in the game.
2) Starcraft has much more micro potential that AOE. There are many units with sort of super powers like Stalkers can teleport and infestors can take control of enemy units. In AOE, you can only issue attack commands to most units.
3) Variety of units. Since Starcraft also has air units which may or may not be able to attack ground units, you have more options within a race to create a unique army/air force combination.
4) The Starcraft map terrain is hierarchical whereas AOE happens on a flat map. There are interesting locations on the map where a smaller army may be able to defeat a larger army based on positioning.
AoE maps are not flat and units have an attack bonus when uphill (and defense penalty when downhill). Top players will place castles on hills for example and micro their units so that they are more elevated than their opponents.
AoE has monks which can take control of enemy units.
The fact that Starcraft has more micro potential should make AI development easier, not harder. Micro management is a relatively mechanic task that is time consuming for humans but which a computer should excel at.
Micro is often written off as a mechanical task, but this is only relevant with expert systems (like microbots).
There is a lot of tactical nuance and understanding that comes in micro, for a neural network/learning algorithm to understand and optimize is actually very impressive just as much as macro.
Knowing it's optimal to blink when your shield runs out before taking hull damage? To dance your weakened stalker to bait your opponent to overextend? To focus fire but not overkill? To wait for a projectile to be mid-air before blinking or picking in a transport? There's so much more to micro than precision and APM.
To your other points, SC maps have lots of ramps and cliffs and high-ground/low-ground impact (no bonuses, but vision constraints and battle surface area and choke points)
AI development is not easier because of micro potential, because it means the AI needs to be prepared to deal with a wider range of effectiveness for any given unit or set of units, they won't always scale linearly in impactfulness or between different player's playstyles
There is the concept of height. Units reveal the fog of war around them up to a certain distance unless they are a ground unit and the tile is higher than them. This leads to things like marching your units up a ramp, and not seeing that there's a ton of enemy units in there until you're right in the middle of them.
Also, if units are walking through a valley, units on the high ground can shoot the ones on the low ground but not vice versa.
I haven't played AOE for ages, but aren't the races only different in a few details like 2 units and some passive effects? In StarCraft races are vastly different.
I can't really judge AOE's complexity, but from what do you draw your conclusion? Just based on the number of rules?
Each civ (race) has about 2 different bonuses (e.g. Indian villagers work faster) and in addition a unique unit. Competitive players now play with about 20 civs. Each civ also has a "team bonus" (e.g. Teams with a Spanish player get 33% more gold per trade trip, teams with a Persian player get upgraded buildings ). In addition to that, each civ has a different tech tree, as well as starting resources or -- in rare cases -- starting units.
Same, totally agreed. I'm a really experienced competitive AoE2 player (not pro, just a serious casual), and I think the long-term planning inherent to AoE is far more complex than SC. Not to mention the procedurally generated maps that are different every game-- it's far more nuanced in my view and requires a truly vast amount of knowledge to make good decisions. There are so many different valid approaches to any given situation.
