[L][H] Searching for The Mystery Non-Macro Problem

I've heard from so many people, especially few friends of mine who are in masters (T and Z), who swear that all it takes to get into Diamond is solid macro. So that's what I've been doing.

I'm in low platinum now, my macro is almost always better than my opponents', and my APM is usually around 60 or so. However, I seem to be losing tons of games, especially where my opponent does some sort of timing push or cheese. There's something wrong with the way I play, and I really don't know what it is. I'd like your help in finding that out.

Regarding feedback on the replays, I can identify most of the obvious errors: getting supply blocked, forgetting to make probes, bad rally points, etc., but I'm absolutely terrible at attack timings; things like "you really didn't have enough forces to attack at this point here" are really helpful.

I just finished playing SIX games now, all of them losses.

Game 1: PvT - a hellion drop cost me many probes, macro delay and bad micro cost me the game.

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Game 2: PvT - early expand into a failed attack at his front, which cost me the game.

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Game 3: PvT - I scouted this BM asshole doing a marine all-in, and I couldn't stop it.

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Game 4: PvP - I messed up my build, then ended up losing somehow.

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Game 5: PvZ - FFE, lost to early speedling/roach push

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Game 6: PvP - started with wrong opening because he was zerg, then got 4gated. I hate platinum league.

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So I'm looking back on why I lose to cheesy stuff like this all the time. I'm thinking that I either don't scout enough, but besides that I'm completely lost. I've been at this plateau for months now, and I just don't know what to do. Please help.

Thanks.

probes are op

iCastor United States. May 26 2012 13:23. Posts 35

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I only have enough time to look at one of the games. In game 5, You saw he DID NOT want you to scout anything...thats why he pulled all of those drones. He got an early gas which could signal speed or roach. You saw he doesnt even have his expo started at 4-5 minutes, that pretty much signals all-in. All that you really need to do is put down a lot of cannons. He is only on one base and you should do anything to stop it because you have a HUGE economy advantage. Put down as many cannons as you think you will need. I usually put down 6-8 considering it all-in.

"To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice your gift." Steve Prefontain

Nishikigoi United States. May 26 2012 13:39. Posts 8

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I mean, yeah, I should have done all the things you mentioned, but I didn't. One of my friends gave me some very similar advice for post-FFE scouting in PvT. Notably, if he has gas and no expo, expect speedlings or a ling/roach all-in.

The problem is that I didn't do that. I didn't do anything. Worse - I panicked. My system had so much adrenaline in it at the time that long-term or high-level thinking was impossible. I knew going into the game that getting the extra cannons was the correct response, but I couldn't think straight. I really need to practice this build more with a partner going either 6pool, extractor first, early double expand, or 2base muta, choosing at random between those strategies and forcing me to react to it.

probes are op

frostway May 26 2012 14:11. Posts 1

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With game 4, I think you lost the battle because you actually had a colossus and two stalkers halfway across the map, so although the army value tab shows its even, in the battle you're actually down 12 stalkers to 21, and he also warped in 4 stalkers at the end of the battle, which made it seem a little more lopsided. His forcefields were probably a little better too, since they cut out an immortal and two stalkers from firing. But if you had the third colossus there the battle probably would have looked different.

For game 2, I'm not sure you want to attack into the natural at all on ohana because of how small the choke is, but if you do an attack like that you need a lot more sentries for forcefields (i.e. more sentry/zealot than stalker) because stalkers just aren't very good straight up vs marine/marauder, especially when stim is done.

etherealfall Australia. May 26 2012 14:44. Posts 385

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You can't search for a 'non' macro problem when the problem is macro itself. Not executing the build properly leaves you open to timings that shouldn't otherwise be a problem. And you shouldn't upload a succession of replays if they show obvious bad play that you can correct yourself. I think the best way is to learn some early timings against each race, have a build that consolidates itself around those timings but is macro orientated and watch A LOT of your replays. Do you REALLY understand what you're scouting?

