i want to start a discussion on how important strategy is in lower leagues.
Strategy for me is the overall gameplan like what unit composition do you want to get in the lategame, which expandtionds do you want to take and which expandtions do you allow your opponent to take.
Sure the best thing to improve your rank is to learn how to Macro better. Everyone says that and this might also be true, but doing this without a clear goal doesn´t help player to understand the game.
I take myself as an example. I´m a high Diamond Terran player on EU and i took the advise to just Macro better and i improved my Macro quite a bit, but i often find myself clueless about when i should attack my opponent. Then i do just the standard timing attacks like the 3 Tank 10 Minute push in TvZ or the 2 Medivacs push in TvP. But after that i´m clueless, i don´t have a specific goal how do i want to win the game. I´m either turteling if i got 1 bad engagement or i´m just attacking my opponent everywhere, but i´m really afraid of the lategame situation in every matchup except for TvT.
Now that i saw the last Day9 episode, where i just talked randomly about the TvP matchup, he starts to point out, that a common overalll goal for antiga is to just keep your opponent on 3 Bases and take your on 4th. So i currently think about my strategy more to progess and i feel that thinking about strategy in lower leagues isn´t that hard to do. I mean everyone can say, i don´t want him to take this bases, while i want to take these bases and that´s my lategame unit composition. With the strategy you have clear indicators, when you do attack and where do you move your units arround. You can avoid lot´s of stupid engagements with just a little thinking ahead.
In bronze to platinum, I would say it's completely unimportant. PvZ, expand, get some sentries and immortals or blink or stargate, put pressure against 3 base play and take a third or defend 2 base play and then take a third. TvZ, 2 base hellion expand, deny creep and try to exercise the fundamentals of map control and being active with the helllions without losing them, into rine/tank or stim/drop or banshee, then third into bigass rine/tank and fourth. In ZvP, take third before lair or hold 1 base all-in, hold pressure, get map control after 9:00 and keep toss in his base with mass roach/muta/mass spine to delay for hive. Et cetera, et cetera.
There's basic strategy to it, sure - take a third vs FFE, go reactor hellion expand. A basic plan. But composition, trying to be fancy, harass, it's for fun, but not important. You just want to play a basic game (i mean, to improve, you can have fun doing whatever of course, it's a game!), and improving your macro, and really analyzing your macro, is super important.
From bronze to mid-masters, you really need to be watching every replay, and understanding how to improve your macro. Late on injects? 2 overlords at once whenyou only needed 1? Overlord too early, too late? Worker saturation is weird? Banking gas from taking gas too early? Banking minerals from taking gas too late? You can't afford your tech of choice because you went tech too quickly? What was the result of the mistakes you made here?
"Macro better" is not nearly as easy as it sounds. But it should be your number one priority. I think what happens though, is that you have no idea what macro better is, until you get higher and higher up in level. So you only become more aware of how shitty your macro is the better you get. Which is the catch 22, because you aren't aware of your shitty macro at a low level so you don't improve it.
Yeah i agree with you that Macro is super important and that you have to be aware of that. But i want to direct this discussion more into that way:
When a low level player ask for help, the common answer is just macro better. It´s not a real goal that you can aim for. Wouldn´t it be a good idea to ask about his strategy and give him tips on that? I mean the way you build you production/upgrades etc has a lot to do with your strategy. When you allow your opponent to get to 3 Bases up, the order in which you Upgrade/ add aditional tech etc. changes because of another goal. Wouldn´t it be more helpfull instead of just saying Macro better?
^ I don't think the 'common answer' nowadays is just 'macro better bye'. It's "I'm watching your replay, and your macro is atrocious at X, Y, Z points, and the results of these supply blocks is losing to X push, unable to take map control at Y point, allowing opponent to get away with Z when he shouldn't or should have just died instead of stayed alive". I'm pretty sure if you say "macro better" you will get a warn.
In about 99% of the replay analyses on this thread, the results from people who put time to watch the replays were that the player macro'd like shit. The other 1% is still macro related usually, as in they didn't transition to higher tech or expand or made too much tech/econ and not enough army or too much army not enough tech/econ, but not as plain as "your supply blocks just ruin you".
Usually the strategy is pretty straightforward and fine. No one here is saying 'macro better'. It's "macro is important" and when they provide replays, it's "your macro failed at X, Y, Z points, resulting in the disaster that occurred". What's going on right now, is a bunch of low level players having theoretically discussions that make no sense. Yea, sure, strategy is important. But I'm pretty sure macro is your problem. Provide replays where you lost, and I can guarantee 99.9% of the time, you lost because of very simply, straightforward macro issues, not strategy.
I've yet to see a diamond or below replay where macro wasn't the primary cause of the loss, really. Most masters replays are macro issues too. Only time I submitted a replay where macro wasn't the problem, I think, was a ZvP on entombed where I went 3/3 pure muta in an hour long game because I genuinely was unaware that you were supposed to go broodlords eventually - I just thought Toss would eventually base trade, so I was completely confused when Toss never base traded and I kept sniping bases but he always kept his army parked at a new base so he was always on 1 mining base and never losing units because my mutas couldn't engage and eventually he had 3/3/3 200/200 archon/HT/mothership army and I mined out over 10 bases and I simply was starved out and a lucky vortex clinched the win when I was starved anyways.
I think another point here is that a lot of the things u want to put as strategy arent really. Gas Timings, Adding Production/Tech, Upgrade Timings etc. in its basic form is just macro, to execute a good build with all those things considered isnt really strategy, its just makro, strategy is of course when you change that up based on information u got or sth. but that just absolutely isnt needed in lower leagues, you dont have to change your composition as long as you have at least aa in it (except with zerg i guess), but if u go a marine or stalker based composition and makro good, there is no need to do anything else to win a game in lower leagues.
Its hard to say how important strategy in lower leagues really is, cause i actually started in bronze going up to mid to high masters and i think the basic strategic baselines of a game u just get by watching pro games or day9 dailies etc. Then you mix that ( a build with a pretty simple goal ) with just concentration on makro and executing that build and you will improve if u just play alot, and if u get to masters with that youre gonna have developed a pretty good set of strategy in the way that you kind of know what you wanna do in situations, thats just what a good rts player is about besides mechanics, to develop that strategic mind that knows what to do and react in a given situation, but i guess if thats new there is something else missing than strategy. Thats i think if u wanna improve as a whole through just playing, ofc there is other ways, there are some eguides her on tl about builds to just improve makro and mechanics, there was a 3rax thread for example, i dont think thats gonna teach you anything about general strategy except for the build specifics.
In my quest to get back to gold league I have some success with focussing less on strategy. Strategy decisions come with the time through experience. Macro only comes through practice. When I have three bases running, I can produce a stream of units. Defending up to this point is my new strategy. Of course I try to scout if the protoss is going to build colossi so that I have a spire in time, but it is even more important to have a load of roaches until that point, and the workers to maintain constant reinforcements.
Over any 10 games or so I manage to even out the worker count on all bases a bit better, or to defend the third better and saturate it faster so I can sustain unit production for when it's showtime.
On April 08 2012 19:06 Sianos wrote: When a low level player ask for help, the common answer is just macro better. It´s not a real goal that you can aim for. Wouldn´t it be a good idea to ask about his strategy and give him tips on that? I mean the way you build you production/upgrades etc has a lot to do with your strategy.
Strategy can't be applied in lower leagues, since people there can't execute them anyway. You can't tell a silver player "do a 3 tank push into taking a third" etc, cause he doesn't have the mechanics to do that. It's better to tell the silver player "get some barracks and a factory and attack when you have a bunch of units".
The only "strategy" that is necessary in lower leagues is to have a brief knowledge about hard counters, like not mass hydras vs 7 colossus.
I think strategy is required to a certain intuitive degree. I think the reason for 'Macro better' movement is not that Macro will gain you the most wins in the least time, but that it'll make a foundation which can be used in higher leagues.
Instead of dictating what one should build, I think it is better to encourage lower league players to experiment and compare experiences of what works and what not. Look at replays to extract knowledge, instead of for copying. Players who rely on getting help to increase their own skill level will plateau really quickly. (However, getting someone to whip you on probe/pylon production etc. is okey.)
The big problem is some strats assume a high multitasking ability, esp. anything where you have to micro harass units while still macroing. Basic timing pushes are still fine. Even if they are late, the defender will also have less stuff.
Destiny showed on stream that he went pure mass queen and won against diamond players. So strategy until high diamond-low/mid masters is maybe 2% of what you should be doing in a game.
There is also a HUGE difference between strategy and gameplan.
Strategy is your ingame decision making what would be the best next course of action. Gameplan is your out of game decision on what you want to be doing 5, 10, 15 minutes into the game and what you want to win with.
Best way to get from bronze to diamond is have 1 gameplan per matchup, and then just focus on maxing out as fast as possible.
A lot. Considering that you have about the same macro skill level which equals overall skill up to high masters. So in a low level game with both players producing units at the same low rate a hellion army beats a zergling army .
On April 08 2012 20:44 TechSc2 wrote: Destiny showed on stream that he went pure mass queen and won against diamond players. So strategy until high diamond-low/mid masters is maybe 2% of what you should be doing in a game.
There is also a HUGE difference between strategy and gameplan.
Strategy is your ingame decision making what would be the best next course of action. Gameplan is your out of game decision on what you want to be doing 5, 10, 15 minutes into the game and what you want to win with.
Best way to get from bronze to diamond is have 1 gameplan per matchup, and then just focus on maxing out as fast as possible.
I watched all the Destiny games. He had to get extremely inventive by the time he started meeting Plats, at one point flat out cheating with NP infestors. He succeeding in proving that a player with GM mechanics is badly crippled by using the wrong strat.
And your definition of strategy is actually the opposite of the RL meaning.
I don´t agrre with the people saying Macro has nothing to do with strategy or your gameplan. Sure Macro is an on topic, but the way you Macro influence your strategy. For example, doing early double upgrades and getting a fast 3rd while having less production facilities, don´t allow you to do pushes aggainst players who invest in army/tech and taking their 3rd slower than you, because you won´t have enough units to do damage to them which results in direct attacks beeing pointless in the early-midgame. When your goal is to not allow your opponent to take his 4th base, then you can invest your ressources into upgrades/expandtions tech until your opponent want´s to take his 4th to get the most advantages you can have at this given point in order to achieve your goal. I think everyone agrees, that having 3/3 upgrades instead of 2/2 when your opponent want´s to take his 4th give´s you better chances in achieving your goal there. Otherwise when you want to pin your opponent on just two bases you have to invest more in production facilities, so that you have a bigger army at that point, when your opponent takes his 3rd. I´m also saying that strategy or your overall gameplan gives you triggers to attack. Everytime you want to attack you have a specific goal in mind, what you want to achieve with that attack. I often see the players in TvZ just attacking over the creep right into the opponents main army, which often results in stupid army losses. When you have the goal to deny X Y expandtion, you can make your army more efficient and you have a clear goal in mind what you want to achieve with that attack. With this your understanding of the game and of "How to Macro godd " becomes better, because like i said, the strategy influence your way to Macro.
I'd just like to say that one of the problems with discussions about 'problem with macro at this point' etc is that very often, the replays where such mistakes can be found can actually be found on both sides, not necessarily more son on the side of the person uploading the replay, so strategy is still relevant. Destiny already had drastically better multitasking and macro-management ability than the players he was going against, but in reality, a person who is stuck at whatever league cannot generally just bump up their multitasking and macro-management ability overnight, so they will need more than just improved mechanical ability to rise up through the ranks, seeing as, when they do start going up the ladder, they will face more players with superior mechanics. If you have poor strategy/'builds'/responses, you probably will not rise up just by 'improving your macro' because you may well only be matching the mechanical abilities of your opponents, not trumping them with GM or professional level mechanics. ALL areas will likely need to improve for players to rise up the ranks, not to say that slowly improving only macro will do nothing, but if the strategy is shaky at higher play, then a slight increase in overall mechanics would probably only keep you steady at best.
I disagree with TechSc2's definition of strategy. Strategy is the more broad idea encompassing things such as your 'game plan' and ability to respond to situations intelligently and appropriately.
A lot. Considering that you have about the same macro skill level which equals overall skill up to high masters. So in a low level game with both players producing units at the same low rate a hellion army beats a zergling army .
Don't be fucking ridiculous dude. A bronze will know enough that pure hellion beats zergling.
And on another note, it's entirely possible for pure ling to beat pure hellions. It's all about timings and macro. I'm 100% sure I could beat any bronze-gold with pure ling against their pure hellion play.
Playing the game enough will tell you things like 'dont make hydras against colossi' and 'i should go towards hive now that my opponent is getting lots of deathball stuff'. With the knowledge that's pretty basic, like hellion vs ling, a gold or platinum should really be focusing on macro.
It's just SO much more important to watch your replays, and analyze your inject/depot/chrono/gas timings, rather than 'should I have made a tech switch?" or "should I have harassed?".
I can't believe this is even an argument. 100% of masters+ players are TELLING you this. They were all bronze at one time too. But every bronze knows better, of course. It's like balance discussions...
On April 08 2012 20:44 TechSc2 wrote: Destiny showed on stream that he went pure mass queen and won against diamond players. So strategy until high diamond-low/mid masters is maybe 2% of what you should be doing in a game.
There is also a HUGE difference between strategy and gameplan.
Strategy is your ingame decision making what would be the best next course of action. Gameplan is your out of game decision on what you want to be doing 5, 10, 15 minutes into the game and what you want to win with.
Best way to get from bronze to diamond is have 1 gameplan per matchup, and then just focus on maxing out as fast as possible.
I watched all the Destiny games. He had to get extremely inventive by the time he started meeting Plats, at one point flat out cheating with NP infestors. He succeeding in proving that a player with GM mechanics is badly crippled by using the wrong strat.
And your definition of strategy is actually the opposite of the RL meaning.
Enlighten me, what is the RL defination of Strategy?
Dictionary explanation of strategy: The ability to acomplish goals with the current available resources (Dutch english translated)
::EDIT:: you cannot agree or disagree on a word that is explained in a dictionary....
i.e. you are terran, you have your first medivac out, and you can decide if you want to drop with it, or you want to push the front with it. THAT IS the defination of strategy. How you are getting the medivac out is your gameplan.
On April 08 2012 21:33 madhyene wrote: You don't need strategy in the lower leagues. Just rush in bronze and silver, learn to two-base in gold, learn to macro in plat...
Basic TvZ example. I have to do different stuff against -1 base lingbling bust that will kill me if I don't reinforce the wall-off. -early 3rd hatch that will easily outmacro me if I don't attack. All other games, mass marine+better macro works fine.
if u go into a game without having a plan or a clue what u want to do u always lose no matter which league
Please, stop making ridiculous comments. You act as if we are saying "macro only, and play counterintuitively otherwise". As long as you have, like, bronze level understanding of the interactions of units (hellions beat lings, etc) and planning (you want to expand, make units, expand, etc), and in-game goals (zerg, get 3 bases, defend, get map control, delay for hive, tvz, get 2 bases, rine/tank push, get third, max rine/tank/medivac/thor/upgrades) you will just need solid macro to carry you to masters.
You think anyone is saying "fellow gold player, forget everything you know about unit vs unit, timing, builds, and in-game goals, and just macro well!". No. Everyone knows enough of what they need to do. Every bronze, or gold, or whoever, has seen a pro game, and has a general idea of how the game goes, and what they are working toward.
No one just suddenly forgets their goals and plans, and focuses on macro. Macro well, and your plan will come together great. But it's like you are arguing against a straw man. It's such a ridiculous comment.
Well they need atleast some stratetgic knowledge because sixpool is still pretty common in lower leagues I guess.
Against 6 pool you pretty much just a-move. Pull 4 drones to focus spines if they make spines. If they don't make spines and have lots of lings, you can mineral walk a bunch. If they pull all drones, base trade.
Not hard.
The thing is, bronze to gold don't know what mineral walking is. I would not call a bronze to gold player 'lower level'. I would call them people who don't understand the controls yet. Which is fine,the game is complicated as fuck, it's not a bad thing at all, I was in gold for months. People even in diamond don't know all the controls, like what shift+ctrl+leftclick on a portrait coes in a control group, or camera hotkeys.
But Platinum+? These people understand the controls enough, that if they get 6 pooled, as long as they plant pool early enough (hatch first with drone scout, pool first, whatever), they should always win against someone of equal skill.
A 6 pool vs 6 pool defense is more a test of skill between two players. There isn't much strategy to it, and as long as the 6 pooler isn't like MUCH higher level than you, you should always beat it unless it's something like hatch first on a 4 player map with no scouting, or mismicro horribly.
Because a diamond player cannot 6 pool at all. They can't. I don't know why, but the competency in 6 pool varies just as much as ranking. A GM 6 pool is much different than masters than diamond than plat than etc.
But 2 people of similar skill, as long as they have read my anti-6 pool guide basically, they should always hold unless they don't drone scout.
On April 08 2012 21:03 Sianos wrote: I don´t agrre with the people saying Macro has nothing to do with strategy or your gameplan. Sure Macro is an on topic, but the way you Macro influence your strategy. For example, doing early double upgrades and getting a fast 3rd while having less production facilities, don´t allow you to do pushes aggainst players who invest in army/tech and taking their 3rd slower than you, because you won´t have enough units to do damage to them which results in direct attacks beeing pointless in the early-midgame. When your goal is to not allow your opponent to take his 4th base, then you can invest your ressources into upgrades/expandtions tech until your opponent want´s to take his 4th to get the most advantages you can have at this given point in order to achieve your goal. I think everyone agrees, that having 3/3 upgrades instead of 2/2 when your opponent want´s to take his 4th give´s you better chances in achieving your goal there. Otherwise when you want to pin your opponent on just two bases you have to invest more in production facilities, so that you have a bigger army at that point, when your opponent takes his 3rd. I´m also saying that strategy or your overall gameplan gives you triggers to attack. Everytime you want to attack you have a specific goal in mind, what you want to achieve with that attack. I often see the players in TvZ just attacking over the creep right into the opponents main army, which often results in stupid army losses. When you have the goal to deny X Y expandtion, you can make your army more efficient and you have a clear goal in mind what you want to achieve with that attack. With this your understanding of the game and of "How to Macro godd " becomes better, because like i said, the strategy influence your way to Macro.
First off, why would you ever want to push someone who´s expansion was much slower ?! On topic: And there is not much ingame decision making involved aka strategy, if u do a preplanned build and attack at time x. Ur idea of Strategy is so simple, if u consider it like that, doing this build and attacking at a certain point, ofc there is "strategy" in lower leagues but a lower leaguer isnt gonna ask himself why or how something works, hes just gonna do it, not much decision making involved. And i said this in my first post, Strategy as a way of thinking what you wanna do is something that you have to develop through playing a lot, and until you are at the point of high masters youre not gonna have it. The way you are describing your strategy (which is just a gameplan) is something you hear someone say (like Day9 in your case), but if u dont develop your own thinking in order to be able to decide whats best to do on your own, how do you expect to play the game at a high level if u have to go and look up a strategy for every possible case a race on a map could do or sth.
The Point i wanna make is, thats the Strategy part is something that you just get through experience, you just have to play a lot, and while you do that you gotta practice your mechanics, aka focus on makro, so that at some point you will not only be able to decide what to do but actually execute it.
sry im just kind of ranting but i think u get the point im trying to make
Just harass a bit and try to do damage. If you do damage, you'll get more ahead so you should attack a bit after that. If you don't do damage, then play defensive and try to harass some more
On April 08 2012 22:06 Jonas wrote: Just harass a bit and try to do damage. If you do damage, you'll get more ahead so you should attack a bit after that. If you don't do damage, then play defensive and try to harass some more
Oh wow no shit sherlock. Worst advice i've seen so far in the whole histoy of TL strategy section. If you want to up your post count, do it on another forum, here we actually expect a sensible post from someone.
But one thing i do agree with:
Too vague of a post, maybe even better suited for the quick question quick answer thread.
Short answer is: not as important, macro is more important.
I get what you want to say. If i´m right you want to say, that your strategic decisions improve while playing a lot. I agree with you on that. But to improve that, you have to actualy thing about it. For example. You want to deny your opponents 3rd, but you failed. Then you should ask yourself: Was it my control or didn´t i have enough units to attack at that moment or did the map favor my opponent in that position? If you don´t think about it, your knowledge of the game cannot be build up and when the people say if you would have macroed better, you could have killed him at that time. So you only focus on improving your Macro, because everyone says that the attack works with good Macro. Noone says something like, look he just had 3 Gateways aggainst your 4 Raxes. If you had produced constantly your army would be bigger than your opponent, because he just had 3 Gateways. The amount of production facilties you and your opponent have in combination with your Macro ability, determine whether an attack can work or not. I mean the answer "Macro better" leads your attention away from other important things. If you played 1000 games until you reach Diamond league and you just thought about "macro better" than your opponent you have wasted 1000 games worth of gameknowledge. Do you understand what i want to point out?
strategy is a key pillar to learning, its as important as you want it to be, If you want fun then screw it but if you want to achieve more then you should consider it to the extent that it makes sense to you. There is a lot of interesting concept you pick up and go 'ahh' its a way of seeing the game from a different perspective which increase your imagination in the game. Some players even report having dreams of the game which is probably an unhealthy obsession but they enjoy thinking about the game and imagining its possibilities even when they aren't playing. For the lower leagues that want to get good study everything and start from the simplest approach, perfecting the early cheeses, making them more efficient and understanding what went right and wrong, doing that you can open your horizon to the subtleties of the game.
In lower league macro is far more important than strategy for the simple reason that an army supply lead can overcome a good strategy.
Strategy tends to be more important when the macro between both player is equal. The difference isnt the ressource, it is the way you use it to the more efficient way possible.
1. A plan of action or policy designed to achieve a major or overall aim - time to develop a coherent economic strategy - shifts in marketing strategy
2. The art of planning and directing overall military operations and movements in a war or battle
3. A plan for such military operations and movements - nonprovocative defense strategies
2. The art of planning and directing overall military operations and movements in a war or battle
wait so google even agrees with a REAL dictionary and you say it's broken? how can a real dictionary be broken? go ahead and learn language from the interwebz, it's gonna be very helpfull in your job later on if it's not flipping burgers.
The art of planning and directing overall military operations A.K.A. doing something with what you have NOW, not thinking about how to get whatever you want in 2 minutes. Strategists such as Napoleon weren't bothered with recruiting new soldiers, he was responsible to put those soldiers to good use. 7Gameplan is how do i get new soldiers. Strategy is how do i use my current set of soliders to benefit me the most
I've been trying to coach a silver league guy and I've had the most success so far by getting him to ignore strategy and micro almost completely, every matchup I'm just having him do the exact same 1-base strategy and focus all of his attention on managing economy and production and hotkeys and all that. It's seemed quite successful so far, he's had a nice winning ration from doing this, something like 1 loss every 6 wins so far. My plan is once he becomes exceedingly efficient and able to manage a 1-base strat completely then I move on to teaching him a 2-base strat and so forth. He plays terran btw. I'm going to have him fully ignore all strategy until he's at least high plat/low diamond. I'll get him there...one day.
greetings from the bronze league! I just played five games. Here's what happened:
(I always try to do 2rax expo, with 2 naked rax--with 1rax expo I can't hold)
Game 1 TvT. proxy 3rax 1-base (I win with bunker and repair)
Game 2 TvZ. He had 23 lings at 6:55 at my expo, 15 drones in base. Total chaos. I won because I locked the lings inside my own base... no need to explain anything else...
Game 3. TvP macro game! (W)
Game 4. TvP 1-base blink stalker (loss, I have no clue as what to do, he comes with 10+ stalkers, my bunkers were at my expo, I have to think about this)
Game 5. TvP 9:50 at my ramp with 2 immo, 3 sentry, 5 stalkers; I had bunkers but he forcefielded in some way so that my SCVs couldn't repair. His attack failed, then he attacks into my main with warp prism and to expo at the same time. I won for some reason.
In my experience, this is to continue forever, 80-90% = 1-base play or cheese.
**
How am I to survive all this while thinking about "macro better"? I am honestly (no irony) interested what's the trick. Here's what I understand so far. My macro and micro is HORRIBLE. But in all those games, my primary goal going into the game should be: how to survive past 10 minutes. What saves my poor life is micro (which is horrible, but still, I won 80% of those games). I have to repair bunkers with SCVs. I have to 9scout to spot cheese. I have to go around my base to find proxy pylons and proxy rax and proxy PF. I have to make bunkers. I have to 2rax expo instead of 1rax expo, since with the latter I can't hold (so poor skill).
And here's another problem. You can say: just macro better and you will have more units at 5:00, 6:00, 7:00. But the problem is, when a 1base rush or cheese is coming, I can't macro normally. It distracts me so much if I have to repair bunkers, have my troops all shooting or retreating, building new bunkers. So if you watch those games, you will find a ton of hilarious macro and micro problems---yes, but I can't do it if I have to fight cheese or rush at the same time.
Perhaps the trick is: macro is important once you defeat cheese and 1base rush. But that's meaningless. It's like saying, macro is not important, learn to counter cheese first.
There's a difference between ignoring strategy, and sticking to one viable strategy. The latter can be very effective for someone who needs all their mental focus for macro and army control. It might get hard countered now and then, but hopefully not too often.
Depending on your definition of "strategy", it's either important or unimportant. Strategy in the sense of "I should be aggressive now and use the breathing room to tech and then try to finish him" is not needed, nor is strategy in the sense of "do I need a few more high templars or should I go for air". The strategy that matters is the basic gameplan, like "I want to get to three bases, then win using mass tier 2 units". Macroing is the most important aspect whether you win or not, but macro without any form of direction won't do much. Perfect injects won't help a zerg who is trying to win with infestors off one base.
A smart player in a lower league shouldn't ask about compositions or strategy, they should ask about the basic idea behind a matchup, then focus on getting their macro up. Whether you go ling infestor, ling/bling/muta or massroach doesn't matter in ZvT in silver, as long as your macro is good any "generally decent plan" works perfectly fine, so all you really need to know is what the general idea in the matchup is.
On April 08 2012 21:44 boppel wrote: too bad there is no ignore function on this forum, never read so much shit form one person (belial) stay free
thx for completely fucking up what i posted and putting words in my mouth which i never spoke out
You made the most inane comment I've ever heard. "if you go into a game without a plan u lose no matter the league". Really? You don't say. What does that even mean. What does that even mean... it's such a meaningless comment. Everyone on ladder has seen a pro game and has a general plan of what to do - make shit, expand, get certain tech out, expand.
Your comment shows exactly what is wrong with low level players who are arguing against the 'macro better' idea. You make it sound as if you have some great strategy, and that's why you lose games, but I guarantee 99.9% of the time, if you submit a replay of you losing a game, it's because you lost because of basic macro mistakes. Not strategy, not plan.
I mean, I've seen some people do some pretty bad builds, but these bad builds are always the result of bad macro (8 gate where gates planted at 9:00 mark, etc, with no blink or upgrades behind it, etc).
On April 08 2012 23:27 aggu wrote: Game 5. TvP 9:50 at my ramp with 2 immo, 3 sentry, 5 stalkers; I had bunkers but he forcefielded in some way so that my SCVs couldn't repair. His attack failed, then he attacks into my main with warp prism and to expo at the same time. I won for some reason.
And here's another problem. You can say: just macro better and you will have more units at 5:00, 6:00, 7:00. But the problem is, when a 1base rush or cheese is coming, I can't macro normally. It distracts me so much if I have to repair bunkers, have my troops all shooting or retreating, building new bunkers. So if you watch those games, you will find a ton of hilarious macro and micro problems---yes, but I can't do it if I have to fight cheese or rush at the same time.
Your anecdotes are in fact perfect examples of how just improving macro will get you out of bronze.
How exactly were any of the above games you mentioned cheese? Like you stated, his "1-base rush" came at 9:50 with only 2 immo/3 sentry/5 stalkers. You could have made enough units to defend this push by the 6-7 min mark easily WHILE expoing if you had improved your macro. How exactly does an incoming rush 3 minutes later "distract you" from macroing the previous 6 minutes or the next 3 minutes?
And then you can take it one step further. Once you are able to macro up an acceptable amount of units by the 6-7 min mark on one base, you'll have enough forces to crush your opponent's. Therefore you can repeat the same strategy and go on the offensive instead of just purely defending and easily rank up in leagues.
To the OP: I think strategy combined with macro is important once you hit diamond or above, but macro alone will easily get you from bronze to plat.
not important at all because the strengths of your other aspects of gameplay are not yet developed and therefore can overwhelm, and triumph over the strategical aspects of play.
I was on a winning streak with 11 wins in a row in silver league EU before I finally lost a 1v1. All just because I focus more on macro (overlords in time, more drones) instead of planning a good strategy and perfect unit composition. The game I just lost was because I didn't scout his 1-base roach. But I won many games even with lack of scouting only because I had more stuff when it mattered.
I get what you want to say. If i´m right you want to say, that your strategic decisions improve while playing a lot. I agree with you on that. But to improve that, you have to actualy thing about it. For example. You want to deny your opponents 3rd, but you failed. Then you should ask yourself: Was it my control or didn´t i have enough units to attack at that moment or did the map favor my opponent in that position? If you don´t think about it, your knowledge of the game cannot be build up and when the people say if you would have macroed better, you could have killed him at that time. So you only focus on improving your Macro, because everyone says that the attack works with good Macro. Noone says something like, look he just had 3 Gateways aggainst your 4 Raxes. If you had produced constantly your army would be bigger than your opponent, because he just had 3 Gateways. The amount of production facilties you and your opponent have in combination with your Macro ability, determine whether an attack can work or not. I mean the answer "Macro better" leads your attention away from other important things. If you played 1000 games until you reach Diamond league and you just thought about "macro better" than your opponent you have wasted 1000 games worth of gameknowledge. Do you understand what i want to point out?
I thought he was saying that play more, and strategy will evolve, and therefore your focus should be on macro, because strategy will come about through good macro and just playing more. Which is true.
Maybe I'm reading him wrong, but to address you, i disagree with you (or both of you, whatever). See, the issue is that, such attacks would work better if you macro better. That's the whole goddamn point here. Things like 'did the map favor him?' are not necesary in platinum and below. Just macro better, your attacks will work much better, and your opponnents will get steamrolled up to like mid-masters.
And you are arguing against a straw man, like every bronze in here is doing. No one is going "Derp, I was told to macro better, I play 1000 games just making drones!". No, they play 1000 games, and get to fucking diamond, if not masters, because they played enough games and their strategy developed. Like, for fucks sake, OBVIOUSLY your game will improve as you play. In the meantime though, your FOCUS should be on macro. Things like strategy, will evolve naturally.
I mean really, the worst thing you can do is hang out on the forums asking questions about strategy. Use the forums to get help on replays you couldn't figure out on your own, and just play more, and analyze your macro in your replays. That's how you get better.
How am I to survive all this while thinking about "macro better"? I am honestly (no irony) interested what's the trick. Here's what I understand so far. My macro and micro is HORRIBLE. But in all those games, my primary goal going into the game should be: how to survive past 10 minutes. What saves my poor life is micro (which is horrible, but still, I won 80% of those games). I have to repair bunkers with SCVs. I have to 9scout to spot cheese. I have to go around my base to find proxy pylons and proxy rax and proxy PF. I have to make bunkers. I have to 2rax expo instead of 1rax expo, since with the latter I can't hold (so poor skill).
Sorry, but you macro horribly. That's why these 1 base all-ins work. If you macro'd better, you would've handled these all-ins much easier. They would hardly even be viable if you macro'd better. Scouting is also part of the equation, but that's as simple as "did he take another base? no? Oh shit, he's all-inning".
You just have to play more. Eventually 1 base all-ins will be so bad, they will be good, because you never see them, and so when you see them, it's like wtf i haven't seen that in a year, what a joke. Make sense? they are just really bad.
