+ Show Spoiler +
This is a guide I essentially wrote for myself, about a month or two ago. After writing it for myself, I decided maybe some other people would get something out of it, so I rewrote it for uploading. If you find something you think is wrong, please feel to point it out (preferably without the use of ad hominem arguments ^_^). I have not used external sources, and as such all definitions are my own. I do this because definitions, even if slightly inaccurate, make things much simpler. So if you don’t like the definitions, feel free to suggest improvements but just remember they were designed with this article in mind.
Some of this guide is super simplistic, I find it gives a good grounding and makes the later sections make a lot more sense but they can probably be skipped if you find them boring (sections 1 and 2 essentially).
Some of this guide is super simplistic, I find it gives a good grounding and makes the later sections make a lot more sense but they can probably be skipped if you find them boring (sections 1 and 2 essentially).
Section 1.1: Strategy – Who should learn it?
+ Show Spoiler +
Everyone should learn strategy because;
You will play fun and interesting things more
The more you play, the better you will get at both mechanics and strategy
Learning strategy makes the game more fun and interesting, and can be very rewarding
A lot of people say to those trying to improve or get out of bronze ‘practice mechanics, just build probes and pylons then win, simple as that’; ‘just macro, that is all you need to get into diamond’; ‘bla bla bla, herp derp derp’. It’s true that you can beat a player with poor mechanics, every day of the week, without any strategy at all. Mechanics take practice; that is all. You can’t learn mechanics by reading them in a book, you just have improve them by playing the game. If you play a lot of games, your mechanics will get good. Great. Now let’s suppose you reach the stage where you can’t improve your mechanics anymore. Now you want to get better, so you have to learn strategy because you can’t just beat players with perfect mechanics by being better mechanically, you have hit your skill ceiling. The problem with this method is that you can learn strategy in parallel to mechanics with very little detriment to your mechanics, so you may as well. It is also very boring to simply practice mechanics all day long, without having the fun of developing new strategies. If something isn’t as fun, you won’t do it as much, and therefore, will not improve as much. Also, consider this, if all you do is practice mechanics, you can only beat players of lower mechanical skill than you. If you learn strategy in parallel, you can beat players of equal or slightly greater mechanical skill than you.
Also, while mechanics only change minimally over time, they fade quickly when you stop playing. Strategies fall in and out of favour, but strategy does not. If you can’t play often, your mechanics can not improve much, but your strategy can.
There is nothing more satisfying, than finding a build you have trouble with, designing a strategy to beat it, and then crushing the next person who uses that build on you. That alone, will make you play much more, and you will improve.
You will play fun and interesting things more
The more you play, the better you will get at both mechanics and strategy
Learning strategy makes the game more fun and interesting, and can be very rewarding
A lot of people say to those trying to improve or get out of bronze ‘practice mechanics, just build probes and pylons then win, simple as that’; ‘just macro, that is all you need to get into diamond’; ‘bla bla bla, herp derp derp’. It’s true that you can beat a player with poor mechanics, every day of the week, without any strategy at all. Mechanics take practice; that is all. You can’t learn mechanics by reading them in a book, you just have improve them by playing the game. If you play a lot of games, your mechanics will get good. Great. Now let’s suppose you reach the stage where you can’t improve your mechanics anymore. Now you want to get better, so you have to learn strategy because you can’t just beat players with perfect mechanics by being better mechanically, you have hit your skill ceiling. The problem with this method is that you can learn strategy in parallel to mechanics with very little detriment to your mechanics, so you may as well. It is also very boring to simply practice mechanics all day long, without having the fun of developing new strategies. If something isn’t as fun, you won’t do it as much, and therefore, will not improve as much. Also, consider this, if all you do is practice mechanics, you can only beat players of lower mechanical skill than you. If you learn strategy in parallel, you can beat players of equal or slightly greater mechanical skill than you.
Also, while mechanics only change minimally over time, they fade quickly when you stop playing. Strategies fall in and out of favour, but strategy does not. If you can’t play often, your mechanics can not improve much, but your strategy can.