GoldenH May 26 2012 17:24. Posts 947

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Previous post nails it. When people say 'all you need is macro' they don't mean that all you need is to spend your money or maximize your income. They mean to follow every step of a plan that reacts to the opponent's strategy via scouting (which involves basic unit control).

So yes, if you are going to try and focus on maxxing out your income, you're going to fail. A Macro strategy is one that maximizes your income while staying alive, and for that you need a LOT of scouting and perfect unit control (and forcefields, as protoss). Basically playing the entire game, except for controlling individual units in fights.

Last edit: 2012-05-26 17:25:58

"(Dudes are) not going to say "Buy this game — I cried at the end". (...) I suppose the secret is to find a game that makes you shoot eight million fuckin' dudes and then cry about how awesome it is to shoot eight million fuckin' dudes." - Tim Rogers

Thobrik Sweden. May 26 2012 18:08. Posts 907

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I'm sad to see that I'm the first one here to recognize that macro alone indeed would not have won you these games.

As weird as it will be to many, and unrewarding as it will seem to some, macro alone will not take you to diamond league. It's true that producing units is a necessity for winning, but it's even more important to note that you need a rough balance between strategy, unit control, and production cabability even at the very lowest levels. Why is this so hard for some people to admit?

If you scout and adapt incorrectly, it's not a macro issue. It's a strategy issue.

If you don't make a forcefield in time to stop an Xpool, it's not a macro issue. It's a micro issue.

OnT: In game 3, you scouted his 3 racks, and very few scvs without an OC. You correctly chrono'd out stalkers and sentries, but, as much as it pains me to say it because of the ruling norm, YOU HAVE TO KITE THE SCVS & MARINES.

I know it sucks that everything you've learnt is wrong. But on a more positive note, there's a solution right? And what kind of strategy game would it be if you got good without applying strategy, anyways?

"Philosophy is questions that may never be answered, Religion is answers that may never be questioned."

totalpigeon United Kingdom. May 26 2012 18:17. Posts 86

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The first game, you lost due to a poor army composition and poor control during the major engagement.
Let's talk about the hellion harass first though. If hellions in your mineral line, the first thing you need to do is get something there to deal with them. Don't run probes until you have a solution on the way... there's really no point. You had 3 warpgates ready to go, but no money - cancel things like the immortals to get two stalkers out there and then to deal with the hellions. Run just a couple of probes each way once you have some defence coming - I mean, they can't dodge for long, and if there isn't something killing the hellions, probe massacre will still happen no matter how good you are.
You did actually catch up really well though, your economy recovery was superb and the fact that you didn't lose any of your army to his pressure meant that you were fairly safe doing it. Unfortunately, you then engaged really poorly into his army at around 20 minutes, which is where you really lost the game. Your units spent waaay more time on move command than attacking, and as a result hardly anything taking fire was shooting back, meaning that you were losing units almost for free. Even worse, it means your units don't stop just in range, and instead walk closer to his army - meaning his units at the back get to fire too, and you actually make his dps better than it should be between two ranged armies. Your composition was also pretty hard countered - heavy marauders and lots of vikings will tend to crush stalker colossus, although it shouldn't have been nearly that bad. You also forgot guardian shield T_T and didn't really do any forcefields - when you have mass stalker, cut small chunks of his army off at the front and kill them while the rest of his army flounders around behind it all. The forcefields are the only thing that will keep a heavy stalker army alive against a roughly equal size bio terran army, so leave as soon as they're running out.
You had the right idea getting charge, but you didn't warp enough zealots in to really make use of it. If you see a lot of marauders, tanks and vikings (which you did), add a load of them (+archons if you can) into your composition before you attack. Seriously, mass chargelot is really strong, and much harder to deal with properly than to execute badly. You do need to switch out of colossus into storm if he has a lot of vikings though. At plat, a couple of good storms can completely swing the game around and they really aren't that hard to land. Don't forget to go straight back into colossus if he loses all his vikings.
To conclude - a poor engagement and choice of composition lose you this game. React more intelligently to the units you see, and always a-move everything with an attack into the battle before you start thinking about microing specific ones.

