Introduction
The MicroRTS competition has been created to motivate research in the basic research questions underlying the development of AI for RTS games while minimizing the amount of engineering required to participate. The results of the annual MicroRTS competitions from 2017 to 2024, hosted by IEEE CiG/CoG, are posted at: https://sites.google.com/site/micrortsaicompetition.
A key difference with respect to the StarCraft competition is that the AIs have access to a “forward model” (i.e., a simulator), with which they can simulate the effect of actions or plans, thus allowing for planning and game-tree search techniques to be developed easily. Although we acknowledge that planning in domains for which the agent does not have a forward model is a very important problem, this is left out of this competition, in order to focus on other core RTS problems.
“Sharpen your game AI’s RTS strategies in MicroRTS before you compete in other ‘real‘ RTS games.”
The winner of the competition will be determined with a round robin tournament where each agent plays all the other agents (and a few baseline agents that the organizers will add to the pool) in a set of maps. A victory counts as 1.0, a draw as 0.5, and a defeat as 0.0. The agent with the highest score in the round robin tournament will be determined as the winner of the competition.
Logistics
The competition site will be updated with submission instructions.
https://sites.google.com/site/micrortsaicompetitionSubmissions will be done via a Google Form that include source code download link, binary download link, video link, self-assessment results (game play result against a few benchmark bots), and participant contact information.
Feedback will be provided via email. Competition results will be posted on the competition site.
Preferred programming languages are Java and Python, although it’s possible to use other languages.
Participants
Target audience are college students and people learning AI/coding who also are interested in RTS games. We plan for about 10 entries and can handle about 20 entries before we may need to change the tournament format.
Timeline
Submission deadline: July 15, 2025
Results announcement: August 26, 2025 (during the IEEE CoG conference competition session)
Organizers
Chang Liu, Professor in CS, Ohio University. IEEE CoG 2024 Competition Co-Chair. Ran Mini MicroRTS tournament in a “Game AI” class at Ohio University twice.
Krerkkiat Chusap, PhD student in CS. Ohio University. Had experience running mini MicroRTS game sessions a year ago.