[kenning]

dota 2 is not as extreme about this as, say, starcraft. in starcraft, most "strategies" are heavily scripted build orders that almost never deviate from a handful of openings (similar to opening moves in chess) and a large amount of winning comes from the ability to quickly give orders to your troops ("micro"). This is an example of a strategy that is not viable without superhuman reactions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKVFZ28ybQs if you directly attack 20 siege tanks with 100 zerglings you will only kill about two siege tanks, but an AI can kill all the siege tanks with some zerglings left over.

There's some of this in dota, but there's a cap on the skill level for most playable characters that pros generally get "close enough" to, and beyond that the strategic depth comes from area control decisionmaking. Theres over 100 heroes and many of them have really weird abilities, like the possibility of creating a temporary wall (earthshaker) or the ability to teleport anywhere on the map every 20 seconds (furion). I could be wrong though, maybe the AI is winning games by playing heroes with long range and perfectly microing them to harass and prevent the other team from ever getting gold/xp.

[halflings]

> in starcraft, most "strategies" are heavily scripted build orders that almost never deviate from a handful of openings (similar to opening moves in chess) and a large amount of winning comes from the ability to quickly give orders to your troops ("micro")

As somebody who plays StarCraft casually (gold/low plat in ladder), this is not true. It's even less true for pro players. The level of strategy in StarCraft is impressive, it's really hard to guess in which direction games will go when two very good players are playing against each other.

Sure, perfect execution when it comes to one strategy (say, mech-heavy Terran) will give you the largest advantage against your opponent, but failing to scout appropriately and guess what your opponent is up to means your strategy is dead. You also have to decide when to attack, how much you're willing to sacrifice to damage somebody's economy, when you want to focus one economy vs building units, ...

The video you sent with zerglings is a gimmick made for fun (it's a hard-coded AI using the siege tank's aim logic to divert zerglings from that). That would not win you a game. (because most likely a pro Terran would have destroyed your base before that)

[fizx]

I wonder how far you'd get with a bot that macros perfectly but also A-moves 2-3 groups.

[eerikkivistik]

I think we made the same point at the same time :D