Partial observability during predictions of the opponent's movements in an RTS game

Abstract

In RTS-style games it is important to be able to predict the movements of the opponent's forces to have the best chance of performing appropriate counter-moves. Resorting to using perfect global state information is generally considered to be ‘cheating’ by the player, so to perform such predictions scouts (or observers) must be used to gather information. This means being in the right place at the right time to observe the opponent. In this paper we show the effect of imposing partial observability onto an RTS game with regard to making predictions, and we compare two different mechanisms that decide where best to direct the attention of the observers to maximise the benefit of predictions.