Abstract
Gameplay in real-time strategy games (RTS) seems to be somehow confined to a de facto standard where economical micro-management is equally important - if not more - as combat strategy. Not all games follow this tendency and some become successful exactly for offering the opposite: a strategy-focused gameplay. However, this is usually achieved by completely removing key gameplay aspects of the genre, such as resource gathering or infrastructures and units? creation, allowing the player to focus on combat. A possible way to create strategy-focused RTS games without sacrificing the other key aspects of the genre is to automate the repetitive and time-consuming tasks. The player will still be in control of everything but he?ll spend less time executing the micro-management tasks. In this work we present a first step towards this solution: an automated system for unit production scheduling that we believe will allow the exploration of new paradigms of play. To be accepted by the player, such system must, among other things, be efficient and reliable, which is a non-trivial task when considering the highly dynamic nature of the environment in this genre of games. To overcome such challenge, we propose a system inspired in the swarm intelligence demonstrated by social insects, namely wasps. The performed evaluation revealed that the proposed decentralized solution yields satisfactory results in comparison with a global centralized algorithm. Although it possesses limitations in particular situations we?ve identified the scenarios in which it performs best, therefore recommending its use if certain problem characteristics are observed.