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By which I mean, when advising lower level players, has "Macro >>>>>>>>> Everything Else" become an article of faith, a sentiment based perhaps on a truism but stretched to ridiculous extremes? Nearly every thread I see by a Silver or Gold player (like myself) asking for advice usually receives extremely pat answers, even if they included a replay (this wasn't the case with myself, I must point out, I've gotten some excellent feedback).
Almost every great SC:BW and SC2 "How to Improve" text hammers this in, and I think we may have gotten overinundated with it.
Let me make two clarifications right off the bat:
1. OBVIOUSLY, Macro is the most important skill for newbies to learn in SC2. You aren't going to 6pool your way to victory in anything above bronze or maybe silver, no matter how well you scoot your little zerglings around.
2. MY Macro, by the scale on which these things are measured here, is still horrendous though improving steadily.
I just wanted to point out that perhaps there is an overemphasis on how lower level players (defined as anything Plat or under, or at the very most Gold and under) should ignore everything else, get good Macro and A-move their way to victory till Diamond. I believe this is an exaggeration.
I never had the experience to talk about this before, though I suspected it, and perhaps I still don't but as I say, my Macro has been improving which allows me to notice it more now.
I lost the last couple games I played. In both, I was miles ahead of my opponent Macro wise. Huge Army differences. I still lost. Why?
In the first match, TvT on Jungle Basin, I kept running my vastly bigger bio army into his choke which had tanks. Yeah, I had tons of marauders but I just got killed by his superior concave, though I had much better Macro.
In the second match, against a zerg opponent, I ended up losing a match despite being on 2base v. 2base, despite defending against Muta harass, and despite having a bigger army for most of it because he went infestors vs. my bioball. He traded energy for units and eventually managed to tech up and kill me. There was nothing my bioball (despite the better macro) could do.
In the first match, I should have secured ALL the expansions and starved him out or dropped on him or something. In the second, I should have scouted better, made ghosts with cloak, and so on. My Macro was already better.
I have no problem losing a bunch of matches because I'm working on my Macro. I'm low level anyway; Even if I get demoted, I'm sure when I make my way back up I'll be stronger than ever. I do think, however, that this is the advice that should be given: That Macro mechanics, and getting a handle on them, is worthlosing a bunch of matches for. Not "If you have better Macro than your opponent, you can A move to victory. Forget everything else."
Better Macro wont save you if they hard counter your army, it wont save you if you don't defend against early cheese, it wont save you if your understanding of positioning is so bad you lose 2x the food supply of your opponent.
I feel a lot of lower level players have been frustrated by being told to work on their macro and getting steamrolled anyway. Would it not be more honest to say "you're going to suck and lose in the beginning no matter what, might as well improve your core game while you're at it?"
Indeed, is it not fair to assume that even lower level players can absorb other fundamentals- such as positioning, and scouting, and building proper counters- concurrently with Macro? At the moment there is little weight given to anything else when it comes to newbies.
Just my two cents. Let me know if anyone feels the same way, or if everyone disagrees
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I disagree. When you are learning a game you don't know almost anything about, you start off with learning the basics. Macro is the basic of the basics. Plus only focusing on macro will get you into diamond, it's just so important. Even at the highest levels people don't have perfect macro, so it's still a way to be above everyone else. Positioning, scouting, counters don't matter if you are anything lower than diamond. A lot of your arguments seem to be not really based on anything else than speculation. Give me a guest pass and tell me to only build stalkers and I'll get to mid diamond at the very least. Marines only would be an option, too. Macro is just the most important and first thing you should be learning.
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Well yes being braindead will not let you win even you have good macro.Is it really that hard to see what he has and not make something that dies terribly to it?
BUT if you just have more stuff than your opponent you can still win.If you have like 40+ supply more than your opponent a lot of times you can just 1a and win.
When people tell you to focus on macro they mean use very little micro not don't think.This is a strategy game after all and having a bad strategy is well...bad.With good macro you can reach at least mid diamond if you have decent builds and unit compositions.