Second game, you lose because you do a half hearted attempt at a bust and trade really badly because of it.
If you're going to attack at this timing, you need to really commit to it if you want to do damage - that means stop making probes at 38-44 and spread them efficiently over your minerals, have a ton of gates (6+, and have them finished with a proxy pylon ready), abuse forcefields (so more sentries, preferably with high energy) to stop him just walking up to you and killing you and to trim bits of his army away and kill for free, more zealots while the bunker is up to tank his damage and preferably 3 immortals if possible so you can take his bunkers down really fast (which means you should make your robo before your second gate, and you can get away with leaving your obs really late vs an early expo from T). Park your obs over his ramp so you can shoot up it at all times. Most importantly, get a proxy pylon down - you will never, ever succeed at a bust without one unless Terran is playing ridiculously greedy.
Compare this to what you were doing - 3 gates active and just a 4th warping in, robo bay warping in, forge warped in but not actually being used, 50 probes and still making them, no proxy pylon. You're not playing efficiently towards an attack at that time, instead you have a ton of resources caught up in things that are going to pay off in around 5 minutes. It's not about the attack timing so much as the fact that you simply don't have a particularly strong army or means to reinforce it. You could still possibly have done some small damage there, not making zealots but instead more ranged units, then moving up, picking off a few of his units (ignore the bunker) without losing anything, blocking him from getting too close with some careful forcefields, and then leaving immediately. I think that is about the best you could hope for, but it's risky.

Third game,
This is a specific, really hardcore cheese. I'm guessing you don't know the easiest response to this... cannons! Yeah, it's really hard as P to hold this off without them, but a couple of cannons and a probe pull to defend them actually completely destroys this. It's also reaaaaally satisfying to beat :D You can tell it is coming by the supply drop onto the depot and the lack of scvs being produced, often it will be a low ground wallin so you can't get into the main and see these little giveaways, but the supply drop at ~4:05 should still be scoutable if you're sneaky. Cut everything else to drop a forge, get sentries to delay (you can ff something in if the cannons are up or nearly up, letting in 5 scvs and then killing them on their own hurts this a lot), get at least 2 cannons. Cannons are seriously good against marines. Put them at the ramp so he can't walk by them, and pull probes to stop him slipping by and to defend the cannons. You don't have enough of any other unit, and his economy is shot anyway, as long as you still have 5 or more probes left after you're still in it. 10 or more left, and you should be able win by pure macro into a-move.

Fourth
Early game niggle - you can get your cybernetics core down straight after your gate finishes if you don't queue your 18th probe early, which can be the difference between holding a 4gate and not.
If you're going robo, use the damned robo. Immortals are ridiculously stronger than stalkers and zealot sentry vs someone with a ton of stalkers, you could have had 2 more easily, which may well have completely changed that battle.
Same problem as before with the attack - you expand just before you hit, which is a bad timing. Get all your units together before you engage, one colossus showing up late is a huge deal, and use your guardian shield! Spread out your sentries so 2 or 3 cover your whole army, it makes a huge difference, especially against someone with a ton of stalkers.
You also get hurt a lot by your angle of attack, his forcefield are able to really limit the surface area of your army that can shoot, while his whole army focuses down your zealots. Come in through both chokes next time, so you get as much area to engage with as possible.
By 15:02 I'd say you've already lost the fight, he has 8 additional stalkers and guardian shields up and more of his units firing, while you have 2 extra sentries and an extra immortal, of which the immortal gets hardly any shots off. Fights in PvP tend to snowball badly if you're slightly outmatched... as you can see.