You dont even need a strategy up until Diamond or even Masters, just macro up to 200 supply and A-move the enemy, you will have better upgrades, army composition and even more supply if you have good mechanics as so many are proclaming. As simple as it sounds, but i recently started playing again after nearly 1 year break and won all ~15 games i played after going 0-5 in placementmatches to try out whether its "so-so-hard to get out of bronze with macro".
Edit; The so called cheese from low-level players are so badly executed that one should be easily able to deflect attacks which normally would be BO-losses.
On April 08 2012 23:27 aggu wrote: Game 5. TvP 9:50 at my ramp with 2 immo, 3 sentry, 5 stalkers; I had bunkers but he forcefielded in some way so that my SCVs couldn't repair. His attack failed, then he attacks into my main with warp prism and to expo at the same time. I won for some reason.
And here's another problem. You can say: just macro better and you will have more units at 5:00, 6:00, 7:00. But the problem is, when a 1base rush or cheese is coming, I can't macro normally. It distracts me so much if I have to repair bunkers, have my troops all shooting or retreating, building new bunkers. So if you watch those games, you will find a ton of hilarious macro and micro problems---yes, but I can't do it if I have to fight cheese or rush at the same time.
Your anecdotes are in fact perfect examples of how just improving macro will get you out of bronze.
How exactly were any of the above games you mentioned cheese? Like you stated, his "1-base rush" came at 9:50 with only 2 immo/3 sentry/5 stalkers. You could have made enough units to defend this push by the 6-7 min mark easily WHILE expoing if you had improved your macro. How exactly does an incoming rush 3 minutes later "distract you" from macroing the previous 6 minutes or the next 3 minutes?
To the OP: I think strategy combined with macro is important once you hit diamond or above, but macro alone will easily get you from bronze to plat.
At 6:00 I had: 2 x bunker, 11 marines, expo 75% done, supply 34. My BO is: 2 naked rax (12, 14), then produce constantly marines and SCVs, until I have money for expo. Make 3 x bunkers.
At 9:48 when the attack comes I have: 18 marines, 33 SCVs, 2 marauders, 3 bunkers, factory (reactor building which I shift to starport later), stim 25% done, expo running, supply 61
What happens at 9.48 is that he forcefields so that I can't repair the bunkers. But I am left with one bunker which I repair with like 10+ SCVs, which he shoots and shoots, but then he retreats.
My question: what are the "macro target" values I SHOULD BE at, given my BO, with which I can hold that without any bunkers or with any micro?
Another way to ask: what is a BO that will hold any bronze 1base rush without any micro or without bunkers? what are the targets (units, supply, SCVs)? A constraint is that I like to expand around 5:00-6:00. I can surely test whatever you come up with!
On April 08 2012 23:27 aggu wrote: Game 5. TvP 9:50 at my ramp with 2 immo, 3 sentry, 5 stalkers; I had bunkers but he forcefielded in some way so that my SCVs couldn't repair. His attack failed, then he attacks into my main with warp prism and to expo at the same time. I won for some reason.
And here's another problem. You can say: just macro better and you will have more units at 5:00, 6:00, 7:00. But the problem is, when a 1base rush or cheese is coming, I can't macro normally. It distracts me so much if I have to repair bunkers, have my troops all shooting or retreating, building new bunkers. So if you watch those games, you will find a ton of hilarious macro and micro problems---yes, but I can't do it if I have to fight cheese or rush at the same time.
Your anecdotes are in fact perfect examples of how just improving macro will get you out of bronze.
How exactly were any of the above games you mentioned cheese? Like you stated, his "1-base rush" came at 9:50 with only 2 immo/3 sentry/5 stalkers. You could have made enough units to defend this push by the 6-7 min mark easily WHILE expoing if you had improved your macro. How exactly does an incoming rush 3 minutes later "distract you" from macroing the previous 6 minutes or the next 3 minutes?
To the OP: I think strategy combined with macro is important once you hit diamond or above, but macro alone will easily get you from bronze to plat.
At 6:00 I had: 2 x bunker, 11 marines, expo 75% done, supply 34. My BO is: 2 naked rax (12, 14), then produce constantly marines and SCVs, until I have money for expo. Make 3 x bunkers.
At 9:48 when the attack comes I have: 18 marines, 33 SCVs, 2 marauders, 3 bunkers, factory (reactor building which I shift to starport later), stim 25% done, expo running, supply 61
What happens at 9.48 is that he forcefields so that I can't repair the bunkers. But I am left with one bunker which I repair with like 10+ SCVs, which he shoots and shoots, but then he retreats.
My question: what are the "macro target" values I SHOULD BE at, given my BO, with which I can hold that without any bunkers or with any micro?
Another way to ask: what is a BO that will hold any bronze 1base rush without any micro or without bunkers? what are the targets (units, supply, SCVs)? A constraint is that I like to expand around 5:00-6:00. I can surely test whatever you come up with!
Here, I just played a quick sample game against easy AI to demonstrate a very safe build that will hold off pretty much ANY bronze rush while letting you comfortably expand in any of the 3 matchups (although it's probably more suited to TvZ/TvT). It's probably not the cleanest build possible, as I don't even play Terran. I'm a Zerg master's player.
By the 7 min mark I had 2 tanks with siege mode already finished. 2 bunkers full of marines and orbital command already landed at my natural. If I had suspected an incoming rush at the 7 min mark, I could've easily transferred some SCVs as my orbital landed so as to have some SCVs to repair. That defense could easily defeat 2 imm/3 sentry/5 stalker with 0 micro besides SCV pull + bunker repair.
How am I to survive all this while thinking about "macro better"? I am honestly (no irony) interested what's the trick. Here's what I understand so far. My macro and micro is HORRIBLE. But in all those games, my primary goal going into the game should be: how to survive past 10 minutes. What saves my poor life is micro (which is horrible, but still, I won 80% of those games). I have to repair bunkers with SCVs. I have to 9scout to spot cheese. I have to go around my base to find proxy pylons and proxy rax and proxy PF. I have to make bunkers. I have to 2rax expo instead of 1rax expo, since with the latter I can't hold (so poor skill).
Sorry, but you macro horribly. That's why these 1 base all-ins work. If you macro'd better, you would've handled these all-ins much easier. They would hardly even be viable if you macro'd better. Scouting is also part of the equation, but that's as simple as "did he take another base? no? Oh shit, he's all-inning".
You just have to play more. Eventually 1 base all-ins will be so bad, they will be good, because you never see them, and so when you see them, it's like wtf i haven't seen that in a year, what a joke. Make sense? they are just really bad.
I understand that my macro is bad. A GM macro is terribly good. My scouting algorithm is exactly what you propose, I just check for expo. I understand that if I can hold, I will win. But I am a poor bronzie and want to understand how to implement the "macro better" algorithm under the circumstances I am in, which is 80% = 1base attack before 10:00. Is there some BO (with early 5-7 min expo) that, when perfectly executed, will hold almost everything WITHOUT bunkers and any micro? What's the supply and unit composition?
How am I to survive all this while thinking about "macro better"? I am honestly (no irony) interested what's the trick. Here's what I understand so far. My macro and micro is HORRIBLE. But in all those games, my primary goal going into the game should be: how to survive past 10 minutes. What saves my poor life is micro (which is horrible, but still, I won 80% of those games). I have to repair bunkers with SCVs. I have to 9scout to spot cheese. I have to go around my base to find proxy pylons and proxy rax and proxy PF. I have to make bunkers. I have to 2rax expo instead of 1rax expo, since with the latter I can't hold (so poor skill).
Sorry, but you macro horribly. That's why these 1 base all-ins work. If you macro'd better, you would've handled these all-ins much easier. They would hardly even be viable if you macro'd better. Scouting is also part of the equation, but that's as simple as "did he take another base? no? Oh shit, he's all-inning".
You just have to play more. Eventually 1 base all-ins will be so bad, they will be good, because you never see them, and so when you see them, it's like wtf i haven't seen that in a year, what a joke. Make sense? they are just really bad.
I understand that my macro is bad. A GM macro is terribly good. My scouting algorithm is exactly what you propose, I just check for expo. I understand that if I can hold, I will win. But I am a poor bronzie and want to understand how to implement the "macro better" algorithm under the circumstances I am in, which is 80% = 1base attack before 10:00. Is there some BO (with early 5-7 min expo) that, when perfectly executed, will hold almost everything WITHOUT bunkers and any micro? What's the supply and unit composition?
Why do you want to "not build bunkers"? If you do an early expo as Terran, it's mandatory to make 1-2 bunkers, 3 preferably if you suspect 4-gate.
On April 08 2012 23:27 aggu wrote: Game 5. TvP 9:50 at my ramp with 2 immo, 3 sentry, 5 stalkers; I had bunkers but he forcefielded in some way so that my SCVs couldn't repair. His attack failed, then he attacks into my main with warp prism and to expo at the same time. I won for some reason.
And here's another problem. You can say: just macro better and you will have more units at 5:00, 6:00, 7:00. But the problem is, when a 1base rush or cheese is coming, I can't macro normally. It distracts me so much if I have to repair bunkers, have my troops all shooting or retreating, building new bunkers. So if you watch those games, you will find a ton of hilarious macro and micro problems---yes, but I can't do it if I have to fight cheese or rush at the same time.
Your anecdotes are in fact perfect examples of how just improving macro will get you out of bronze.
How exactly were any of the above games you mentioned cheese? Like you stated, his "1-base rush" came at 9:50 with only 2 immo/3 sentry/5 stalkers. You could have made enough units to defend this push by the 6-7 min mark easily WHILE expoing if you had improved your macro. How exactly does an incoming rush 3 minutes later "distract you" from macroing the previous 6 minutes or the next 3 minutes?
To the OP: I think strategy combined with macro is important once you hit diamond or above, but macro alone will easily get you from bronze to plat.
At 6:00 I had: 2 x bunker, 11 marines, expo 75% done, supply 34. My BO is: 2 naked rax (12, 14), then produce constantly marines and SCVs, until I have money for expo. Make 3 x bunkers.
At 9:48 when the attack comes I have: 18 marines, 33 SCVs, 2 marauders, 3 bunkers, factory (reactor building which I shift to starport later), stim 25% done, expo running, supply 61
What happens at 9.48 is that he forcefields so that I can't repair the bunkers. But I am left with one bunker which I repair with like 10+ SCVs, which he shoots and shoots, but then he retreats.
My question: what are the "macro target" values I SHOULD BE at, given my BO, with which I can hold that without any bunkers or with any micro?
Another way to ask: what is a BO that will hold any bronze 1base rush without any micro or without bunkers? what are the targets (units, supply, SCVs)? A constraint is that I like to expand around 5:00-6:00. I can surely test whatever you come up with!
Here, I just played a quick sample game against easy AI to demonstrate a very safe build that will hold off pretty much ANY bronze rush while letting you comfortably expand in any of the 3 matchups (although it's probably more suited to TvZ/TvT). It's probably not the cleanest build possible, as I don't even play Terran. I'm a Zerg master's player.
By the 7 min mark I had 2 tanks with siege mode already finished. 2 bunkers full of marines and orbital command already landed at my natural. If I had suspected an incoming rush at the 7 min mark, I could've easily transferred some SCVs as my orbital landed so as to have some SCVs to repair. That defense could easily defeat 2 imm/3 sentry/5 stalker with 0 micro besides SCV pull + bunker repair.
I've an 80%ish winrate in silver TvP and TvZ by expanding at 6:00 after 3 rax. I have so many marines that no ealy push can cause much problems. Just a bane bust requires the small change of building the OC on highground, and getting siegetech before expoing.
How am I to survive all this while thinking about "macro better"? I am honestly (no irony) interested what's the trick. Here's what I understand so far. My macro and micro is HORRIBLE. But in all those games, my primary goal going into the game should be: how to survive past 10 minutes. What saves my poor life is micro (which is horrible, but still, I won 80% of those games). I have to repair bunkers with SCVs. I have to 9scout to spot cheese. I have to go around my base to find proxy pylons and proxy rax and proxy PF. I have to make bunkers. I have to 2rax expo instead of 1rax expo, since with the latter I can't hold (so poor skill).
Sorry, but you macro horribly. That's why these 1 base all-ins work. If you macro'd better, you would've handled these all-ins much easier. They would hardly even be viable if you macro'd better. Scouting is also part of the equation, but that's as simple as "did he take another base? no? Oh shit, he's all-inning".
You just have to play more. Eventually 1 base all-ins will be so bad, they will be good, because you never see them, and so when you see them, it's like wtf i haven't seen that in a year, what a joke. Make sense? they are just really bad.
I understand that my macro is bad. A GM macro is terribly good. My scouting algorithm is exactly what you propose, I just check for expo. I understand that if I can hold, I will win. But I am a poor bronzie and want to understand how to implement the "macro better" algorithm under the circumstances I am in, which is 80% = 1base attack before 10:00. Is there some BO (with early 5-7 min expo) that, when perfectly executed, will hold almost everything WITHOUT bunkers and any micro? What's the supply and unit composition?
Why do you want to "not build bunkers"? If you do an early expo as Terran, it's mandatory to make 1-2 bunkers, 3 preferably if you suspect 4-gate.
OK, if they are mandatory, I will make them. I thought they are gimmicky and not part of "better macro". Well, I realize that one problem I had was the lack of bunkers, previously I played a bit of protoss and didn't need such..
On April 08 2012 23:27 aggu wrote: Game 5. TvP 9:50 at my ramp with 2 immo, 3 sentry, 5 stalkers; I had bunkers but he forcefielded in some way so that my SCVs couldn't repair. His attack failed, then he attacks into my main with warp prism and to expo at the same time. I won for some reason.
And here's another problem. You can say: just macro better and you will have more units at 5:00, 6:00, 7:00. But the problem is, when a 1base rush or cheese is coming, I can't macro normally. It distracts me so much if I have to repair bunkers, have my troops all shooting or retreating, building new bunkers. So if you watch those games, you will find a ton of hilarious macro and micro problems---yes, but I can't do it if I have to fight cheese or rush at the same time.
Your anecdotes are in fact perfect examples of how just improving macro will get you out of bronze.
How exactly were any of the above games you mentioned cheese? Like you stated, his "1-base rush" came at 9:50 with only 2 immo/3 sentry/5 stalkers. You could have made enough units to defend this push by the 6-7 min mark easily WHILE expoing if you had improved your macro. How exactly does an incoming rush 3 minutes later "distract you" from macroing the previous 6 minutes or the next 3 minutes?
To the OP: I think strategy combined with macro is important once you hit diamond or above, but macro alone will easily get you from bronze to plat.
At 6:00 I had: 2 x bunker, 11 marines, expo 75% done, supply 34. My BO is: 2 naked rax (12, 14), then produce constantly marines and SCVs, until I have money for expo. Make 3 x bunkers.
At 9:48 when the attack comes I have: 18 marines, 33 SCVs, 2 marauders, 3 bunkers, factory (reactor building which I shift to starport later), stim 25% done, expo running, supply 61
What happens at 9.48 is that he forcefields so that I can't repair the bunkers. But I am left with one bunker which I repair with like 10+ SCVs, which he shoots and shoots, but then he retreats.
My question: what are the "macro target" values I SHOULD BE at, given my BO, with which I can hold that without any bunkers or with any micro?
Another way to ask: what is a BO that will hold any bronze 1base rush without any micro or without bunkers? what are the targets (units, supply, SCVs)? A constraint is that I like to expand around 5:00-6:00. I can surely test whatever you come up with!
For scv count, its much simpler to calculate At 10 min, assuming constant production of SCVs + orbital on one CC, you would have 33 workers. Considering you already have your expo up for 3 mins 35 secs, you should have EXTRA 10 scvs even with 2nd orbital
Total time = (10 x 60) = 600 secs Less orbital = 600 - 35 = 565 Number of scvs = 565/17 = 33
I guess to get a better gauge on units etc, you would have to look at BO guide or replays.
Some guy did this awhile ago and I feel it needs to be refreshed:
1. He made nothing but stalkers 2. He did not pressure his opponent in any way 3. He did not scout 4. He a-moved (zero micro) to his opponent's base when maxed 5. He got to diamond with his superior mechanics 6. Proceeded to do the same with Terran and Marines (don't remember if he did with zerg)
Does this look like a complicated strategy to you? The point is you don't need a strategy in Bronze-Plat, do whatever the hell you want just work on your mechanics.
Destiny also massed queens and got to platinum, just youtube it.
On April 09 2012 00:45 Monkeyballs25 wrote: I've an 80%ish winrate in silver TvP and TvZ by expanding at 6:00 after 3 rax. I have so many marines that no ealy push can cause much problems. Just a bane bust requires the small change of building the OC on highground, and getting siegetech before expoing.
Can you give me the BO or replay, so that I can test? So you have 3 naked rax with constant marine + SCV production + bunkers + expo at 6:00 ? This must be without gas? Or do you halt production to get expo? I know there's the 1base 3rax rush with stim etc but that's not what I want.
On April 09 2012 00:45 Monkeyballs25 wrote: I've an 80%ish winrate in silver TvP and TvZ by expanding at 6:00 after 3 rax. I have so many marines that no ealy push can cause much problems. Just a bane bust requires the small change of building the OC on highground, and getting siegetech before expoing.
Can you give me the BO or replay, so that I can test? So you have 3 naked rax with constant marine + SCV production + bunkers + expo at 6:00 ? This must be without gas? Or do you halt production to get expo? I know there's the 1base 3rax rush with stim etc but that's not what I want.
Search for Halby's Mineral Drill on Youtube. As long as you don't take gas, you can constantly produce from the 3 rax and CC and still expand at 6:00. I don't generally get bunkers. After expoing I do take 1/2 gas to get some tech.
On April 09 2012 00:45 Monkeyballs25 wrote: I've an 80%ish winrate in silver TvP and TvZ by expanding at 6:00 after 3 rax. I have so many marines that no ealy push can cause much problems. Just a bane bust requires the small change of building the OC on highground, and getting siegetech before expoing.
Can you give me the BO or replay, so that I can test? So you have 3 naked rax with constant marine + SCV production + bunkers + expo at 6:00 ? This must be without gas? Or do you halt production to get expo? I know there's the 1base 3rax rush with stim etc but that's not what I want.
Search for Halby's Mineral Drill on Youtube. As long as you don't take gas, you can constantly produce from the 3 rax and CC and still expand at 6:00. I don't generally get bunkers. After expoing I do take 1/2 gas to get some tech.
I'm sorry but your build would not hold against a gold-plat level executed 4-gate, which I imagine would be quite common in TvP at these leagues.
If you want to get better, use your brain and learn the game through playing. Of course you cannot simply state that macro alone will solve all your problems. The problem with lower leaguers is because they really are casual players.
Casual Habits: 1. Do not play the game enough 2. Do not care enough about improving / lazy attitude 3. Do not watch replays and actually learn from their mistakes 4. They spend more time reading up on how to win instead of actually playing the game
Solutions: 1. You play ladder a lot. Lets take someone who plays 50 games a day versus someone who plays 5 games a day and then spends the rest of his time reading these useless forum posts - who do you think will improve faster? 2. Only play 1v1 because all the other modes do not require any brainpower to play and you do not actually learn the game well at all 3. You learn from your mistakes by watching every one of your replays 1+ times to pinpoint where you went wrong, and you figure out how to improve. Simple. 3. You watch replays from top pros to learn the meta game and learn strategy
I really thought this would be common sense to anyone looking to get better, but it seems common sense is not so common.
I think people are too aggressive with the "macro better" statement toward low league players. In my opinion a good plan will help them, and strategy is one of the compositions of a plan. Low league players can't just simply have pro level macro and use mass queens to win every game, they need to advance in everything, not just macro. They need to learn strategy, macro, micro, positioning, defending cheese and everything... but a bit at a time. That way they will improve a little at everything and become eventually masters.
Let's say they just improve macro, they become diamonds and don't know how to use decent strategies to beat players, and it just takes them tons of game and frustration to learn other things than macro which they never learnt in lower leagues.
Strategy of course will help lower level players. No one doubts that.
But it's much easier to learn macro first and strategy later. Why?
Learning strategy first typically isn't very helpful. Sure, you can learn to do Zenio's 3-hatch baneling bust, but unless you have the macro (injects, drone timings, overlord timings) down, it won't be as effective.
To be fair though, when I was a lower league player I was always more interested in Strategy (I did work on macro too though), so I can understand. It's not fun just practicing macro.
I would say the two elements macro and strategy can go hand in hand if done right. Learning a strategy can improve some parts of your macro. It teaches you when to add production, how to spend your money optimally, and if you steal a build 100% and do it exactly the same as a pro your macro will be improved when using that build.
On April 08 2012 23:06 TechSc2 wrote: 2. The art of planning and directing overall military operations and movements in a war or battle
wait so google even agrees with a REAL dictionary and you say it's broken? how can a real dictionary be broken? go ahead and learn language from the interwebz, it's gonna be very helpfull in your job later on if it's not flipping burgers.
The art of planning and directing overall military operations A.K.A. doing something with what you have NOW, not thinking about how to get whatever you want in 2 minutes. Strategists such as Napoleon weren't bothered with recruiting new soldiers, he was responsible to put those soldiers to good use. 7Gameplan is how do i get new soldiers. Strategy is how do i use my current set of soliders to benefit me the most
Well, the dictionary you listed was apparently some translation from Dutch (not sure how that works for defining an English word). The bit I'm arguing about is the "with current resources", and I'm saying that a gameplan is part of strategy.
I also disagree with your definition of gameplan - it's not just how to get the units, but also how to use them. You wouldn't be getting them if you were then going to make up what you did with them on the spot.
On April 09 2012 00:53 Forbidden17 wrote: Some guy did this awhile ago and I feel it needs to be refreshed:
1. He made nothing but stalkers 2. He did not pressure his opponent in any way 3. He did not scout 4. He a-moved (zero micro) to his opponent's base when maxed 5. He got to diamond with his superior mechanics 6. Proceeded to do the same with Terran and Marines (don't remember if he did with zerg)
Does this look like a complicated strategy to you? The point is you don't need a strategy in Bronze-Plat, do whatever the hell you want just work on your mechanics.
Destiny also massed queens and got to platinum, just youtube it.
I might actually try this for season 7. Its a simple strategy, but an effective one, especially in PvZ. Gets wrecked by MMM and protoss robo.
On April 09 2012 01:15 Adonminus wrote: I think people are too aggressive with the "macro better" statement toward low league players. In my opinion a good plan will help them, and strategy is one of the compositions of a plan. Low league players can't just simply have pro level macro and use mass queens to win every game, they need to advance in everything, not just macro. They need to learn strategy, macro, micro, positioning, defending cheese and everything... but a bit at a time. That way they will improve a little at everything and become eventually masters.
Let's say they just improve macro, they become diamonds and don't know how to use decent strategies to beat players, and it just takes them tons of game and frustration to learn other things than macro which they never learnt in lower leagues.
Sorry, maybe it is overly aggressive. It's just frustrating discussing strategy with lower league players when their opinions are so biased becase they can't execute a build properly. They will insist hatch first or 1gate fe is impossible to deal with 2rax when it is actually the best response.
The point I was trying to make is not "fuck strategy 100%, all out mechanics ftw", obviously learn both but the priority should be mechanics. You are not in bronze because you can't stop 6pool you are in bronze because your mechanics are terrible.
If you want a "strategy" to get to diamond or higher here you go: Protoss - mass stalker colossi Zerg - mass roach hydra Terran - mass marine marauder
Don't waste your time going: "oh gee I wonder if it's safe to nexus first on this map or should I get the forge first since I may not scout him right away and he could be 6pooling, but the distance is so long I should be able to fend it off if I just cut probes a little at 16..."
just forget all that garbage and just focus on mechanics.
On April 09 2012 00:53 Forbidden17 wrote: Some guy did this awhile ago and I feel it needs to be refreshed:
1. He made nothing but stalkers 2. He did not pressure his opponent in any way 3. He did not scout 4. He a-moved (zero micro) to his opponent's base when maxed 5. He got to diamond with his superior mechanics 6. Proceeded to do the same with Terran and Marines (don't remember if he did with zerg)
Does this look like a complicated strategy to you? The point is you don't need a strategy in Bronze-Plat, do whatever the hell you want just work on your mechanics.
Destiny also massed queens and got to platinum, just youtube it.
I might actually try this for season 7. Its a simple strategy, but an effective one, especially in PvZ. Gets wrecked by MMM and protoss robo.
In a theorycrafting world it gets wrecked by anyone who knows how to play the game properly. Yet, he got to diamond.
On April 09 2012 01:15 Adonminus wrote: I think people are too aggressive with the "macro better" statement toward low league players. In my opinion a good plan will help them, and strategy is one of the compositions of a plan. Low league players can't just simply have pro level macro and use mass queens to win every game, they need to advance in everything, not just macro. They need to learn strategy, macro, micro, positioning, defending cheese and everything... but a bit at a time. That way they will improve a little at everything and become eventually masters.
Let's say they just improve macro, they become diamonds and don't know how to use decent strategies to beat players, and it just takes them tons of game and frustration to learn other things than macro which they never learnt in lower leagues.
Sorry, maybe it is overly aggressive. It's just frustrating discussing strategy with lower league players when their opinions are so biased becase they can't execute a build properly. They will insist hatch first or 1gate fe is impossible to deal with 2rax when it is actually the best response.
The point I was trying to make is not "fuck strategy 100%, all out mechanics ftw", obviously learn both but the priority should be mechanics. You are not in bronze because you can't stop 6pool you are in bronze because your mechanics are terrible.
If you want a "strategy" to get to diamond or higher here you go: Protoss - mass stalker colossi Zerg - mass roach hydra Terran - mass marine marauder
Don't waste your time going: "oh gee I wonder if it's safe to nexus first on this map or should I get the forge first since I may not scout him right away and he could be 6pooling, but the distance is so long I should be able to fend it off if I just cut probes a little at 16..."
just forget all that garbage and just focus on mechanics.
On April 09 2012 00:53 Forbidden17 wrote: Some guy did this awhile ago and I feel it needs to be refreshed:
1. He made nothing but stalkers 2. He did not pressure his opponent in any way 3. He did not scout 4. He a-moved (zero micro) to his opponent's base when maxed 5. He got to diamond with his superior mechanics 6. Proceeded to do the same with Terran and Marines (don't remember if he did with zerg)
Does this look like a complicated strategy to you? The point is you don't need a strategy in Bronze-Plat, do whatever the hell you want just work on your mechanics.
Destiny also massed queens and got to platinum, just youtube it.
I might actually try this for season 7. Its a simple strategy, but an effective one, especially in PvZ. Gets wrecked by MMM and protoss robo.
In a theorycrafting world it gets wrecked by anyone who knows how to play the game properly. Yet, he got to diamond.
I'm not theorycrafting, I watched all the games. I'm saying that any of his opponents that used those builds crushed him despite having much worse macro. The games he won were against opponents with bad macro AND often a poor strat.
On April 08 2012 23:27 aggu wrote: greetings from the bronze league! I just played five games. Here's what happened: + Show Spoiler +
(I always try to do 2rax expo, with 2 naked rax--with 1rax expo I can't hold)
Game 1 TvT. proxy 3rax 1-base (I win with bunker and repair)
Game 2 TvZ. He had 23 lings at 6:55 at my expo, 15 drones in base. Total chaos. I won because I locked the lings inside my own base... no need to explain anything else...
Game 3. TvP macro game! (W)
Game 4. TvP 1-base blink stalker (loss, I have no clue as what to do, he comes with 10+ stalkers, my bunkers were at my expo, I have to think about this)
Game 5. TvP 9:50 at my ramp with 2 immo, 3 sentry, 5 stalkers; I had bunkers but he forcefielded in some way so that my SCVs couldn't repair. His attack failed, then he attacks into my main with warp prism and to expo at the same time. I won for some reason.
In my experience, this is to continue forever, 80-90% = 1-base play or cheese.
**
How am I to survive all this while thinking about "macro better"? I am honestly (no irony) interested what's the trick. Here's what I understand so far. My macro and micro is HORRIBLE. But in all those games, my primary goal going into the game should be: how to survive past 10 minutes. What saves my poor life is micro (which is horrible, but still, I won 80% of those games). I have to repair bunkers with SCVs. I have to 9scout to spot cheese. I have to go around my base to find proxy pylons and proxy rax and proxy PF. I have to make bunkers. I have to 2rax expo instead of 1rax expo, since with the latter I can't hold (so poor skill).
And here's another problem. You can say: just macro better and you will have more units at 5:00, 6:00, 7:00. But the problem is, when a 1base rush or cheese is coming, I can't macro normally. It distracts me so much if I have to repair bunkers, have my troops all shooting or retreating, building new bunkers. So if you watch those games, you will find a ton of hilarious macro and micro problems---yes, but I can't do it if I have to fight cheese or rush at the same time.
Perhaps the trick is: macro is important once you defeat cheese and 1base rush. But that's meaningless. It's like saying, macro is not important, learn to counter cheese first.
That kind of stressful decision making increases your skill cap (apm, focus, micro, decision making). Which means that when you're not cheesed, you will still be playing much faster and more attentive (macro macro macro, the push is comiiiing). If you always play in your comfort zone, you stagnate, right?
I just remember these days when all terrans either 1/1/1'd or marine+SVC'd in gold/silver. It teached me to scout a bit better, to 1-gate expand, to pull workers when needed, etc. Once you survive, you know it's a deserved 1A 5-10 minutes later :D ^^
On April 09 2012 00:45 Monkeyballs25 wrote: I've an 80%ish winrate in silver TvP and TvZ by expanding at 6:00 after 3 rax. I have so many marines that no ealy push can cause much problems. Just a bane bust requires the small change of building the OC on highground, and getting siegetech before expoing.
Can you give me the BO or replay, so that I can test? So you have 3 naked rax with constant marine + SCV production + bunkers + expo at 6:00 ? This must be without gas? Or do you halt production to get expo? I know there's the 1base 3rax rush with stim etc but that's not what I want.
Search for Halby's Mineral Drill on Youtube. As long as you don't take gas, you can constantly produce from the 3 rax and CC and still expand at 6:00. I don't generally get bunkers. After expoing I do take 1/2 gas to get some tech.
I'm sorry but your build would not hold against a gold-plat level executed 4-gate, which I imagine would be quite common in TvP at these leagues.
If you fast expo, you must make bunkers.
Haha, It's not THAT common to see a 4gate even in PvP, and PvT/PvZ is all around FEing nowadays. I suspect it is true even in silver, not sure about bronze o_O
On April 09 2012 01:15 Adonminus wrote: I think people are too aggressive with the "macro better" statement toward low league players. In my opinion a good plan will help them, and strategy is one of the compositions of a plan. Low league players can't just simply have pro level macro and use mass queens to win every game, they need to advance in everything, not just macro. They need to learn strategy, macro, micro, positioning, defending cheese and everything... but a bit at a time. That way they will improve a little at everything and become eventually masters.
I have 750+ wins and I am still in Silver. One of my issues is that I make my mistakes again and again. Have a look on macro is the best advise I got so far because it helps in every game, not just the game where a certain strategy could be applied.
Not everyone can get to masters anyway, since master league covers just 2% of the active player population.
Strategy requires a lot of experience. If you tell a player "if you scout this, do that" you will never cover any possible situation. And to notice the nuances of different situations, experience is invaluable. So while one focuses on ones macro, one also can get the experience for smarter strategy choices in the next game.
When I play a ZvZ and see that my opponent takes his third, I could expand, too, or mass units for an attack. Either choice requires superior macro compared to the opponent: To defend my new expansion, or to crush him in time (while his third isn't making profit yet.) If I attack on two-bases versus his three, I could have the goal to finish the game right there, or to crush his forces to leaving him nothing to attack me while I expand or even double-expand. No matter how to look at it, at least from a zerg perspective I need to have the proper economy to allow me having valid strategy choices in the first place.