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@ Outlaw
Positioning, scouting, counters don't matter if you are anything lower than diamond. This is kind of what I'm talking about, no offense of course. I gave my examples simply because I had better Macro by far that game than my opponent, not because I had perfect or even solid macro. If you get void ray rushed and have perfectly Macroed Marauders, how does that help you? Or even if you had a few marines and were teching and had no idea how to micro your marines properly?
I have no doubt Macro is the most important and first thing. I'm saying that these other things are also fundamentals of the game. Banshee harass, which a lot of players like doing, is not really a fundamental part of the game for comparisons sake. But positioning, scouting and counters apply in every MU and can absolutely be key to victory. How is that not "fundamental"?
And I dont doubt you could stalkers-only to Mid Diamond but I have a feeling that if that's true, you have have a good sense of things like upgrades, positioning, timing and so on. None of which come under "Macro".
@ Nafta
This is a strategy game after all and having a bad strategy is well...bad....With good macro you can reach at least mid diamond if you have decent builds and unit compositions.
I agree with you. Good Macro + good builds + good unit composition. Good builds require timing (generally, builds have a point at which you should push or expand or something) and good composition requires good scouting as well as macro and tech switches.
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I've recently convinced my IRL friends to start StarCrafting, and they struggling in the lower leagues, one of my friends had a 40% winrate in bronze, until we played a game, and I just told him to build more probes. He advanced to silver, I told him a build order (4gate ololol), and he's now >50% winrate against Golds. He has never really played a RST game except Dota, which... isn't. But Dota got some micro and positioning, and I think that those skills helps him a lot in his games.
I agree that macro is the most important thing to learn when you're new, but the "forget everything but..." part is where I disagree. I believe that counters are very important, and positioning can win you several games. If you macro good, but only build marines, and you don't know Foxer micro, you will die to a decently executed SlingBling, because the one with the blings will not need close to as much macro as you to break even in the battles.
I'd say focus (almost) only on macro(BO, workers, multitasking, but you need a composition that does well against anything.) until you are gold, then mix in counters and micro, then improve everything steadily.
+ Day[9] newbie tuesday. >>>> macro
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What your saying is true but things like positioning and unit composition cant be taught, its basically learnt from experience and thinking about where you should put your units and what units to make. but if you watch a lot of pro gamer replays and try to understand why the player is doing what he is doing you can learn a lot about positioning/unit composition.
The only reason people point out macro so much is because it sticks out like a sore thumb in most lower level games I'm sure if you showed people those games you were talking about they could tell you how you got screwed over even though you were ahead in macro.
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From what i read you attacked into sieged tanks with a better concave, no matter how many units you have if half of them cant fire your army advantage is negated, i think that one was a positioning/decision making fail
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"ignore everything but macro" is kind of an ironic statement considering macro pretty much is everything.
The lesson it's supposed to teach you is a mechanical understanding of what you have to do to succeed, and a much broader perspective of the game on a whole.
Most of the time when people watch vods etc they are so focused on the action that the majority of the game eludes them, like what got them to that point of action. It absolutely teaches you fundamental skills.
Your anecdotes are actually evidence of that if they are truly fair recollections of the games. You lost and can easily identify why, dumb attacks or bad unit compositions. Those things are so easy to fix compared to trying to identify that your economy sucks, your unit production sucks, etc. There aren't immediately obvious reasons why those things suck
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The advice I would give every newbie is to look at your losses and just look at your production buildings. And write down how long you are not making units. Compare that with if you did make units constantly how many units would you have vs the opponent? And work up from there to analyse your losses.
The best way to improve is to play someone who is clearly better then you for beginners in customs. For higher skilled it will be slightly different. They can improve by playing equal skilled players at minimum compared to higher skilled for beginners. After that you can check your losses on macro / positioning / timing etc. This is the best way to pick out your flaws.