Fifth game
You saw no expo at either the second or third. Basically that means stop doing whatever it was you were doing (well, get your cyber core) and make more cannons, zealots and walls, and try to probe scout if he's getting a lair. No lair (99% of the time) means roach or baneling speeding, lair means one base muta which I presume requires you to cannon your minerals and make stalkers too.

Sixth game
I think you already nailed this one with your own analysis

no real comeback for that opening

Hope some of this is useful, honestly I do think your macro is pretty decent for plat, but you have a few glaring problems. You early game builds are not optimal, which leaves you open to a lot of cheesy play. Your army composition isn't tailored nearly as well to your opponents as it could be, especially considering how much intel you can easily get with obs. Your engagements are handled really poorly. Finally, your decision making is really questionable when you're mad

. You can fix your engagements easily, by remembering guardian shield, using a move to intiate the battle and not engaging through narrow chokes. Improving your army composition will require more thought, but incorporate templar tech (storm + archons) against Terran and (once you have charge utilise many more chargelots against marauder heavy comps, they just don't die) and focus on getting tech units fast and in high numbers against P rather than gateway units (especially more immortals when expanding vs non-stargate, or you'll just die to blink allins) whenever possible. And there is plenty of room to optimize your early game builds, to get that next probe a little faster or your gateways down 10 seconds earlier, get your tech building before your next gate etc. which is what will give you the real advantage.

Sianos May 26 2012 19:24. Posts 527

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Hi there,

i will watch game 2 and give my cents while viewing the game.

3:50:

You scouted your opponent having 0 Gas, from this you can guess that your opponent is doing a 1 Rax fe. But you didn´t manage to scout his expandtion. It´s allways better to confirm something than guessing something. The timing to put down a CC at 18 Supply is 3:45 at 20 Supply it´s a few seconds later. At this stage he can only have 2 Marines. You were in his base a bit too long and took too much damage on your probe. If you manage to leave his base without taking any damage you can come back at 3:50 and look whether he really is going for the expandtion.

5:00:

When you take your expandtion you let your opponent see it, becuase you walk with your units straight to your opponent. You can allways use your zealot and/or stalker to check your natrual, so that he isn´t able to see that you are going for an expandtion that easily. That´s information towards your opponent that you can deny, so do it. Good players can use this information to tech faster than usual.

5:10:

You miss your probe production for 20 seconds. This can be 2 more Probes for you. You are doing a economical opening so every Probe counts!

6:35:

You miss to put your probes into the gas for 50 seconds! That´s ~ 100 Gas less for you to use. Allways look at the left side of the screen to check whether your Gas is finished at put your probes in there ASAP.

8:00:

You are supply blocked. That´s because you only build 1 Pylon at a time while you have 3 Gates and a Robo. That´s 8 supply in one production cycle. You also want to build your probes 2 at a time, which ends up in a supply block, where you can´t build any units or workers. Shortly before your 3rd Gate finishes you want to constantly build 2 pylons at a time to prevent this supply block. A supply block can happen from time to time, but you have to get the most out of it, by either starting your tech earlier, getting your upgrades earlier or getting more production facilities. You don´t want your money to idle. You want to constantly spend it from the beginning to the end.

10:00:

You only have 45 probes. That´s way too less for an economic oppening without getting serious troouble in the beginning. You also have build your observer but why don´t you scout your opponents base with it? While doing this you culd have scouted, that your opponent is heavily going into the armee tree and get his upgrades with very late tech. There is no reason to attack those kind of a player, because his army will be much stronger than your´s, when you are doing an economical oppening. Then you attack into him and get easily shut down. The reason for this is that 1 you went for an economical oppening with tech and 2 your opponent went for an economical oppening with army. He also does have the defender advantage in this situation, which makes his army even stronger. If you wouldn´t have done the macro mistakes you would be with a lot more units at this stage, but you would also loose this engagement because your opponbent has to much advantages over you. The result is that you loose all your army and then his counter push totally kills you. If you want to do an attack focused play you have to invest more money in armmy which means more gates or upgrades instead of going for collo tech. Did you know the ETA concept? If not visit thisthread and you will understand the game more, so that in the future your dicesions will be better.

