However the important part is- He is a quality poster. If you don't know that, you don't lurk enough.
[G] Advantages and strategy in SC2 - Page 3
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Probe1
United States17920 Posts
However the important part is- He is a quality poster. If you don't know that, you don't lurk enough. | ||
BestZergOnEast
Canada358 Posts
Perhaps you could consider this true, since strategy is not concrete advice in the sense of 'go build a bunker', but then you might as well just go play counterstrike if mechanics is the be all and end all of the game. | ||
GGruss
Sweden121 Posts
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Flix
Belgium114 Posts
On July 20 2011 04:50 Anihc wrote: What is with the recent influx of "guides" that are simply a wall of text with overgeneralizations and very little concrete advice? Sorry for being harsh but this isn't helpful at all. Try narrowing down your scope and then give specific instructions and examples. EDIT: To all the posters who think this is good: can you explain exactly how it was helpful for you? Can we please up our standards a bit, long post with decent organization and proper usage of English does not equal good. EDIT2: See below for a more detailed explanation of my criticism. I know this "guide" is better than most stuff that appear in the forums but I still don't think it's very useful in its current state, regardless of how fun (or not) it was to read. I think what's happening is that you're not finding what YOU'RE looking for in his post. I for one think there are several concrete examples of his theories and I hope this helps me get a better overall sense of the game. You're right It won't help me micro my banelings better against MMM but as much as that's necessary to be better so is getting better overall game sense as to when you're ahead or behind, when you have an advantage you need to exploit. High level players probably need better game sense like this just as much to help in decision making, this equals to a high standard of information to me. And what's with the "can we please up our standards" high horse comment? Edit: No disrespect, you're a long time quality poster and contributer to TL. in all honesty I'm not in a position to make judgement calls but only to voice my opinion. | ||
TokO
Norway577 Posts
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Geiko
France1929 Posts
After reading it, I haven't really seen anything I didn't already know. Of course, mainly everything you say is true, but how useful is it to people ? I think anyone master or above will find zero use in this guide, and every one under master league should just play more instead of theorycrafting. I also agree with Anihc about upping the standards for TL. The increasing number of bad "guides" is making it very painful to browse TL in search of good BO for X and X. For example, I would love to read a Zealot/Archon guide in PvX but all those that already exist are of (very) poor quality. | ||
Fyrewolf
United States1533 Posts
On July 20 2011 15:48 Tee wrote: thanks for the input, would definitely like to write those at some stage You misquoted, that was me that said that, not well-named. On July 20 2011 15:48 Tee wrote: Definitely true, therefore the qualifier 'all else being equal'. I should adjust it to demonstrate that clearer. Essentially the point I'm trying to make is that once you have these two in the bag, your road to victory is clear and a loss should only result from sloppy play (assuming roughly equal tech etc). the point that you can still die to a lack of detection raises an excellent strategical idea, in that when you are ahead and both players know it, you want to buy safety, as most players will take risks (such as DTs) to come back from being behind. so detection solidifies your advantage. will definitely put that in somewhere I did agree in the later part of that post when speaking of the all things equal part, I was merely making the point that it can be offset if you do happen to have an advantage in another area. | ||
Tee
Australia11 Posts
On July 20 2011 20:21 Geiko wrote: What audience does this guide target ? After reading it, I haven't really seen anything I didn't already know. Of course, mainly everything you say is true, but how useful is it to people ? I think anyone master or above will find zero use in this guide, and every one under master league should just play more instead of theorycrafting. I also agree with Anihc about upping the standards for TL. The increasing number of bad "guides" is making it very painful to browse TL in search of good BO for X and X. For example, I would love to read a Zealot/Archon guide in PvX but all those that already exist are of (very) poor quality. The guide, as stated in intro, was actually targeted at myself. I wrote it for fun, to nail down my thoughts into a coherent collection of ideas. I wasn't even sure how far I would go, but after writing so much, I decided maybe I would put it up here, see what people thought, who knows, it might help some people. I could have told you that you would have found very little education from the article Geiko, given the understanding you have already demonstrated in your other TL posts. I also doubt it would ever help anyone above masters (i.e. GM), but possibly