The normal way the majority of people improve is by experience. They play alot and win/lose alot of games on ladder and they gradually improve each mechanic learning what to do and what not to do. This is when you don't have practice partners where you should be massing ladder games. The experience is the same as when you would do the 1st method I described (the custom games) albeit the custom way is more efficient in doing so.
You're right though that it could be better to tell beginners that they'll keep losing for a while so it's better to improve their core basics. Obviously the majority will neglect this advice anyways as telling this to someone is demotivating and people like sweet words of encouragement rather than hard true facts.
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In the first match, TvT on Jungle Basin, I kept running my vastly bigger bio army into his choke which had tanks. Yeah, I had tons of marauders but I just got killed by his superior concave, though I had much better Macro. That's bad decision making period - Focusing on micro isn't going to solve your problems there.. Better Macro wont save you if they hard counter your army, it wont save you if you don't defend against early cheese, it wont save you if your understanding of positioning is so bad you lose 2x the food supply of your opponent.
Hard counter your army? Eh, i think people put too much emphasis on unit composition imo, ESPECIALLY lower players.. Just make a ton of shit and you can do wonders with a large force..Yes banelings "hard counter" marines (unless your Foxer) but who cares? If you continue to stream in tons of marines, he is wasting gas to killl your marine only force...
There is a reason people advice people to focus on macro - it's because it works.
And I dont doubt you could stalkers-only to Mid Diamond but I have a feeling that if that's true, you have have a good sense of things like upgrades, positioning, timing and so on. None of which come under "Macro".
Oh, yes you can, you can go stalkers only to mid diamond easily. Because once you focus on on thing and one thing only, you can do it so much better. And most lower level players are surprised on how much shit they can actually afford to make. Also, upgrades has everything to do with Macro...
Also, if you feel you have grasped the macro part, then thats when you move onto positioning, scouting and all that good shit...But if you don't have any units...what good will any of that do for you?
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Well aside from build order, macro should be one of the biggest things you need to focus on. I feel like it's the foundation that you build everything upon. For example: you play x amount of games where you focus solely on macro. Then after those x games, you get used to macroing and rarely miss a macro cycle. Then from there, you start to incorporate other things like army management/movement between macro cycles, and you keep building things on. Eventually, you will get used to macroing while doing other stuff.
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On November 06 2010 21:45 floor exercise wrote: Your anecdotes are actually evidence of that if they are truly fair recollections of the games. You lost and can easily identify why, dumb attacks or bad unit compositions. Those things are so easy to fix compared to trying to identify that your economy sucks, your unit production sucks, etc. There aren't immediately obvious reasons why those things suck
Quoted for truth. In any competitive activity (sport) it's always easier to spot a decision related mistake compared to a fundamental technical flaw. Thats why you always focus on training fundamentals first (in this case macro) before you move on to the more "exciting" stuff. Losing a few games before you get your fundamentals up to a decent level should be expected.
After your fundamentals become solid what you get is the opportunity to constantly find yourself in advantages positions that allow you to dictate the game based on your decision, and more opportunity to make game breaking decisions = faster learning of decision making.
This is in contrast to when you don't specifically focus on fundamentals, you pretty much try to learn "everything" at the same time, which is too much for the brain to handle/absorb, which in turn makes learning less efficient.
This of course applies to the learning stages of the game, at a world class professional level (referring to tournament players who consistently place near the top, diamond league is no where near professional) solid fundamentals are taken for granted and thats why the pros place more emphasis on decision making.
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Real life is like an RPG. In order maximize your potential you gotta know where to allocate your stat points.
You gotta max out your macro skill at lower levels in order to have a high skill cap ^^
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build orders and macro are their biggest fault in general. Pro bw players spend 80% of their time macroing. Now in sc2 it's way easier but the top top top players aren't doing it perfectly at all (usually not even that close).
