A Case Study of ZvP Macro on Shakuras Plateau Across Leagues
Abstract/Introduction
+ Show Spoiler +
The purpose of this study is to examine, in-depth, the differences in macro across leagues (only in the early game). Specifically, in the initial data, it is to investigate how the rate of worker production correlates with player skill. Read: rate, not final worker count. It is known that a master player is better than a diamond player. I'm not trying to prove that one league is better than another, because that is redundant and pointless. There is another thread here http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=266019 that goes into a spending quotient and compares macro across leagues at an extremely zoomed out level. It's very cool stuff, but unfortunately Starcraft 2 is a game where the possible scenarios grow to exponential proportions, similar to chess. In the ETA-Concept be Felo, he quotes:
"Chess is infinite: There are 400 different positions after each player makes one move apiece. There are 72,084 positions after two moves apiece. There are 9+ million positions after three moves apiece. There are 288+ billion different possible positions after four moves apiece. There are more 40-move games on Level-1 than the number of electrons in our universe. There are more game-trees of Chess than the number of galaxies (100+ billion), and more openings, defences, gambits, etc. than the number of quarks in our universe!"
- Chesmayne
How many variations can there be in terms of worker production in Starcraft 2 by the 10 minute mark? The average deviation in whatthefat's analysis is astronomical. He also only looked at the end result of the games. I'm interested in something different. I wanted to investigate macro in terms of a the progression in the first 10 minutes of a Starcraft 2 game.
I feel it's interesting to look at zerg instead of terran and protoss due to the larva mechanics. In terran and protoss, constant worker production = best possible macro (in terms of worker production), which isn't that hard to do (keep tapping cc/nexus hotkey). However, as zerg, you have to consciously decide when the drone, how many to make, etc.
As of the intial posting, I've only invested maybe two hours into this. This will be an ongoing project where I will be adding data. The topics investigated are:
Workers built/minute
Unspent resources/minute
Food/minute - Oddly enough, it appears that looking at food is useless, since the difference is too little. Every single player (so that's 19 players) across all the leagues had food ranging from 60-80 at the 10 minute mark. Aside from Stephano. The higher level players had better tech.
"Chess is infinite: There are 400 different positions after each player makes one move apiece. There are 72,084 positions after two moves apiece. There are 9+ million positions after three moves apiece. There are 288+ billion different possible positions after four moves apiece. There are more 40-move games on Level-1 than the number of electrons in our universe. There are more game-trees of Chess than the number of galaxies (100+ billion), and more openings, defences, gambits, etc. than the number of quarks in our universe!"
- Chesmayne
How many variations can there be in terms of worker production in Starcraft 2 by the 10 minute mark? The average deviation in whatthefat's analysis is astronomical. He also only looked at the end result of the games. I'm interested in something different. I wanted to investigate macro in terms of a the progression in the first 10 minutes of a Starcraft 2 game.
I feel it's interesting to look at zerg instead of terran and protoss due to the larva mechanics. In terran and protoss, constant worker production = best possible macro (in terms of worker production), which isn't that hard to do (keep tapping cc/nexus hotkey). However, as zerg, you have to consciously decide when the drone, how many to make, etc.
As of the intial posting, I've only invested maybe two hours into this. This will be an ongoing project where I will be adding data. The topics investigated are:
Workers built/minute
Unspent resources/minute
Food/minute - Oddly enough, it appears that looking at food is useless, since the difference is too little. Every single player (so that's 19 players) across all the leagues had food ranging from 60-80 at the 10 minute mark. Aside from Stephano. The higher level players had better tech.
Methods
+ Show Spoiler +
I needed to set parameters for the games that I will be investigating. Since matchups and the maps they take place in require so much variation in play style, I settled on ZvP on Shakuras Plateau. Investigating all games from the zerg perspective, I chose this map because it's one of the easier maps for zerg to get a third (and thus encourages more macro). In selecting the games, I made sure that the zerg was not allining by checking the build order and making sure no roaches or exessive amount of zerglings were built in the first 6 minutes of the game. I also checked to see what the protoss was doing. Ideally, I would have a fast 3 hatch vs FFE, but matches like those are virtually impossible to find on replay websites in leagues lower than diamond. When looking for games from bronze to plat, I attempted to find games where the zerg player tried to macro to the best of his ability.