low masters and below. I read nothing in the forum guidelines prohibiting articles aimed at improving players below GM / masters; but I will concede, that perhaps this post walks a fine line between what was laid out in the strat forum posting guidelines. To that end, it is up to the mods whether or not the content is worthy or not, and I would like to improve and elaborate on the post with more specific examples and actual replays, but that would also tread the same line that the OP did. It is not a build order, it is not a strategy, it is trying to understand the strategic implications at any point in the game, so that if your build order gets messed up, you don't just fall apart. It is entirely possible that this just isn't the place for posts like this, but I wanted to put it somewhere for people to read, and this is what I came up with. As for everyone under master league playing more rather than theorycrafting, I addressed this in the introduction. I actually believe this to be a huge misconception amongst the community that people who want to get better should only practice mechanics. Mainly because that can be very boring, and there is a subset of players who would just quit if they were not allowed to theory craft and improve their strategy somewhat. The analogy, if you will permit it, is to tell scientists to learn a technique for growing cells in culture perfectly, and until they get that perfect, do not worry about learning how to design an experiment, analyze your results etc. No one would get past undergrad because the passion for science is not the passion for running through the motions of sterilizing implements over and over; the passion is in finding the answer to a question by designing an experiment. I believe the passion people feel for starcraft, is the passion for understanding the strategy, not the passion for understanding how to read numbers on a screen and press a series of keys in response. Due to this, I think lower level players should definitely spend time thinking about advantages and strategies, because it will make them play more. How many times have you thought of a new strategy / read a new strategy and gone "man... i realllly wanna get home and try that shit out". It sparks motivation to play more, and therefore increases skill by virtue of increased play. Personally, I want more players playing, and them all to get better; telling them to only focus on mechanics and forget strategy seems like a poor method to achieve that goal. Sorry for the, once again, verbose reply, and if you have any suggestions on how to improve the post, then please let me know. | ||
Fyrewolf
United States1533 Posts
On July 20 2011 20:21 Geiko wrote: What audience does this guide target ? After reading it, I haven't really seen anything I didn't already know. Of course, mainly everything you say is true, but how useful is it to people ? I think anyone master or above will find zero use in this guide, and every one under master league should just play more instead of theorycrafting. I also agree with Anihc about upping the standards for TL. The increasing number of bad "guides" is making it very painful to browse TL in search of good BO for X and X. For example, I would love to read a Zealot/Archon guide in PvX but all those that already exist are of (very) poor quality. Just because a Master/Grandmaster player will probably have a grasp on these concepts already doesn't mean that it is a bad guide, noobies are the ones that need the most help. I got good enough to beat a Class B Chess player before I actually learned a lot of important strategical concepts in chess, not everyone in SC2 knows these kinds of concepts. | ||
marvellosity
United Kingdom35817 Posts
The idea of gaining advantages made me think a little though... so many people use the builds pros use because they are good, which is fine - e.g. 3gate sentry expand vs Zerg, or a 1rax gasless expand. Now, if people who took these builds as their own took some time to ask "what advantages is this opening giving me? How can I utilise these", "what are its weaknesses - so how can I mitigate them?" then actually they'd probably end up playing a much sounder game. In many ways for Zerg this is much more obvious vs T/P than for other races: openings are almost always designed to give an economic advantage. So a Zerg will seek to increase this by taking a fast third etc. The weaknesses are also obvious - behind in army/tech for the time being. So a Zerg need to defend vs tech - spores or queens vs DTs/stargate, or queens/spores/roaches/sim city vs hellion/banshee. They also need to defend vs army - i.e. scouting lings to know exactly when P/T is moving out so they can build an army. It seems the overall plan to increase advantages and mitigate disadvantages are less developed (or at least less obvious) in P/Ts case. | ||
me_viet
Australia1350 Posts