In bronze silver gold people usually don't have any good build orders or transitions yes but the thing is you can do whatever the hell and make mid+ diamond with no clue about anything if you macro decently.
I have yet to see a silver replay where the macro is not an issue, even if it happens to be that players strongest part and their other stuff is even worse.
The other part you talk about is mostly gamesense which is basically aquired by playing, now in the future in your tvt where a similar situation might come up you'll be less inclined to make the same bad decision of running into his choke, you learn that mostly by experience and this one in particular is applicable to a ton of situations, your mass army needs space, aoe armys want you to choke up and such.
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Counters are usually overrated alot, all the matchups will end up having some fixed compositions anyways and it's control/macro/decision making that matters, not making immortals to counter the marauders in a certain situation because they're a counter, that'll be mostly automatic.
People play bio a lot vs Z now, it's about pressuring and micro, T generally has to do damage and pressure or the other races have superior macro or army by default (zerg unit spam, mass droning, toss doomball), luckily T has the pressuring options available so you have to learn to use them, poke back and forth and strike fear into your opponents heart.
Get good BO(s) macro well micro enough but not too much remember to macro at all times learn when to fight and when not to
and you're good to go
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"Ignore strategy and only work on massing shit" is extreme, but a lot of low level players fall into the trap of watching a battle and saying "hey, my zealots died to roaches, maybe I need an immortal" or something like that, when the real answer is "hey I have 12 probes and he has 40 drones"
Lower level players with no experience in SC may not think in terms of economy and their ability to sustain superior production. They'll look at "I have 8 zealots and a void ray and I lost to 8 roaches and 3 queens" not being able to see the fundamental reasons why they lost
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macro is by far the most important, and if you want to get to a decent level you should focus on your macro. Do i mean ingore everything else? absoulutly not but macro should be 90%+ of your focus. You can easily get to mid diamond with good macro + A-move. I am about 1600 diamond and I 2v1 my roomate (bronze leauge) and his friend (silver leauge) by building nothing but stalkers. The difference between solid macro and bad macro is such a bigger gap between good micro and bad micro.
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Think of it like this:
You're at, say, silver level.
How good can you expect your opponent's micro to be? Can he beat 20 zerglings with 5 marines on open ground? Even Boxer can't do that.
If you have 20 zerglings for every 5 marines he's got, that's macro. You win without having to micro.
Yes, you need a basic understanding of counters and builds and scouting, but unless you're consciously trying to make the worst possible unit, it will be hard to lose with good macro.
Think about it like this: most noobs have an understanding that hellions > marines. It's true. Everyone knows it. Knowing it more won't help you.
I estimate that in terms of skill level, most noobs are like this:
Strategy: 50% Micro: 50% Macro: 20%
When 100% is optimal. Since your play is roughly the multiplication of each aspect of your play, improving your macro will drastically improve the level of your play.
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Thanks all, there were some fantastic responses here. I especially liked the below:
On November 06 2010 21:45 floor exercise wrote: Your anecdotes are actually evidence of that if they are truly fair recollections of the games. You lost and can easily identify why, dumb attacks or bad unit compositions. Those things are so easy to fix compared to trying to identify that your economy sucks, your unit production sucks, etc. There aren't immediately obvious reasons why those things suck
YES. I have never argued in my OP that Macro was not the most important thing, just that it wasn't the only thing, and that n00bs like me might have had an easier time dealing with losses if someone had just told us:
"Look, son, this game is hard as hell and focusing just on your macro is going to lose you a ton of games when someone rushes you with something weird but then when you start to work your way back up, you'll suck less than everyone around you."
I can't remember who said it but I also liked the analogy to sports, on how its easier to correct for bad decisions rather than fundamental flaws.