There is nothing more satisfying, than finding a build you have trouble with, designing a strategy to beat it, and then crushing the next person who uses that build on you. That alone, will make you play much more, and you will improve.
Section 2.1: Fundamental Ideas of Strategy
+ Show Spoiler +
A strategy is simply a set of loose instructions that we follow to achieve a goal, or perhaps more fundamentally, a strategy is a set of smaller strategies that we can follow to achieve a goal. Given this, a strategy makes no sense without a goal. So we should define our goal clearly. For our purposes, our goal will be ‘get better at SC2’. To achieve this goal we can follow these instructions
1) Understand what strategy is
2) Improve our SC2 mechanics
3) Know our opponents (strengths/weaknesses/favoured playstyle)
4) Develop an effective in-game strategy
Once again, we should note that these instructions do not need to be followed in order, and in fact, can all be executed in parallel.
Section 2.2: Understand what strategy is
Anything that can be called a strategy game must meet the following fundamental criteria (or at least, this is the definition that I like to use, it’s not perfect, but it is useful).
1) At least 2 characters, who both want the same goal, but only one can achieve that goal.*
2) An initial playing field that is close to balanced.
3) No optimal pathway that ensures victory regardless of the opposing characters actions (i.e. you need to either force your opponent to do something, or know what they are doing and adjust your actions accordingly, in order for something to be called a ‘strategy’.
4) A number of possible advantages to be obtained.
5) A method of achieving an advantage through skill over chance.
6) Once an advantage is gained, this should be able to be used to
a. Win (i.e. kill the other player)
b. Convert into another advantage
c. Leverage a larger increase in said advantage
7) The maximum advantage possible should allow for an easy conversion into a win, without chance being a major factor.
* + Show Spoiler +
With this in mind we can see that in SC2, we follow a set of instructions in simple form
1) Start the game
2) Gain an advantage
3) Convert or increase that advantage
4) Convert our advantages into a win
So we can see that gaining an initial advantage, leveraging more advantage and then converting that into the win is fundamental to Starcraft 2.
We are going to start with the following initial assumptions; which while aren’t always true, are the best way to start developing a strategy.
1) Both players have perfect mechanics and zero knowledge of their opponent beyond race
2) The initial conditions (races and starting positions) in the game are perfectly balanced (perfect balance in this context means equal opportunity to gain an advantage; equal ease to execute and gain said advantage; and equal ease of converting that advantage into a win).
So starting the game is easy. Click ‘Find Match’. Now we want to gain an advantage.
1) Understand what strategy is
2) Improve our SC2 mechanics
3) Know our opponents (strengths/weaknesses/favoured playstyle)
4) Develop an effective in-game strategy
Once again, we should note that these instructions do not need to be followed in order, and in fact, can all be executed in parallel.
Section 2.2: Understand what strategy is
Anything that can be called a strategy game must meet the following fundamental criteria (or at least, this is the definition that I like to use, it’s not perfect, but it is useful).
1) At least 2 characters, who both want the same goal, but only one can achieve that goal.*
2) An initial playing field that is close to balanced.
3) No optimal pathway that ensures victory regardless of the opposing characters actions (i.e. you need to either force your opponent to do something, or know what they are doing and adjust your actions accordingly, in order for something to be called a ‘strategy’.
4) A number of possible advantages to be obtained.
5) A method of achieving an advantage through skill over chance.
6) Once an advantage is gained, this should be able to be used to
a. Win (i.e. kill the other player)
b. Convert into another advantage
c. Leverage a larger increase in said advantage
7) The maximum advantage possible should allow for an easy conversion into a win, without chance being a major factor.
* + Show Spoiler +
There are some exceptions when the goal is not a super limited resource. Such as money in real life, sometimes the goal is to get a lot, but fundamentally, it is getting more than everyone else. This is analogous to our division rank, but it is not so important for us in terms of our goal of improving at SC2. It is easy and accurate enough to say that the goal of our in-game strategy is to win the current game.