The adage of macro better is true, but an addendum must be made.
Macro better. should really be: Pick a safe build, then macro better.
Protoss example: 3 gate is a safe build. It's an outdated build, but a build none the less. Do this build only, don't be fancy, don't do what the pros do. Learn and practice the build so that the build is as natural as breathing. The more you do your chosen build, the less time is spent thinking on how to do the build, or what building goes when, what to build, etc, etc. While learning the build, macro to the best of your ability.
The thought required to do the build will become insignificant, and your macro will improve dramatically. Do this, and you can advance quickly. Myself being high gold and still advancing (I was silver season 5), I 3 gate in every matchup (with variations to standard 3 gate of course). It works. It's outdated, there are so many better builds out there right now. But being able to do 1 build extremely well will advance you up the ladder far faster than being able to do every build really poorly.
The biggest problem with low league players is they see a pro do something on a stream, and want to do it too. But they don't have the micro ability, or decision making, or don't have the macro skill to pull it off. But it's new, and it worked for him; why won't it work for me? It's the every build poorly versus 1 build cleanly argument again.
While my 3 gate example may be poor, as it is outdated, pick something else and learn it. I'm currently transitioning to learn FFE, but I'm practicing that off ladder to maintain macro and hone the build. I still don't have it down, and until I do, I will continue to play off ladder to get the build hammered down.
TL;DR: Pick one solid build. Learn it so it becomes natural. Learn to macro better while learning the build. Watch your rank rise.
people have to remember that guys in the lower leagues might stay there for a very long time since they don't play that much, is not fast enough, isn't skilled enough and isn't dedicated enough to practice towards a perfect execution of a build order/strategy. With that in mind a less skilled player should try to execute one build per match-up as good as they can do. When they are doing that as many have said previously they will both improve their macro and how to play a certain strategy.
The whole thing is- a good strategy won't matter so much if there is an overwhelming army. The persians still won at thermoplyae against the greeks although legend has it that it was several million persians vs 300 greeks at a narrow pass.
But against a player who is on an even skill level compared to you in a match strategy matters.
Things like; unit placement, expanding earlier, denying their expansion, making battles less cost efficient for the other side, a sneak attack while they are distracted, or two pronged attacks/multi-pronged attacks, getting a tech advantage, or hitting a timing attack when an upgrade finishes (eg- stim).
So to repeat: Strategy matters a little bit, but having a great economy that allows you to make a larger and more technologically advanced army faster and more efficiently than your opponent matters a helluva lot more.
When I first started this game, did a fast expand, droned to saturation, then made units. Any units. I didn't control them either, just a-moved via the minimap and made 2 specific checks (on arrival, to see what he was making, and on death, to see how much he still had). The rest of the time, I was back at my base, doing injects, remembering overlords, and trying to run out of money. If I ran out of larva, I built a macro hatch. If I ran out of money, I spread creep.
You'd be amazed what you can macro through in low leagues. My response to banshees was to make 2 evo chambers in different locations, begin producing queens from every hatch, and pump drones. As long as I cancelled anything other than queens in my hatches (lair), got an inject off with each queen before she died, and I didn't have to restart my evo chamber more than twice (very rare), I could just drone through the damage until I got spores up. This worked pretty reliably up to top 8 in gold, which was about the point when most people were actually making stuff past the point when their banshees started shooting. Bronze/silver players were completely ineffectual against this; they'd kill drones slower than I could produce them, deny maybe 2-3 spores, and be actually way behind afterwards. Checking replays I got used to seeing 3 marines, 14-17 scv's, and almost 4k minerals back home. Then they'd typically make an scv, a fusion core, and 2 more starports... this was so normal I learned to time my counterattack so it hit between BC #1 and BC's #2 and #3 (which were delayed, due to forgetting the tech labs).
Strat is not important in lower leagues. You just mass something and aclick it. Even in zvz, i just lost one, my opponent goes gas and is mining it, and kills me with mass speedling. He ended the game with 300 gas in the banked up, and i had to rage due to loss vs noobness.
strategy is allways important.. and why not start practicing it from the lower league and all the way up to masters? however, start by generally focussing on the game flow, how the game works, and so forth, but my advice would be, that you should watch many casts and learn all the way from the bottom to the top. it also saves alot of frustration and work when you hit gold or plat and eventually need to begin working some strats into your gameplay. but start with some easy openings, and timings, not the big idra thing, where u calculate every single gas and mineral, and hit that perfect timing. even in high dia that is pretty rare, so just keep it simple
Strategy = the overall gameplan (like getting a fast expansion, then teching to some big scary unit and rolling over the opponent with it) Tactic = more detailed small part of the strategy (like how to use your units in an engagement; siege up on that highgroud, run forward with the marines, have them baneling rolled because they're out of tankrange and then have the tanks slowly poked to death by Mutas)
Strategy is somewhat important even in lower leagues, because it frees up your head to macro better (which is still the most important part). So, if you know that you want to FE, get MMM, expand more, finally get Ghosts and Vikings, you don't need to think about it too much anymore and can concentrate on building that stuff.
Macro well, strategy will follow. There isn't much strategy to really understand, the game is pretty straightforward. At the lower levels, strategy doesn't exist because of the lack of macro. You don't have ZvP where toss goes FFE, has to scout if zerg takes third, then toss does sentry/zealot wg pressure, which zerg must get roaches and creep for, and then zerg gets map control to deny third, then toss gets third, then zerg gets mutas while toss has stronger army, and then zerg must keep toss in his base while he gets broodlords before the push. You will *never* see a game go like that in diamond. But you'll always see it in masters+. You may see mutas, or mass roach, or warp gate timing, but you won't see all the facets of a 'normal' PvZ in a lower league game.
Without proper macro on both sides, strategy doesn't exist. Macro is the basics of this game. So the problem, is that Diamond players aren't really considered playing the game. They don't have the basics down. So any 'strategy' ends up viable if you macro better, and the game isn't played at a 'competent' level where things really make sense.
There is no strategy in the lower leagues. You may think it is, but it's not. All you have in the lower leagues is basics of how the game may flow, like stalker/colossi, but that's more unit composition, not strategy. Strategy is ALL about timings, and the lower levels don't have the macro to make such timings exist.
The whole thing is- a good strategy won't matter so much if there is an overwhelming army. The persians still won at thermoplyae against the greeks although legend has it that it was several million persians vs 300 greeks at a narrow pass.
Its funny you mention that, because the Persians beat the Greeks by outflanking their position and forcing the bulk of their holding force to retreat from certain death once they had lost their superior terrain advantage. Likewise you can massacre infinite numbers of lowtech troops using a chokepoint and colossi/siegetanks/broodlords.
I'm in gold and can still use the same build versus all 3 races and win. Strategy really has no importance; it's all about who can make a continuous stream of units better than the other. I try to not even micro anymore (unless it's a split versus a ton of banes) because I know that while the attack is going on my opponent won't be macroing. As long as I macro while he doesn't, I come out on top in the end.
My priorities are; 1)Tap through production buildings and make sure every building is producing units (workers being the most important) 2)Make sure a supply block isn't imminent. 3)Make sure my upgrades are running. 4)Do some harass if I have the spare APM. 5)Rinse and repeat.
Macro well, strategy will follow. There isn't much strategy to really understand, the game is pretty straightforward. At the lower levels, strategy doesn't exist because of the lack of macro. You don't have ZvP where toss goes FFE, has to scout if zerg takes third, then toss does sentry/zealot wg pressure, which zerg must get roaches and creep for, and then zerg gets map control to deny third, then toss gets third, then zerg gets mutas while toss has stronger army, and then zerg must keep toss in his base while he gets broodlords before the push. You will *never* see a game go like that in diamond. But you'll always see it in masters+. You may see mutas, or mass roach, or warp gate timing, but you won't see all the facets of a 'normal' PvZ in a lower league game.
Without proper macro on both sides, strategy doesn't exist. Macro is the basics of this game. So the problem, is that Diamond players aren't really considered playing the game. They don't have the basics down. So any 'strategy' ends up viable if you macro better, and the game isn't played at a 'competent' level where things really make sense.
There is no strategy in the lower leagues. You may think it is, but it's not. All you have in the lower leagues is basics of how the game may flow, like stalker/colossi, but that's more unit composition, not strategy. Strategy is ALL about timings, and the lower levels don't have the macro to make such timings exist.
Its easy to say strategy doesn't exist in low leagues, when you make up your own definition of strategy to specifically exclude it. As long as you have EQUAL macro on both sides, strategy exists.
On April 10 2012 21:42 Shivvy wrote: I'm in gold and can still use the same build versus all 3 races and win. Strategy really has no importance; ...
You know that you actually do have a strategy there that you use against all 3 races, don't you? You just call it different by saying "build". Do you know why you can win with it against all 3 races? You can execute the build/strategy well, because you use it so often. This frees up your mind to macro more properly which leads to you having a bigger army than your opponent and eventually winning. So this is my whole point. In lower leagues it just matters that you have A strategy/build or let's say a rough gameplan to macro better. In higher leagues you need to know a variety of strategies and choose one depending on what your opponent does, because people can macro very well already. Strategy is less important in lower leagues than in higher, but it's not unimportant.
What is more important is a knowledge of the game and how the relationship of economy to army to tech works. Once you understand this then you are better able to gauge if you are behind or ahead, and what appropriate actions to take in general terms.
Then once you know how to macro decently, you are gold/plat and then you can work on unit comps and tactics.
A build is not a strategy. It can be indicative of one, but a build is really just a premade, preplanned set of actions. It does not (necessarily) have any strategic value in itself.
strategy is vital in every league, no big surprises in a real time strategy game. FYI macro is strategy, the strategy of building workers, building s etc at certain times
On April 11 2012 03:16 dogabutila wrote: Strategy is unimportant bronze to plat.
What is more important is a knowledge of the game and how the relationship of economy to army to tech works. Once you understand this then you are better able to gauge if you are behind or ahead, and what appropriate actions to take in general terms.
Then once you know how to macro decently, you are gold/plat and then you can work on unit comps and tactics.
A build is not a strategy. It can be indicative of one, but a build is really just a premade, preplanned set of actions. It does not (necessarily) have any strategic value in itself.
See my post above on redefining strategy to suit your own views, then claiming low leagues have no strategy.
It really is of greatly reduced importance in the lower leagues. When I can't sleep at night I like to get on SC2 and play customs 1v1 on Shattered, and do silly stuff. You get a lot of bronze to platinum players jumping into your games between the Masters players.
I pretty much go mass ground Vikings every game, with 95% winrate against sub-Diamond players. If they're Diamond/Masters Zerg it still works sometimes (overlords). I don't bother against Diamond/Masters Terran and Protoss.
1 Base Mass Assault Mode Viking is about the worst strategy imaginable. The health/damage of ground vikings makes them roughly as effective as 2 marines, if marines cost 75 minerals and 37 gas, had no stim, overly expensive upgrades, and were made from Barracks that cost 100 gas each. Mass Sentry is about the only worse composition.
But if you have good mechanics, you can do idiotic stuff like that and beat people up to Platinum easily. That's why people just repeat ad nauseum JUST MACRO JUST MACRO JUST MACRO (however non-descriptive that may be).
In lower leagues, strategy is pretty set. Since you play terran... You decide to go bio ball, mech, or marine/tank. Because transitioning from bio->mech or mech->bio has a lot of disadvantages, you sort of have to commit to one build, and that ends up pushing your strategy in one general direction.
For instance, you play bio, so you will have to make use of a mobile force via drops or catching your opponent out of position. Play mech or bio/mech, you are less mobile and therefore push slowly and methodically. This is all strategy, and your unit composition guides your play style.
As you go up to higher leagues, you have to start taking into account what your opponent is doing. What buildings does he have and on how many bases? How large is his army and where is it right now? etc. Once you have that information, you take a look at your own base and units and decide whether now is a good time to attack and where to attack first. Because this is all done in real time, it requires alertness and reasonable multitasking skills (and sufficient mechanics).
As you get better at the scouting aspect, you can then work on unit control. Figure out what each unit should be doing during the engagement, and how you can manipulate units to either take less damage, or do more damage. Practice this, and then you can move on to the 'finer' things... like special builds that hit at specific times, and are meant to deal a certain type of blow to your opponent.
The way i see it, the learning curve sort of goes this way: macro -> scouting -> unit control
you could learn any of these out of order and still win games, but i think the natural progression goes like the above, and the 'strategy' aspect is embedded in each step. your unit composition is determined while you macro, and your scouting will determine how you engage. your unit control will be icing on the cake (your strategy).
As a random player who just got promoted into plat, I can assure you that even builds are not really needed until you get into high gold. Until that point the only numbers I knew were 15 hatch, 13 gate, and 12 barracks. After that I pretty much just made as much of whatever felt right to beat the opponent with. Once I got to high gold I decided I wanted to start playing better and adopted some standard builds, but I have no doubt that I could easily have gotten to where I am now with just macro and building things semi-intelligently.
I suppose you could call building the right units strategy to an extent...but that's pretty simple. As long as you just build units and expand getting into at least gold is very easy. After that I don't doubt that upon perfecting the builds I have begun to use I will get into diamond no problem.
On April 08 2012 20:44 TechSc2 wrote: Destiny showed on stream that he went pure mass queen and won against diamond players. So strategy until high diamond-low/mid masters is maybe 2% of what you should be doing in a game.
There is also a HUGE difference between strategy and gameplan.
Strategy is your ingame decision making what would be the best next course of action. Gameplan is your out of game decision on what you want to be doing 5, 10, 15 minutes into the game and what you want to win with.
Best way to get from bronze to diamond is have 1 gameplan per matchup, and then just focus on maxing out as fast as possible.
I watched all the Destiny games. He had to get extremely inventive by the time he started meeting Plats, at one point flat out cheating with NP infestors. He succeeding in proving that a player with GM mechanics is badly crippled by using the wrong strat.
And your definition of strategy is actually the opposite of the RL meaning.
Lets be fair he was using mass queens, those things take FOREVER to get to the enemy base. Had he gone something like pure lings he probably would of been fine till like high diamond
I think its good practice to know what openings are standard in all matchups and just do them blindly without any knowledge as to why they are good. More importantly don't question why the opening is good, just do it because if it is standard play it should be capable of handling all situations in the matchup. It will make you more comfortable with those standard styles of play once you do have the macro to play well. The focus should be on macro and not questioning the BO though.
On April 08 2012 20:44 TechSc2 wrote: Destiny showed on stream that he went pure mass queen and won against diamond players. So strategy until high diamond-low/mid masters is maybe 2% of what you should be doing in a game.
There is also a HUGE difference between strategy and gameplan.
Strategy is your ingame decision making what would be the best next course of action. Gameplan is your out of game decision on what you want to be doing 5, 10, 15 minutes into the game and what you want to win with.
Best way to get from bronze to diamond is have 1 gameplan per matchup, and then just focus on maxing out as fast as possible.
I watched all the Destiny games. He had to get extremely inventive by the time he started meeting Plats, at one point flat out cheating with NP infestors. He succeeding in proving that a player with GM mechanics is badly crippled by using the wrong strat.
And your definition of strategy is actually the opposite of the RL meaning.
Lets be fair he was using mass queens, those things take FOREVER to get to the enemy base. Had he gone something like pure lings he probably would of been fine till like high diamond
If he'd used a better strategy he'd have gotten to a higher league? You don't say
Strategy doesnt have to be what the pro players do.
I was playing in bronze because I was bored, and my strategy, no matter what race I play against, I am going to contain them inside of their base, sneak in with a probe and a warp prism, and fill their base with cannons until they leave the game. My stratgey worked every game
The people that tell you to focus on macro in lower leagues are not saying that it's the only way to progress. Those people believe that macro is a FUNDAMENTAL part of the game, and without it, you cannot build correctly. If you don't have solid fundamentals, you will alter the other parts of your game to compensate, which isn't ideal. Yes, you can strategize your way to higher leagues, and many other ways, but if the fundamentals of your game are not solid, you will eventually reach a point where they are holding you back.
If you look at how children are taught things (how to play instruments, or sports, etc), they will start with fundamentals first, then move on to the rest for exactly this reason.
STrategy is a lot more important then what people are saying in this thread. It's more important for several reasons. 1. A strategy works as a guide, which make it a lot easier to keep up you macro. 2. A strategy gives you a goal, something to work for (like doubledrop to take out spawningpool) 3. Making a strategy work will give you pride in your play, and make you want to push forward and learn new strategies. I'm sure there are more, but these, i think, are the most important. So to answer the op, strategy is essential in lower leagues as well as higher. It seems everyone say strategy is not important for every league under the one they are in. But as someone who's worked his way from bronze and up, i know strategy is everything!
strategy is extremely important in all leagues if you have the wrong comp and you macro/micro the same you'll lose if you macro better you'll get into higher leagues but if you can't understand the strategy behind the game you'll be in a lower league (eg. "i macro at a masters level but i always use wrong comp so i'm in plat) for instance some people have great game sense (we'll use naniwa) but they aren't the best at micro or macro (naniwa). he still won many tourneys, i'm not saying by any stretch he is bad in either category but the ability to read your opponent especially in ladder games helps a lot.
for instance last game i saw a terran try to wall me off (ie i scouted him first on tal'darim), so my probe was dead but i scouted a long time. I saw one barracks (up to about 25ish supply on my side) and no expansion (1 gas as well, probably @ 13 or 14). Heres the game sense drill, what do you do? I cancelled my nexus and four gated. he had one tank and a handful of marines and i just rolled him. (he was 1 1 1ing i saw the starport with a techlab building something when i attacked). If i just expanded sure i could have held off his attack (long rush) but strategy and game sense allows me to pick up victories i might not normally have been able to) (i'm poor against the 1 1 1 all in build). Macro is arguably better in a setting where people play overly safe (NA) but game sense will help more in a more aggressive setting (korea?). making correct decisions off of scouting is key because otherwise theres no reason to scout: sharpening game sense will help like macro will
Strategy exists in lower level play, it's just very different. For instance, I remember being proud of myself one game back when I was in Gold league when I realized I could kill a drone harassing my pylon by simply creating the "our drones are under attack!" message via probe harassment in the Zerg main and then attacking the harassing drone with two probes.
What it comes down to is whether you're playing to win the current game or playing to improve. The skills of solid mechanics will continue to serve you well as you climb the ladder, whereas a specific strategy you develop may become less relevant down the line.
That said, you really don't need to play a standard build to work on mechanics. Feel free to Funday Monday it up; so long as you're focusing on macro and micro in-game and leave the silly strategizing to between games, you're not really hurting yourself at all and you get to have some extra fun too!
Strategy is the most important part in every league, it's just what part of strategy you should be focusing on in your league that should matter.
In the pro-scene, strategy would involve mind-games, unique build orders since they have already have adequate macro/micro and army positioning knowledge and skill.
When you get to diamond/master league, it would be more about army composition/positioning, scouting/reacting and they would have sufficient macro/micro skill developed.
Then at lower leagues, players should focus on trying to get a better economy than the enemy thus have more fighting units at their disposal to overpower (ie: a-move) their enemy. Although they should take into consideration of army composition to some degree such as 'build vikings if they have colossus' and 'don't run bio army into a wall of sieged tanks', however, these things is more considered knowledge rather than skill at this point.
Macro well, strategy will follow. There isn't much strategy to really understand, the game is pretty straightforward. At the lower levels, strategy doesn't exist because of the lack of macro. You don't have ZvP where toss goes FFE, has to scout if zerg takes third, then toss does sentry/zealot wg pressure, which zerg must get roaches and creep for, and then zerg gets map control to deny third, then toss gets third, then zerg gets mutas while toss has stronger army, and then zerg must keep toss in his base while he gets broodlords before the push. You will *never* see a game go like that in diamond. But you'll always see it in masters+. You may see mutas, or mass roach, or warp gate timing, but you won't see all the facets of a 'normal' PvZ in a lower league game.
Without proper macro on both sides, strategy doesn't exist. Macro is the basics of this game. So the problem, is that Diamond players aren't really considered playing the game. They don't have the basics down. So any 'strategy' ends up viable if you macro better, and the game isn't played at a 'competent' level where things really make sense.
There is no strategy in the lower leagues. You may think it is, but it's not. All you have in the lower leagues is basics of how the game may flow, like stalker/colossi, but that's more unit composition, not strategy. Strategy is ALL about timings, and the lower levels don't have the macro to make such timings exist.
Its easy to say strategy doesn't exist in low leagues, when you make up your own definition of strategy to specifically exclude it. As long as you have EQUAL macro on both sides, strategy exists.
Equal lower level macro doesn't mean anything though. It's impossible to quantify that into any meaningful strategy discussion. You can't ask somone how to hold off the triple supply block into late gas 3 tank timing push at 12 minutes because in another game he might only get supply blocked twice or 4 times. It's nonsensical.
Telling a lower league player to learn strategy is somewhat dangerous. The biggest reasons that immediately come to mind are:
1. Strategy relies on execution, which means macro. If I tell you to go with a 4 rax pressure build that involves an attack once stim and combat shieds finish, then this is an example of a strategy. However, this strategy really only works because of the time at which it hits and the number of units you get for your attack. Both of these are heavily contingent upon your macro. A similar push that occurs a minute later, even if it involves more units, may be awful. The clearest example of this would be the 4 gate rush for protoss. A poorly executed 4 gate is worse than just a middle of the road, generic macro opening.
2. People tend to get too focused on details in a strategy. Overall expansion counts and composition are all well and good, but many people will try to reduce a strategy down to timings or food count. These are usually variable and need to be adjusted depending on what you scout. People will also try to find a specific push or tactic that is supposed to end the game. If it goes off, does the big damage, but the game doesn't end; then what do you do?
I think that the much more fundamental skill you should focus on is identifying your advantage and utilizing it. If you know that your advantage is macro because he delayed an expo for some aggression, then maybe you decide to try to starve your opponent out while outexpanding him. (in this context, i mean macro advantage based on events in a particular game, not relative skill at macro) If you see an opponent that invested heavily in some sort of tech unit, then maybe your advantage is mobility and you should do multipronged harass to keep him stuck in his base.
Basically, having a very refined strategy is something that is going to be most helpful at the end, when you are confident in your fundamentals and also feel that your opponents are likely to be good enough that you can't win by just executing everything better. Before that, its probably better to just have a a basic idea of what compositions you like and how fast you feel comfortable expanding depending on the map and what you scout.
As someone who just got promoted to diamond today, I thought I should just come and back up what all the masters in here are saying. When we say that "strategy isn't important bronze-platinum", we're not saying use a terrible strategy and win with pure mechanics. We're saying that you should just have a simple game plan + a basic knowledge of unit compositions and use good mechanics to overpower your opponent.
I have a very simple game plan that I do in every game that I rarely stray from (unless I'm trying to have fun/playing in front of friends).
ZvP - 12 min max roach, deny Protoss third. Add in hydras and corruptors as needed. Tech up to broodlords if I can't just push into his natural.
ZvT - Ling/baneling to defend against early pushes. Get ~15 mutas to harass/kill drops. Deny/harass third as long as possible. Add in broodlords for final push once I'm maxed.
ZvZ - Defensive banelings while droning on 2 bases. Get roaches out ~40 food and try to take a third. Max on roach and slowly replace roaches with infestors as game goes on. If he's going mutas, just push into his natural/main and kill as much as I can while getting hydras.
I have a basic plan for each match-up, and I don't just blindly make units that are obviously countered by my opponents army, but I don't put tons of effort into strategy when I know that I'll get supply blocked three times while executing it. Sticking to a basic build that you can execute by memory, so that you can focus on your mechanics is really the best way to improve. If you really don't care that much about getting better and you just want to have fun, then by all means, try and use strategies to out-think your opponent if that's what you want to do. But when you post on TL asking why your super pro new build lost, don't get offended when we say that it's because you stopped making workers at 40 and were floating 3k resources.
"Strategy means 'a global plan to reach a long-term goal,' and is taken from a Greek word that means "army leadership".
Tactics, on the other hand, means a short term plan or behavior and comes from a Greek word that means "science of arrangement" (of an army). One uses tactics (little tricks) in a strategy (long-term plan)." That is all.
Overall strategy and game tactics are important on every level, but the mechanical gap between a bronze player and a grandmaster is so inconceivably vast that the later would never lose to the former. It isn't a matter of percentages or luck, there is simply no way he should be able to lose in any circumstance whatsoever.
6-pools are a good illustration, they're incredibly simple to do, require, at their most simplistic, the construction of no workers, only one building, and then calls for the player to spam the first melee unit he's capable of producing.
6-pools can be very effective at all levels of play, I recall DRG winning a high-level tournament game with one not too long back. I can say that in high masters they take games off opponents all the time. A lot of players, especially when complaining about cheese, comment on how anyone can do these simple strategies and become a diamond / master / grand-master player.
It's just not true, mechanics define whether a 6-pool falls to bronze level play or takes games off professionals. JulyZerg 6-pools all of the time on ladder, and I see him win most of those games. Tactics or strategy will never cover up for poor mechanics, they'll give you an edge against players will similar mechanics, but one never makes up for the other.
I play against my cousin who is in gold. His macro has become very good. His builds are better than mine when I offrace. But I still roll him because he is not aggressive enough.
IMO aggression is the only skill of note from gold-GM. Your macro and micro will naturally become better as you try and be more aggressive, because being aggressive takes a lot of attention to detail and APM; understanding the map, the capabilities of your army and your enemy, knowing what your momentary advantage is and how to best take advantage of it.
I play against my cousin who is in gold. His macro has become very good. His builds are better than mine when I offrace. But I still roll him because he is not aggressive enough.
IMO aggression is the only skill of note from gold-GM. Your macro and micro will naturally become better as you try and be more aggressive, because being aggressive takes a lot of attention to detail and APM; understanding the map, the capabilities of your army and your enemy, knowing what your momentary advantage is and how to best take advantage of it.
I wouldn't use calculations to determine whether you macro well, I'd grab a professional replay, look at X supply by Y minute, and compare that to what you get every game.
There is an enormous difference between a low masters player going 3-hatch before gas and a professional doing the same.
Army control doesn't really matter when you have 20 less supply by the 8 minute mark.
On April 08 2012 21:33 madhyene wrote: You don't need strategy in the lower leagues. Just rush in bronze and silver, learn to two-base in gold, learn to macro in plat...
lol, You can pretty much rush in any league. For instance if I ever face anyone who is in the range of bronze to platinum, I mass reaper that person or thor rush or proxy planetary and I still win 99% the games. Just basic mechanics should get you pretty high.
On April 11 2012 14:22 Gyro_SC2 wrote: I think strategy and macro are link together.
You can't have a good macro if you don't a strategy
Watch Destiny get to Platinum with mass queens, or Dragon(i think?) get to High Diamond with pure marine and then trying saying that you need strategy in order to macro. Until at least diamond, the most basic strategies can work if they're executed well enough.
I play against my cousin who is in gold. His macro has become very good. His builds are better than mine when I offrace. But I still roll him because he is not aggressive enough.
IMO aggression is the only skill of note from gold-GM. Your macro and micro will naturally become better as you try and be more aggressive, because being aggressive takes a lot of attention to detail and APM; understanding the map, the capabilities of your army and your enemy, knowing what your momentary advantage is and how to best take advantage of it.
that's kind of like saying "the only skill required is to be good at the game" since you're including everything in "aggression."
making units and a-moving them is the only real skill you need. my mouse broke and i played my diamond friend with touchpad for shits and giggles and won both the games we played.
On April 11 2012 14:22 Gyro_SC2 wrote: I think strategy and macro are link together.
You can't have a good macro if you don't a strategy
Watch Destiny get to Platinum with mass queens, or Dragon(i think?) get to High Diamond with pure marine and then trying saying that you need strategy in order to macro. Until at least diamond, the most basic strategies can work if they're executed well enough.
As I said, 6-pools work at every level of play, including games played by Code S Zergs.
Mechanics are everything, strategy and tactics are important in their own right, but they do not make up for mechanical short-comings.
On April 08 2012 19:06 Sianos wrote: When a low level player ask for help, the common answer is just macro better. It´s not a real goal that you can aim for. Wouldn´t it be a good idea to ask about his strategy and give him tips on that? I mean the way you build you production/upgrades etc has a lot to do with your strategy.
Strategy can't be applied in lower leagues, since people there can't execute them anyway. You can't tell a silver player "do a 3 tank push into taking a third" etc, cause he doesn't have the mechanics to do that. It's better to tell the silver player "get some barracks and a factory and attack when you have a bunch of units".
The only "strategy" that is necessary in lower leagues is to have a brief knowledge about hard counters, like not mass hydras vs 7 colossus.
Yeah this is basically true. Even up to masters all you need to do is have way more stuff than your opponent and attack move his base. I've beaten diamond players going mass queen before, it's not that difficult just to outmacro and out multitask someone.
In any league below plat it's better to teach 1 base builds because the lower league player can focus on mechanics very slowly and improve them without throwing too much complexity into the mix like expanding and injecting multiple hatcheries/defending on multiple fronts.
Then when the player can manage to not excess 1000 minerals before the 6 minute mark, you can start being like "ok, lets work on expanding at this time and getting more production facilities".
On April 08 2012 23:27 aggu wrote: Game 5. TvP 9:50 at my ramp with 2 immo, 3 sentry, 5 stalkers; I had bunkers but he forcefielded in some way so that my SCVs couldn't repair. His attack failed, then he attacks into my main with warp prism and to expo at the same time. I won for some reason.
And here's another problem. You can say: just macro better and you will have more units at 5:00, 6:00, 7:00. But the problem is, when a 1base rush or cheese is coming, I can't macro normally. It distracts me so much if I have to repair bunkers, have my troops all shooting or retreating, building new bunkers. So if you watch those games, you will find a ton of hilarious macro and micro problems---yes, but I can't do it if I have to fight cheese or rush at the same time.
Your anecdotes are in fact perfect examples of how just improving macro will get you out of bronze.
How exactly were any of the above games you mentioned cheese? Like you stated, his "1-base rush" came at 9:50 with only 2 immo/3 sentry/5 stalkers. You could have made enough units to defend this push by the 6-7 min mark easily WHILE expoing if you had improved your macro. How exactly does an incoming rush 3 minutes later "distract you" from macroing the previous 6 minutes or the next 3 minutes?
To the OP: I think strategy combined with macro is important once you hit diamond or above, but macro alone will easily get you from bronze to plat.
At 6:00 I had: 2 x bunker, 11 marines, expo 75% done, supply 34. My BO is: 2 naked rax (12, 14), then produce constantly marines and SCVs, until I have money for expo. Make 3 x bunkers.
At 9:48 when the attack comes I have: 18 marines, 33 SCVs, 2 marauders, 3 bunkers, factory (reactor building which I shift to starport later), stim 25% done, expo running, supply 61
What happens at 9.48 is that he forcefields so that I can't repair the bunkers. But I am left with one bunker which I repair with like 10+ SCVs, which he shoots and shoots, but then he retreats.
My question: what are the "macro target" values I SHOULD BE at, given my BO, with which I can hold that without any bunkers or with any micro?
Another way to ask: what is a BO that will hold any bronze 1base rush without any micro or without bunkers? what are the targets (units, supply, SCVs)? A constraint is that I like to expand around 5:00-6:00. I can surely test whatever you come up with!
Here, I just played a quick sample game against easy AI to demonstrate a very safe build that will hold off pretty much ANY bronze rush while letting you comfortably expand in any of the 3 matchups (although it's probably more suited to TvZ/TvT). It's probably not the cleanest build possible, as I don't even play Terran. I'm a Zerg master's player.