I have to confess, this isn't a game where I have natural talent (I have it in other games/sports but not RTS's at all and its the first i've played competitively). For people who are just that good at RTS's, and especially people who played BW, I dont think you realize just how hard this game is for the layman who doesn't have tons of time to practice (like myself). And, because you could beat Silver and Gold players with your eyes shut (I beat Silver usually, Gold about 50%) I don't think you realize thats its very easy even in those leagues to get out-timed, out positioned, out whatevered even when you have better Macro than your opponent.
That said, I think its much more helpful for people better at this game to be honest with us newbies and tell us how badly we'll get our ass kicked, but we should at least practice the fundamentals to have a solid foundation to build on later. I feel part of the problem is how terrible the practice league is (rocks and slow-motion? Really Blizzard? We're newbies, not brain dead.)
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You need to walk before you learn how to run.
You need to learn how the pieces move in chess before you study opening theory.
etc.
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So you're saying that strategy/game sense is more important than macro? That is probaly true, but it's not something you can easily teach. You can teach macro, to an extent, but how do you teach strategy effectively without the game experience?
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Sure theres some situations where macro won't win - no medivacs vs infestors with bio. A-moving into tanks. Common sense solves them. If you don't totally ignore your brain you can get into diamond with good macro, is that a good enough clarification?
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You cannot learn effective strategy if your macro isn't passable. For example, if your build isn't timed properly, you simply will be unable to execute some strategies against a solid player. You will have insufficient units to execute a timing attack, or defend a fast expansion, regardless of your control.
Find opponents who keep their money low as quickly as possible, because the more time you spend against bad opponents who do not punish you for having poor macro, the more you will build suboptimal habits (like thinking you can expand with x build at y timing that is totally invalid against someone with solid execution of a robust build).
If you have perfect macro and are playing in leagues where your opponents don't, you should be attacking all the fucking time unless going for economic builds, because chances are your opponent has money banked that could be troops, giving you a decisive advantage. Barring some obvious micro gaffs on your part, no amount of fancy play should save him if he doesn't have shit.
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OK just to clarify, I'm not a great RTS player but I'm not brain dead. I absolutely agree that a lot of things have to be learned through experience, but surely things like "superior positioning" and "scout better" are things you should keep in mind while looking at replays.
I just think that telling newbies to Macro well and A-move to win, while well-intentioned, will definitely have a demoralizing effect. People in those leagues arent THAT bad.
@ Slayer: Well the "don't A-move into tanks" thing sounds easy, certainly. But people should learn, so as not to piss away their Macro advantage, what to do instead. Its not always obvious, especially in the middle of a game. In my case, I should have just covered the map and taken out any of his vulnerable expansions. I know that now. But because my money was low I was like "screw it, I'll just force my way up his ramp, he doesn't really have much stuff and what am I going to gain by waiting?" just little things like that.
But I get the thrust of these replies: that Macro is the building block and everything else will become obvious with time, whereas if you ignore your macro, you'll always be mediocre and wont really know why. Close enough?
Thanks again for all the replies!
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I think it's important to note, mister OP, that macro being important isn't meant to help you win all your games.
In fact, proper macro might cause you to lose a few more games, instead of say focusing more on micro in a decisive battle.
But it gives you GREAT habits for playing, and eventually will make you a better player than if you tried to focus on micro, and let your resources spike like crazy every battle.
So yes: Macro's kinda the building block.
Still, feel free to micro your units or play with positioning once in a while. I like to try hard to get better at SC2, but I do enjoy actually having fun in the game sometimes.
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@ DOB: nail on the head. That, I feel, is far more honest than saying "just focus on Macro and win every game till diamond".
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How do you get into Diamond if you're a new player? Watch Day9 and actually FOLLOW his advice. Don't just watch them for entertainment and then forget everything he said. He emphasizes macro, but also talks about important stuff like timings and common mistakes newbies make.
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On November 07 2010 04:46 Autofire2 wrote:@ DOB: nail on the head. That, I feel, is far more honest than saying "just focus on Macro and win every game till diamond".
It is emphasized because without good macro you can't make a good judgement call on anything else.