With this in mind we can see that in SC2, we follow a set of instructions in simple form
1) Start the game
2) Gain an advantage
3) Convert or increase that advantage
4) Convert our advantages into a win
So we can see that gaining an initial advantage, leveraging more advantage and then converting that into the win is fundamental to Starcraft 2.
We are going to start with the following initial assumptions; which while aren’t always true, are the best way to start developing a strategy.
1) Both players have perfect mechanics and zero knowledge of their opponent beyond race
2) The initial conditions (races and starting positions) in the game are perfectly balanced (perfect balance in this context means equal opportunity to gain an advantage; equal ease to execute and gain said advantage; and equal ease of converting that advantage into a win).
So starting the game is easy. Click ‘Find Match’. Now we want to gain an advantage.
Section 3.1: Gaining an Advantage
+ Show Spoiler +
To do this, we will break it up into steps;
1) Learn the possible advantages
2) Decide which advantage is the best one to get
3) Learn how to get that advantage
4) Figure out how to convert that advantage into either a larger advantage; another advantage; or a win.
Section 3.2: Possible advantages
There are many possible advantages in Starcraft 2. Some are easier to obtain than others, some are more successful. In fact; there are so many possible advantages in sc2, that I don’t feel comfortable saying my list is complete, but it is a nice starting point. Suffice to say, some are more important than others, and some are easier to convert into a win. A lot of these have overlapping themes, so it is hard to make a nice orderly list, but I have tried my best (i.e. cloak could be under tech or tactical etc.)
So let’s list all the ones we can think of, in no specific order
1) Army
a. Size
b. Composition
c. Mobility
2) Economy (applies to both gas and minerals)
a. Total Available (number of bases)
b. Rate of collection Minerals
c. Production speed
3) Technology
a. Upgrades
b. Tech Tree Advancement
4) Tactical
a. Map vision
b. Expansion control
c. Army Positioning (arc, on a cliff, behind a wall, surface area etc.)
d. Micro
e. Detection and Cloak
5) Information
a. For all of the possible advantages, knowing your opponents advantage in each of these creates a mirror advantage in information. i.e. knowing your opponent has no gas, gives you an information advantage of the type Technology(3a and 3b) (this 5th type of advantage is the fundamental difference between games of perfect information and games with imperfect information i.e. chess versus starcraft)
Section 3.3: Decision making – What advantage do I want?
Decision making comes down to which advantage you should get, or press, given what you know.
One way to figure out what advantage you want to go for initially is to look at the games you win, and decide which advantage won it for you. Not the advantage that won at the end, because that will nearly always be army size, but the advantage that you first gained.
Example 1: I often gain an initial advantage by fast expanding as Zerg; my initial advantage is economy (available and rate of collection). If my opponent does not fast expand; his advantage is going to be army size or technology. So, in order to maintain my advantage, I need to prevent his tech or army size from being effective. From there, we work out what our opponents advantage is, and do our best to nullify it or sidestep it.
Example 2: I am zerg; my opponent is Protoss. I have double upgrades while my opponent only has a single forge. If I start upgrades early, I can gain an upgrade advantage all game long.
From here, it is a matter of either increasing our initial advantage, converting it into another advantage, or winning with it. There is also the possibility of maintaining your advantage while nullifying or eliminating their advantage. Some examples are given below
From Example 2:
1) Increase initial advantage: Use the upgrade advantage to execute a timing attack with the goal of killing the opponents forge while continuing your own upgrades (use this decision if I scout a forge upgrading or double forges)
2) Convert my upgrade advantage into a economic advantage by expanding , knowing that your upgraded army can protect you if your opponent attacks even if you cut army production (use this decision if your opponent is trying to gain an army size advantage)
3) Just go kill the opponent because my army is of similar size to his, but has upgrades so will kill their units faster than they will kill mine (use this decision if opponent is trying to gain an economic advantage by expanding).
Put simply, we want to gain an initial advantage in some way with our opening, and then use our scouting information to make a decision as to how we should gain further advantages. This is why keeping that scouting worker alive as long as possible is so important to top level players. If you can keep your worker alive longer than your opponent can, you already have an initial scouting advantage that you can exploit for a further advantage.