On July 20 2011 20:21 Geiko wrote: What audience does this guide target ? After reading it, I haven't really seen anything I didn't already know. Of course, mainly everything you say is true, but how useful is it to people ? I think anyone master or above will find zero use in this guide, and every one under master league should just play more instead of theorycrafting. I also agree with Anihc about upping the standards for TL. The increasing number of bad "guides" is making it very painful to browse TL in search of good BO for X and X. For example, I would love to read a Zealot/Archon guide in PvX but all those that already exist are of (very) poor quality. Users who have been here for a while prior to the blue post change on TL, notices and remembers all the quality posters (most ends up becoming blue-posters). The blue posts allows the newer members to recognize immediately who the quality posters are. New members should immediately notice the quality of these posts and realize the standards TL is looking for. Off topic: Geiko, why the hell do you need a zealot/archon guide? Just keep 3-raxing =P | ||
AmericanUmlaut
Germany2560 Posts
And he's right on this one, in my opinion. This is truly an admirable effort, especially for a first post, but it's very long-winded and contains very little information that would lead a reader of any level to better play in SC2. I notice, by the way, that no one arguing that this isn't true has actually come forward with something they've learned from the article that they feel will make them a better player. Compare to this post on the same subject of advantages and strategy (http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=64514). It's not even limited to SC, discussing advantages and strategy in games in general, and yet it very consisely explains a large number of concepts that I can and do use to improve my in-game performance. | ||
Geiko
France1929 Posts
On July 20 2011 21:49 Tee wrote: The guide, as stated in intro, was actually targeted at myself. I wrote it for fun, to nail down my thoughts into a coherent collection of ideas. I wasn't even sure how far I would go, but after writing so much, I decided maybe I would put it up here, see what people thought, who knows, it might help some people. I could have told you that you would have found very little education from the article Geiko, given the understanding you have already demonstrated in your other TL posts. I also doubt it would ever help anyone above masters (i.e. GM), but possibly low masters and below. I read nothing in the forum guidelines prohibiting articles aimed at improving players below GM / masters; but I will concede, that perhaps this post walks a fine line between what was laid out in the strat forum posting guidelines. To that end, it is up to the mods whether or not the content is worthy or not, and I would like to improve and elaborate on the post with more specific examples and actual replays, but that would also tread the same line that the OP did. It is not a build order, it is not a strategy, it is trying to understand the strategic implications at any point in the game, so that if your build order gets messed up, you don't just fall apart. It is entirely possible that this just isn't the place for posts like this, but I wanted to put it somewhere for people to read, and this is what I came up with. As for everyone under master league playing more rather than theorycrafting, I addressed this in the introduction. I actually believe this to be a huge misconception amongst the community that people who want to get better should only practice mechanics. Mainly because that can be very boring, and there is a subset of players who would just quit if they were not allowed to theory craft and improve their strategy somewhat. The analogy, if you will permit it, is to tell scientists to learn a technique for growing cells in culture perfectly, and until they get that perfect, do not worry about learning how to design an experiment, analyze your results etc. No one would get past undergrad because the passion for science is not the passion for running through the motions of sterilizing implements over and over; the passion is in finding the answer to a question by designing an experiment. I believe the passion people feel for starcraft, is the passion for understanding the strategy, not the passion for understanding how to read numbers on a screen and press a series of keys in response. Due to this, I think lower level players should definitely spend time thinking about advantages and strategies, because it will make them play more. How many times have you thought of a new strategy / read a new strategy and gone "man... i realllly wanna get home and try that shit out". It sparks motivation to play more, and therefore increases skill by virtue of increased play. Personally, I want more players playing, and them all to get better; telling them to only focus on mechanics and forget strategy seems like a poor method to achieve that goal. Sorry for the, once again, verbose reply, and if you have any suggestions on how to improve the post, then please let me know. I'm sorry, I reread my original message and it comes off a bit harsh I really respect all the time you put into this post and by no means do I consider what you wrote to be bad (the last part about "bad guides" wasn't aimed at you). I was just questioning the overall orientation that the strat forum should take, in particular the G threads which in my opinion should only be very high level threads (understand : with information useful to very high level players). For example, I've worked a ton on my PvZ FFE into stargate thread but since I'm not a very high level player, I didn't think it deserved a G tag. I also hesitated a lot before putting a G to my PvP strat and put a disclaimer saying it was only a D at high levels. And it really saddens me when I see 10 posts a day with a G tag that look like they took 15 minutes to write (once again, not referring to your thread, but in general) or/and with average to low-level content. | ||