Summary of your mistakes:
- Macro mistakes like getting supply blocked and forget to put your probes in gas on time are HUGHE!
- No scouting before attacking
- Attacking while teching aggainst a player who is investing in army and upgrades

Some rules:
- Never attack while you are teching or ecoing (^^ yes ecoing now is an official world for investing in economy)
- Allways use your tech for either attacking or securing an expandtion
- Try to get an advantage in either army, tech or eco
- Don´t invest in one tree, when you have the advantage in that tree, for example don´t invest in eco if you are 1 base ahead of your opponent
- While scouting find out what your opponent is doing. Is he teching, armying or ecoing?

Last edit: 2012-05-26 19:33:51

MstrJinbo United States. May 26 2012 22:29. Posts 777

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I planned to opened up with my usual 1gate expand against Terran, but seeing two barracks, I panicked and prepared for a marine rush, a strategy that I still routinely lose to. I built 2 more gates, but resumed with my expo once I saw his factory, expecting to see some hellion or banshee harass. He dropped 3 hellions in my base and, through some terrible misclicks on my part, managed to kill off 14 probes. The rest of the game I was playing catchup, and could never get over my macro disadvantage.

This is not the same game I saw? For starters you scouted gas before rax and you even scouted the factory. I have no idea why you thought it was going to be a 2 rax. Using the information you actually had, the most likely thing would be either cloaked banshees or some type of fast drop. And the terran may try to follow up with some sort of 1/1/1 push. It is not something that you should cancel you build over.

Also you are not behind at all in this game. At worst you are pretty even the whole game at best you are up almost 20 workers by the end of the game. The main non-macro problem in the late game is you do not have a good lategame army composition. Gateway, immortal, collosus is pretty good for 2 base pushes but once it starts to get to 3 base and larger armies you are going to want to start adding high templar, archons and chargelots to your composition.

That being said you should have been able to win that last fight. Here are some reasons that you didn't
1. You weren't very good with researching your attack and armor ugrades. That should be where your edge is, especially if you are going double forge.
2. you attacked in a pretty bad angle. most of your units bunched up and were not attacking. especially those immortals. Immortals are 4 supply and you have 3 of them. They really needed to do more damage than they did. Also there was a tank defending where you attacked and you were taking a lot of free hits from the tank before the fight even started.
3. You attacked with a bunch of sentries with almost full energy. that energy needed to be used for guardian shield and forcefield.

Last edit: 2012-05-26 22:30:19

Saechiis Netherlands. May 26 2012 22:57. Posts 2880

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Sounds like you need more experience just playing the game in stressful situations. I lost to cheeses all the time even though I knew that I should do something, but I got so excited that I ended up doing nothing and dying (and angry

)

Really just play more and ingrain it into your skull that 4 min no expansion for Zerg means that you have to add cannons to your front. Scouting cheese will still give you an adrenaline boost, but with experience you'll know how to respond without having to think about specifics. In general playing more and getting more confortable in any kind of game will help more than working out theoretical responses to everything, because those are first to go out the window when the heat is on

Last edit: 2012-05-27 01:07:47

Thinking outside the box, I wonder what's in the box

rdub49erfn United States. May 27 2012 00:13. Posts 8

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Hi. I'm a master toss, and I agree with your friends - all you need to get to diamond/masters is (1) good macro (2) good strategy (including a solid build order) and (3) good scouting and reacting. You can easily get to masters with very bad micro.

I watched Game 2 and Game 3 and the reason you lost both is because of bad strategy.

Game 2: If you are going to do a 2 base attack, you need more produciton buildings. 5+ gate and robo or 6+ gate is "normal." 2 gate robo with no proxy pylon is suicide. You built two observers (and didn't use them), which are useless for an attack (unless you use one to get you vision to the high ground) Your second immmortal wasn't even at the battle.