In summation, in each game:
- The zerg didn't build much army and had no tech for the first 6 minutes.
- The zerg expanded quickly (relatively to what's expected for their league).
- A majority of the zerg player's food was drones for the first 9 minutes.
- The zerg did not face early game aggression, such as 2gate proxy zealot or 4gates.
- All replays are from the NA server (except for Stephano).
For the workers built per minute, I looked at 3 games from each league. I know 3 is a small sample size, but considering how narrow my parameters are, I felt it was acceptable. I counted the workers every 30 seconds, averaged them, and compiled the data into a graph.
In order to find the unspent resources per minute, I will use the same approach by averaging unspent resources every 30 seconds and fit a linear regression to the data. I will take the gas and multiply it by 1.25 (since 4 gas is mined instead of 5 minerals), and add that to the mineral count. Therefore, the graph will only display unspent minerals, but will factor in stockpiled gas. It's not perfect, but call me lazy.
In summation, in each game:
- The zerg didn't build much army and had no tech for the first 6 minutes.
- The zerg expanded quickly (relatively to what's expected for their league).
- A majority of the zerg player's food was drones for the first 9 minutes.
- The zerg did not face early game aggression, such as 2gate proxy zealot or 4gates.
- All replays are from the NA server (except for Stephano).
For the workers built per minute, I looked at 3 games from each league. I know 3 is a small sample size, but considering how narrow my parameters are, I felt it was acceptable. I counted the workers every 30 seconds, averaged them, and compiled the data into a graph.
In order to find the unspent resources per minute, I will use the same approach by averaging unspent resources every 30 seconds and fit a linear regression to the data. I will take the gas and multiply it by 1.25 (since 4 gas is mined instead of 5 minerals), and add that to the mineral count. Therefore, the graph will only display unspent minerals, but will factor in stockpiled gas. It's not perfect, but call me lazy.
Sources of Error
There are many sources of error. I will list them out here:
- Gas timings. People who opt for speed earlier will naturally have less drones.
- Protoss aggression. Luckily, in almost all the games the players were untouched for the first 8 minutes (even in master). There was some stargate and zealot aggression, but none of the games consisted of 5-8 gate allins or double stargate allins.
- Diversity of skill within a league. Expanding upon this, it could be possible that I happened upon 3 platinum ZvP's on Shakuras Plateau that didn't involve early aggression, where all three zergs sucked about equally as much (check out how close the data points are to the linear fit). There will most likely also be the most deviation in bronze and master, with the least in silver/gold/plat.
- Aggressive decision to stop droning after a certain point (mostly in diamond and masters).
Results and Discussion
Part 1
+ Show Spoiler +
This will be updated as I get more data. Here is the first set of interesting stuff:
The first thing you guys notice after inspection is probably that platinum players have the lowest drone production of all the leagues. This looks like I screwed up bad, but upon reflection and closer study of the replays, it makes sense. The platinum replays were by far the most consistent. I can upload the replays if you guys don't believe me.
Here is what I believe the progression of Bronze -> Diamond is. You do 1/2 base allins until plat, then you start learning how to play. The people who struggle to "macro better" in bronze-gold are floundering around, not knowing when to drone, when to build army, etc. In platinum, they are constantly scared of aggression and under drone.
Master and diamond players have similar worker production. However, in the replays, it is clear that master players are more clever and have better mechanics. Therefore, it appears that the greatest difference between masters and diamond isn't macro, but in fact multitasking ability and game understanding.
For master and diamond players, I believe it when you say you have 60+ workers at 10:30. Esp since you can build them in bulk quickly. But this is only to the 10 min mark.