By the 7 min mark I had 2 tanks with siege mode already finished. 2 bunkers full of marines and orbital command already landed at my natural. If I had suspected an incoming rush at the 7 min mark, I could've easily transferred some SCVs as my orbital landed so as to have some SCVs to repair. That defense could easily defeat 2 imm/3 sentry/5 stalker with 0 micro besides SCV pull + bunker repair.
One guy there above said you first need a build, then concentrate on macro. Nobody can get our of bronze by perfectly macroing warp prisms (or can they?), yet you can surely do a mind-blowing macro on warp prisms and it's still amazing macro. That's why I can beat very hard AI and GTAI even if I am in bronze, I assume these AI have quite good macro and mechanism. Macro requires some intervention from human intelligence which you obtain by playing a ton. For the same reason, I am not convinced of the 'just macro better' if a master level player wins by massing and a-moving. It must be AI that wins like that to prove the theory.
In my post cited above, I had difficulties with 'macro better' theory because I was constantly 1base'd or cheesed by silver high bronze players, and it required a lot of micro to survive as I wanted to expo fast. It was frustrating, because 'macro better' did not seem to go anywhere. Teamsolid then provided me a good early expo build (see above) that perhaps could surivive rushes. Here's interesting thing what happened to me with that build and what it means that build and macro must be integrated. I looked at teamsolid's replay and tried to copy the build, but never got the benchmarks right. Something was wrong, even if I did it like 20 times against weak AI. Then I suddenly realized that you get supply by building a command center (don't you? I am so low level I didn't know that). But that meant I was always building an extra depot, and it ruined the efficiency of the whole build. Because production is exponential in SC2, small things like this snowball out of control, and suddenly the BO can't hold 1base rushes anymore.
I still have to find the time to try this build on ladder...
I think one of the issues here is that many players, especially lower league players like me, prefer to win with a clever strategy. If feels good to outsmart the opponent. Having good mechanics feels lame because those no-RL-kiddies which play all day long will beat you with mechanics while they don't apply any clever strategy at all. Or they just play standard, where is the fun in that?
Another issue probably are the countless guides and VODs which leave the impression that the right strategy will give one good chances to win. Those guides also lead to the impression that reading / watching guides improve the play.
Every time I embrace the macro and mechanic improvement advise, I improve my play, but too often I fell back to plan out clever strategies ... which gets crushed because he has more stuff.
But the issue with "macro better" or "work on your mechanics" is: "Okay, dude, you need to actually commit yourself to tiresome practice instead of enjoying the game."
On April 11 2012 17:06 [F_]aths wrote: I think one of the issues here is that many players, especially lower league players like me, prefer to win with a clever strategy. If feels good to outsmart the opponent. Having good mechanics feels lame because those no-RL-kiddies which play all day long will beat you with mechanics while they don't apply any clever strategy at all. Or they just play standard, where is the fun in that?
Another issue probably are the countless guides and VODs which leave the impression that the right strategy will give one good chances to win. Those guides also lead to the impression that reading / watching guides improve the play.
Every time I embrace the macro and mechanic improvement advise, I improve my play, but too often I fell back to plan out clever strategies ... which gets crushed because he has more stuff.
But the issue with "macro better" or "work on your mechanics" is: "Okay, dude, you need to actually commit yourself to tiresome practice instead of enjoying the game."
Yeah exactly, I mean it depends on how you view the game and what aspirations you have. Some people are perfectly happy to play like you say, and do things that strike them as cool, others want to maximise their ability to play the game.
On April 11 2012 17:06 [F_]aths wrote: I think one of the issues here is that many players, especially lower league players like me, prefer to win with a clever strategy. If feels good to outsmart the opponent. Having good mechanics feels lame because those no-RL-kiddies which play all day long will beat you with mechanics while they don't apply any clever strategy at all. Or they just play standard, where is the fun in that?
Another issue probably are the countless guides and VODs which leave the impression that the right strategy will give one good chances to win. Those guides also lead to the impression that reading / watching guides improve the play.
Every time I embrace the macro and mechanic improvement advise, I improve my play, but too often I fell back to plan out clever strategies ... which gets crushed because he has more stuff.
But the issue with "macro better" or "work on your mechanics" is: "Okay, dude, you need to actually commit yourself to tiresome practice instead of enjoying the game."
people who just want to enjoy the game instead of practicing shouldn't complain about not getting better.
As someone who has somewhat fail control as a mid to high diamond when playing constantly (which is not recently), if the strategies are sound, they can still win you games.
I think I can help with the discussion. By my job (researcher in Didactics of Mathematics) i know some things about strategy in Mathematical Problem Solving.
There are 2 concepts involved: actions and strategies.
An strategy (as someone said before, using the dictionary) is a general plan. In SC2, it could be to play rush, make an initial push or try to defend to make a big army and then attack. you must choose 1 of thee options at the beginning of the game.
But then there are the actions, that are the exactly way you perform the strategy. You can rush by make a 6pool or 8pool, it's not the same thing. These are 2 different actions to develop a plan.
Then, I think there is strategy at every level. The difference between players is how to make the actions play well. It's not only a macro/micro discussion.
Another important thing is the way people can change their plan to adapt to the actual game. If you rush and the other defense well, you must change your strategy in-game. And that's not easy.
I'm platinum player. I'm not a good player because I'm very slow (40-50 apm) and my opponents usually have 80-90 apm, but I can equal them by a good study of what I wanna do. Then, I try to use the better strategy for my kind of game (studing my limitations) and I think it works for me.
Here goes my first post, so I guess i've to say something about me: im a wooden league player with an incredible record of 50 apm and, like the rest of mortal people, i have a w/l rate of +-50%. I use to play terran (Blood, Rock & dust).
Saying that, and talking from my own experience (this threat is about low leagues players) I must say that i noticed some improvement in my game since i listen to Day 9 saying "[...]But it does not mater, because HE IS A MAN WITH A PLAN [...]" in some funday Monday. Since then, i always try to have a plan and work arround it. This makes me have a clear idea of what i need. Maybe im not following the right path to reach my objetives, but not building "random" structures (oh! hell, he got this stuff & i need to counter it... how?), or making "random" moves arround the map (he can be here... oh! whait, here! no... hum.. here!), made me improve my macro aswell my micro.
I notice (at least is my experience) that having a clear idea of what you want you lost less time & resources in stuff you really dont need. Hope timing attacks & map controll comes with experience (hell, my 4 hellions drop never come in time with blue flame, i should work arround it).
On April 11 2012 13:36 HelloAnnyong wrote: jEcho got his new account to Master league today by massing lings in every matchup.
Destiny got his smurf to Plat+ by massing queens.
Gonna go ahead and say that no, strategy doesn't seem to be very important.
Let's rephrase those(I assume both players have their main account in Grandmaster) Using a poor strategy causes you to drop a league. Using an absolutely terrible strategy causes you to drop 3 leagues.
what is useful is a standard 2 base opener, but its not even needed.
all you need to do is
a) constantly build worker - that means, RLY constantly till you have 50 on 2 base. never stop, not for a second. b) spend that money, never float more than 500 minerals and 300 gas WHILE going up to 50 workers by building enough production facilities. dont spend too much on static defense, it wont help you to attack and its not rly well spent money in most cases (1-2 bunkers are ok).
if you do this, there is no way you can be rushed or your opponent will have more units at any time, cause your macro is simply superior. The mistake most ppl do is stopping to build workers cause they are feared which leads into less units AND less workers 1 minute later.
€: i went to high master with both, terran and zerg just by building marines / roachling on 1 or 2 base. strategy is not even secondary till you reach master.
I imagine there are some people in bronze/silver who have not heard of TL or build orders. I myself was purely an SCLegacy guy and just joined TL when I stepped into Gold. I did not know how important macro/micro/mechanics in a game.
All that was in my mind climbing bronze/silver was:
Gameplan Gameplan Gameplan
I wasn't using the keyboard much, and the build orders that I used I just pulled out of my ass. I played protoss like terran, basically researching warp gate AFTER I got 4 gates. My gateways were hotkeyed to 6 and I "chrono-pumped" units. Only researching warpgate if I was gonna use it for offensive reinforcement later on.
I survived PvP by using fast zealots, and was doing OK PvZ and PvT, watching my enemy composition and adjusting my Zealot/Stalker ratio.
I got into high silver.
Then, 4 gate started to become popular and the zealot build time was nerfed. I started dropping in rank and was basically forced to learn build orders instead of using my homemade ones.
So I guess, up to a point you can get to high silver with your own strategies alone. But, at a certain point, if you want to get higher you have to:
1. Learn standard builds 2. Learn the proper way to play (mechanics/macro)
Basically I see it like this.
1. Bronze/Silver - You can choose between strategizing or playing better. A rush is a strategy, you can consistently win with it in these leagues. You can start playing decent and improve your macro/mechanics and not think of strategies etc and just out build your opponents -- you will also consistently win. But, since you are in such low leagues, anything might work.
2. Gold to Diamond - You cant just strategize anymore. Everyone is trying to perfect their macro/micro/mechanics. So you have to do so as well to compete.
3. Masters/GM - These guys probably got macro/micro/mechanics down. To a point that they all are just pushing how fast and how good they execute things at the same high level. So, strategies win them games. Whoever can out scout can capitalize on their macro/micro/mechanics.
Strategy is important in all leagues, and, to be honest, the vast majority of strategy in even the highest levels of play are fairly broad in spectrum.
Have a game plan until you're breaking into Master league (or Diamond KR), that's when you start to hammer out builds and map focuses.
I play against my cousin who is in gold. His macro has become very good. His builds are better than mine when I offrace. But I still roll him because he is not aggressive enough.
IMO aggression is the only skill of note from gold-GM. Your macro and micro will naturally become better as you try and be more aggressive, because being aggressive takes a lot of attention to detail and APM; understanding the map, the capabilities of your army and your enemy, knowing what your momentary advantage is and how to best take advantage of it.
that's kind of like saying "the only skill required is to be good at the game" since you're including everything in "aggression."
Hardly, knowing what to do, how to do it, and actually doing it are very different skills.
making units and a-moving them is the only real skill you need. my mouse broke and i played my diamond friend with touchpad for shits and giggles and won both the games we played.
On April 11 2012 17:06 [F_]aths wrote: I think one of the issues here is that many players, especially lower league players like me, prefer to win with a clever strategy. If feels good to outsmart the opponent. Having good mechanics feels lame because those no-RL-kiddies which play all day long will beat you with mechanics while they don't apply any clever strategy at all. Or they just play standard, where is the fun in that?
Another issue probably are the countless guides and VODs which leave the impression that the right strategy will give one good chances to win. Those guides also lead to the impression that reading / watching guides improve the play.
Every time I embrace the macro and mechanic improvement advise, I improve my play, but too often I fell back to plan out clever strategies ... which gets crushed because he has more stuff.
But the issue with "macro better" or "work on your mechanics" is: "Okay, dude, you need to actually commit yourself to tiresome practice instead of enjoying the game."
Yeah exactly, I mean it depends on how you view the game and what aspirations you have. Some people are perfectly happy to play like you say, and do things that strike them as cool, others want to maximise their ability to play the game.
Playing the game how you want is fine, but this is like a boxer saying he wants to work on his post victory dance and anyone who tries to have good cardio is lame. It's a game, and you should have fun, but the fundamentals are fundamental for a reason. Beating someone because you have better fundamentals isn't lame and doesn't mean you spend all your time practicing. That would imply that time spent is the same as skill for everyone, which just isn't true. Having better fundamentals is being better at the game in most cases.
Outsmarting people in the lower leagues tends to mean doing something very risky that you hope your opponent has never seen before or just plays poorly against. Doing so may be fun, and by all means, do it when you want to play around. Just don't treat it as though this is somehow more legitimate or more important than basic skills.
On April 08 2012 19:06 Sianos wrote: Yeah i agree with you that Macro is super important and that you have to be aware of that. But i want to direct this discussion more into that way:
When a low level player ask for help, the common answer is just macro better. It´s not a real goal that you can aim for. Wouldn´t it be a good idea to ask about his strategy and give him tips on that? I mean the way you build you production/upgrades etc has a lot to do with your strategy. When you allow your opponent to get to 3 Bases up, the order in which you Upgrade/ add aditional tech etc. changes because of another goal. Wouldn´t it be more helpfull instead of just saying Macro better?
I remember a post from a several months ago where a mod was encouraging higher level players to also comment on the choice of strategy despite macro faults in lower level players. The strategy advice could be helpful since the player may be trying to, say, build attacking units and tech off too few expansions or workers. Their macro could be ok (relatively speaking), but they chose to attack into, say, a siege line and died when it would have been better to sidestep the advantage and attack elsewhere. Saying this is far more helpful than "macro better", because honestly, who couldn't macro better?
To answer your original question, strategy isn't that important when you're in bronze/silver. My girlfriend is somewhere in "high bronze" and whenever I watch any of her games both players just do whatever they want. However, her poor macro is usually MUCH better than her opponents leading to a victory. I have a friend in low masters who made his way through platinum and diamond by maxing on roach/hydra as fast as possible and all-ining every zvz. His macro won him the games, but that hardly works anymore since his opponents macro a lot better than before.
I can't speak for gold league, but I've been in Platinum for a while and strategy is a lot more important than players in higher leagues think. I played a protoss recently who did an FFE and opted for some early void rays. He never attacked and I knew I had a window, so I ran in with ~160 supply of roach/hydra/ling at 12.5 minutes (slightly behind the benchmark of the Ret replay I've been copying). From the replay I saw that I had 70 supply more than my opponent. However, using terrain and some very well-placed forcefields the battle ended in their favor. I maxed after about 90 more seconds and attacked again. This time their victory was more decisive despite my HUGE supply lead. The toss then made a deathball and won the game, even though I macro'd WAY better than they did. To be fair, I usually win the games where I'm macroing well and have ridiculous supply leads, but close to half my games are against cheese and all-ins where defending properly is an iterative trial and error process in tandem with good scouting and macro.
Here's my point: pure macro won't always win the game for you in platinum. In fact, it's downright frustrating when you know you macro'd WAY better than your opponent and they win with a clever strategy you've never seen before or a blind hard counter. Strategy is a necessary component to success, but it is oftentimes difficult to learn. Therefore, it is wiser, especially for lower league players, to focus on macro mechanics while experience over time and through pro replays/casts will aid with strategy.
I wouldnt worry about winning, losing, or strategy. Just play the game how you enjoy playing it. Make your own build if you dont like the "pre made" ones.
being a low master's I've found that saying just macro or watch your timings is a great way to to help low leaguers that are having trouble with the basics when do I want workers..etc, etc. and just say A move your army and continue build more, but I think the biggest problem for early leaguers, is giving up that micro for just a second to macro up and continue micro'ing after, thats why I tell my gold league friends to true aggressive builds that take my multi-tasking, b/c I think that is really what is the problem at low levels doing more than 1 thing at the same time
You can improve your game in any way, improving tactics or improving your performance of those tactics. I don't think it's really possible to make useful statements about which to focus on is better in lower leagues. I think in general mechanics are much more important then strategy in this game regardless of the level you're at. Ofcourse there are ways to somewhat sidestep the tactical part of the game by simply doing an effective aggresive strat in each matchup and focussing on perfecting that. That's a very viable tactic for ladder up till high masters basically and one way you could argue that mechanics are more important then tactics, but in general i think both are worth improving with mechanics being the more important one.
It really does show how stupid strategies can win if you do them better than the other guy.
Nice! Only watched the first game so far, but it was a blast.
Hah yeah it's pretty funny! I actually just pulled off 2 base mass viking vs a Diamond Terran, and he got super super mad. He asked me if it was the new Terran play, and when I told him no, he said "well fuck it" and logged off. lol.
On April 11 2012 17:06 [F_]aths wrote: I think one of the issues here is that many players, especially lower league players like me, prefer to win with a clever strategy. If feels good to outsmart the opponent. Having good mechanics feels lame because those no-RL-kiddies which play all day long will beat you with mechanics while they don't apply any clever strategy at all. Or they just play standard, where is the fun in that?
Another issue probably are the countless guides and VODs which leave the impression that the right strategy will give one good chances to win. Those guides also lead to the impression that reading / watching guides improve the play.
Every time I embrace the macro and mechanic improvement advise, I improve my play, but too often I fell back to plan out clever strategies ... which gets crushed because he has more stuff.
But the issue with "macro better" or "work on your mechanics" is: "Okay, dude, you need to actually commit yourself to tiresome practice instead of enjoying the game."
people who just want to enjoy the game instead of practicing shouldn't complain about not getting better.
They will get better, but very slowly. I think many folks out their consider themselfves a gamer who plays the game, not someone who needs to show off a high ranking. If you tell them the truth about macro and mechanics, you shy them away since they realize they cannot left the building probe at the last pylon, they need to move it back to mining only to pull another probe five seconds later.
When I play a 2v2 with such guys, I need to carefully suggest small adjustments. If I demand that he devotes himself to practice on his mechanics, he would abandon the game right away.
There is a problem, though. As I know from my own experience, I judge my own understanding way to high while in fact I am very incompetent about the topic. The advise to improve mechanics and macro over planning out a good strategy sounded very strange for me, I just ignored it for a long time. It was only some weeks ago where I experienced myself how much a zerg can produce off three bases.
Tips and hints for beginners should be short and precise in my opinion. Day[9] talks an hour about mechanics – much too much for a real newbie.
On April 10 2012 21:18 Belial88 wrote:You don't have ZvP where toss goes FFE, has to scout if zerg takes third, then toss does sentry/zealot wg pressure, which zerg must get roaches and creep for, and then zerg gets map control to deny third, then toss gets third, then zerg gets mutas while toss has stronger army, and then zerg must keep toss in his base while he gets broodlords before the push. You will *never* see a game go like that in diamond.
Sorry, but I call bullshit. I've played games very like that in silver and gold*. More players would pay attention to your advice if you didn't make assumptions about what goes on in lower leagues. Even if your advice applies (which it does) it makes you look like you don't know what you're talking about.
What I'd rather you say is "Macro is one of the foundations of good play. Strategy is another, but as it happens you can get most of the benefit of good strategy by just plugging in one of these. You can't plug in good macro, so focus on that as far as learning goes."
If you wanted to go a step further you could say:
"When you're playing games at a low level it'll look like you're losing for a million different reasons. But a lot of the things you screw up, you wouldn't even get the chance to screw up if you had more stuff, sooner, and kept up production at all times instead of getting distracted. Concentrate on that, and you'll find that the laundry-list of things you think need to learn 'right now' shrinks to something much more manageable, because you'll only be losing to equally well-executed strategies that actually counter yours, rather than those and the ones your strategy should beat."
*For clarity: I'm not saying they were immaculate examples of the scenario you're talking about. What I'm trying to explain is that while anyone can look at a game and say "Well sure, if I had half again as much stuff at time X I'd have won" (which is what master-level players dicking around with mass stalkers/vikings looks like) that degree of improvement can seem unrealistic to players like me. It's not as intuitive to look at a game and say "If I'd had just a bit more stuff at time X, he'd have killed zero SCVs instead of five, he wouldn't have been able to drone as hard, and I wouldn't have needed to worry about a broodlord/ultra switch fifteen minutes later - thus I should forget about broodlord/ultra switches and work on getting a bit more stuff at time X."
I think one of the issues here is that many players, especially lower league players like me, prefer to win with a clever strategy. If feels good to outsmart the opponent. Having good mechanics feels lame because those no-RL-kiddies which play all day long will beat you with mechanics while they don't apply any clever strategy at all. Or they just play standard, where is the fun in that?
Another issue probably are the countless guides and VODs which leave the impression that the right strategy will give one good chances to win. Those guides also lead to the impression that reading / watching guides improve the play.
Every time I embrace the macro and mechanic improvement advise, I improve my play, but too often I fell back to plan out clever strategies ... which gets crushed because he has more stuff.
But the issue with "macro better" or "work on your mechanics" is: "Okay, dude, you need to actually commit yourself to tiresome practice instead of enjoying the game."
people who just want to enjoy the game instead of practicing shouldn't complain about not getting better.
They will get better, but very slowly. I think many folks out their consider themselfves a gamer who plays the game, not someone who needs to show off a high ranking. If you tell them the truth about macro and mechanics, you shy them away since they realize they cannot left the building probe at the last pylon, they need to move it back to mining only to pull another probe five seconds later.
When I play a 2v2 with such guys, I need to carefully suggest small adjustments. If I demand that he devotes himself to practice on his mechanics, he would abandon the game right away.
There is a problem, though. As I know from my own experience, I judge my own understanding way to high while in fact I am very incompetent about the topic. The advise to improve mechanics and macro over planning out a good strategy sounded very strange for me, I just ignored it for a long time. It was only some weeks ago where I experienced myself how much a zerg can produce off three bases.
Tips and hints for beginners should be short and precise in my opinion. Day[9] talks an hour about mechanics – much too much for a real newbie.
Well I don't think Day9 is aimed at beginners, more like intermediate+ There's other people that do intro tutorial videos that are both shorter and easier to follow for a newbie.
It really does show how stupid strategies can win if you do them better than the other guy.
Nice! Only watched the first game so far, but it was a blast.
Hah yeah it's pretty funny! I actually just pulled off 2 base mass viking vs a Diamond Terran, and he got super super mad. He asked me if it was the new Terran play, and when I told him no, he said "well fuck it" and logged off. lol.
On April 10 2012 21:18 Belial88 wrote: ^ No, it's the other way around.
Macro well, strategy will follow. There isn't much strategy to really understand, the game is pretty straightforward. At the lower levels, strategy doesn't exist because of the lack of macro. You don't have ZvP where toss goes FFE, has to scout if zerg takes third, then toss does sentry/zealot wg pressure, which zerg must get roaches and creep for, and then zerg gets map control to deny third, then toss gets third, then zerg gets mutas while toss has stronger army, and then zerg must keep toss in his base while he gets broodlords before the push. You will *never* see a game go like that in diamond. But you'll always see it in masters+. You may see mutas, or mass roach, or warp gate timing, but you won't see all the facets of a 'normal' PvZ in a lower league game.
Without proper macro on both sides, strategy doesn't exist. Macro is the basics of this game. So the problem, is that Diamond players aren't really considered playing the game. They don't have the basics down. So any 'strategy' ends up viable if you macro better, and the game isn't played at a 'competent' level where things really make sense.
There is no strategy in the lower leagues. You may think it is, but it's not. All you have in the lower leagues is basics of how the game may flow, like stalker/colossi, but that's more unit composition, not strategy. Strategy is ALL about timings, and the lower levels don't have the macro to make such timings exist.
Lol, wow. Are you Diamond? I am pretty sure you aren't (you're better, duh). Just because that stuff didn't happen when you were in Diamond doesn't mean that it doesn't happen now. I was Plat in season 6 (am easily Diamond), and that does happen. Lol, just lol. I have played multiple games where I go 3 hatch before gas against FFE, respond to WG pressure, mass roaches to delay/deny third while getting some tech (not always Broods). This was in Plat. Granted, it was during the ladder lock, and I was playing all Diamond players (but it was still just Diamond players).
I agree that macro is the most important, and it's pretty obvious that you can't execute a build or a 'standard' strategy if you don't have the macro to keep it clean, but seriously, don't make such emphatic statements about leagues you aren't in. Sure, maybe you are right, in which case I should be in masters, and some of my opponents in these games should also be in masters.
- - - - -
Also, all this talk about Destiny massing queens against people... Wasn't this forever ago? Every player, from Bronze to GM is better now than they were before. I would bet anything that a 'mid/high' Gold player from S6 would crush any Plat player from S1-2. So who cares about massing queens and getting to Plat or whatever back when Plat was even more garbage than it is now? It's 100% unsurprising that a pro can beat people of supremely low skill massing something like queens. I think it just shows how idiotic the opposing player was. Sure, his macro may have sucked, and that contributed to him losing, but seriously, he also had to have little to no brain to lose to that.
Strategy is important in all leagues (you can't be a complete moron), but the focus in the lower leagues should be more on trying to macro to the best of your ability, because just making a lot of *stuff* (pylons and probes and attacking units) can just eventually lead to rolling your opponents (usually regardless of how well you planned out your unit composition and strategy).
You need a strategy that is half decent. As long as it isn't something like mass corrupter, its fine. Hellion banshee vs Protoss? No problem at lower level you should win regardless of its weaknesses
I am in Silver, my experinece says strategies are very important on low leagues. I lost a fight with 200/200 pure roaches against 120 supply protoss at his natural at 13min yesterday. "macro better" seems not the best answer in low leagues.
On April 10 2012 21:18 Belial88 wrote: ^ No, it's the other way around.
Macro well, strategy will follow. There isn't much strategy to really understand, the game is pretty straightforward. At the lower levels, strategy doesn't exist because of the lack of macro. You don't have ZvP where toss goes FFE, has to scout if zerg takes third, then toss does sentry/zealot wg pressure, which zerg must get roaches and creep for, and then zerg gets map control to deny third, then toss gets third, then zerg gets mutas while toss has stronger army, and then zerg must keep toss in his base while he gets broodlords before the push. You will *never* see a game go like that in diamond. But you'll always see it in masters+. You may see mutas, or mass roach, or warp gate timing, but you won't see all the facets of a 'normal' PvZ in a lower league game.
Without proper macro on both sides, strategy doesn't exist. Macro is the basics of this game. So the problem, is that Diamond players aren't really considered playing the game. They don't have the basics down. So any 'strategy' ends up viable if you macro better, and the game isn't played at a 'competent' level where things really make sense.
There is no strategy in the lower leagues. You may think it is, but it's not. All you have in the lower leagues is basics of how the game may flow, like stalker/colossi, but that's more unit composition, not strategy. Strategy is ALL about timings, and the lower levels don't have the macro to make such timings exist.
Lol, wow. Are you Diamond? I am pretty sure you aren't (you're better, duh). Just because that stuff didn't happen when you were in Diamond doesn't mean that it doesn't happen now. I was Plat in season 6 (am easily Diamond), and that does happen. Lol, just lol. I have played multiple games where I go 3 hatch before gas against FFE, respond to WG pressure, mass roaches to delay/deny third while getting some tech (not always Broods). This was in Plat. Granted, it was during the ladder lock, and I was playing all Diamond players (but it was still just Diamond players).
I agree that macro is the most important, and it's pretty obvious that you can't execute a build or a 'standard' strategy if you don't have the macro to keep it clean, but seriously, don't make such emphatic statements about leagues you aren't in. Sure, maybe you are right, in which case I should be in masters, and some of my opponents in these games should also be in masters.
- - - - -
Also, all this talk about Destiny massing queens against people... Wasn't this forever ago? Every player, from Bronze to GM is better now than they were before. I would bet anything that a 'mid/high' Gold player from S6 would crush any Plat player from S1-2. So who cares about massing queens and getting to Plat or whatever back when Plat was even more garbage than it is now? It's 100% unsurprising that a pro can beat people of supremely low skill massing something like queens. I think it just shows how idiotic the opposing player was. Sure, his macro may have sucked, and that contributed to him losing, but seriously, he also had to have little to no brain to lose to that.
This, people seem to forget that skill level has risen in the past year(s). Bronze might still be terrible, but silver-plat has a totally different skill level, I guess it's a steeper curve which levels out around diamond/master, there's such a great skill gap between silver-plat, and people in gold now are way better then the plats(or sometimes even diamonds) from a year ago, knowing unit counters, compo's and build orders are first things that pop my mind. Macro is still most important, but it isn't that true to just macro properly = win. Well I guess untill high gold it still does matter.
NOTE: I was in diamond S1-2, just purely on macro and knowing basic build orders. If I would main zerg instead of Random again, I guess I would be in plat at the most right now.
The point is your idea of a strategy would be a joke to someone in diamond or above. In fact your strategy probably doesn;t go further than pylons + probes + aim for this unit comp ... and attack at this time.
Its still a strategy. The point is that your strategy is goign to be more about getting fundamentals right wheras you would hope a lot of what you call strategy is just everyday business for them.
Maybe if you scout at x tiem and see this then you know hes going something that will kill you unless you change what you are doing ... but you only get that from *having* a strategy in the fist place that you are repeating to build on.
The problems with timings is that as you get better they do change and come sooner and harder.
Actually the details of what you do with the medivac is part of tactics. Strategy is about large scale framework ideas, tactics are the small details of how you make a strategy work in given situations. Most peoples strategy is to either do an attack at x with y units or to macro and defend. But the details of abusing as sentry or blink stalkers are tactics.
On April 14 2012 01:12 Dingodile wrote: I am in Silver, my experinece says strategies are very important on low leagues. I lost a fight with 200/200 pure roaches against 120 supply protoss at his natural at 13min yesterday. "macro better" seems not the best answer in low leagues.
That has nothing to do with strategy (or macro really), unless the 120 army force was all air units or something. That was a horrendous, god awful, game losing engagement on your part, and you were likely missing some ups (roach speed, burrow, +1/+1, etc). You need MC-like control to even stand a chance when you are 80 supply down. As long as you have at least roach speed and you aren't charging up ramps into cannon lines and immortals while getting your forces cut in half, repeatedly, you can't lose that.
Also, if you are honestly maxing that early, you won't be in Silver for long, at all (if you can stay consistent). I'd be pretty shocked if a crappy platinum player could get to 200 supply with the proper upgrades within 13 minutes, even if their opener was never pressured.
On April 14 2012 01:12 Dingodile wrote: I am in Silver, my experinece says strategies are very important on low leagues. I lost a fight with 200/200 pure roaches against 120 supply protoss at his natural at 13min yesterday. "macro better" seems not the best answer in low leagues.
So what if you lose a fight of roaches vs a protoss army at his natural? If you're macroing, you'll stay maxed the whole engagement while his army is constantly shrinking, not because you're being cost-efficient, but because you're building roaches constantly while he needs to wait for warp-ins etc.
Bad engagements don't matter if you have good macro compared to someone with bad macro, unless it's a gameending engagement outside of your base.
On April 14 2012 01:12 Dingodile wrote: I am in Silver, my experinece says strategies are very important on low leagues. I lost a fight with 200/200 pure roaches against 120 supply protoss at his natural at 13min yesterday. "macro better" seems not the best answer in low leagues.
That has nothing to do with strategy (or macro really), unless the 120 army force was all air units or something. That was a horrendous, god awful, game losing engagement on your part, and you were likely missing some ups (roach speed, burrow, +1/+1, etc). You need MC-like control to even stand a chance when you are 80 supply down. As long as you have at least roach speed and you aren't charging up ramps into cannon lines and immortals while getting your forces cut in half, repeatedly, you can't lose that.
Also, if you are honestly maxing that early, you won't be in Silver for long, at all (if you can stay consistent). I'd be pretty shocked if a crappy platinum player could get to 200 supply with the proper upgrades within 13 minutes, even if their opener was never pressured.
I won that game later with other units. I had already speed roaches and +1 armor . Without his phoenix opener (killed ~5 overlord), I would have 200/200 a bit earlier. I had trouble to win this situation because he had already 4 collosus and 3 immortals at his natural.
@toberoth Zerg 200/200 should able to beat 120 protoss without reinforcement, or is it wrong?
On April 14 2012 01:12 Dingodile wrote: I am in Silver, my experinece says strategies are very important on low leagues. I lost a fight with 200/200 pure roaches against 120 supply protoss at his natural at 13min yesterday. "macro better" seems not the best answer in low leagues.
That has nothing to do with strategy (or macro really), unless the 120 army force was all air units or something. That was a horrendous, god awful, game losing engagement on your part, and you were likely missing some ups (roach speed, burrow, +1/+1, etc). You need MC-like control to even stand a chance when you are 80 supply down. As long as you have at least roach speed and you aren't charging up ramps into cannon lines and immortals while getting your forces cut in half, repeatedly, you can't lose that.
