To defeat the cheese, we’ll need to build a reaction system.
Which we can take a look at in 3 parts:
- Signals — information your bot receives
- Policy — how it interprets that information
- Responses — what it does after its interpretation, including nothing
Let’s talk about the first part
Understand what makes a good signal
Before your bot can react, it has to notice.
Good signals come early. They’re how your bot sees the world, the little clues that whisper, ‘Zerg rush incoming.’
If the sight of Zerglings is your first or only signal, it doesn’t give your bot much time to respond. Early detection means survival. So we need to look further up the chain.
Timing matters: The basic building blocks of a Zerg rush are a Spawning Pool -> Zerglings, but what makes it a rush is that the Spawning Pool is built right away, before anything else, less than a minute into the game.
Location tells a story: In another cheese, like a Proxy Barracks or Gateway (Terran and Protoss cheese where they hide production buildings close to your base), location becomes the signal.
Absence is a clue: Sometimes it’s not about what your bot does see, but what it doesn’t. With a cannon rush or proxy cheese, your opponent’s base will often be empty because their resources are dedicated elsewhere, a strong signal that something sneaky is happening.
Learn from patterns: A game like StarCraft has its cheesy strategies codified all over the internet. You can pick up signals by searching or reviewing your bot’s replays to spot common patterns.