Similarly speaking, the difference between bronze and gold isn't so much worker production, but from what I can see, spending the money and having a somewhat reasonable build order. A large fraction of the players I studied in these leagues built many workers blindly without scouting what the opponent was doing, probably after having people on teamliquid telling them to macro better, or Day9 telling them to lose by overdroning. I believe that the drone production outlined in my data above overestimates the average drone production for zergs in bronze and silver.
It's also likely that bronze/silver/gold players make drones blindly, while platinum players are more cautious. Again, notice the difference here is around 6 drones before the 10 min mark. I'm sure by the end of the game, platinum players generally have more total workers built.
Stephano is obviously in a league of his own.
In the end though, at least for zerg in ZvP on Shakuras Plateau, it seems the number of workers you can get away with early game is directly proportional to your skill and how gosu you are.
The conclusion I came to is that it's not the number of workers built that matters, but the rate at which workers are built, especially in the early game. This most likely only pertains to zerg as terran/toss worker build rate is capped by their cc/nexus count.
Feel free to conduct your own analysis of my data. I assure you that I did everything in my power to make the data as accurate and precise as possible despite the small sample size (I painstakingly studied 20+ replays! many were omitted).
The first thing you guys notice after inspection is probably that platinum players have the lowest drone production of all the leagues. This looks like I screwed up bad, but upon reflection and closer study of the replays, it makes sense. The platinum replays were by far the most consistent. I can upload the replays if you guys don't believe me.
Here is what I believe the progression of Bronze -> Diamond is. You do 1/2 base allins until plat, then you start learning how to play. The people who struggle to "macro better" in bronze-gold are floundering around, not knowing when to drone, when to build army, etc. In platinum, they are constantly scared of aggression and under drone.
Master and diamond players have similar worker production. However, in the replays, it is clear that master players are more clever and have better mechanics. Therefore, it appears that the greatest difference between masters and diamond isn't macro, but in fact multitasking ability and game understanding.
For master and diamond players, I believe it when you say you have 60+ workers at 10:30. Esp since you can build them in bulk quickly. But this is only to the 10 min mark.
Similarly speaking, the difference between bronze and gold isn't so much worker production, but from what I can see, spending the money and having a somewhat reasonable build order. A large fraction of the players I studied in these leagues built many workers blindly without scouting what the opponent was doing, probably after having people on teamliquid telling them to macro better, or Day9 telling them to lose by overdroning. I believe that the drone production outlined in my data above overestimates the average drone production for zergs in bronze and silver.
It's also likely that bronze/silver/gold players make drones blindly, while platinum players are more cautious. Again, notice the difference here is around 6 drones before the 10 min mark. I'm sure by the end of the game, platinum players generally have more total workers built.
Stephano is obviously in a league of his own.
In the end though, at least for zerg in ZvP on Shakuras Plateau, it seems the number of workers you can get away with early game is directly proportional to your skill and how gosu you are.
The conclusion I came to is that it's not the number of workers built that matters, but the rate at which workers are built, especially in the early game. This most likely only pertains to zerg as terran/toss worker build rate is capped by their cc/nexus count.
Feel free to conduct your own analysis of my data. I assure you that I did everything in my power to make the data as accurate and precise as possible despite the small sample size (I painstakingly studied 20+ replays! many were omitted).
Extra
If anybody would like to help me out on my quest for knowledge, I would really appreciate it if you posted replays of yourself playing a macro-focused game of PvT on Antga Shipyard! Obviously leave your league too. =)
Also, yes, the sample size is small, so the results here aren't law. I'm honest that I only have 3 replays per league. If you guys are curious about what I'm talking about here, please then submit ZvP replays on Shakuras Plateau that are macro-oriented, and I will try to compile more holistic data. The limiting factor here is that it's hard to find replays within the constraints on replay websites, especially in lower leagues. Ideally I could have maybe 10 games for each league.
This is very much a work in progress. Also, the results of this isn't "plat players suck", if this is what any of you were walking away with.