Also, if you are honestly maxing that early, you won't be in Silver for long, at all (if you can stay consistent). I'd be pretty shocked if a crappy platinum player could get to 200 supply with the proper upgrades within 13 minutes, even if their opener was never pressured.
I won that game later with other units. I had already speed roaches and +1 armor . Without his phoenix opener (killed ~5 overlord), I would have 200/200 a bit earlier. I had trouble to win this situation because he had already 4 collosus and 3 immortals at his natural.
This makes no sense... at all... lol. How is it that he has that many robo units on two bases and he opened stargate AND he was trying to expand to a third? His army can't hold, not even close. There is no way he will have any amount of sentries (or anything else) to soak/mitigate the damage. You just focus fire down the tech and win right then and there. Colossus are more or less glass cannons, and 3 immortals is a joke if its not backed up by sentries and some stalkers.
You definatley don't need strategy, but just macro isn't enough. I have a diamond terran friend who can max by 14 minutes against any race, and when he was struggling in the lower leagues, he would be maxed but right click his army past the other guy's army which was 50+ supply behind, and just lose all his stuff. I think a better word is mechanics, as it is not super nitty gritty stuff (marine splits, blink micro, burrowing banelings), but instead just your ability to do what you want to do. I'm a mid-high master terran and zerg, and when I first offraced as toss, I was low masters, because I had the mechanics from playing other races. I didn't know what I was doing. For example, I knew to forge expand against zerg, but from there i just added gates and a robo and took a third at random timings no matter what my opponent did, and just attacked when I felt like I was at an advantageous position.
Probably u know nothing about some weird silver strategies :D He built no one Stalker. In addition he had mass zealots and ~2 sentries. No 3rd. The biggest mistake was that i fought at his ramp.
strategy is 0% important at lower levels. on my bronze account, i was doing compositions determined by dice rolls. i would win with shit like sentry immortal phoenix, cause people don't expand or make stuff.
On April 14 2012 01:12 Dingodile wrote: I am in Silver, my experinece says strategies are very important on low leagues. I lost a fight with 200/200 pure roaches against 120 supply protoss at his natural at 13min yesterday. "macro better" seems not the best answer in low leagues.
I really need to see a replay to believe this. Macro better is the best answer in the lower leagues. Trying to give a low level player a great strategy is wrong because he might have a very hard time to pull it off.
On April 14 2012 01:12 Dingodile wrote: I am in Silver, my experinece says strategies are very important on low leagues. I lost a fight with 200/200 pure roaches against 120 supply protoss at his natural at 13min yesterday. "macro better" seems not the best answer in low leagues.
The hardest thing to believe about this post is that you managed to max out by 13mins and you claim to be in silver.
On April 14 2012 01:12 Dingodile wrote: I am in Silver, my experinece says strategies are very important on low leagues. I lost a fight with 200/200 pure roaches against 120 supply protoss at his natural at 13min yesterday. "macro better" seems not the best answer in low leagues.
The hardest thing to believe about this post is that you managed to max out by 13mins and you claim to be in silver.
On April 14 2012 01:12 Dingodile wrote: I am in Silver, my experinece says strategies are very important on low leagues. I lost a fight with 200/200 pure roaches against 120 supply protoss at his natural at 13min yesterday. "macro better" seems not the best answer in low leagues.
The hardest thing to believe about this post is that you managed to max out by 13mins and you claim to be in silver.
He prob meant 23 mins lol
Its posts like this that make it hard to take macrobots seriously. Maxing out with roaches by 13 minutes is NOT THAT HARD. HURR SILVER LEAGUE, MUST HAVE TAKEN 23 MINUTES.
>But your macro was really bad, look at that unused gas geyser! I know. And I still maxed on roaches in under 13 minutes. That's why your statement is massively wrong.
>But that was just medium AI Zerg, they can't apply proper pressure. I know, but a silver Toss FFE won't apply much pressure either. Less, in fact, to the point where I could have taken the 3rd faster and skipped the early roaches.
Monkeyballs25 <3 Thank you. Your own 2 questions und answer are perfect for people (who want help me) were never in silver My opponent applied lesser pressure at early (@7min) than AI hard.
On April 14 2012 01:12 Dingodile wrote: I am in Silver, my experinece says strategies are very important on low leagues. I lost a fight with 200/200 pure roaches against 120 supply protoss at his natural at 13min yesterday. "macro better" seems not the best answer in low leagues.
The hardest thing to believe about this post is that you managed to max out by 13mins and you claim to be in silver.
He prob meant 23 mins lol
Its posts like this that make it hard to take macrobots seriously. Maxing out with roaches by 13 minutes is NOT THAT HARD. HURR SILVER LEAGUE, MUST HAVE TAKEN 23 MINUTES.
>But your macro was really bad, look at that unused gas geyser! I know. And I still maxed on roaches in under 13 minutes. That's why your statement is massively wrong.
>But that was just medium AI Zerg, they can't apply proper pressure. I know, but a silver Toss FFE won't apply much pressure either. Less, in fact, to the point where I could have taken the 3rd faster and skipped the early roaches.
That's still like a minute if not a minute and a half later than you should be maxing...>_>
Just macro better and you'll win most of your games in silver, even if you still lose to weird unit compositions or cheese.
On April 14 2012 01:12 Dingodile wrote: I am in Silver, my experinece says strategies are very important on low leagues. I lost a fight with 200/200 pure roaches against 120 supply protoss at his natural at 13min yesterday. "macro better" seems not the best answer in low leagues.
The hardest thing to believe about this post is that you managed to max out by 13mins and you claim to be in silver.
He prob meant 23 mins lol
Its posts like this that make it hard to take macrobots seriously. Maxing out with roaches by 13 minutes is NOT THAT HARD. HURR SILVER LEAGUE, MUST HAVE TAKEN 23 MINUTES.
>But your macro was really bad, look at that unused gas geyser! I know. And I still maxed on roaches in under 13 minutes. That's why your statement is massively wrong.
>But that was just medium AI Zerg, they can't apply proper pressure. I know, but a silver Toss FFE won't apply much pressure either. Less, in fact, to the point where I could have taken the 3rd faster and skipped the early roaches.
I watched that replay.
You just made zero units and mass droned -.-' when someone says work on your macro it doesn't mean blindly make drones and have one roach with zero zerglings at the 5:45min mark. You even skipped the essential scouting lings.
Heh, nice, I successfully predicted the first two replies. @Megabuster Of course its sub-optimal roach maxing. I was just pointing out that the 23 minute figure is a laughably high overestimate.
@Forbidden17 Its fairly common against Protoss not to need any units that early. Granted if they do a FFE there's a higher chance of a pylon block or a cannon at your natural that would make going hatch first less viable. http://drop.sc/159242 So there's a pool first variant with a later expand, scouting lings, +1 ranged and armour, roachspeed and burrow by 13:30ish.
Lol, wow. Are you Diamond? I am pretty sure you aren't (you're better, duh). Just because that stuff didn't happen when you were in Diamond doesn't mean that it doesn't happen now. I was Plat in season 6 (am easily Diamond), and that does happen. Lol, just lol. I have played multiple games where I go 3 hatch before gas against FFE, respond to WG pressure, mass roaches to delay/deny third while getting some tech (not always Broods). This was in Plat. Granted, it was during the ladder lock, and I was playing all Diamond players (but it was still just Diamond players).
Rep please. I'm sure there are games where toss does 2 base pressure, zerg holds, then pushes back with roaches, but I can't imagine it's a game where Toss goes sentry/zealot wg pressure, zerg gets roaches, then toss tries to take third, and then zerg gets mutas to keep toss in base, etc, with macro behind it all. I don't think the strategy you see in higher level games would exist in platinum or diamond because of the lack of macro. Toss can't get those zealot/sentry out to hit right before roaches can be out or that zerg gets roaches out at the exact moment to hold it, or that zerg gets map control and denies third with roaches, and then eventually toss gets third while zerg gets mutas, and then delays p long enough to get bl while P tries to get a big army to push with, etc.
Strategy is important in all leagues (you can't be a complete moron),
Well, you can be a 'moron' strategically and win in the lower leagues with pure macro, that's the whole point here. Obviously, no one is saying just go pure ling and focus on pure macro - what we are saying is play your game, but focus on improving your macro as you progress. You don't need to be re-watching replays wondering about this or that strat, you need to be rewatching your replays focusing on your macro.
The problem is almost never strategy. Never. You will see it in every [H]elp me thread, that the macro was the reason the person lost, not strategy, about 90% of the time. It doesn't take much to realize "hey, i should make roach/ling to defend toss 2 base pressure, then take third, tech up, deny third, then try to get bl in time". But it does take a lot to know how to macro right - it's hard as fuck to do! But it's not like anyone here is saying "dont worry about getting roaches to defend pushes, or getting broodlords or upgrades later in the game, just macro bro!".
I am in Silver, my experinece says strategies are very important on low leagues. I lost a fight with 200/200 pure roaches against 120 supply protoss at his natural at 13min yesterday. "macro better" seems not the best answer in low leagues.
I can 99% guarantee, that macro was your problem.
I am 100% positive that a zerg who macros well, can easily crush a 2 base toss with pure roach. 100%.
I am pretty sure, not 100%, but I'm pretty sure, if you macro'd reasonably better, you would have won with your 200/200 roaches.
Please, post a replay. Because this thread is full of people saying the exact same thing you are. You, are the exact person the OP is directed toward. People who think that strategy is more important than it really is, and that macro isn't 100% the reason you are lower level. I guarantee I can pick apart very, very basic problems in your macro, and that is why you lost.
If you don't believe me, I'd be more than willing to play the person you played, in a PvZ, and I will go pure roach, and I will tell him I am going pure roach, and he can do the same strat.
I mean, we all saw Zeerax vs Mondragon. Mondragon won through pure macro against the voidray/colossi play he was doing. The reason the strategy of deathball play is so bad, is because of the basic macro behind it - you just won't have enough shit to hold.
Zerg 200/200 should able to beat 120 protoss without reinforcement, or is it wrong?
I would say it completely is dependent on what toss is doing, and their macro... It's not hard for zerg to get 200/200 roaches ~12-13 minute. There's a reason that kyrix style mass 3 base roach doesn't just always win against toss.
A good toss should be able to survive 200/200 roaches at 13 minute. What makes the game though, is how good both the z and p are, and their macro, and the outcome of such an attack. There are plenty of reasons why doing mass roach like that is bad - your tech is late, you have too few mutas/infestors, and then toss pushes back with ~150 supply and kills you because all you have are roaches against sentry/immortal, possibly colossi.
Its posts like this that make it hard to take macrobots seriously. Maxing out with roaches by 13 minutes is NOT THAT HARD. HURR SILVER LEAGUE, MUST HAVE TAKEN 23 MINUTES.
Yea, it's not hard to reach max by 13 minute. What's hard, is having all the tech behind it, and enough drones behind it, and getting everything else out in a timely manner. I don't think it's hard at all for a silver to max out at 13 minutes in a game against AI. I don't really see it happening in a real game, and a silver definitely wont max out by 13 against a good toss.
Macro better does not mean make more drones. It means get your shit out earlier, bigger, harder.
@monkeyballs: I don't doubt you can max out in under 13 minutes. What I doubt, is that you can macro well at all. Are you avoiding supply blocks/early/multiple supply made too early and banking over 300 minerals or gas in the first 10 minutes? I doubt it.
Getting maxed under 13, easy. Can you hit 70+ in a real game by the 8 minute mark (and eventually winning) with lair, speed, evo, warren, queens as necessary, is the real question.
Lol, wow. Are you Diamond? I am pretty sure you aren't (you're better, duh). Just because that stuff didn't happen when you were in Diamond doesn't mean that it doesn't happen now. I was Plat in season 6 (am easily Diamond), and that does happen. Lol, just lol. I have played multiple games where I go 3 hatch before gas against FFE, respond to WG pressure, mass roaches to delay/deny third while getting some tech (not always Broods). This was in Plat. Granted, it was during the ladder lock, and I was playing all Diamond players (but it was still just Diamond players).
Rep please. I'm sure there are games where toss does 2 base pressure, zerg holds, then pushes back with roaches, but I can't imagine it's a game where Toss goes sentry/zealot wg pressure, zerg gets roaches, then toss tries to take third, and then zerg gets mutas to keep toss in base, etc, with macro behind it all. I don't think the strategy you see in higher level games would exist in platinum or diamond because of the lack of macro. Toss can't get those zealot/sentry out to hit right before roaches can be out or that zerg gets roaches out at the exact moment to hold it, or that zerg gets map control and denies third with roaches, and then eventually toss gets third while zerg gets mutas, and then delays p long enough to get bl while P tries to get a big army to push with, etc.
Strategy is important in all leagues (you can't be a complete moron),
Well, you can be a 'moron' strategically and win in the lower leagues with pure macro, that's the whole point here. Obviously, no one is saying just go pure ling and focus on pure macro - what we are saying is play your game, but focus on improving your macro as you progress. You don't need to be re-watching replays wondering about this or that strat, you need to be rewatching your replays focusing on your macro.
The problem is almost never strategy. Never. You will see it in every [H]elp me thread, that the macro was the reason the person lost, not strategy, about 90% of the time. It doesn't take much to realize "hey, i should make roach/ling to defend toss 2 base pressure, then take third, tech up, deny third, then try to get bl in time". But it does take a lot to know how to macro right - it's hard as fuck to do! But it's not like anyone here is saying "dont worry about getting roaches to defend pushes, or getting broodlords or upgrades later in the game, just macro bro!".
I am in Silver, my experinece says strategies are very important on low leagues. I lost a fight with 200/200 pure roaches against 120 supply protoss at his natural at 13min yesterday. "macro better" seems not the best answer in low leagues.
I can 99% guarantee, that macro was your problem.
I am 100% positive that a zerg who macros well, can easily crush a 2 base toss with pure roach. 100%.
I am pretty sure, not 100%, but I'm pretty sure, if you macro'd reasonably better, you would have won with your 200/200 roaches.
Please, post a replay. Because this thread is full of people saying the exact same thing you are. You, are the exact person the OP is directed toward. People who think that strategy is more important than it really is, and that macro isn't 100% the reason you are lower level. I guarantee I can pick apart very, very basic problems in your macro, and that is why you lost.
If you don't believe me, I'd be more than willing to play the person you played, in a PvZ, and I will go pure roach, and I will tell him I am going pure roach, and he can do the same strat.
I mean, we all saw Zeerax vs Mondragon. Mondragon won through pure macro against the voidray/colossi play he was doing. The reason the strategy of deathball play is so bad, is because of the basic macro behind it - you just won't have enough shit to hold.
Zerg 200/200 should able to beat 120 protoss without reinforcement, or is it wrong?
I would say it completely is dependent on what toss is doing, and their macro... It's not hard for zerg to get 200/200 roaches ~12-13 minute. There's a reason that kyrix style mass 3 base roach doesn't just always win against toss.
A good toss should be able to survive 200/200 roaches at 13 minute. What makes the game though, is how good both the z and p are, and their macro, and the outcome of such an attack. There are plenty of reasons why doing mass roach like that is bad - your tech is late, you have too few mutas/infestors, and then toss pushes back with ~150 supply and kills you because all you have are roaches against sentry/immortal, possibly colossi.
Its posts like this that make it hard to take macrobots seriously. Maxing out with roaches by 13 minutes is NOT THAT HARD. HURR SILVER LEAGUE, MUST HAVE TAKEN 23 MINUTES.
Yea, it's not hard to reach max by 13 minute. What's hard, is having all the tech behind it, and enough drones behind it, and getting everything else out in a timely manner. I don't think it's hard at all for a silver to max out at 13 minutes in a game against AI. I don't really see it happening in a real game, and a silver definitely wont max out by 13 against a good toss.
Macro better does not mean make more drones. It means get your shit out earlier, bigger, harder.
@monkeyballs: I don't doubt you can max out in under 13 minutes. What I doubt, is that you can macro well at all. Are you avoiding supply blocks/early/multiple supply made too early and banking over 300 minerals or gas in the first 10 minutes? I doubt it.
Getting maxed under 13, easy. Can you hit 70+ in a real game by the 8 minute mark (and eventually winning) with lair, speed, evo, warren, queens as necessary, is the real question.
Then you understand my point. Maxing out in under 13 minutes does not require good macro. Which is why it was stupid for that other guy to question a silver leaguer's ability to do so.
I'll answer your second question with some replays, provided you tell me what you think that level of macro(70+ supply by 8 minutes and still winning the game) would land someone in.
^ No that's not the point. Maxing out in 13 minutes as zerg, with roaches, isn't impressive. You might as well say "see im silver and i can hit 200/200 supply after 40 minutes". There's nothing that's really 'impressive', since it's just considered competent macro, but it's extremely unlikely that a bronze-plat can hit 70+ supply against computer at the 8 minute mark. Even if they could, they could just never, ever do it in a real game.
The other guy just didn't realize how easy it is to max in 13 minutes. Charon posted a replay a few pages back saying he could, and 'proving' that low level can macro well in a vacuum. I watched the replay, and it was actually counter-proof of his argument, showing that a gold CANT macro well ina vacuum - he had tons of supply blocks, early overlords, making 5+ overlords at once (i believe after 18 supply, he was either blocked or made way more overlords than his production could justify EVERY time).
But his point is basically right - that even in a vacuum, a low level player can't macro well. A better example than 13 minute max, is 8 minute 70+ (which i never hit in real games on ladder, and im mid-masters). I doubt a plat could ever do that in a vacuum, but even if he could, he would never do that in a real game, never come close to it.
People who are below diamond, just cannot macro 'competently' (as in not macro well, but just avoid major issues like supply blocks, and banking gas/minerals over 300) in the first 10 minutes. I mean, I don't even think mid-masters can do that in an actual game (but probably in a vacuum). If you are below masters, you have a long way to go before strategy. You have to macro 'competently'.
As long as you avoid supply blocks, not make more overlords than your production can justify (ie no 2 overlords at once at 20 supply), and not bank over 300 minerals/gas in the first 10 minutes, you should be able to get to low masters fairly easily, with basic game knowledge (derp, hellions beat lings, derp, don't run into sieged tanks, derp, dont fly mutas into marines on accident) and strategy/scouting (opponent is still on 1 base, he's all-inning, my opponent is on 2 base continue as normal, my opponent took 4 gas, make spores).
If you can actually macro well, as in make overlords on time, don't bank more than 100 minerals, never be late on injects, you should be able to get very, very well into masters, if not high masters, along with some basic game understanding that you DEFINITELY will have accrued from having practiced your macro and just watching enough games (hey mutas, good unit).
I'll answer your second question with some replays, provided you tell me what you think that level of macro(70+ supply by 8 minutes and still winning the game) would land someone in.
A real game where you hit 70+ supply by 8 minute, and have the normal stuff (lair or speed started, evo chamber unless you see no gas at toss base or get a really good scout off and know you don't need it, roach warren, 3 queens). No play like you are ignoring your opponent to 'prove' something obviously, just a natural game where you deal with toss sending out a zealot as scout/pressure (if he doesn't do that...), and you have to figure out what he's doing and scout, et c.
I mean, I'm mid-masters, and I don't think I ever hit that. So if you can pull off a game where you scout, deal with that pressure, and hit 70+ and respond appropriately to what's going on and have the right stuff and at least don't lose to something ridiculous like never making units or whatever, I'd say you are probably way past platinum, at the very least... like masters.
strategy is important if you want to comprehend why you won or lost any given game. macro becomes easier to understand once you start to think about how you actually want to win games. players are too focused on building up armies and playing "macro games" when they should just learn to attack and see how it goes.
when i started playing, i always got attacked at my front door. my games would be won or lost based on whether or not i held the attack well enough simply because my opponent was literally right in front of my base every time i had an engagement. i got so frustrated when i lost because i felt like i should have won since i macro'd my best and had tech and upgrades and yadda yadda yadda. if i had just engaged even halfway to my opponent's base, i would have increased my options as well as my map awareness.
so to answer your question, strategy is very very important. even if its the most basic of plans, its better than just sitting around and waiting for your opponent to decide how the games gonna go.
edit: i like to compare it to chess. in chess, both players have their entire armies from square one. you don't have to think about macro management, you have to think about strategy. in starcraft, while its true that you must be competent enough to build up your army at an equal rate or greater than your opponent can, you should not disregard the fundamental aspect of using your army in a strategy game.
^ I guarantee 99% of games lost below high masters is because of macro (barring huge blunders like running mutas over marines or not responding to an opponent who didn't expand).
If you are below diamond, please, post a replay showing how (besides major blunders or not scouting obvious things like DTs or he didn't expand) you lost not because of strategy.
I wrote a guide about holding 6 pools, and someone recently posting say he lost when going 14 pool. He was lower level, I watched the replay, and he actually lost purely because of macro.
Strategy is not important. Macro is. Any bronze player on TL will know enough strategy that they can get by. I really, really don't think any bronze is losing because of strategy...
so to answer your question, strategy is very very important. even if its the most basic of plans, its better than just sitting around and waiting for your opponent to decide how the games gonna go.
Sitting around and macro'ing is just as much pressure as an attack. When you expand, drone up, et cetera, you are forcing your opponent to make certain choices or he loses. He doesn't have many options, whether you macro, or all-in.
People are making these weird straw man analogies that make no sense. You are arguing ridiculous things, like saying "yea, but if you focus on macro, then you are going to go pure zergling against hellions! If you focus on macro, then his worker rush will kill you! If you focus on macro, then your opponent can do whatever he wants!" No. If you macro, you force the opponent to either macro too (game stays even), or desperately attack, to which, if you macro well and scout just basically (he expanded, didn't expand), you will hold, and come out ahead.
There's a reason why masters players can beat any bronze-plat (and most diamond, if not all) by just making 1 unit and doing any kind of strat.
edit: i like to compare it to chess. in chess, both players have their entire armies from square one. you don't have to think about macro management, you have to think about strategy. in starcraft, while its true that you must be competent enough to build up your army at an equal rate or greater than your opponent can, you should not disregard the fundamental aspect of using your army in a strategy game.
Starcraft is definitely like chess. But let me fix that for you:
Starcraft is like chess. But people who are below high masters, are like people playing chess who don't know how all the pieces move yet.
You can't get into strategy until you get the basics down. No one is denying that macro'ing well is hard as fuck, and takes years to get the basics down. Similar to chess, really - you don't get into strategy in chess until you learn the basics of the game, like how pieces interact, how to set things up, the openers...
You can get to upper master leauge just by makro and mikro, you need absolutely no strategy. I started at silver, and got up to master's by just building units and ccs
There are some standard compositions and ways to get there for every race. You'll always be best off sticking to those. There's not much strategy in my TvZ for instance, I open FE-->reactor hellions-->cloakedB with inbase fast 3rd, but past that it's just building marine medivac tanks and attacking when I think it'll work. If I see Hive tech I prepare for that. It's pretty simple, doesn't go much thinking into it.
Edit. Realized I didn't really answer the question. Do you need to utilize a mainstream strategy to maintain gold league? Hardly. You can freestyle it all the way to masters if you feel like it, but eventually you'll be limited by people executing relatively tight timing attacks.
I was in a bronze and just got into silver by doing two things: having a build that holds most early 1base allins and by concentrating on macro alone. Since I can now survive early all-ins reliably, and I am in a lower league, I am going to put the 'mid masters by macro alone' theory to test. What I am going to do is to use the same build over and over, and make sure i (1) constantly produce SCVs until ~70, (2) constantly produce army and new production buildings, (3) keep minerals low, (4) make expos when possible. If I lose, I check if (1-4) were done properly. If they were, and I still lose, I will post a replay here. I will a-move my army and only micro minimally (tanks into siege mode etcetera). I will put zero attention to army composition or strategy.
So far, I am winning. But we'll see. A possibility is that I will never learn to do (1-4), but that's another story...
Yeah 70 supply by 8 minutes is well out of my league(get it?). I was in silver as zerg in season 3, and gold zerg in season 4. Had between 45-60 food at 8:00, with the average closer to 55. I actually went through a point where I never lost to a Protoss FFE, simply because I had worked out that they can't actually do anything prior to 8 minutes or so so I could tunnelvision my basebuilding. The Toss that beat me mostly used 2/3 gate expands, because it was harder to tell on scouting gateways first whether they were onebasing or not early on, and I'd get the dronecount wrong. The food count itself was the same or higher.
On April 14 2012 19:14 aggu wrote: I was in a bronze and just got into silver by doing two things: having a build that holds most early 1base allins and by concentrating on macro alone. Since I can now survive early all-ins reliably, and I am in a lower league, I am going to put the 'mid masters by macro alone' theory to test. What I am going to do is to use the same build over and over, and make sure i (1) constantly produce SCVs until ~70, (2) constantly produce army and new production buildings, (3) keep minerals low, (4) make expos when possible. If I lose, I check if (1-4) were done properly. If they were, and I still lose, I will post a replay here. I will a-move my army and only micro minimally (tanks into siege mode etcetera). I will put zero attention to army composition or strategy.
So far, I am winning. But we'll see. A possibility is that I will never learn to do (1-4), but that's another story...
Glad to see you got out of bronze already.
Let me know how it goes. I think practicing macro alone will take you to platinum-low diamond.
Then some strategy/game sense would be required to get to Masters.
Again for you bronzers out there, try copying this T build like he did. Maybe you'll get out of bronze within a week too.
The other guy just didn't realize how easy it is to max in 13 minutes. Charon posted a replay a few pages back saying he could, and 'proving' that low level can macro well in a vacuum. I watched the replay, and it was actually counter-proof of his argument, showing that a gold CANT macro well ina vacuum - he had tons of supply blocks, early overlords, making 5+ overlords at once (i believe after 18 supply, he was either blocked or made way more overlords than his production could justify EVERY time).
If you refer to my replay at least stay to the facts.
There was no supplyblock till 86 and the 5 OL occured after the 9 min mark. Most of your critics was idle larvae and my overlordtiming being off. So if you want to make a point feel free but dont bend "evidence" so it suits your argument. Even after your analysis of my replay I watched pro replays and guess what: The same things happen to them all the time. Idle Larvae while having 400 minerals, to many overlords at certain points, even supplyblocks. While I see the mistakes i made, you guys still keep saying "You just need GM level macro and you can play what you want till plat!" Guess what: Ppl in Bronze dont have GM level macro, they probably will never have. So they need to play something that makes at least a tiny bit of sense.
But thanks to your advise I really got better, having more army, more income and more upgrades earlier. Still i lose to ppl with less army, less income and less upgrades (3/3 Ling/Infestor/Ultra against 2/1 Marine/Tank/Medivac, 2 Base vs 4 Base 80 Workers to 46) I didnt lose because my macro was so much worse than his. I lost because of overlord placement, losing units stupidly and engaging in unvavorable positions.
Dictionary explanation of strategy: The ability to acomplish goals with the current available resources (Dutch english translated)
::EDIT:: you cannot agree or disagree on a word that is explained in a dictionary....
Your dictionary is broken. Google says:
strat·e·gy noun /ˈstratəjē/ strategies, plural
1. A plan of action or policy designed to achieve a major or overall aim - time to develop a coherent economic strategy - shifts in marketing strategy
2. The art of planning and directing overall military operations and movements in a war or battle
3. A plan for such military operations and movements - nonprovocative defense strategies
2. The art of planning and directing overall military operations and movements in a war or battle
wait so google even agrees with a REAL dictionary and you say it's broken? how can a real dictionary be broken? go ahead and learn language from the interwebz, it's gonna be very helpfull in your job later on if it's not flipping burgers.
The art of planning and directing overall military operations A.K.A. doing something with what you have NOW, not thinking about how to get whatever you want in 2 minutes. Strategists such as Napoleon weren't bothered with recruiting new soldiers, he was responsible to put those soldiers to good use. 7Gameplan is how do i get new soldiers. Strategy is how do i use my current set of soliders to benefit me the most
Gameplan as you describe it is part of strategy in this game ... your argument is straw man. Getting units is part of this game and so it will be involved in strategies for the game. You will even have a strategic keyboard setup fo the game ... if you don't then you should.
I love how in previous posts its all you dont need strategy
just use mechanics
then some guy says i did look at this you say he should of maxed 1:30 earlier ..... and that you missed the essential scouting lings
That sounds suspiciously like strategy to me.
the problem is that the game has got to the point where everyones mechanics has to be tip top because for strategies to be really useful all that stuff has to be very consistent - otherwise you are just not playing optimally. Its a bad strategy.
But call it mechanics, macro whatever it is still part of your strategy.
You can sum up all actions in a game as being part of strategy and tactics at the same time. Eg microing marines against banelings is a tactic, but knowledge of that tactic and anticipating its use is part of strategy. Just because you have defined strategy to suddenly not include this stuff jsut says you have a narrow idea of what a strategy is and are probably missing a ton of things to analyse as result.
Getting tired of all this not maxing out by 12-13 mins bs - yes im in silver (Admittedly at the top) and do it regularly. Its getting really annoying constantly reading the same old uninformed bullshit. Macroing to 200 food in 12 mins takes like 40 apm at most probably more like 30 average (you build 3 hatches, 1 pool, warren and 4 extractors, all drones an few lings then roaches with overlords ... not exactly taxing - a terran 5 rax that then transitions into expand + something mechy takes far more effort in a 4v4 for instance). I am playing silver and gold opponents. They suck too so they cant harass and macro so its easy to do. If they harass lots then i probably have more stuff provided i defend properly and win if they dont i max out and win ... unless they have a lot of immortals (or hide a third) it seems. The reason why i lose is all the games where they dont FFE, or they fake it and then go mass gateway and i have no defences.
IE my strategy is broken as i haven't figured out various scouting timings to figure out when i shuold stop droning for a while. Its really obvious why i am where i am for me.
You stop seeing 1 basing play once you leave bronze.
Its really NOT HARD to do even in a game so stop the condescending bullshit that you clearly are uninformed about. Plat cant max out? Rofl if that's true ill be in diamond in a week or 2. What is hard for lower league players is that until you know its possible you cannot do it. Because i am always playing other turds that are just as turdy as me I dont get to learn quickly by getting slaughtered by strong opponents. In fact this max out build at 12 mins is fairly new its not been around for a year - although i remember idra doing some very roach heavy play vs p a while back but i wouldnt of noticed timings then)
you do get that players in silver play 30 game a season right? And they can still max out by 12-13 mins (if they know they can)? The problem is that they know nothing else so have HUGE holes in their builds that cause them to lose to any build slightly different to what their is built to beat. IE they build 20 lings jsut so they know they wont die ....
Strategy : 1. a (1) : The science and art of employing the political, economic, psychological and military forces of a nation or group of nations to afford the maximum support to adopted policies in peace or war (2) : The science and art of military command exercised to meet the enemy in combat under advantageous conditions
1. b : a variety of or instance of the use of strategy
2. a : a careful plan or method : a clever stratagem
2. b : the art of devising or employing plans or stratagems toward a goal
3. an adaptation or complex of adaptations (as of behavior, metabolism, or structure that serves or appears to serve an important function in achieving evolutionary success <foraging strategies of insects>
Grandmasters and Masters players Globally : 29 501 Players or 4.2% of all players.
All leagues below Masters players Globally : 682 736 Players or 95.8% of all players.
First seeing those statistics. I am amazed at how some people can assert that any players below Masters only need to work on their Macro. Think about it, that means that almost 96% of all players only need to work on only ONE thing to get better ?!?
Second lets all agree that within 20 games of practice even a totally new player can max out his supply with Marines/Zerglings/Zealots when playing alone (no AI, no Opponent) fairly quickly (like by the 12 min mark, no I haven't tested it so I just picked a number out of thin air, I may be wrong but the point is you can max out on simple units very quickly when you do not have to worry about Strategy). So simple macro can`t be all that complicated, keeping up with your Macro while attacking or defending is a great deal more complicated and requires good Multitasking skills and, yes you guessed it, a good strategy.