Game 3: You scouted the 3 barracks. You just need to know the proper reaction. I've lost to this build a lot and I've found that the solution is sentries, and chronoboost on your gateways. If you just forcefield your ramp, remember T has very little income. So once you scout it, stop chronoing probes, have 2-3 gateways, Chrono out sentries first, and feel free to cut probes if you need to get a unit out instead. Also don't sit your senries too close to ramp because Terran can scan.

Anyway, learning strategy is hard. You can watch Day9, watch pros, read TL threads, and most importantly analyze your replays.

Kovaz May 27 2012 00:52. Posts 203

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I watched game 1, so that's what I'll comment on. I'm only in diamond so take what I say with a grain of salt.

First, you scouted a barracks and a factory, not two raxes. That should immediately tell you that no super fast marine rush or whatever is coming. The only kind of bio attack that makes sense from what you've seen is like a 3rax with medivacs, which won't come till much later. You don't need to 3gate expand, 1gate expand is perfectly safe against what he's doing. You saw that he went gas before rax as well, so my first instinct would be telling me to prepare for cloak banshees.

You should poke earlier with your first zealot+stalker, and leave the sentry behind. As long as he doesn't have concussive shells done, you can always run away. If you're really worried about conc shells, bring a probe and send it up his ramp first. In this game, there were four marines there, which you might have been able to kill by microing your one stalker. You'd also see a barracks and a factory with no addons. That's some really good scouting information. Since you see no tech lab on either, you can deduce: 1) He's either making hellions or not using his factory at all. 2) If he's going for some sort of bio pressure, he's hiding his addons which means they'll be later than is optimal.

From this scouting, you've basically got it narrowed down to a few possibilities:
1) Banshee play, maybe 2port but could also be some sort of 1port into expand or even a late 1-1-1.
2) Hellion play, maybe Hellion drop. Hellion drop is probably more likely because of the fast gas.
3) A weird MMM push with late upgrades. I'd say this is the least likely.

I think if you had aggressively pushed up his ramp you would have been able to see a hellion pop out, which is a obviously huge.

As for your defense, yeah you might have misclicked a bit but I'm sure you'll be able to fix those mistakes. You actually weren't that far behind, you were down 4 workers but you had your natural faster and have chrono boost.

It's generally a good idea to scout for hidden bases like the third he took. Either by being really active with an observer or just sending a zealot or probe down the sides is always a good habit. He got his third faster than you.

You expanded at a pretty good pace, you probably could have taken your third a bit faster had you scouted his, but not a big deal.

Your macro kind of falls apart as you move out to attack him. Right as you first engage, you're sitting on about 2k/1k. If you had 20 more zealots with your army, you would have absolutely demolished him. I'd have to watch the replay again to tell you what the specific reason for floating money was, but I'd probably guess you don't have enough gateways for the number of bases you have.

You also engaged fairly poorly. You shouldn't be dancing around within siege tank range and you were clumped up with your zealots in the back.

I'd say your composition was a bit off as well. If you're going to be attacking into your opponent, you want a lot of zealots to buffer damage. Especially if he has tanks. Had you made a few more gates and warped in a round or two of pure zealot that fight would have gone a lot better.

So, in summary:
1) You can improve your early game scouting a decent bit, and 1gate expand is safe enough against almost anything anyway; there's no need to do an improvised 3gate expand.
2) You still stabilised fairly well afterwards. You said in your summary that you were playing catch-up all game. That wasn't exactly true. You should watch your replays and compare how behind you felt in the game to how behind you actually are. It's often surprising how much of a difference there is.
3) You didn't engage very well in the last fight and your army was smaller than it could have been.

Hope this helps.

Fenneth Australia. May 27 2012 01:12. Posts 309

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Don't have the mindset that "I just need to get out of Platinum, then I won't have to worry about this stupid cheese". There will still be cheese at higher levels, and it will be executed better.

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