IslandLife
21 Posts
I think your focus on advantages is spot on. In my discussions with other players at my skill level, I continually see that they have not put much thought into creating advantages and recovering from a disadvantage. 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. This is absolutely great information. I still cannot convince my friend that when I defend his early one base rush, I have the advantage economically if I expanded. He simply replies he didn't macro well enough. Hence, I would really suggest finding a short replay that demonstrates the point you are trying to get across. Trust me, there are lots of players out there who need to see it not just read it. If you really want to put the time in, perhaps you and a friend could create short, clear examples in-game. Another of my friends recently told me he lost because he didn't have enough tanks in TvT. While I did have maybe 3 extra tanks, I was a full 2 upgrades ahead on weapons and armor with my marines. They stimmed and took out his tanks with ease. Show this in a replay for Example 2! The rest of the guide I did not find particularly helpful, but I really encourage you to refine the guide. It is far too wordy, and it doesn't convey any solid strategic information. You mentioned you wrote it for yourself, and that is how it reads. You write really well, but honestly a lot of it felt like you were trying to meet a word minimum in an essay. If you went through each advantage from section 3 with really specific advice and replays, I think you would have one of the most vital guides for new players. It would be really awesome! Good luck and I hope you keep working on this! | ||
0c3LoT
Canada162 Posts
I think a lot of what you said in this Guide directly goes against what Ver was saying. | ||
0c3LoT
Canada162 Posts
On July 20 2011 21:49 Tee wrote: The guide, as stated in intro, was actually targeted at myself. I wrote it for fun, to nail down my thoughts into a coherent collection of ideas. I wasn't even sure how far I would go, but after writing so much, I decided maybe I would put it up here, see what people thought, who knows, it might help some people. I could have told you that you would have found very little education from the article Geiko, given the understanding you have already demonstrated in your other TL posts. I also doubt it would ever help anyone above masters (i.e. GM), but possibly low masters and below. I read nothing in the forum guidelines prohibiting articles aimed at improving players below GM / masters; but I will concede, that perhaps this post walks a fine line between what was laid out in the strat forum posting guidelines. To that end, it is up to the mods whether or not the content is worthy or not, and I would like to improve and elaborate on the post with more specific examples and actual replays, but that would also tread the same line that the OP did. It is not a build order, it is not a strategy, it is trying to understand the strategic implications at any point in the game, so that if your build order gets messed up, you don't just fall apart. It is entirely possible that this just isn't the place for posts like this, but I wanted to put it somewhere for people to read, and this is what I came up with. As for everyone under master league playing more rather than theorycrafting, I addressed this in the introduction. I actually believe this to be a huge misconception amongst the community that people who want to get better should only practice mechanics. Mainly because that can be very boring, and there is a subset of players who would just quit if they were not allowed to theory craft and improve their strategy somewhat. The analogy, if you will permit it, is to tell scientists to learn a technique for growing cells in culture perfectly, and until they get that perfect, do not worry about learning how to design an experiment, analyze your results etc. No one would get past undergrad because the passion for science is not the passion for running through the motions of sterilizing implements over and over; the passion is in finding the answer to a question by designing an experiment. I believe the passion people feel for starcraft, is the passion for understanding the strategy, not the passion for understanding how to read numbers on a screen and press a series of keys in response. Due to this, I think lower level players should definitely spend time thinking about advantages and strategies, because it will make them play more. How many times have you thought of a new strategy / read a new strategy and gone "man... i realllly wanna get home and try that shit out". It sparks motivation to play more, and therefore increases skill by virtue of increased play. Personally, I want more players playing, and them all to get better; telling them to only focus on mechanics and forget strategy seems like a poor method to achieve that goal. Sorry for the, once again, verbose reply, and if you have