Third Starcraft 2 is classified as Real Time STRATEGY game.
Now I agree with all of you that a Bronze leaguer's Macro will not ever be close to being as good as a Masters leaguer's Macro however I will speculate that one Bronze leaguer's Macro is comparable to an other Bronze leaguer's Macro.
I concede the point that ONE way to win the game vs. your opponent of the same league is to have a better Macro then him. However an OTHER way to win the game vs. your opponent is to have a better strategy then him.
I will further speculate that improving both your Macro skills and learning new and better implementation of strategies will ultimately help you improve faster. Allow me to explain further because I can already foresee all the objections to my last statement. If you work on improving both your strategy and your macro, ultimately you will tax your multitasking ability to the max. Improvement at first will be slow because well you are trying to multi-task which in and of itself is a very hard skill. However since you are practicing that skill your Macro and Strategy implementation will improve as you are improving at multitasking, the first signs of improvement may be slow but eventually (maybe by the time you get to Platinum) improvement will be faster because you can multi task better and can now proceed to learn harder more complex strategies that require stronger multitasking skills. On the other hand if a player only works on one aspect of his play (either Macro or Strategy) then that player will eventually reach a ceiling in his game and never be able to progress further until he improves the other aspect that he has ignored. Strategy and Macro are to pillars of improvement in Starcraft 2, a third pillar is Micro.
Should one try to improve his macro? YES ALWAYS!! Is it correct to point out to a fellow player that his macro is laking at time XYZ? OF COURSE!!!! But also explain why his Macro failed at that point (you were attacking at 3 places, while Microing the main army and as you did that you Macro slipped considerably, maybe you should practice that particular type of engagement so you can keep up your Macro).
The same can be said about strategic advise the difference is that when you give strategic advise please keep in mind the league of the player. Take for example this simple strategic advice that can be given to a Zerg player facing a Terran player.
If you see a lot of marines get a lot of banelings.
This strategic advice may seem like common sense to a player In Gold league however to a player in Bronze league that maybe has played the game a grand total of 1 week, that may be INVALUABLE advice. On the other hand to a zerg player facing a Meching Terran player :
When you attack him, pull his attention at 3 or 4 diffrent places at once, attack his fourth with a ling run-by, his main with mutalisk's, engage his main army with Roach/Brood Lord/Infesters out of position when he tries to deal with the ling run-by and the mutas.
That is (probably incorrect) advice which is next to incomprehensible to a Bronze player, no matter how long he has played the game, since there is no way for him to do all of that at once however a Platinum and above player can implement such a strategy with varying degrees of success. So the lower the league you are playing in, the simpler the strategy you are trying to implement should be.
In short, yes in my opinion Strategy is very important no matter what league you are in, what that strategy will look like and how complex that strategy is will change depending on your league.
In My Opinion the "All lower leagues have horrible Macro" attitude is down right prejudice and should be discouraged at all times. There are multiple pillars to Starcraft2 and Macro is but one of them. Improving all aspects of your game is a much better approach then simply improving one aspect. On one day, practice your Macro, the next practice your strategy and on the third practice your Micro, one the fourth day, start over. Only through constance practice of all relevant aspects of the game will you continually improve and never hit a ceiling.
Sorry for the wall of text but I wanted to make my point of vue clear.
I've made it to high masters on multiple names (boosting/leveling names) with sub par macro, so you really can't say macro is everything. I do it through unit control, and multitasking. Handling 2-3 drops at once while pushing can stress even superior macro players. I drop player after player that macro WAAAAAAAAAAY better than me, but because I make the most of my engagements, and abuse Terrain
Granted, macro is a very large reason many people, myself included, lose games. And by bad macro, I mean for the level of people I play. I draw a lot of high masters, and low grandmasters routinely, and if you look at macro, I'm ahead...why? Because of uber aggressive builds and unit control to force mistakes out of better players.
Strategy is too broad of a term, too, by the way.
I think knowing how to FE into 2 base aggression (3 for Z) can be a great stepping stone for making someone a better player. You learn to hold all ins off 2 base early, and then learn to macro properly to do a nice 2 base push. From there, is when you learn the rest of the real 'macro' on 3+ base with amount of production, depot timings, upgrades etc.
Macro is very, very important. So important that it's importance is overemphasized. You can lose with perfect macro easily in lower leagues. You always have to have some clue about whats going on no matter who you are facing. The best macro in the world will not stop an unexpected 4 gate, which is something you will encounter pretty often in all leagues.
Many players develop a very good build that they rely on most of the time to win in lower leagues. They perform that one build almost perfectly, but it's all they know how to do. If you don't see builds like this coming; the ones people have honed game after game, you will lose to them, even if you are the superior player.
I think that in lower league the difference in mechanics can be so huge that it is the only things which matters. Mass gling with good macro and micro can be a poor controlled Colossus.
I have changed the color of the quote below in the following way. As I understand the terms STRATEGY,MACRO and MULTITASKING
On April 14 2012 17:42 Belial88 wrote: ^ No that's not the point. Maxing out in 13 minutes as zerg, with roaches, isn't impressive. You might as well say "see im silver and i can hit 200/200 supply after 40 minutes". There's nothing that's really 'impressive', since it's just considered competent macro, but it's extremely unlikely that a bronze-plat can hit 70+ supply against computer at the 8 minute mark. Even if they could, they could just never, ever do it in a real game.
The other guy just didn't realize how easy it is to max in 13 minutes. Charon posted a replay a few pages back saying he could, and 'proving' that low level can macro well in a vacuum. I watched the replay, and it was actually counter-proof of his argument, showing that a gold CANT macro well ina vacuum - he had tons of supply blocks, early overlords, making 5+ overlords at once (i believe after 18 supply, he was either blocked or made way more overlords than his production could justify EVERY time).
But his point is basically right - that even in a vacuum, a low level player can't macro well. A better example than 13 minute max, is 8 minute 70+ (which i never hit in real games on ladder, and im mid-masters). I doubt a plat could ever do that in a vacuum, but even if he could, he would never do that in a real game, never come close to it.
People who are below diamond, just cannot macro 'competently' (as in not macro well, but just avoid major issues like supply blocks, and banking gas/minerals over 300) in the first 10 minutes. I mean, I don't even think mid-masters can do that in an actual game (but probably in a vacuum). If you are below masters, you have a long way to go before strategy. You have to macro 'competently'.
As long as you avoid supply blocks, not make more overlords than your production can justify (ie no 2 overlords at once at 20 supply), and not bank over 300 minerals/gas in the first 10 minutes, you should be able to get to low masters fairly easily, with basic game knowledge (derp, hellions beat lings, derp, don't run into sieged tanks, derp, dont fly mutas into marines on accident) and strategy/scouting (opponent is still on 1 base, he's all-inning, my opponent is on 2 base continue as normal, my opponent took 4 gas, make spores).
If you can actually macro well, as in make overlords on time, don't bank more than 100 minerals, never be late on injects, you should be able to get very, very well into masters, if not high masters, along with some basic game understanding that you DEFINITELY will have accrued from having practiced your macro and just watching enough games (hey mutas, good unit).
I'll answer your second question with some replays, provided you tell me what you think that level of macro(70+ supply by 8 minutes and still winning the game) would land someone in.
A real game where you hit 70+ supply by 8 minute, and have the normal stuff (lair or speed started, evo chamber unless you see no gas at toss base or get a really good scout off and know you don't need it, roach warren, 3 queens). No play like you are ignoring your opponent to 'prove' something obviously, just a natural game where you deal with toss sending out a zealot as scout/pressure (if he doesn't do that...), and you have to figure out what he's doing and scout, et c.
I mean, I'm mid-masters, and I don't think I ever hit that. So if you can pull off a game where you scout, deal with that pressure, and hit 70+ and respond appropriately to what's going on and have the right stuff and at least don't lose to something ridiculous like never making units or whatever, I'd say you are probably way past platinum, at the very least... like masters.
I'm not saying your points are wrong. However being mid-masters there are a great number of things you take for granted, unit counters and such. For lower leagues, the lower you go the more important and illusive those things you take for granted are. Much of those things can be classified under Strategy, a good number can also be classified has simply having good Multi-tasking skills. Please do not mix MACRO, which you incidentally define fairly well, with all the other things that you take for granted. Knowing how to scout, how to process that information and how to use it is at the very least Tactics, more likely that is Strategy, since you had planned probably since the before the game ever started to scout at that particular time in order to learn or try to learn what your opponent is trying to accomplish. Please re-evaluate what things you take for granted when you are giving advise to a lower league player, try to remember what you knew and what you did not know when you were there but do not insult us with "Just improve your Macro and you will win, guaranteed!" Your own talking points include Multitasking skills and Strategy.
Strategy is VERY important. A player in a lower league needs to pick a strategy that they can actually execute. If they're going for, I dunno, triple-pronged drop harass, then they're gonna lose every time because they can't actually do that. It's nothing about "counter this, counter that", it's about finding something that works and running with it.
The other guy just didn't realize how easy it is to max in 13 minutes. Charon posted a replay a few pages back saying he could, and 'proving' that low level can macro well in a vacuum. I watched the replay, and it was actually counter-proof of his argument, showing that a gold CANT macro well ina vacuum - he had tons of supply blocks, early overlords, making 5+ overlords at once (i believe after 18 supply, he was either blocked or made way more overlords than his production could justify EVERY time).
If you refer to my replay at least stay to the facts.
There was no supplyblock till 86 and the 5 OL occured after the 9 min mark. Most of your critics was idle larvae and my overlordtiming being off. So if you want to make a point feel free but dont bend "evidence" so it suits your argument. Even after your analysis of my replay I watched pro replays and guess what: The same things happen to them all the time. Idle Larvae while having 400 minerals, to many overlords at certain points, even supplyblocks. While I see the mistakes i made, you guys still keep saying "You just need GM level macro and you can play what you want till plat!" Guess what: Ppl in Bronze dont have GM level macro, they probably will never have. So they need to play something that makes at least a tiny bit of sense.
But thanks to your advise I really got better, having more army, more income and more upgrades earlier. Still i lose to ppl with less army, less income and less upgrades (3/3 Ling/Infestor/Ultra against 2/1 Marine/Tank/Medivac, 2 Base vs 4 Base 80 Workers to 46) I didnt lose because my macro was so much worse than his. I lost because of overlord placement, losing units stupidly and engaging in unvavorable positions.
I didn't say anything about your macro not being good before the 9 minute mark. And secondly, actually yea, your macro was atrocious before the 9 minute mark. Your early gas, not mining gas for a long time, late lair due to this, not making queens on time, completely late injects right off the bat, and not maynarding workers at all.
If you reread the post, you will see I was quite harsh about your play in the first 9 minutes. There is no bending going on, anyone can watch the replay and see there are obvious mistakes in the first 9 minutes.
Pro players macro much better. Sometimes there is a momentary supply block at 50 supply, when the overlord gets shot down, or they get supply blocked. But these things almost only ever happen when they are micro'ing or dealing with pressure, it doesn't happen before the 7 minute mark, and they make up for it with their micro. You cannot compare your games with a pros - they are dealing with opponents who macro well, and on top of it, are micro'ing in a way that a low level player could never pull off (at least, not without sac'cing their macro, which is something no one can really do unless you are pro, this is something that actually takes skill to pull off).
Also, you being on 4 base ultra/infestor 3/3 against 2 base rine/tank sounds like horrible macro to me, really. It's also a bit of lack of understanding the game, but really, macro is the bigger problem. You should never lose to a terran stuck on 2 base short of some all-in. So, ignoring the problem that why in the world would you ever go hive tech against pure rine/tank, or why would you go hive tech against someone on just 2 bases (2 bases = all-in, if he doesnt take a third there is no way for them to play out the game without getting rolled by mass ling/bane/muta or ling/infestor), if you had macro'd better, you could of won. You would've taken your fourth, realized he isn't taking a third, and then mass units and just completely break him.
What you say really makes no sense, and I get it, low level players don't have game understanding, and thus why they are bronze, or whatever. But I'd argue that macro was the bigger problem. You should have had ling/infestor out, saw he didn't take a third, and massed enough to have straight up killed him.
You didn't macro well enough, so you couldn't break the terran on 2 base when your macro advantage should have materialized. You going into ultras or hive tech against someone on 2 bases is just bad decision making and flawed game knowledge, which I get is what you are arguing is more important, but really, you should be able to afford ultralisk den and all the hive tech in the world if the opponent is stuck on 2 base and still win. But lack of injects and macro and droning made it so you couldn't remax quick enough, and trade with the opponent well, even if you did make the mistake of going hive against 2 base terran.
In My Opinion the "All lower leagues have horrible Macro" attitude is down right prejudice and should be discouraged at all times. There are multiple pillars to Starcraft2 and Macro is but one of them. Improving all aspects of your game is a much better approach then simply improving one aspect. On one day, practice your Macro, the next practice your strategy and on the third practice your Micro, one the fourth day, start over. Only through constance practice of all relevant aspects of the game will you continually improve and never hit a ceiling.
You are wrong, and the OP is directed to 'deluded' people exactly like you. You think your macro is fine, or that other things are more important. But we are telling you they aren't, and that your macro is actually shit, and that you are only crippling your ability to improve because you refuse to acknowledge this.
We aren't saying strategy isn't important. What we are saying is that, unless you are masters (or according to people who know how to play, ie high masters+), you play at such a low, low, low level that you need to focus on your macro, because at diamond and below, people just play so horribly that you can easily get to masters if you just focus on basic macro (avoid supply blocks, constantly make units) over anything else.
And we aren't saying it's easy to do that either. It's hard to make workers, and make supply, when someone sends zealot pressure to you, or a drop, or you need to know if the opponent expanded or not and he has marines patrolling his base to deny scouts.
But please, if you are a lower level player, provide a replay of a game you lost, 8+ minutes long, that you lose, that you think isn't because of macro. So far, only one person has taken this challenge. It wasn't a surprise to me that his macro was actually horrible, even in the first 9 minutes, and his replay was proof that a low level player actually can't macro.
On April 15 2012 06:18 Lazzi wrote: I think that in lower league the difference in mechanics can be so huge that it is the only things which matters. Mass gling with good macro and micro can be a poor controlled Colossus.
completely wrong. If you play a good build in lower leagues, your multitasking/micro can be weak as hell, you will get a shitload of wins. Your macro should be well enough to build things at the right time, but that shouldn't be too hard. Strategy is often times the biggest weakness of lower league players, so there is plenty of room to capitalyze on that!
I'm not saying your points are wrong. However being mid-masters there are a great number of things you take for granted, unit counters and such. For lower leagues, the lower you go the more important and illusive those things you take for granted are. Much of those things can be classified under Strategy, a good number can also be classified has simply having good Multi-tasking skills. Please do not mix MACRO, which you incidentally define fairly well, with all the other things that you take for granted. Knowing how to scout, how to process that information and how to use it is at the very least Tactics, more likely that is Strategy, since you had planned probably since the before the game ever started to scout at that particular time in order to learn or try to learn what your opponent is trying to accomplish. Please re-evaluate what things you take for granted when you are giving advise to a lower league player, try to remember what you knew and what you did not know when you were there but do not insult us with "Just improve your Macro and you will win, guaranteed!" Your own talking points include Multitasking skills and Strategy.
Good Day!
I was being a little broad, just to be politically correct and nice. Do the points in that post and you'll hit masters overnight. 'Macro competently', and you should hit masters in a few months, and be guaranteed at least diamond - as in never get supply blocked in first 10 minutes, and always be producing units (as in no gap more than 2 seconds of no worker production, or unit production if purposely cutting workers).
Strategy is VERY important. A player in a lower league needs to pick a strategy that they can actually execute. If they're going for, I dunno, triple-pronged drop harass, then they're gonna lose every time because they can't actually do that. It's nothing about "counter this, counter that", it's about finding something that works and running with it.
No way.
A player in the lower leagues needs to macro well. Your example doesn't even make sense. So a low level player will lose every time because he's macro'ing well, and making 3 medivacs and marines/marauders with stim? Like, if that triple drop fails, they lose the game? That makes zero, zero sense. A low level player can do a build that gets 3 medivacs and bio with stim out, and if they macro well, it will take them very, very far. If they can pull off the drops without actually hurting themselves more by slipping on their macro, go for it, but the priority is macro.
It's just low level players saying strategy is important over and over, and arguing against points that make no sense. I guarantee any masters terran can do a build that makes 3 medivacs and bio, and beat any bronze-platinum (probably diamond too), without having to do a single drop.
A player in the lower leagues should pick a standard middle of the road strategy, but this is a one time decision and once they have done that they can pretty much ignore strategy and just focus on executing that strategy from a macro perspective.
I mean if you just go marine/tank vs zerg say, there's not a lot that can go wrong. You can basically ignore marine splitting if your macro is good and you have extra tanks and extra marines.
As long as you don't simply a-move you should win, and even if you do a-move you still might
I don´t think strategy is as important in the lower leagues. However people are sooner starting to use them, without even understanding the game or without a follow-up. For example is a silver league player able to execute a clean 5:45 4gate in PvP and wins a lot of games with it, although he has no clue how the game or the match-up works. His enemies might face a lot of certain strategies they have to deal with, and start using them on their own, just to not get crushed in every game.
The thing is, a player of a higher caliber is able to adjust his playstyle to strategies thrown at him, while lower league players are most likely not able to do something against for example a 2-base colossus timing in PvT. This is often caused by the lack of general knowledge in the leagues, the players don´t know standard things, like going 3rax into factory into starport for Medivacs and Vikings against Protoss. So they start cheesing and allinning (what a gross word), because otherwise they can´t deal with it properly and just lose to the overthoguht strategies of other players.
All in all strategie shouldn´t be as important as it is, the game should rely more on the understanding of it and not of strategies someone picked up during a stream or on teamliquid.
What i am taking from this is that high-level-pro-sc2-players would also criticize non-pros focusing on anything but macro (including probably everyone in this thread).
Belial, you don't seem to be responding to anything I'm posting. Maybe what I'm saying isn't worth answering - I don't know.
What I'd like you to explain to me is why my experience runs counter to your advice.
I play Zerg, and for months I tried to 'focus on macro' in silver league, without success. I don't just mean 'without winning more', I mean without winning more or succeeding in macroing much better or feeling like I was getting anywhere. One day, after watching the 'Intimate ZvX' Stoic VoDs, the penny dropped: my efforts were fruitless because my in-game decisions were terrible. I was attacking where and when I shouldn't and not attacking where and when I should. I wasn't transitioning at the right times or into the right tech. I wasn't droning at the right times or making units at the right times. I wasn't reading my opponent correctly.
In short, I was constantly throwing away hard-won early advantages and letting my opponents back into the game. Despite berating myself endlessly between games for not macroing during fights, I was unable to tear my attention away because I always had that 'THIS IS IT, THE GAME IS BEING WON OR LOST HERE' feeling.
Virtually overnight I made it into Gold, and I started to find it much easier to keep my mind on my macro.
... sorry, back in a minute my computer is freaking out.
Another point is that a lot of the "strategies" that people are coming to forums to ask for help for aren't figured out for their skill level. For example how do you hold a 4 gate when doing a 1 rax expo? The answer is to repair your bunker and have more marines. You CAN'T use the 1 rax expand "strategy" without being able to have enough marines to hold a 4 gate. Another example is holding a 1/1/1 as toss. The pros cut every corner to barely hold with perfect macro to eek out an advantage. If you're stealing "strats" from pro players, you won't be able to execute them with sub-omptimal macro.
I play Zerg, and for months I tried to 'focus on macro' in silver league, without success. I don't just mean 'without winning more', I mean without winning more or succeeding in macroing much better or feeling like I was getting anywhere. One day, after watching the 'Intimate ZvX' Stoic VoDs, the penny dropped: my efforts were fruitless because my in-game decisions were terrible. I was attacking where and when I shouldn't and not attacking where and when I should. I wasn't transitioning at the right times or into the right tech. I wasn't droning at the right times or making units at the right times. I wasn't reading my opponent correctly.
I don't know exactly what you are saying. I can imagine it, but it doesn't make much sense. Like what, you would attack with your army 'when you shouldn't'? But that makes no sense. Like, why would you ever have more than 4-10 units before 60 supply? You shouldn't be making so many units. Thus, bad macro.
You really have to give an example, because what you say doesn't make any sense. I guess you are saying you would all-in all the time when you had the macro lead, and throw away that lead, and then lose?
You just have to provide replays. No low leaguer has yet done this besides charon. Please, provide your gold level replays that are so strategic. I guarantee we can pick it apart, and show you huge macro flaws that, if fixed, would get you diamond. Just basic stuff too.
It's not strategy to not all-in when you have the macro lead over the opponent too, by the way. It's just... I don't know. But you didn't learn 'strategy' by realizing "Hey, I shouldn't mass units and a-move when i have the lead". Although I really can't imagine that if you didn't macro better, even with your all-ins, you wouldn't have won more. I'm positive your macro is (relatively) atrocious if you are in silver/gold.
I play with GMs, and all the time, they tell me, Belial, you have the shittiest fucking macro. Why do you never make drones? Why do you always have idle larva? I tell them.... I don't know what the fuck you are talking about, I am macroing fine, I am only making drones. I rewatch the replays, and I constantly have 2 second gaps where I don't make drones, especially around 40+ supply, and at 50+ supply I tend to miss injects. But I sooooo focus on my macro, and my macro is way ahead of most people at my points level in masters. But I still have the shittiest macro. So if you are diamond, or gold, there is just no way you are going to have better macro than someone in masters.
On April 15 2012 06:38 Acritter wrote: Strategy is VERY important. A player in a lower league needs to pick a strategy that they can actually execute. If they're going for, I dunno, triple-pronged drop harass, then they're gonna lose every time because they can't actually do that. It's nothing about "counter this, counter that", it's about finding something that works and running with it.
Like belial already said, this makes no sense. The reason a low league player can't do triple-pronged drop harass is because if they try to do that, their macro implodes because they can't multitask like that. The idea to do triple drop harass is strategy... deciding NOT to do that because you're focusing on macro, is ignoring strategy and focusing on macro. You want to use the compositions and tactics which puts the least strain on you, because you're busy macroing. IF you're macroing well, it doesn't matter what strategy you use, be it triple pronged harass (amazing if you can actually macro well while doing it) or mass marine.
But please, if you are a lower level player, provide a replay of a game you lost, 8+ minutes long, that you lose, that you think isn't because of macro. So far, only one person has taken this challenge. It wasn't a surprise to me that his macro was actually horrible, even in the first 9 minutes, and his replay was proof that a low level player actually can't macro.
I'll find you a replay in which Macro was not the deciding factor for my lost. I'm not saying that I'll have Masters level Macro, I'm saying that I'll look through my replays and find a few choice replays where my macro was either Equal, or Slightly Better, then my opponent's. Assuming my Macro is on par with my opponent or even better then my opponent and I still loose the game, can we still blame my Horrible-Non-Master-Level-Macro as the cause of loosing the game?!? But give me a few days and I'll find a few replays for you so you can have fun, prove that I don't have Master level Macro and blame my lost on that.
However when I do upload these replays I expect that you will look not for just the one obvious solution of "Well hey, if you even had a better Macro then your opponent then you already have you would have won anyway" but for other solutions like bad decisions on my part, like missed opportunities that I really should have capitalized on and such. Remember I'm not looking for Master's level Macro I'm looking for any edge that would have allowed me to win in that particular situation. Tell me if you don't plan to do this since there will be no reason for me to upload the replays. We all know that a Gold leaguer can not have Master's Level Macro that is simply impossible but he can be expected to have Equal Macro to or Slightly better Macro then his opponent that has been chosen for him or her using Blizzard's Auto Match system. Agreed?
I play with GMs, and all the time, they tell me, Belial, you have the shittiest fucking macro. Why do you never make drones? Why do you always have idle larva? I tell them.... I don't know what the fuck you are talking about, I am macroing fine, I am only making drones. I rewatch the replays, and I constantly have 2 second gaps where I don't make drones, especially around 40+ supply, and at 50+ supply I tend to miss injects. But I sooooo focus on my macro, and my macro is way ahead of most people at my points level in masters. But I still have the shittiest macro. So if you are diamond, or gold, there is just no way you are going to have better macro than someone in masters.
So all lower leaguers in your opinion should never ever ever ever concentrate on anything else then building units, keeping your money low, improving your income rate in order to get better? That would result in a lot of marines standing around waiting to be slaughtered in my opinion. You say so yourself, when you play a player whom is out of your league (as in above you on the ladder) he beats you macro wise, well big surprise, I have a feeling that this is pretty much standard for most players.
Keep in mind I'm not trying to prove that Macro is not a way to improve yourself, I'm trying to prove that Macro is not the ONLY way to improve yourself. Macro is good and should ALWAYS BE WORKED ON, but there are other aspects to the game that if ignored will prove to be a problem later on namely Strategy.
I'm not asking for replays where you macro better than your opponent. I'm asking for replays where macro was not a deciding factor in a longer form game, or a game where you lost and you think macro would not have made a difference (stupid blunders aside of course).
I'm saying, bronze to plat (really, diamond too, and most masters probably), if you just macro better, you would do much better. Not macro well, just macro competently. The argument here is that bronze-plat play with such bad macro, that if you just focused on macro'ing competently, you would be higher ranked overnight.
Sure, I'll look over the game without bias. If you lost because of a blunder, that's something we already said that is an obvious mistake. If you lost because of a strategy, well, I'd like to see that. But if you are bronze-plat, I can guarantee if you just macro stronger, you would win. People in bronze-plat just don't macro 'competently'. Most would argue mid-masters can't macro worth shit either. As in, they don't just have bad macro, they can't macro at all.
So all lower leaguers in your opinion should never ever ever ever concentrate on anything else then building units, keeping your money low, improving your income rate in order to get better? That would result in a lot of marines standing around waiting to be slaughtered in my opinion. You say so yourself, when you play a player whom is out of your league (as in above you on the ladder) he beats you macro wise, well big surprise, I have a feeling that this is pretty much standard for most players.
Yes...
No, it wouldn't result in marines standing around to be slaughtered. Another straw man argument. If you constantly make workers, you will have steadily increasing income. In order for you to keep your money below 400 at all times, you need to constantly spend it. As your worker count increases, your rate of income increases. The only way you can spend your money, is teching up. If you macro well, eventually you will have no choice but to go mass bl/infestor, or archon/colossi/mothership, or ghost/tank/viking/thor or marauder/ghost/medivac/viking or ultra/bane/infestor.
Secondly, any bronze level player will know enough to get medivacs with their marines, or get infestor with broodlords, et cetera.
Third.... you can stomp anyone in bronze with pure marine, pure zergling, pure any unit, because people just play so badly there. I would not consider bronze 'low level', I would consider it people who don't know the controls of the game yet, 10 year olds, bots, and handicapped.
Keep in mind I'm not trying to prove that Macro is not a way to improve yourself, I'm trying to prove that Macro is not the ONLY way to improve yourself. Macro is good and should ALWAYS BE WORKED ON, but there are other aspects to the game that if ignored will prove to be a problem later on namely Strategy.
Every masters+ player, a blue, high masters, pro players, people who know what they are talking about, are saying you are wrong. I guess we're all assholes, and you just know better though, right? Can you tell me anything else that us masters+ players are ignorant on?
I agree with you completely. But the problem here, is that bronze to diamond players, don't play this game 'competently'. How can you incorporate strategy and timings when macro is so off, that timings don't exist? How can you play this game, if you don't even know the rules of it? That's the point we are making here. Learn the rules of the game - macro - then get on the strategy.
And it's hard as fuck to macro, and I'm a mid-masters player, who is well aware that I can't macro worth shit. So I'm not trying to say it's easy, and I'm not trying to say diamonds are idiots.
I'll concede, had I not supply blocked myself I could have had maybe 2 or 3 more units during that first attack and it would have probably made a diffrence. HOWEVER, overall my Macro was similar to his, my Income was similar to his, my money was mostly low (not always but most of the time), besides a few supply blocks and a few times where I over-compensated for being supply blocked I am fairly proud of my current Macro skills, they of course need work, HARD WORK however for my current league and especially in this current game I believe that they were adequate and with that same level of Macro I probably could have won the game.
Where I lost the game (strategy wise) was simply not scouting the fact that he was going HT, not responding to the High Templars by Getting Ghosts, and not spreading my units at the rally point in order to avoid them all being stormed at once. These are, probably in your opinion stupid mistakes, but this is low level strategies that I need to learn and implement, the cool thing is I know most of my problems, I get supply block and I over compensate for being supply blocked, I probably missed a round of SCVs or 2, I did not scout well enough to see what was comming, and I did not respond to what was there. These are both Macro and Strategy Mistakes, fixing one of them may actually allow me to win in a similar situation in the future, but I will eventually encounter the other problem soon again, so why not fix both problems?!?!
Every masters+ player, a blue, high masters, pro players, people who know what they are talking about, are saying you are wrong. I guess we're all assholes, and you just know better though, right? Can you tell me anything else that us masters+ players are ignorant on?
Well, its not that surprising that the top 4.5% which is to say, Masters and GrandMasters (please see earlier post for link to SC2Ranks.com for stats), look down at the other 95.5% of all players, find the simplest mistake they can find, proclaim that "Geez guys, fix that mistake and you'll be up here with us looking down uppon the rest." I'd actually hate the game is it was that simple. Its the complexity of all aspects of the game, Macro, Micro, Strategy, Reactions and Game knowledge that make this game fun. It's a complex game, a game that Masters and GrandMasters have worked very hard, on all aspects of it, to know what they know today. Us lower leaguers need to have that same dedication and hard work on all aspects of the game to get up there with you guys. All I ask is that when you try to help a lower leaguer, analyse all aspects of his game play, not just "Does he keep up his Macro" and suggest ways to fix each of the problems seen. Then help that player with the problem he wants to try and fix, I garantee you, eventually when he has figured out how best to use the units at his disposal and still looses the game, he will fix the Macro thing if he chooses not to work on that at first.
I believe I have explained my point, wrong though some people may think it is, fairly well. I strongly believe in it and well, what is the worst that can happen? I stay in the so called Lower Leagues for as long as I play the game? well why not, at least I'm playing against other individuals whom are reasonably similar to me in Skills. All I'm really missing is a shiny picture on my SC2 screen that has a star on it, be it blue or gold.
Thank-you, Good Luck, Have Fun and most of all, go and have Good Games
PS : For the record, I do not believe that any player, no matter what league he or she is in, is an asshole for merely expressing an opinion that I may or may not agree with, quite the contrary, discussion and healthy argument are great and just improve the game experience. But I really do dislike BMers, I mean what possible purpose could that serve?!?
I play Zerg, and for months I tried to 'focus on macro' in silver league, without success. I don't just mean 'without winning more', I mean without winning more or succeeding in macroing much better or feeling like I was getting anywhere. One day, after watching the 'Intimate ZvX' Stoic VoDs, the penny dropped: my efforts were fruitless because my in-game decisions were terrible. I was attacking where and when I shouldn't and not attacking where and when I should. I wasn't transitioning at the right times or into the right tech. I wasn't droning at the right times or making units at the right times. I wasn't reading my opponent correctly.
I don't know exactly what you are saying. I can imagine it, but it doesn't make much sense. Like what, you would attack with your army 'when you shouldn't'? But that makes no sense. Like, why would you ever have more than 4-10 units before 60 supply? You shouldn't be making so many units. Thus, bad macro.
Ok, now we're getting somewhere. You're sweeping far too much under the rug of 'bad macro', as well as making weird assumptions about what 'must' be happening in order to support your opinion.
You just have to provide replays. No low leaguer has yet done this besides charon. Please, provide your gold level replays that are so strategic. I guarantee we can pick it apart, and show you huge macro flaws that, if fixed, would get you diamond. Just basic stuff too.