Fundamental to any strategy is to play to our strengths, while avoiding any confrontation that exploits our weaknesses. What this means in context, is we want to make our advantages count and our opponents advantages to not count and conversely, we want our weaknesses to be meaningless or hidden, and our opponents weaknesses to be exploited. So when making a decision;
1) Determine the advantage(s) we have
2) Determine the advantage(s) our opponents have
3) Determine the weakness(es) we have
4) Determine the weakness(es) our opponents have
5) Choose a course of action that will allow 1 and 4 to have the greatest determining effect, while minimizing the effects of 2 and 3.
Section 3.3: How to get an initial advantage
This is relatively simple at first glance, but can become immensely complex. In fact, the method of gaining an initial advantage is often what distinguishes the greatest players. Essentially, for us newbies, if you want an economic advantage, fast expand; Army advantage, cut economy; Upgrade advantage – start them early; Tech advantage – get earlier gas. The main point is, if you get an advantage, you want to exploit it. So many games I see players get early double upgrades and start +1/+1 but then not attack as soon as the upgrades are done. If your opponent starts +1/+1 about twenty seconds after you do, your army is only stronger than his for 20 seconds after that upgrade completes, so you MUST attack then, or your advantage means nothing until 2/2 is done.
Section 3.4: Converting your advantage
The key to Starcraft 2 is economy, everyone knows that or has at least heard that. But, what does this mean? If we have a better economy, we win right? Wrong! And this is a concept a lot of players have trouble with. The statement “Starcraft 2 is a game of economy” means ‘An economical advantage in Starcraft 2 is the easiest advantage to convert into another advantage’. This is not to say that an economical advantage is the easiest advantage to gain. It is also the case for the most part, that in order to convert one advantage into another, we must go through the intermediate step of converting it into an economic advantage first.
The concept of converting advantages is extremely complex, due largely to the vast number of possible conversions. Given this, I will try to list some of the easiest conversions to execute, and some fundamental ideas about converting advantages in SC2.
Principles
1) Converting one advantage into another usually requires an intermediate step of converting it into an economic advantage.
2) Economic advantages are the easiest to leverage into further economic advantages while not sacrificing other advantages
3) If you have an economic advantage, and an army advantage (1a,b,c ; 2a,b,c) and everything else is equal; your opponent has very little chance unless you mess up. Other advantages exhibit varying levels of dynamic play.
4) The only way to defeat an opponent that won’t quit (and for our purposes it is best to assume we are playing someone who won’t quit) is to convert an army advantage into a win. For this reason, the winner will nearly always have an army advantage at the very end of the game (base race being an exception – god damn it uniden).
5) Any advantage comes at a cost (costs include some other missed advantage, attention, in game minerals); your goal is to either make that cost not count, or to gain more from the advantage than it cost you.
Examples of common advantages in SC2:
I have the smaller army, but it is more mobile
The faster your units are, the more map control you have, most people understand this concept, but do not understand why. One of the reasons you have map control, is because if their army leaves their base, you can attack their base, kill their workers, but still get back to your base in before their army gets there; and with your defenders advantage, you can hopefully hold off their attack. If you neglect to counter attack when you have the more mobile army, you are throwing away your advantage. There are other reasons why mobility and map control is useful, this is just one of them.
I have strong units but they are immobile (i.e. siege tanks)
People seem to poorly understand siege tanks for the most part. They are one of the only real ‘space controlling’ units in the game. With these you want to secure expansions and gain an economic advantage, not run them across the map to kill your opponent quickly. A few sieged tanks can control huge amounts of space allowing for safe expansion, upgrading etc. You only want to send these units into the field if you feel your opponent is overstepping his bounds i.e. if a zerg is trying to squeeze extra bases / drones in that you don’t think he can afford, try to start pushing towards his main. If he is not over-expanding or over-droning, there should be no need to push, just take bases, upgrade and sit and defend. Alternatively, you can side-step their immobility with drop ships, coupled with their long range, you can often put them in easy to defend locations that can shell the opponents base (i.e. low ground on tal darim; shakuras; a bunch of the season 3 maps). The same principles are required for defence, if you are defending and your opponent has lots of siege tanks, you want to have mobile air units to defend against any dropping of these tanks into bad locations for you, and use mobile harassing units to hit any locations that aren’t protected by tanks. Also, engaging his army at any time his tanks aren’t sieged means his cost effectiveness plummets, conversely, engaging sieged tanks requires that you are extremely far ahead economically.