any suggestions on how to improve the post, then please let me know. Why learn to run before you can walk? No one's saying to solely focus on mechanics because then we'd just tell you to play the Multitasking Trainer all day. The reason why lower level players are encouraged emphasize their mechanics is because that's generally what's holding them back. How many times have you thought up or found out about a really cool strategy and then weren't able to implement it to its full potential because your mechanics weren't as good as they could be? Also, your analogy is flawed. If the scientist doesn't have the basic fundamentals down pat, like how to operate a microscope, how to keep things clean, basic biology (MECHANICS) etc. then they will never be able to to do something like grow a perfect culture of cells (STRATEGY). | ||
Fyrewolf
United States1533 Posts
Mechanics are what generally holds back players, true, but that's not why a strategy fails per se, it's because you didn't understand the underlying principles behind it and therefore can't deal with anything that doesn't go according to plan (like not having enough units because your macro slips up). Then you can evaluate I don't have enough units to accomplish goal x, maybe I can sneak in an extra upgrade or something to accomplish that goal. That's why Day[9] stresses having a game plan before you go into a game so that you can adjust when things don't go right and you don't feel lost. Having good mechanics is useless if you don't know what you are trying to do with those mechanics. | ||
CecilSunkure
United States2829 Posts
I don't really want to read your post, as your forward doesn't really explain why I should it. Why would I want to read your personal notes? Your forward basically says you wrote this thing for yourself, then you say something about ad hominem which makes me think this whole thread is a bunch of pretentiousness from the OP. Not saying it is just you being pretentious, but I am saying your forward makes it look like so. Take a look at my forward. For example in my document my forward does a great job of offering something to the reader, where yours is more like "Hey I wrote this for myself, but I wanna share it and maybe you'll find it interesting" -sounds like it belongs in the blogs section. So then I read section 1.1 and find that I disagree with every single thing you wrote. I respect your opinion as your own, but [G] threads are threads written by people that know what they are talking about. In my document I barely wrote about strategy, other than telling people to use strategies developed by professionals. I don't really see why you'd have a better understanding and ability than me on the subject since you don't give me a reason to; provide a reason as to why I should. I won't respond directly to the content, as I heavily disagree with everything I read, but I don't have the time to argue with a bunch of opinions listed in a wall of cryptic text. But I did want to give you some advice on what I did read from a writer's and reader's standpoint. | ||
0c3LoT
Canada162 Posts
On July 21 2011 03:08 Fyrewolf wrote: Actually a lot of times a strategy fails when you try it out the first time is not because of mechanics. It's because something goes a little bit differently than you read in the guide, and you are suddenly lost because you don't understand why you are using the strategy and what you are trying to accomplish with it. Mechanics are what generally holds back players, true, but that's not why a strategy fails per se, it's because you didn't understand the underlying principles behind it and therefore can't deal with anything that doesn't go according to plan (like not having enough units because your macro slips up). Then you can evaluate I don't have enough units to accomplish goal x, maybe I can sneak in an extra upgrade or something to accomplish that goal. That's why Day[9] stresses having a game plan before you go into a game so that you can adjust when things don't go right and you don't feel lost. Having good mechanics is useless if you don't know what you are trying to do with those mechanics. Come on, man. You basically just proved my point there. Your macro slips (due to your mechanics not being as good as it could be), then you need to "evaluate" and "think" about proper responses in order to make up for your macro slipping. Meanwhile, while you're thinking about what you need to do to catch back up, your macro is slipping even more as you make the necessary adjustments (due to subpar mechanics). You will NOT be able to make those "on the fly" adjustments worthwhile if your mechanics suck. You'll just continue to fall behind. | ||
sick_transit
United States195 Posts
Von Clausewitz: On War Sun Tzu: The Art of War So in general I agree that guides like this are not really a helpful contribution to the strat forum and that the best guides tend to be much more focused on SC2 and particular races, match-ups, or problems within the game. But I think OP's heart is in the right place so let's not hate on him. I'm sure his future posts will be great. Parenthetically even a quick perusal of Sun Tzu reveals its relevance to SC2 (discussions of reinforcing, securing space before advancing, etc.). | ||
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