You're still not listening. Yes, you will unquestionably find large macro flaws in my play. Yes, if my macro were dramatically better I would be higher up the ladder. But I just got done telling you that improving my macro required improving my understanding, game-sense and decision-making, and that improving them raised me a league virtually overnight after months of attempting to 'focus on macro' in silver with no in-depth understanding of what I was macroing towards in any given situation.
I am now in a place where 'macroing better' actually has some meaning, because I can look at what my opponent is doing and have an idea what I'll need to have when, what his likely response will be if the first exchange goes my way, and hence how I'll be wanting to follow-up. Without that understanding - without strategy - I'm just randomly building random shit in an attempt to 'keep my money low'. Maybe that works for races with stalkers or marines and a fixed worker production rate; it sure as shit wasn't working for me as Zerg.
It's not strategy to not all-in when you have the macro lead over the opponent too, by the way. It's just... I don't know.
It's just... strategy. Getting from where you are now to where you want to be with the resources at your disposal - which requires an understanding of 'where you are now' that includes your opponent, what they can or are likely to do next, and so forth. People keep telling you you're taking too much for granted and you don't listen.
But you didn't learn 'strategy' by realizing "Hey, I shouldn't mass units and a-move when i have the lead". Although I really can't imagine that if you didn't macro better, even with your all-ins, you wouldn't have won more. I'm positive your macro is (relatively) atrocious if you are in silver/gold.
And you're right: it is. But it's now improving more quickly because I'm thinking about a bigger picture that I understand more clearly. I spend less time sitting on minerals, gas and larvae wondering what I should spend them on. I more often instinctively look away from battles to macro, because I now 'get' that the battle is a comma rather than a full stop.
I play with GMs, and all the time, they tell me, Belial, you have the shittiest fucking macro. Why do you never make drones? Why do you always have idle larva? I tell them.... I don't know what the fuck you are talking about, I am macroing fine, I am only making drones. I rewatch the replays, and I constantly have 2 second gaps where I don't make drones, especially around 40+ supply, and at 50+ supply I tend to miss injects. But I sooooo focus on my macro, and my macro is way ahead of most people at my points level in masters. But I still have the shittiest macro. So if you are diamond, or gold, there is just no way you are going to have better macro than someone in masters.
This is irrelevant (apart from the bit about you having macro 'way ahead of most people at your points level' which actually harms your argument). I'm not claiming to have good macro, let alone better macro than anyone else. I'm saying one thing:
I found that I could not improve my macro in a meaningful way without a better understanding of my goals in any given situation. It simply wasn't happening. Whether that's just me, just Zerg, or what, I don't know. In any case, it's a fact that trying to obey the 'macro first and foremost' mantra with insufficient knowledge of strategy kept me in silver for a good six months. It wasn't the right way for me to try to improve. Now I'm working on my macro, and it's paying off.
If you really, really want me to subject you to replays, I will (when I get to the machine they're on). However, they would be misleading because you would mostly see my macro improving, but not appreciate why it was improving. And yes, you would be able to point out a million things I'm still doing terribly, and if you mostly fixed them I'm sure I would get to diamond. That's certainly my plan
^ why are you going 11 rax? so econ hurt a bit there...
- Dude you are missing workers already. 2:20 to 2:30, you didn't make a worker.
- You make orbital on 14. Isn't it supposed to be on 15? maybe this is because of yoru super fast rax. Why in the world did you make a super fast rax, and not do anything with it? It's like a defensive 6 pool...
- Your depot was a bit early. You sit below 18 supply for a long time, due to addon production and OC. Make that depot later...
- 3 rax is really all-in, but, hey, strat doesn't matter, so moving on.
- 160 gas already... you need to make your gas later. you take gas too quickly, obviously.
- whoa you make your 26 depot wayyyy too early. Now you are at 21/35. Dude. You are killing yourself here. why not go 4 rax instead of early depot? Maybe you could have made more scvs and done the same build, without having to cut workers. Your hurting yourself...
- 200 gas before 25 supply. dude. this is horrible. take it later, get an expansion in there instead.
- Late on mules...
- why are you scanning if you went all-in with 3 rax? You only need to scan if you went like 1 rax expand or cc first or gasless expand. You also could have just sent an SCV or a marine to scout, and seen no expo, and that would have told you all you need to know.
- so you are already hurting your econ by a lot now. scanning when going all-in. making depots way too early. you should be pushing by now.
- Missing scvs at 25... you don't make one from 5:05 to 5:29. Wow. then, you make another depot! when you are at 21/35!
What in the world is going on here!?!?! YOU ARE AT 26/43!!!! You SCAN WHEN YOU ARE GOING ALL-in!!! wtf!
- So. your all-in fails because you scan, don't make workers, and make depots so damn early, and make your rax and gas way too early (11/12....when you just sit in your base).
- hoooly shit. 26/43, you start another depot. why not make a rax or OC with that money?
- 5:45 to 5:51, no scv.
- 5:45 to 6:01 you don't use your reactor rax.... so you are already behind a couple marines already.
- 200 gas, come on. 6:00. pull off workers from gas, and get 2 more rax, or an expansion, or whatever you want man.
- No marauder for 10 seconds
- no marine for 5 seconds.
- 6:20 to 6:43, no marines. So you have over 40 seconds of no marine production now, so you are at least behind 4 marines. You are constantly not making marauders either, you on average have only 1 marauder in production instead of 2.
- why do you have 2 tech labs? why didnt you get stim? you had the moeny for it. You are always above 200/200.
- no marine 7:05 to 7:13
- 6:55 to 7:01 no 2nd marauder (which has been happening all game long, just 1 marauder instead of 2 muarauders in production)
- 7:46 to 9:37, no scv.
- 7:35 to 9:30, you make about 6 marines, when you could have easily made about 12. single marine only, not making any marines for long stretches...
- supply blocked at 58...
- 8:20 to 8:56, no marauders in production...
- it's 8:00, you didn't make an scv for at least 30 seconds...
- wow you a-move, but you can't macro behind it. dude, you don't need to watch the battle.
and if you had more units, hit a bit earlier, and hit harder with stim or something and macro'd just half better dude, you would've won the game right then and there. But not only do you not win the game there, you fail to macro behind an a-move.
Seriously. You could have won this game if you just a-moved and focused on your macro instead. Because you ddin't micro at all anyways, so why are you bothering watching the engagement? you shouldve just a-moved through the minimap and focused on your macro. It'd be nice if you could do both, but you can't. which is okay. but if you focused on your macro, you would have won. so lets look at some more trouble.
would have easily won that fight if you macro'd better... im not even saying make your depots on time, go 13 rax instead of all-innish 11 rax, 16 gas instead of ridiculous 12 gas, and MULE better. I'm saying, hey bro, make workers, make marines and marauders. You fail to do that. Utterly. If you didn't, you would have won this game. If you had actually macrod well, well god damn, you would just be the beast of gold league. In fact, you would be diamond overnight!
No need to watch rest of replay. You open with an all-in, fail at it because of horrendous macro (okay, so you avoid supply blocks until 58, but it is not better at all that you were at 26/43 supply.... that's just as bad as being supply blocked every time). But some more fail...
- supply blocked at 70/70 for a long ass time.
- Over 700 minerals and gas at 12:00.
- 86/86... for a long time...
- 102/102
Okay. So it's obvious you have this horrible all-in build that you do every time. You do it horribly, but hey, you do it, I can tell. Know how I can tell? Because you dont get supply blocked until 58 supply. You make depots just over and over and way too early. Which is about as bad as being supply blocked, but I can tell you make those depots on a certain schedule, you make 1 and then make another when it's done, even though you have only 1 rax, which is making an add-on, and a CC, whcih is turning into an OC. So whatever. repetition there. But as soon as your all-in fails, you have no idea what to do, and you get supply blocked every single time.
Then you go "oh shit, i need to make 2 depots". then you get depot every time. But every time, you are supply blocked...
- You a-move in the battle, but you dont make annnything again... come on. You should have doubled yoru army size during the attack that you halved his.
- Normally when you get map control or crush a push, you tech up. It's basic macro. I mean, if you want to spend that 500/500 you have, you NEED to tech up. You dont make any starports, for medivacs OR vikings, or get ghost tech. And so you bank money.
But you really aren't banking that much, because you are at FORTY (holy fucking shit!!!!) workers at 15 minutes into the game, when you should have at least 60. Wowwwww only 40 workers, you are sooooo dead in macro. Please make svs, even though you haven't made a single one for the last 2 minutes.
- Why dont you get medivacs? You not having ghosts was not why you lost, your horrible macro was why you lost. And you have no medivacs. You could have just made medivacs, you need them no matter what your opponent had, and would have been fine...
So, a replay proving that low level players can't macro at all, and that if you had just done basic macro in the first 9 minutes, you would have easily won.
And I know it's hard. To you, it looks like good macro. But that's the problem. Everyone thinks they macro well, but in reality, they macro like total shit. I can tell you that I macro 10x better than you, but high masters say I macro like shit, and I can tell I macro like shit when I watch my replays.
Learn the very, very valuable skill of knowing how to analyze your macro. I watch every single game I play, win or lose, and analyze my macro in the first 8 minutes, then for any glaring macro issues after 8 minutes (did i take 4th on time? did i bank money? larva?). I rarely watch reps for strategy, that's easy to figure out. What's hard, is figuring out how my macro factored into my loss.
But thanks for posting a rep, and at least having the balls to do that. Even if it actually proved my point, and proved yourself wrong. It really goes to show how low level players just don't understand, and delude themselves. It's a tough fucking game, so there's nothing wrong with you. You just need to understand that you can macro your way to masters. Every masters will tell you that.
I'd actually hate the game is it was that simple. Its the complexity of all aspects of the game, Macro, Micro, Strategy, Reactions and Game knowledge that make this game fun. It's a complex game, a game that Masters and GrandMasters have worked very hard, on all aspects of it, to know what they know today. Us lower leaguers need to have that same dedication and hard work on all aspects of the game to get up there with you guys. All I ask is that when you try to help a lower leaguer, analyse all aspects of his game play, not just "Does he keep up his Macro" and suggest ways to fix each of the problems seen. Then help that player with the problem he wants to try and fix, I garantee you, eventually when he has figured out how best to use the units at his disposal and still looses the game, he will fix the Macro thing if he chooses not to work on that at first.
The game only gets complex at the higher levels. That's why they say, any strategy is viable in diamond. Because people don't macro well at all in the lower leagues, that bad strategy is never punished.
You can try to use strategy in the lower levels, sure. But in the lower levels, if you macro well, you can beat anyone. If you had good macro, you would be in masters.
On April 16 2012 10:15 Belial88 wrote:But thanks for posting a rep, and at least having the balls to do that. Even if it actually proved my point, and proved yourself wrong. It really goes to show how low level players just don't understand, and delude themselves. It's a tough fucking game, so there's nothing wrong with you. You just need to understand that you can macro your way to masters. Every masters will tell you that.
Your Welcome
But . . .
Please do us all a favor, go back to that amazingly deep analysis of yours, review each and every one of your own comments and please please please please PLEASE, highlight using different colors what is a Macro Mistake and what is a Strategic Mistake. I do have problems with Macro I never denied it. But I fail to understand how not teching-up is a MACRO?!?!? mistake. Where in the definition of Macro does it ever mention that I should tech-up?!?
Of course my play is horrible and has a gazillion mistakes, not all the mistakes you pointed out are Macro . . . You proved both our points, my Macro is horrible and needs work (I believe I said that before I uploaded). But had I teched up well maybe I'd have won the game also?!? Last time I looked Teching-up was definitly not in Team Liquids Definition of Macro.
Thank-you Belial, you actually proved to all of us through your amazingly deep and (shall we say colorful language) analysis of my game that Strategy goes hand in hand with Macro, Pick a horrible strategy (stay on Marine and Marauders to long) and you loose Darn I'm Shocked!
Oh here is the link to TeamLiquid's definition of MACRO
Any time 2 equally skilled players face off strategy is important.
When a player A is of greater skill than player B strategy is irrellivant due to the fact that player A will just have way more stuff.
Simply put, when 2 bronze level players face off their macro and mechanics are equally terrible and so if one player positions their army better, or has a better compostion either by luck or by decision that player will win.
Important note : lower league strategies are different to higher league strategies. Take the 111. Strong build, everyone knows that right? It involves too much stuff for a lower level player to pull off effectively, they will have more success with a marine tank push, cause it's less complicated. A 111 will be too late with too many macro hiccups to work properly. Other builds in the lowest levels of play require no one attacking for the first 15 minutes, which tends to work out ok in bronze. They would outright lose in higher leauges, but it's still a viable strategy for two equally skilled bronze players.
I'm using bronze examples becaue they are more extreme, but all levels of play have variations of this. Diamond players will do builds that just outright lose to master players because they work vs diamond players.
I think its syles vs styles. Yes, you will get more consistent wins with good macro and mechanics, but, it also takes longer to learn. You have to repeat things over and over, fix each thing that is wrong with your play one by one. As most people will say, "just play more games".
But, some people in the lower leagues are in there probably because they haven't even played 200 games in total. Some people just play 2 ladder games a week MAX. These are the people that probably would just benefit from coming up with a creative build or just out scouting and out reacting to opponents.
These are the people who just want to enjoy those 2 games a week. Either they have work, or enjoy other games for the PC/Console. So they just cant focus on SC2 only let alone macro and mechanics. They just want fun fun strategies. They might just don't care if they leave silver or not.
Case in point, watch LagTV. People win by just out-thinking others. And it's probably the most fun way to win! + Show Spoiler +
Now, there is another breed of gamer that just plays SC2 all day long. 1000+ games total, and wants to climb the ladder. They have probably already hit the wall where strategy just wont cut it. And, they probably already know that macro and mechanics will get you wins more than strategy until they reach diamond.
So, where does this come down to? Just play the game and maximize your fun.
The beauty of the matchmaking system is, that whatever style you have you probably will get 50% wins 50% losses in the long run. Macro/Mechanics/Strategy, the system wont care.
Please do us all a favor, go back to that amazingly deep analysis of yours, review each and every one of your own comments and please please please please PLEASE, highlight using different colors what is a Macro Mistake and what is a Strategic Mistake. I do have problems with Macro I never denied it. But I fail to understand how not teching-up is a MACRO?!?!? mistake. Where in the definition of Macro does it ever mention that I should tech-up?!?
Okay, teching up could be considered strategy, but there's a MACRO problem that is the root cause of it.
You failed to make workers. Because of this, you sat at 40 SCVs. If you have only 40 SCVs, and not have good macro and constantly make workers, you won't have higher income. If you don't have higher income, then you don't need tech to spend your money, you can just make marine/marauder and make sure not to have a bank.
If you had been constantly making workers, and was instead at a very modest 60 workers (which would still be bad macro, by the way), there would be no way you could keep your money below 500/500 without teching up (or extremely fast multitask and macro where you throw down 20+ rax.. but I highly doubt you could do that, and that's a lot harder to macro out right, unless you go like gasless pure marine 30+ rax).
So yes, there's a strategic problem of you not making medivacs, ghosts, or vikings, but the root cause if a macro problem of you not making workers OR spending your bank. If you make workers, your income goes up, and you can't just go marine/marauder to spend it all, so you are FORCED to tech up in order to keep your money low.
Solve macro, and you solve the strategy.
But had I teched up well maybe I'd have won the game also?!? Last time I looked Teching-up was definitly not in Team Liquids Definition of Macro.
No, you would not have. You could not afford medivacs or ghosts, because your income was so low, because you never made workers. You would have had half the army for 4 medivacs or some ghosts, which would ahve been crushed just the same.
It looks like a strategic problem, but in reality, it's a macro problem. Because pure marine/marauder with good macro would have won that game just as easily. It looks like if you only made medivacs and ghosts you would have won, but in reality, if you did that with your horrible macro, you would have a tiny, tiny army that would have been crushed much easier.
Take a look at the infamous Kryxi vs MKP on shakuras plateau, where he went pure baneling. It LOOKED like a micro issue, or a strategy issue (ling/bane is much better than pure bane). But in reality, Kryix lost the game because he went all-in on 40 drones, and didn't outright kill MKP with his bane bust. There was no way for kryix to have won that game after a failed bane bust, but MKP's micro just served to make the game entertaining as hell.
Any time 2 equally skilled players who play at a competent level face off strategy is important.
FTFY.
At bronze to diamond (and most would argue, up to mid-masters, or even GM on NA/low masters KR), people play 'incompetently'. I know that sounds harsh, but what I mean is, is that people play at such a low level in the lower leagues, that strategy is not important, because everyone macros so poorly.
If you macro GOOD, you will get to masters, if not high masters, easily. People in silver, they just don't play 'competently'. It's like people playing chess who don't know the rules of the game. Timings don't exist, strategy is irrelevant. Just macro out more units, and win.
Like, I could play any platinum player, and go pure speedling, and win. Now, obviously, I'm better than a plat. But a Platinum player, could focus on his macro, maybe be more mindful of his macro, and concentrate on it, and he will rank up soon enough.
it takes time to macro well. it's hard as fuck. But if you are bronze to diamond, please, please, please, understand, if you macro better, you will get to masters easily. We aren't saying macro good. We're saying avoid the silliest of mistakes like getting supply blocked at 28 supply, or making a depot when you are at 21/28 supply, or just constantly make workers.
Liek taht's it. Constantly, always, always make workers, never have lapse in time of worker production? Diamond, easily.
Important note : lower league strategies are different to higher league strategies. Take the 111. Strong build, everyone knows that right? It involves too much stuff for a lower level player to pull off effectively, they will have more success with a marine tank push, cause it's less complicated. A 111 will be too late with too many macro hiccups to work properly. Other builds in the lowest levels of play require no one attacking for the first 15 minutes, which tends to work out ok in bronze. They would outright lose in higher leauges, but it's still a viable strategy for two equally skilled bronze players.
That's because anything is viable in the lower leagues. People macro so poorly that you can literally do anything, and win. We've seen countless pros, as well as just regular masters players, just troll the fuck out of bronze to diamond doing stupid shit, and winning, because you can do anything in the lower leagues and win. Because no one has enough shit to win.
Nevermind that strategy and micro is absolutely atrocious in the lower leagues too. But the biggest reason, is because of the macro.
But, some people in the lower leagues are in there probably because they haven't even played 200 games in total. Some people just play 2 ladder games a week MAX. These are the people that probably would just benefit from coming up with a creative build or just out scouting and out reacting to opponents.
Of course. If you log 2,000 games, 99% of people will be diamond. If not masters. Really, you should be masters if you play 3k games. It's very rare to have more than 3k games and be below masters.
Which goes to show, hey, it doesnt take skill to get to masters.
Now, there is another breed of gamer that just plays SC2 all day long. 1000+ games total, and wants to climb the ladder. They have probably already hit the wall where strategy just wont cut it. And, they probably already know that macro and mechanics will get you wins more than strategy until they reach diamond.
That won't happen unless there's a handicap on the player... Play 3k games, you'll be masters.
Belial, did you actually check my opponent's macro skills? Was his Macro equal, greater then or less then my own Macro level. I checked and from what I can see it seems to me that his macro was more or less equal to mine. Would I have won if my macro was better then his, maybe. Would I have won if my Strategy was better then his, maybe. Would I have won if both my strategy and my macro was better then his, most likely.
You can't just macro a simple basic unit, and expect to win every match-up Banelings>Marines, (remember splitting up marine is definitely not a Macro skill). Yah you might say well if you have a 30 supply lead on your opponent no matter how many banelings, you'll kill him then in that case I expect Blizzards match system will soon match me against better skilled opponents since a 30 supply lead (assuming no big harassment was successful earlier) is bordering on unfair and I definitely need to be placed against better opponents, but with equal macro skill, of course strategy will make a difference.
Yes I already know that my words can be taken out of context and be used to prove your point. Remember I never said Macro was not a way to improve, I'm simply trying to get you to understand that Strategy is an other way to improve. Improving both is better then improving only one.
^ It looked like he was macro'ing really bad, but he made more workers than you did, had a more standard build instead of doing an all-in like you were, and was better about constant worker production, pylons, and spending his gas.
You were ahead in supply before you pushed out, but that was because you were all-inning and so had lots of production going but no tech or macro.
Both of you macrod pretty badly, and I wouldn't say you macro'd better. You were ahead in supply at 58 , but that was because you didnt' expand or tech. If you cut tech or macro, you will shoot ahead in supply of the opponent for a while, before their macro kicks in or their tech takes advantage of you.
I'd say you both macro'd extremely evenly. You had some really blatant mistakes. Not making workers ever. Not making marines ever (marauder production was better). Making supply depots just ludicrously early. After you 9:30 attack that should have hit around I think 7:00, your macro really fell apart as you banked 2k/2k+, got supply blocked every single time, and just really never made any more workers.
You can't just macro a simple basic unit, and expect to win every match-up Banelings>Marines, (remember splitting up marine is definitely not a Macro skill). Yah you might say well if you have a 30 supply lead on your opponent no matter how many banelings, you'll kill him then in that case I expect Blizzards match system will soon match me against better skilled opponents since a 30 supply lead (assuming no big harassment was successful earlier) is bordering on unfair and I definitely need to be placed against better opponents, but with equal macro skill, of course strategy will make a difference.
It's been done many times by people trying to prove a point. You can easily get to diamond macro'ing just marines, or just banelings, or just zerglings, et cetera. It's been posted in this thread even, like the guy who went gasless pure marine, and didn't even do a good build, he just made marines, and made expos only when he started to bank money (he would go 4 rax on 1 base, then expand, and that's a horribly all-in build).
Since you aren't going to macro much better overnight, no, don't do that yourself. We are just saying that that's how important macro is, if you had decent macro, you could get to diamond with just going a single, basic unit only.
Yes I already know that my words can be taken out of context and be used to prove your point. Remember I never said Macro was not a way to improve, I'm simply trying to get you to understand that Strategy is an other way to improve. Improving both is better then improving only one.
Right, but everyone here, including blues, are telling you, that you are wrong.
This kind of thinking is WHY you are FAILING. Realize your macro is shit, and focus on it. keep deluding yourself into thinking your macro is good, or that strategy is important, and stay in gold league. Gold is soooo horribly low level, you have very little understanding of this game and macro. Please, listen to higher level people, when they are telling you, that you need to FOCUS on macro.
Trust us. We were all in gold at one time too. I watch every one of my replays for macro, not strategy. Every time I've posted a thread on TL about "Hey, why did i lose?", I got 20 responses saying "Macro better" (obviously not just like that, but very detailed responses, explaining why my macro caused my loss).
Because I PROMISE you, no one can get to masters with just strategy. You can have the best 'strategy' in the world, you will NEVER hit diamond. But if you have the best macro in the world, you will be top masters overnight. That should tell you everything you need to know.
Besides, every strategy is viable in Gold league. What we are telling you, is that low masters on NA is so horribly bad, that you can do any strategy you want, and win. You can 4 gate, you can go roach/hydra/corruptor, you can go stalker/colossus pvz, whatever. Macro well, and you'll get to diamond, if not masters.
Or just ignore me, and Cecil, and every blue and pro and high masters who's commented on this. Whatever. We have no fucking clue what we are talking about. The only difference between you and me, I'm sure is just a little multitask. Because everyone in masters actually plays well and doesn't 1a derp their units (sarcasm).
Any time 2 equally skilled players who play at a competent level face off strategy is important.
FTFY.
See this is where we disagree. We're not talking about a competent level of play, we're talking about all levels of play. Lower level players can do 2 things to win games:
One is improve their macro, which will give them more stuff and the strategy they use will be almost irrelivant (i say almost because some things like a DT rush vs a no detection protoss loses regardless how much shit they have)
The other is learn to scout / read opponent and react 'correctly'.
Both are important, both can get you to diamond, but neither will get you into masters on their own. Most people walk a middle path, improving their macro a little and their strategy a little and slowly moving up the leagues.
"Strategy" and "Macro" are two terms defined way too broadly. You can't say one is more important than the other because they intersect at many many points.
That said, if you substitute "Strategy" for "Unit composition", it suddenly makes a lot more sense. You can have success with suboptimal unit compositions as long as you have more of them. It doesn't matter if you have zealot voidray, archon sentry or colossus stalker, as long as you have more than your opponent. As long as you have more, it makes no different what unit composition your opponent is using. At least as long as you have stuff that shoots ground and stuff that shoots air and if you're not being absurdly hard countered (mass ling vs bf helion).
See this is where we disagree. We're not talking about a competent level of play, we're talking about all levels of play. Lower level players can do 2 things to win games:
One is improve their macro, which will give them more stuff and the strategy they use will be almost irrelivant (i say almost because some things like a DT rush vs a no detection protoss loses regardless how much shit they have)
The other is learn to scout / read opponent and react 'correctly'.
Both are important, both can get you to diamond, but neither will get you into masters on their own. Most people walk a middle path, improving their macro a little and their strategy a little and slowly moving up the leagues.
What level are you, may I ask?
You can get to masters with macro alone. You can't use strategy to get to platinum without macro.
Things like DTs and such can be solved most of the time by macro alone, especially in lower levels, which is the point here. People will have such late DTs it doesn't matter. As long as you scout for expo or not expo, army out front or not army out front, that should be enough. You can make throwaway turret/spore every game anyways, and if you macro well, you will get to masters just fine. Dts will never come before zerg has a standard evo chamber up anyways.
If you macro competently, than you can get to diamond, if not masters. We aren't talking about good macro, just better macro.
"Strategy" and "Macro" are two terms defined way too broadly. You can't say one is more important than the other because they intersect at many many points.
No.
At the lower levels, there is no strategy, because anything is viable due to the horrendous macro there (not to mention micro, decision making, etc).
Strategy can only come with macro. If you don't macro well, you can't do any strategy. "mass hellions" is not a strategy, it's just a plan. "4 hellions at 7:30 to deny third" is a strategy, but if you don't macro well, the zerg can just take the third in your face because the hellions won't stop the drone.
You need ghosts to deal with HT. But in the lower levels, people don't make enough shit, and you can steamroll zealot/archon/ht because you have just twice the size of army. Secondly, you can't just get ghosts - you have to have good macro for them to be worthwhile. Ghosts with a tiny army is crap. Ghosts with no econ, is crap. But if you macro well, you will be FORCED to get ghosts, otherwise you will bank money.
So macro well, and the right strategic decisions will come naturally. You will say "Hey, I'm on 10 bases, gee, the only way I can keep my money low is with 3/3 mass broodlords!" or colossi/archon/ht/mothership or ghost/viking/medivac/tank/thor.
On April 16 2012 10:58 Don.681 wrote: I think its syles vs styles. Yes, you will get more consistent wins with good macro and mechanics, but, it also takes longer to learn. You have to repeat things over and over, fix each thing that is wrong with your play one by one. As most people will say, "just play more games".
But, some people in the lower leagues are in there probably because they haven't even played 200 games in total. Some people just play 2 ladder games a week MAX. These are the people that probably would just benefit from coming up with a creative build or just out scouting and out reacting to opponents.
These are the people who just want to enjoy those 2 games a week. Either they have work, or enjoy other games for the PC/Console. So they just cant focus on SC2 only let alone macro and mechanics. They just want fun fun strategies. They might just don't care if they leave silver or not.
Case in point, watch LagTV. People win by just out-thinking others. And it's probably the most fun way to win! + Show Spoiler +
Now, there is another breed of gamer that just plays SC2 all day long. 1000+ games total, and wants to climb the ladder. They have probably already hit the wall where strategy just wont cut it. And, they probably already know that macro and mechanics will get you wins more than strategy until they reach diamond.
So, where does this come down to? Just play the game and maximize your fun.
The beauty of the matchmaking system is, that whatever style you have you probably will get 50% wins 50% losses in the long run. Macro/Mechanics/Strategy, the system wont care.
I can't say the pretend to be afk strategy is out thinking someone as it wont work in any league above... oh dear lord. But the terran SCV rush was silly, protoss can run around and regen shield, giving not only a home advantage and a worker advantage, but also he has a survivablity advantage since the terran really has no mining to fund repairs.
After more thought Belial88 is right if your objective is to get a higher league.
Winning that game, right now, strategy will do it for you, because improving your macro takes lots and lots of practise, but the right decision right now will win you this game. But in the next game you might make the wrong decision, or your opponent will make a better decision, leaving you with a 50/50 win rate.
Improving your mechanics/macro will lower the importance of those strategic or tactical decisions improving your win rate and thus improving your MMR.
So I will amend my statement, strategy is really important for winning right now, but because the game is so complicated and people don't make logical decisions you will still lose a lot of games if you rely on just strategy.
If you improve your macro you will have more stuff, which often times will allow you to survive a game you should have lost even though you were trading poorly due to bad engagements or bad compositions.
I decided to put the 'macro better into masters' theory into test, since I was a bronze terran player. Haven't been able to play that much, but I am winning almost every game so far, got me into high silver rather instantly. In the last game, however, I was not winning convincingly against silver opponent, so I checked the replay. I noticed certain problems:
First problem: too many SCVs. How bad is it to have extra SCVs? I had ~90. Should I try to learn to stop at ~70?
Second problem: spending is difficult after 3rd base and say 6 orbitals, or after 200/200. Should I just build rax after rax, or rather try to tech up and produce thors and stuff? Is my gas going to sustain high tech units? How to sink all those minerals? or should i start banking at that point?
Third: If I let the opponent to max out as well, I don't know how to make use of my better macro. If say ultras eat all my marines, reproduction is too slow never mind I have 10 bases and 10k in the bank, and I get killed even if I have more bases and other stuff. I lost once because I a-moved my MM+viking ball into zealot+templar army. It was not pretty. I had ~20-30 rax, several orbitals, and all the money but couldn't resupply fast enough and lost to 2-base protoss. i guess it's about resupply speed, if the enemy starts to kill my orbitals which are at this point everywhere, I win because I can resupply. I played protoss before and this wasn't a problem. So I guess the problem is how to take advantage of terran macro when the income becomes ridiculously high but supply is capped. Teching is slow, too.
Please do us all a favor, go back to that amazingly deep analysis of yours, review each and every one of your own comments and please please please please PLEASE, highlight using different colors what is a Macro Mistake and what is a Strategic Mistake. I do have problems with Macro I never denied it. But I fail to understand how not teching-up is a MACRO?!?!? mistake. Where in the definition of Macro does it ever mention that I should tech-up?!?
Okay, teching up could be considered strategy, but there's a MACRO problem that is the root cause of it.
You failed to make workers. Because of this, you sat at 40 SCVs. If you have only 40 SCVs, and not have good macro and constantly make workers, you won't have higher income. If you don't have higher income, then you don't need tech to spend your money, you can just make marine/marauder and make sure not to have a bank.
If you had been constantly making workers, and was instead at a very modest 60 workers (which would still be bad macro, by the way), there would be no way you could keep your money below 500/500 without teching up (or extremely fast multitask and macro where you throw down 20+ rax.. but I highly doubt you could do that, and that's a lot harder to macro out right, unless you go like gasless pure marine 30+ rax).
So yes, there's a strategic problem of you not making medivacs, ghosts, or vikings, but the root cause if a macro problem of you not making workers OR spending your bank. If you make workers, your income goes up, and you can't just go marine/marauder to spend it all, so you are FORCED to tech up in order to keep your money low.
Solve macro, and you solve the strategy.
This is getting just a tad silly.
"There would be no way you could keep your money below 500/500 without teching up... well, unless you kept your money low without teching up. But you wouldn't try to do that; you'd make the right strategic decision at the right time and tech up, even without knowing that's what you should be trying to do, and even with me insisting over and over that you don't need to think strategically and that you can get into diamond with just basic units and good macro."
I'm not arguing that people should shift their focus from improving their macro. I'm arguing that a degree of strategic understanding can serve as a lens to help them focus on macro. It certainly helped me.