I started upgrades at a different time
Attack as soon as they finish! As mentioned, the exact amount of time earlier you started your upgrades, is the exact window of opportunity you have to inflict damage when they finish, after each set. So attack when 1/1 finishes, when 2/2 finishes and when 3/3 finishes. Also, if you have started upgrades and your opponent has not, if you see his army move out before your upgrades finish, do whatever you can to delay engaging until those upgrades finish. A 20 food army at 1/1 versus 20 food army at 0/0 will leave you much less ahead than a 100 food army at 1/1 versus a 100food army at 0/0. Similarly, if you are behind in upgrades, make sure yours finish before you engage. If he is at 1/1 and you’re at 0/0, you want to engage before his 2/2 finishes but after your 1/1 finishes, that way, he won’t have an army for the timing window after his 2/2 finishes. There are various ways to delay engagements, one is to just send a few sacrificial units past his to make him chase them down, or to counter attack with a few just to make him turn around for those precious few seconds. Often times, sacrificing an expansion is better than engaging before your upgrades are equal.
Economic advantages
The world is your oyster if you are making more money than your opponent, but essentially, you just want to keep it that way and win the long game. Economic advantages stack up over time to give you an eventual win, and rarely give you a short sharp victory, you have to take small advantages from it. Start your upgrades earlier, get your tech out faster, get your infrastructure going so you can get more units out etc etc. If your opponent has an economic advantage, you need to do something to hurt his economy or step up your own. Do not try to play a long passive game against someone who has more money than you, he should win.
There are many more types of advantage and this section could be a lot more in depth, but I’m going to leave that for another time.
Section 4.1: Developing a new strategy from scratch
+ Show Spoiler +
If you want to develop a novel strategy decide which advantages you want to use and go from there. Obviously, we want to keep two things in mind at all times;
1) The map
2) The matchup
The best way to figure out an advantage you can use to win is to look at the asymmetries between your race, and the race of your opponent, and figure out how to utilize these to gain an advantage.
We want to play to our strengths; we want to abuse some sort of early game asymmetry to leverage an advantage for ourselves, often times, an economic advantage. We can look at various strategies that have been posted previously in the strategy forums that have done exactly this. Why not the Protoss forge fast expand build?
On maps with a small choke at your natural, forge fast expand builds are viable versus zerg. This is because a) the choke can be defended by relatively few cannons b) static defence is strong early game even if immobile c) we can wall a small choke and our opponent has only short range units to attack early game. The strength of this build is getting an economic advantage by expanding early. The weakness is a lack of units to defend. We sidestep the need for units by making static defence at a choke, knowing our opponent will not have flying units or long range units until a certain point in time, by which time our expansion will have paid off, and we will have enough units to defend.
So, the strengths of this build are economy, and the weaknesses are side-stepped. There are a number of options for zerg opponents her, they can either side-step your advantage by taking a quick 3rd base, levelling the playing field again; get drop tech fast to nullify your tactical advantage at the choke; etc etc. The point here is, often two players of similar skill will often both have an early game advantage; the winner is decided by who utilizes their advantage most effectively. The only way to utilize your advantage effectively, is to truly understand what it is, what its weaknesses are, and how to side-step those weaknesses given the map and situation.
If you do want to develop a new strategy for yourself, try to really look at what you want to punish, examine the weaknesses and strengths of it, and work out a way that both punishes its weaknesses, while side-stepping its strengths. Also, don’t forget timings, if you discount a strategy because they could have some unit to counter it, check that they could actually fit that unit into their build in time to stop your damage.
