Using statistics and game knowledge to create better bots in Dota 2

Sammanfattning: Multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) games and games in general offer developers opportunities to design and test AI to further push research within the area. MOBA is a genre that has seen an increase in popularity during recent years alongside a rapidly growing esports scene.  The game's main purpose is ultimately to be enjoyed and played by human players, who often come up with and are encouraged to create their own strategies in order to beat the game or win out over their opponents.  This thesis will explore how mimicking human behavior in AI and using statistics from human players can be beneficial to AI design. The AI will be developed in a framework similar to that used by the Conference of Games for their Dota 2 5v5 AI competition. Three different strategies will be created, each of which will mimic some aspect of human behaviour, and then tested against the built-in AI in Dota 2. All the developed AI’s managed to win with varying results. The results showed some support for the notion that human gameplay and statistics can be beneficial to AI design. There are, however, difficulties with the complexity of the game that is Dota 2.