As a for-instance: I've been working on my ZvP lately, practicing the 12-minute-max versus FFE. It's great because there's a solid macro benchmark (which I'm not quite hitting in a real game yet, before you ask ). But I still have to watch the gasses at his natural (thank you Intimate ZvX) so I don't get caught out by air or DTs.
At the same time, not all my opponents go FFE. I often get 4-gated or zealot-rushed, so I've been working on deviations based on scouting gate/core or gate/gate, possibly with a pylon block at my natural. Knowing how many drones to build or when to start a spine crawler/roach warren/gas is not macro. Knowing what to do next to prevent him getting back in the game is not macro. And knowing these things makes it easier - makes it possible - for me to aim for what you call 'competent macro', because there's something concrete for me to aim for.
When my head's in the right place and I know exactly what I'm trying to do and why, I tend not to get supply blocked, make too many overlords or miss injects. I'm actually focused on my macro because my brain isn't worrying about a bunch of other decisions. Why is that so difficult for you to accept?
On April 16 2012 10:15 Belial88 wrote:But thanks for posting a rep, and at least having the balls to do that. Even if it actually proved my point, and proved yourself wrong. It really goes to show how low level players just don't understand, and delude themselves. It's a tough fucking game, so there's nothing wrong with you. You just need to understand that you can macro your way to masters. Every masters will tell you that.
Your Welcome
But . . .
Please do us all a favor, go back to that amazingly deep analysis of yours, review each and every one of your own comments and please please please please PLEASE, highlight using different colors what is a Macro Mistake and what is a Strategic Mistake. I do have problems with Macro I never denied it. But I fail to understand how not teching-up is MACRO?!?!? mistake. Where in the definition of Macro does it ever mention that I should tech-up?!?
Techingup is a macro mistake if you do it when you cant afford it.
At the same time, not all my opponents go FFE. I often get 4-gated or zealot-rushed, so I've been working on deviations based on scouting gate/core or gate/gate, possibly with a pylon block at my natural. Knowing how many drones to build or when to start a spine crawler/roach warren/gas is not macro. Knowing what to do next to prevent him getting back in the game is not macro. And knowing these things makes it easier - makes it possible - for me to aim for what you call 'competent macro', because there's something concrete for me to aim for.
When my head's in the right place and I know exactly what I'm trying to do and why, I tend not to get supply blocked, make too many overlords or miss injects. I'm actually focused on my macro because my brain isn't worrying about a bunch of other decisions. Why is that so difficult for you to accept?
You are clearly smart enough now, to know enough now, to make the right strategic decisions, based on very simple scouting (did he ffe, or did he gateway expand?).
Now that your strategy and scouting is ace, you should focus on your macro.
That's what we are saying. You aren't losing because of strategy. You already know enough strategy to get along just fine. Now focus on your macro.
You could also just go 2 base lair, macro well, and get up to at least diamond with sub-optimal strategy/builds, if not masters, and be safe from whatever opening toss did.
What you are saying is just helpful stuff, sure. But if you macro well, you can move well past platinum, at the very least. Are you capable of macro'ing well? Probably not. But if you focus on your macro, you will improve enough to the point to where strategy will become an issue. Until then, in bronze to plat, you can do whatever you want and win games.
it feels like strategy is only usefull to the point of, do you have detection? OR do you have the right army composition? OR try to make sure they dont have a hard counter to what you have. apart from getting these right, macro win you the game.
At the same time, not all my opponents go FFE. I often get 4-gated or zealot-rushed, so I've been working on deviations based on scouting gate/core or gate/gate, possibly with a pylon block at my natural. Knowing how many drones to build or when to start a spine crawler/roach warren/gas is not macro. Knowing what to do next to prevent him getting back in the game is not macro. And knowing these things makes it easier - makes it possible - for me to aim for what you call 'competent macro', because there's something concrete for me to aim for.
When my head's in the right place and I know exactly what I'm trying to do and why, I tend not to get supply blocked, make too many overlords or miss injects. I'm actually focused on my macro because my brain isn't worrying about a bunch of other decisions. Why is that so difficult for you to accept?
You are clearly smart enough now, to know enough now, to make the right strategic decisions, based on very simple scouting (did he ffe, or did he gateway expand?).
Now that your strategy and scouting is ace, you should focus on your macro.
That's what we are saying. You aren't losing because of strategy. You already know enough strategy to get along just fine. Now focus on your macro.
That's what I've been trying to get through to you since I joined the thread. That's what I am able to do, now that I have some semblance of a strategic framework. And it's not just a question of 'did he FFE or gateway expand', either - you do play zerg, right? Plus I'm getting a handle on understanding what kind of advantage I've eked out in any given situation and what I should do next to exploit it.
Like I said: people keep telling you you're taking too much for granted, and you aren't listening. I'm not proud of the fact that my decision making and game-sense were so bad that they were preventing me improving my macro. It would be humiliating, if I were a less well-adjusted and all-round fabulous person. Still, there it is. So could you find it in your heart to temper your advice just a little?
For instance, could you agree with:
'You'll find it easier to concentrate on improving your macro if your other in-game decisions are swift and premeditated, so make sure you have a decent mental road-map of what you're going to do in what circumstances. Keep it as simple as possible by starting with a safe, middle of the road build, and DON'T build decisions into it that are based on poor macro. Always be thinking: should I easily have had more stuff? Would I have needed to make this decision if I had had it? Use strategy sparingly to inform your macro goals, not compensate for macro shortcomings.'
Up to plat/diamond (depends on region) you should just use 1-2 standard builds against each race and execute them perfectly. Just don't float any minerals or gas too often, add extra production buildings & upgrade when you can afford it and you should be able to defend any attack or cheese easily and also kill your opponent with pretty much 1 attack. That has nothing to do with strategy though, it's just following a build order.. No matter what you decide to do after that point, your units will always be superior to your opponents and you will be able to beat him by just attacking him and not screwing up your micro horribly.That is pretty much what Destiny wanted to prove in his stream when he did the low league games.
After plat/diamond though, the advantage you can get by doing a build flawlessly isn't that great anymore, because obviously your opponent has practiced his macro as well and even if his is a bit worse than yours (of course diamond players have nowhere near perfect macro), it ain't enough to compensate for poor strategy choice.
For example, in a TvZ the zerg's standard build might include early double expand. In lower leagues this would be ok even against a 1 base all-in because the allin simply wouldn't come early enough and also wouldn't include the proper amount of units for it to be deadly because of supply blocks, delay in worker production, poor micro by the terran,etc. But in higher leagues this should never happen and the zerg would be dead if he blindly did that build without being ready to deviate from it. That is strategy ! The build itself might aim for a great early economy but that's exactly what the allin counters. The zerg must adapt to the situation and maybe cancel the 3rd base or pull drones in order to defend. Then he can try to counter the terran's strategy himself by going fast muta or something (assuming the allin was marauder-hellion, = no early thors or stim marines).
But thinking like that in lower leagues is just unnecessary because a)your opponent doesn't think either,so what he does will be completely random, b)there are flaws in your gameplay that need to be fixed first c)nobody at higher levels has these flaws anymore so you MUST overcome them in order to be able to get there. So, I'm afraid that strategy doesn't matter at all in lower leagues. Just have a build that is known to be safe and standard and keep doing it until you do it perfectly. Never float minerals, not even while fighting. That should be your goal. Might be hard at first, too much multitasking maybe, but that's Starcraft.. Practice will make you better.
imo, it doesnt matter at all. Mechanics are WAY more important. It would be like a masters guy who only makes terrible or stupid units, but still beats the gold guy doing normal stuff.
I've been playing around on a smurf account to test stuff like this out in lower leagues, planning to maybe make a big blog post to focus some of the issues. Basically, even if you say strategy makes a difference in lower leagues, it's still not true. To test it, I decided to make up a strategy/build myself which I know wouldn't be all that good, and just rely on my mechanics to do it well enough to win regardless. The idea was that I would show that even a bad player can make up their own strategy using knowledge of macro to optimize it and it will be good enough, even if it's bad. So I decided to only build zealots. Since I want warp tech, I need a gas, but building a gas just for 50 gas sounds dumb, so I decided to use some more gas... enter +1 attack. So using basic knowledge of macro, I decided to build between 16 and 20 probes (I only need 150 gas and then minerals, so no need for any more), go for a completely standard opening (9 pylon, 12 gate, 13 gas etc). Other than that, I just relied on checking my resources, no build planned farther than that. Turned out to become something like a 5 warpgate +1 zealot attack, which crushed a gold zerg easily.
However, I wasn't satisfied with that. It was obviously extremely all in and I'm not going to expect low league players to be able to deal with allins too well, especially when it's something they probably haven't seen before. So I made a new bad strategy: 3base ling in ZvZ. I decided that my goal would be to get to at least 3 base, and only build lings, using gas and tech to improve upgrades. The game took about 14 minutes, I ended up with 6 bases, never touching my opponent until I got 2/2... where I ran in and demolished him. He had roaches and mutalisks, but it obviously didn't matter at all since I was almost maxed on lings and had 3/3 on the way. Even if he had attacked me with mutas earlier, it wouldn't have mattered since I was macroing somewhat competently and could just use one of my many other bases.
I'm going to play around with it a lot more, but I feel it's very easy to make reliable examples that crappy strategies easily win in lower leagues if coupled with decent mechanics and macro.
On April 16 2012 20:32 Tobberoth wrote: Turned out to become something like a 5 warpgate +1 zealot attack, which crushed a gold zerg easily. However, I wasn't satisfied with that. It was obviously extremely all in and I'm not going to expect low league players to be able to deal with allins too well, especially when it's something they probably haven't seen before.
Bolded the part where you acknowledge the role of scouting and understanding in facilitating an appropriate and well-macroed response
So I made a new bad strategy: 3base ling in ZvZ. I decided that my goal would be to get to at least 3 base, and only build lings, using gas and tech to improve upgrades. The game took about 14 minutes, I ended up with 6 bases, never touching my opponent until I got 2/2... where I ran in and demolished him. He had roaches and mutalisks, but it obviously didn't matter at all since I was almost maxed on lings and had 3/3 on the way. Even if he had attacked me with mutas earlier, it wouldn't have mattered since I was macroing somewhat competently and could just use one of my many other bases.
Again, how can this poor guy hope to 'improve his macro' when he is clearly at a complete loss as to what he should even be trying to do?
What I mean is: you're implying "Well-macroed roach/muta should have beaten my stupid strategy. Therefore his problem was his macro." Right?
First question: Does well-macroed roach/muta easily beat 6-base 2/2 ling, assuming all other decisions (like him not attacking or attempting to deny bases or making banelings) stay the same?
I'm happy to go with 'yes' here for the sake of argument.
Next question: For the answer to the above to be yes, would he need to have known you were going to wait until you were maxed with 2-2 before attacking? Could he have macroed up game-winning roach/muta, happily letting you take bases and get upgrades uncontested, and never been in danger of losing along the way? Or would he have had to build units to be safe, and make use of those units in order to mitigate their opportunity cost?
In other words, to what extent is his bad macro - or rather his difficulty in improving that macro from game to game - attributable to a lack of clear goals? He sounds a lot like me from a few weeks ago, if I'm honest: sitting in my base fretting about whether I'm safe or not, making no use of the precautionary units I've built, just hoping to be allowed to get maxed. It's impossible to pursue 'competent macro' when you're in that kind of mental state.
bronze-gold you really don't need to be doing what the pros do as far as strats are. I think the big thing is just learning how the game works. And for example you learn how to 4 gate, and you do this without getting supply blocked you can win
On April 16 2012 20:32 Tobberoth wrote: I've been playing around on a smurf account to test stuff like this out in lower leagues, planning to maybe make a big blog post to focus some of the issues. Basically, even if you say strategy makes a difference in lower leagues, it's still not true. To test it, I decided to make up a strategy/build myself which I know wouldn't be all that good, and just rely on my mechanics to do it well enough to win regardless. The idea was that I would show that even a bad player can make up their own strategy using knowledge of macro to optimize it and it will be good enough, even if it's bad. So I decided to only build zealots. Since I want warp tech, I need a gas, but building a gas just for 50 gas sounds dumb, so I decided to use some more gas... enter +1 attack. So using basic knowledge of macro, I decided to build between 16 and 20 probes (I only need 150 gas and then minerals, so no need for any more), go for a completely standard opening (9 pylon, 12 gate, 13 gas etc). Other than that, I just relied on checking my resources, no build planned farther than that. Turned out to become something like a 5 warpgate +1 zealot attack, which crushed a gold zerg easily.
However, I wasn't satisfied with that. It was obviously extremely all in and I'm not going to expect low league players to be able to deal with allins too well, especially when it's something they probably haven't seen before. So I made a new bad strategy: 3base ling in ZvZ. I decided that my goal would be to get to at least 3 base, and only build lings, using gas and tech to improve upgrades. The game took about 14 minutes, I ended up with 6 bases, never touching my opponent until I got 2/2... where I ran in and demolished him. He had roaches and mutalisks, but it obviously didn't matter at all since I was almost maxed on lings and had 3/3 on the way. Even if he had attacked me with mutas earlier, it wouldn't have mattered since I was macroing somewhat competently and could just use one of my many other bases.
I'm going to play around with it a lot more, but I feel it's very easy to make reliable examples that crappy strategies easily win in lower leagues if coupled with decent mechanics and macro.
You're not the first and certainly not the last to try something like this. I'm sure everyone is familiar with Destiny going mass queens and the reddit post from over a year ago where some guy went mass stalkers straight into diamond. It's already been well discussed. Common sentiments seem to be "Yes, you can do stupid things and get away with it in lower league with good macro" and "Lower league players don't have higher league macro senses so the tests are incomparable". Anyone can run a test like this by bombing all your team game placements and doing ridiculous strategies.
As Gheed pointed out in his latest lower league troll blog, bronze leaguers especially just lack overall game knowledge instead of just macro mechanics. I was playing 2v2 with my bronze level girlfriend last night. She plays protoss and doesn't have the God-aweful macro you'd expect. She'll max a bit late, but upgrades, expansions, workers, and reinforcements are all where they're supposed to be. However, she liked attacking straight into our opponent's army by herself instead of denying expansions, harassing, and attacking in good positions. We eventually won the game, but I told her to hold off attacking and move to different locations so much that she was quite annoyed that I wasn't letting her "play the game", winning or losing.
Experience with different strategies counts for a lot, as well. I'm a plat zerg and last night I played a protoss who went 1 base, 2 stargate mass void ray into zealot, sentry, stalker. I lost the game, but my macro was not the reason. I started extra queens too late and I needed more than 2 spores. The damage wasn't terrible and in the end I had almost 3 times the worker count. I went for hydra/corruptor/roach and found out the hard way that I didn't have enough resources to sustain this on two bases. Matters weren't helped when my army was caught in the middle of the map on move command when I was injecting. Even though my army had a lot "more stuff", it was still stomped because the composition wasn't right. This was the first time I encountered such a strategy and I have several ideas on what could have made it better.
Problems like the game I described above are common with lower level zergs in particular. Each matchup requires reactions to a large number of strategies. Utilizing a practice partner is really the only way you can practice the same exact set of actions against ONE strategy over and over to perfect the macro needed. This won't help when you see something new, so our reaction should be to stick with what we know. This doesn't always work and then we're back to the drawing board and undoubtedly more sessions with practice partners. Those without partners learn the long and hard way through trial and error on ladder.
I'm going to play around with it a lot more, but I feel it's very easy to make reliable examples that crappy strategies easily win in lower leagues if coupled with decent mechanics and macro.
It won't be anything new, though. We've had the mass ling guy, the mass stalker guy, and the mass queen guy already mentioned before. What they've succeeded in is proving is that using a suboptimal strat leads to playing at one or more leagues below your true potential based on your mechanics and macro.
On April 17 2012 00:45 Servius_Fulvius wrote: ... I'm a plat zerg and last night I played a protoss who went 1 base, 2 stargate mass void ray into zealot, sentry, stalker. I lost the game, but my macro was not the reason. I started extra queens too late and I needed more than 2 spores. The damage wasn't terrible and in the end I had almost 3 times the worker count. I went for hydra/corruptor/roach and found out the hard way that I didn't have enough resources to sustain this on two bases. Matters weren't helped when my army was caught in the middle of the map on move command when I was injecting. Even though my army had a lot "more stuff", it was still stomped because the composition wasn't right. This was the first time I encountered such a strategy and I have several ideas on what could have made it better.....
Having an insufficient number of bases is arguably the most important aspect of "good macro", so your example does not support your argument that things other that macro are what mainly determine the outcomes of your games. I think this post shows why the over-used line "macro better" is actually good advice; people in lower leagues lose and rarely attribute their loss to macro.
I have myself as an example: Immediately after I made it into Masters league last year, I took a break from SC2 for 9 months. I recently picked up playing again, lost over 20 games in a row, and was promptly demoted to platinum. I did not forget any of the strategy involved with winning, but my reactions were so slow I could not execute the same builds I did in the past. "Macro better" is simple advice, but this doesn't mean it is simple advice to follow.
On April 16 2012 11:17 Belial88 wrote:That won't happen unless there's a handicap on the player... Play 3k games, you'll be masters.
I have 1848 league wins which mean I've played almost 4000 games still in gold
On April 10 2012 21:18 Belial88 wrote:You don't have ZvP where toss goes FFE, has to scout if zerg takes third, then toss does sentry/zealot wg pressure, which zerg must get roaches and creep for, and then zerg gets map control to deny third, then toss gets third, then zerg gets mutas while toss has stronger army, and then zerg must keep toss in his base while he gets broodlords before the push. You will *never* see a game go like that in diamond.
also this kind of game do happen quiet often in gold, with all the macro mistakes on both side which make it 'even'.
though I agree that if one party macro abit better, then it would not go to the very last stage (bl switch) since the game will be over way sooner
this is one replay when I macro horribly, I keep having half the supply of my opponent the whole match but somehow I end up winning the match http://drop.sc/161424
so why do you think macro and strategy are unreleated?
macro is CLEARLY a part of strategy... this is evidenced by the abstraction that claims they are different breaking so quickly.
All you need to do is macro ... but you need a build order ... oh and scouting ... adn take expansions at tyhe right time ... oh and get gas at right times ... oh and wall off properly ... oh and overlord scouting patterns ... did i mention appropiate upgrade timings. All part of macro ... begs the question what isnt part of macro?
Macro is pretty quickly beginning to include the entire game dont you think? Or do you think that you are some kind of strategic genius who is doing something 'strategically' special somewhere else? What do you think the point of the game is if not to produce more shit than the other guy and kill him? Thats *really* obvious. Strategy is the large scale approach, it is how you prioritise things ... it if *far* more general an idea than 'macro' which is why you are having to import so much strategy into the idea of macro for it to have any meaning. Clue: There is a reason why White-Ra is saying special tactics rather than special strategy. It has - i suspect - something to do with him understanding what words mean - namely strategy and tactics.
Is that perhaps because a computer game is simply about using a UI? ... and as a result all you are saying with MACRO is execute things on the UI cleanly and efficiently.
Because you are ... and that boils down to saying L2P.
Macro is a part of strategy. It also has dependencies on lots of other things.
How can you win a game if you do not attack? Therefor winning is not simply about macro. So stop saying it. You sound retarded because you are over simplifying a problem to the point of it becoming meaningless.
ps 2000 wins or there about in silver (but ok 1500 of them are in team games)
On April 17 2012 00:45 Servius_Fulvius wrote: ... I'm a plat zerg and last night I played a protoss who went 1 base, 2 stargate mass void ray into zealot, sentry, stalker. I lost the game, but my macro was not the reason. I started extra queens too late and I needed more than 2 spores. The damage wasn't terrible and in the end I had almost 3 times the worker count. I went for hydra/corruptor/roach and found out the hard way that I didn't have enough resources to sustain this on two bases. Matters weren't helped when my army was caught in the middle of the map on move command when I was injecting. Even though my army had a lot "more stuff", it was still stomped because the composition wasn't right. This was the first time I encountered such a strategy and I have several ideas on what could have made it better.....
Having an insufficient number of bases is arguably the most important aspect of "good macro", so your example does not support your argument that things other that macro are what mainly determine the outcomes of your games. I think this post shows why the over-used line "macro better" is actually good advice; people in lower leagues lose and rarely attribute their loss to macro.
I have myself as an example: Immediately after I made it into Masters league last year, I took a break from SC2 for 9 months. I recently picked up playing again, lost over 20 games in a row, and was promptly demoted to platinum. I did not forget any of the strategy involved with winning, but my reactions were so slow I could not execute the same builds I did in the past. "Macro better" is simple advice, but this doesn't mean it is simple advice to follow.
That isn't reactions. its muscle memory ... but its also a slow decision process that is clouded by doubt (or more likley just not remembering stuff with lots of 'oh yeah thats why i did that' moments)
THe point is that 'macro better' offers no information value to people reading it. so its terrible way of communicating how to get better. Expansino timings are subtle things. Denying that is silly, there is a huge amount of information that needs to be processed (if you are not automatically going 15 pool 17 hatch) and weighed up (Eg pvp vs pvz). sure you can claim that is macro .. but then i claim all you are saying is 'get better at sc2' - the information content is pretty equivalent.
On April 17 2012 00:45 Servius_Fulvius wrote: ... I'm a plat zerg and last night I played a protoss who went 1 base, 2 stargate mass void ray into zealot, sentry, stalker. I lost the game, but my macro was not the reason. I started extra queens too late and I needed more than 2 spores. The damage wasn't terrible and in the end I had almost 3 times the worker count. I went for hydra/corruptor/roach and found out the hard way that I didn't have enough resources to sustain this on two bases. Matters weren't helped when my army was caught in the middle of the map on move command when I was injecting. Even though my army had a lot "more stuff", it was still stomped because the composition wasn't right. This was the first time I encountered such a strategy and I have several ideas on what could have made it better.....
Having an insufficient number of bases is arguably the most important aspect of "good macro", so your example does not support your argument that things other that macro are what mainly determine the outcomes of your games. I think this post shows why the over-used line "macro better" is actually good advice; people in lower leagues lose and rarely attribute their loss to macro.
I actually had a sufficient number of bases. The protoss was on one base. I was on two. I had a massive worker lead as well. Unspent resources were low and I had a lot of "stuff". I just didn't have the right "stuff" and died. The same thing happened to me last night. Some guy went mass raven and all I had was zergling/baneling to take down his buildings. Once again, wrong composition.
Take a protoss I beat yesterday as another example. He had more blink stalkers than I had roaches. I won the battle because he only blinked once and then let his stalkers die. It didn't matter that he had more than me - his composition wasn't correct and composition is purely a strategic choice.
And I never said "what MAINLY determined the outcomes of my games". A lot of my wins and losses are associated with macro. Take a zvz I played last night where I couldn't break my opponent's third because their better injects lead to a larger army. However, I won because I got four bases, better upgrades, and 9 broodlords while they were stuck on three bases and, as I saw in the replay, 3000 unspent resources with 32 larva and about 80 open supply at the end.
I suppose calling the win based on "macro" or "strategy" also has to do with the way you see it. Three times since Saturday I've played against this weird 2 stargate voidray into carrier build. All three times my base gets attacked and all three times I take my 25 or so roaches, counterattack, and cripple my opponent's economy. Counterattacking is a strategy. The fact I have all those roaches is macro. Their lack of defending units at home is macro, though their choice to build carriers revolved around some strategy. Of course someone else can view this differently because the definitions of "strategy" and "macro" are so vague one could subjectively call it one or the other and make an argument.
P.S. - Did some pro (or day9 daily) popularize the 2 base carrier build recently? That's usually what happens when I see different plays like this....
edit: I might add that macro is important and needs to be focused on, but it's not that fun doing it religiously so to break it up, have a go at microing your units excessively, or just concentrating on getting the tap-hotkey-macro thing going, or get used to using the minimap religiously, or try and rush all in off 1 base, or two bases, or do something cheesy. Anything to keep it interesting because the idea of macroing better is easy to say, but hard to do. Changing your focus around a bit helps break up the monotony of it and keeps the game fresh and interesting.
in lower leagues all you need to do to win is build workers non stop and spend your money on stuff if you manage to do these things you are diamond/master without strategy and i know TL staff dont like answers like that if some lower league player needs help but this is true
I just thought of a way that these tiresome debates could be ended or atleast cut down on a lot. A macrobot. An AI that's designed to do nothing but build pylons and probes and a random unit composition of its choice. Let it loose on a selection of players of different leagues and see how it performs. If it gets a 50% winrate against diamond, the "nothing but macro" advocates win. If it doesn't the "strategy is important too" crowd wins.
On April 18 2012 01:49 Monkeyballs25 wrote: I just thought of a way that these tiresome debates could be ended or atleast cut down on a lot. A macrobot. An AI that's designed to do nothing but build pylons and probes and a random unit composition of its choice. Let it loose on a selection of players of different leagues and see how it performs. If it gets a 50% winrate against diamond, the "nothing but macro" advocates win. If it doesn't the "strategy is important too" crowd wins.
I like this idea. Maybe 10 years from now when SC3 is in production, they'll open up a bot API and Stanford can have a graduate project to design a bot, much as they did for BW (yes i realize there's bots now, but they're not legitimate; imagine what they could turn into if they were legal and endorsed).
But ya these threads are tiresome. Most people just post the same tired bullshit without reading anything above them. It's easy to say "macro more" when a couple replies into it you realize that the guy's definition of macro is pretty much every possible choice in the game. "You were on 3 bases when he was on 4... well that's a macro issue." When you get to define what the question means, I guess any answer's plausible.
But that advice is about as useful as telling your little brother to "be confident" and he'll get a date to the prom. To be useful people need to explain what that means. "build more workers" is pretty useful advice... as is "spend your money", but beyond that, you gotta be specific.
It'd be nice if people'd admit that strategic choices matter, but at some skill threshold the basic problems in making things slowly eclipse any strategic choices. Or maybe, most strategic choices. That'd be refreshing. I doubt we'll see that anytime soon.
EDIT:
THe point is that 'macro better' offers no information value to people reading it. so its terrible way of communicating how to get better. Expansino timings are subtle things. Denying that is silly, there is a huge amount of information that needs to be processed (if you are not automatically going 15 pool 17 hatch) and weighed up (Eg pvp vs pvz). sure you can claim that is macro .. but then i claim all you are saying is 'get better at sc2' - the information content is pretty equivalent.
This is one of the smartest statements i've seen in this thread.
As I see it, general skill level, is a set of skills. E.g. micro, macro, multitasking, decision making, knowlegde (such as builds, timings, strategies, etc.). All these skills go into making you a good or bad player. If you lack in one area, you will be worse than if you didnt have that weakness. But strengths in other areas can make up for it.
With that in mind, some sort of strategy will be important in the lower leagues too.
Macro is extremely important. Most games you probably can just win with pure macro...but honestly learning how to scout and react are extremely important as well. As far as strategy goes, I am a gold league terran 1v1 player. Every game I have a strategy, i seem to win. There is no rule saying that macro and strategy can't go together in a lower league. The strategy may not be as complicated and as in depth as a masters player or a pro's but atleast a skeleton build with an outcome in mind is not bad to have. Am i wrong?
On April 16 2012 15:55 aggu wrote: I decided to put the 'macro better into masters' theory into test, since I was a bronze terran player. Haven't been able to play that much, but I am winning almost every game so far, got me into high silver rather instantly. In the last game, however, I was not winning convincingly against silver opponent, so I checked the replay. I noticed certain problems:
First problem: too many SCVs. How bad is it to have extra SCVs? I had ~90. Should I try to learn to stop at ~70?
Second problem: spending is difficult after 3rd base and say 6 orbitals, or after 200/200. Should I just build rax after rax, or rather try to tech up and produce thors and stuff? Is my gas going to sustain high tech units? How to sink all those minerals? or should i start banking at that point?
Third: If I let the opponent to max out as well, I don't know how to make use of my better macro. If say ultras eat all my marines, reproduction is too slow never mind I have 10 bases and 10k in the bank, and I get killed even if I have more bases and other stuff. I lost once because I a-moved my MM+viking ball into zealot+templar army. It was not pretty. I had ~20-30 rax, several orbitals, and all the money but couldn't resupply fast enough and lost to 2-base protoss. i guess it's about resupply speed, if the enemy starts to kill my orbitals which are at this point everywhere, I win because I can resupply. I played protoss before and this wasn't a problem. So I guess the problem is how to take advantage of terran macro when the income becomes ridiculously high but supply is capped. Teching is slow, too.
1. 70-80 SCVs are ideal, but more is not a big mistake. It's always better to have MORE SCVs than to have too few. Also, you can easily lose SCVs to runby's, you can use them as meatshield for your marines if necessary, etc.
2. If you macro is indeed superior, just go kill him anytime. You don't have to wait til 200/200. But yes, if you do hit max, just make more raxes, more factories, more starports. Constantly keeping your upgrades going so you have near 3/3 by the time you're maxed is also part of macro.
In fact, if you're only focusing on macro, you'll probably have a larger army for the majority of the game compared to your opponent if you check your replay. If not, it's not true that your macro is superior.
Now, we could get into strategy and talk about when you should make thors and when not to, but it should hardly matter until you're at least diamond to be honest.
3. Ultras won't eat all of your marines if you have a large macro advantage. Unless of course you've actually hit 200/200 already and are twiddling your thumbs, patiently waiting for your opponent to catch up in supply while your resource bank ticks up. Piling up resources due to either supply block or due to supply max --> I would consider both of them poor macro.
How to take advantage of terran macro when the income becomes ridiculously high but supply is capped? Why not attack before your supply is capped? And while your units are attacking, make sure you continue to spend your money, so that you're not banking.
But of course, I'm sure you would have come to this realization yourself as well after more games.
On April 16 2012 12:03 Sylvanium wrote: Belial, did you actually check my opponent's macro skills? Was his Macro equal, greater then or less then my own Macro level. I checked and from what I can see it seems to me that his macro was more or less equal to mine. Would I have won if my macro was better then his, maybe. Would I have won if my Strategy was better then his, maybe. Would I have won if both my strategy and my macro was better then his, most likely.
You can't just macro a simple basic unit, and expect to win every match-up Banelings>Marines, (remember splitting up marine is definitely not a Macro skill). Yah you might say well if you have a 30 supply lead on your opponent no matter how many banelings, you'll kill him then in that case I expect Blizzards match system will soon match me against better skilled opponents since a 30 supply lead (assuming no big harassment was successful earlier) is bordering on unfair and I definitely need to be placed against better opponents, but with equal macro skill, of course strategy will make a difference.
Yes I already know that my words can be taken out of context and be used to prove your point. Remember I never said Macro was not a way to improve, I'm simply trying to get you to understand that Strategy is an other way to improve. Improving both is better then improving only one.
I was struggling with TvZ because my siege tank control is so poor. I was losing literally every TvZ I played until I watched those tutorials. Now I can win games in the most cost-inefficient manner ever. I go MMM against players using ling-bling-muta and still win, even though I should be destroyed. I don't even drop because my multitasking can't handle it and I always forget to anyways. I just focus on my macro, making units and not getting supply blocked plus expanding. Almost all of my games result in me streaming units into my enemies base after losing a maxed MMM army (I can't split worth shit and I don't even bother engaging off creep or in good positions. Basically just a move) and winning anyways.
Strategy and unit composition is awesome and all but improving macro will show results much faster than learning fancy strategies and harass builds.
It'd be nice if people'd admit that strategic choices matter, but at some skill threshold the basic problems in making things slowly eclipse any strategic choices. Or maybe, most strategic choices. That'd be refreshing. I doubt we'll see that anytime soon.
You have that backwards. At some skill threshold strategy eclipses the basics of making things, but its certainly beyond gold league. It's only the higher levels where improved production begins to experience diminishing returns, and strategic choices become more important.