1) The map
2) The matchup
The best way to figure out an advantage you can use to win is to look at the asymmetries between your race, and the race of your opponent, and figure out how to utilize these to gain an advantage.
We want to play to our strengths; we want to abuse some sort of early game asymmetry to leverage an advantage for ourselves, often times, an economic advantage. We can look at various strategies that have been posted previously in the strategy forums that have done exactly this. Why not the Protoss forge fast expand build?
On maps with a small choke at your natural, forge fast expand builds are viable versus zerg. This is because a) the choke can be defended by relatively few cannons b) static defence is strong early game even if immobile c) we can wall a small choke and our opponent has only short range units to attack early game. The strength of this build is getting an economic advantage by expanding early. The weakness is a lack of units to defend. We sidestep the need for units by making static defence at a choke, knowing our opponent will not have flying units or long range units until a certain point in time, by which time our expansion will have paid off, and we will have enough units to defend.
So, the strengths of this build are economy, and the weaknesses are side-stepped. There are a number of options for zerg opponents her, they can either side-step your advantage by taking a quick 3rd base, levelling the playing field again; get drop tech fast to nullify your tactical advantage at the choke; etc etc. The point here is, often two players of similar skill will often both have an early game advantage; the winner is decided by who utilizes their advantage most effectively. The only way to utilize your advantage effectively, is to truly understand what it is, what its weaknesses are, and how to side-step those weaknesses given the map and situation.
If you do want to develop a new strategy for yourself, try to really look at what you want to punish, examine the weaknesses and strengths of it, and work out a way that both punishes its weaknesses, while side-stepping its strengths. Also, don’t forget timings, if you discount a strategy because they could have some unit to counter it, check that they could actually fit that unit into their build in time to stop your damage.
Section 5.1: A word about balance
+ Show Spoiler +
It seems clear, that the ideas presented here, if correct, present a clear method of determining imbalance in the game.
1) If strategy X is optimal at gaining an advantage in all cases regardless of scouting information, and can then be used to leverage other advantages with no weaknesses, it is imbalanced.
2) If execution is really easy for strat X, and its counter (strat_y) is really tricky to execute, you could also make an argument for imbalance.
The point I want to make with this is that if you ever lose a game and think ‘Damn, that felt imbalanced’, or you are consistently having trouble with a common build; come back and think about the game strategically.
1) When did your opponent gain an advantage?
2) How did they do it and what was it?
3) How did they leverage it to gain further advantage and eventually the win?
4) What advantages did they sacrifice/what weaknesses did they create to get those advantages
5) How could I have exploited those weaknesses to create an advantage for myself?
6) How could I have nullified or avoided their advantages?
Once you have answered these questions, you should have some idea as to how to go about refining your play to defeat that strategy, and if you do, it is one of the most satisfying feelings in the world.
1) If strategy X is optimal at gaining an advantage in all cases regardless of scouting information, and can then be used to leverage other advantages with no weaknesses, it is imbalanced.
2) If execution is really easy for strat X, and its counter (strat_y) is really tricky to execute, you could also make an argument for imbalance.
The point I want to make with this is that if you ever lose a game and think ‘Damn, that felt imbalanced’, or you are consistently having trouble with a common build; come back and think about the game strategically.
1) When did your opponent gain an advantage?
2) How did they do it and what was it?
3) How did they leverage it to gain further advantage and eventually the win?
4) What advantages did they sacrifice/what weaknesses did they create to get those advantages
5) How could I have exploited those weaknesses to create an advantage for myself?
6) How could I have nullified or avoided their advantages?
Once you have answered these questions, you should have some idea as to how to go about refining your play to defeat that strategy, and if you do, it is one of the most satisfying feelings in the world.
Section 6.1: Afterword
+ Show Spoiler +
Thanks for reading; I hope this helps some people. If people like this, I’ll probably write a section on the various costs of different types of advantages, the ease of conversion between them and what decisions are good given a set of advantages (i.e. 1.a. and 1.b. versus a player with 2a.2b. etc).