I just don't think you are giving people much credit... how many players mind's go BLANK every game and they *just* focus on macro?
and you can probably 4gate/banelingbust/mm push you're way to diamond
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On November 07 2010 03:31 Autofire2 wrote: OK just to clarify, I'm not a great RTS player but I'm not brain dead. I absolutely agree that a lot of things have to be learned through experience, but surely things like "superior positioning" and "scout better" are things you should keep in mind while looking at replays.
I just think that telling newbies to Macro well and A-move to win, while well-intentioned, will definitely have a demoralizing effect. People in those leagues arent THAT bad.
@ Slayer: Well the "don't A-move into tanks" thing sounds easy, certainly. But people should learn, so as not to piss away their Macro advantage, what to do instead. Its not always obvious, especially in the middle of a game. In my case, I should have just covered the map and taken out any of his vulnerable expansions. I know that now. But because my money was low I was like "screw it, I'll just force my way up his ramp, he doesn't really have much stuff and what am I going to gain by waiting?" just little things like that.
But I get the thrust of these replies: that Macro is the building block and everything else will become obvious with time, whereas if you ignore your macro, you'll always be mediocre and wont really know why. Close enough?
Thanks again for all the replies!
Its MUCH easier to review a replay to fix minor problems, than to fix the problem that 99% of non diamond players have in that send out small armies of units and watch them move//fight as their minerals just keep rolling up unspent.
The argument for macro only is that its not only the most important element of starcraft but also the least focused on for the typical newbie. Your argument is that there are situations where you can be macroing better and lose, which is a no brainer but doesn't really hold a candle to the fact that macro reigns supreme for the general case.
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well the macro >>>>>>>> all mentality got me into diamond recently. So it DOES work. Of coz mass lings will lose to banelings dispite how many zergling you have etc....
But my advice is just to keep working on your macro, and just makes stuff that doesn't get rolfstomped by whatever opponent is making, and you'll make it to diamond.
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I think people are forgetting that macro is how you spend your money, not just spending money however you want so for people saying that if you macro a bunch of marauders and lose to void rays, you macro'd perfectly but lost because of another factor but that's not true. If you spent your money on the wrong thing then you have failed at macroing.
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Macro is having more shit than your opponent at any particular instance of time in the game. It's not saying that you should just build shit and get countered, that much is common sense, you need to make the right units and by macroing properly you will counter you opponent's force by just having more units.
I think this wasn't explained properly to new players because in Brood War, pretty much everyone makes the right shit and the game always comes down to timing.
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On November 07 2010 01:44 Autofire2 wrote: I have to confess, this isn't a game where I have natural talent (I have it in other games/sports but not RTS's at all and its the first i've played competitively). For people who are just that good at RTS's, and especially people who played BW, I dont think you realize just how hard this game is for the layman who doesn't have tons of time to practice (like myself). And, because you could beat Silver and Gold players with your eyes shut (I beat Silver usually, Gold about 50%) I don't think you realize thats its very easy even in those leagues to get out-timed, out positioned, out whatevered even when you have better Macro than your opponent.
I think most realize how hard and overwhelming SC and SC2 can be to someone new to RTS. Even at higher levels, the experienced player may get overwhelmed by everything going on at once and being able to manage it all. I think an experienced player can understand how crazy hard managing a game of SC can be for a newbie.
I think the thing a lot of us take for granted is how hard it is for a newbie who didn't grow up playing Starcraft to be able to identify fundamental mistakes in their play immediately. It's one of the things I think Day[9] does well. He's able to identify common pitfalls in lower skilled play, and put into words what I've had ingrained into my head from playing and watching SC all these years
A silver player that loses to a zerg that builds 16 zerglings and attack moves them may think "damn I lost to zerglings, I need a bunker" whereas I would look at the game and go "hmm you have 500 minerals 6 minutes into the game" or "hmm you cut SCVs for 2 whole minutes early in the game"
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I think you are missing the point of the "dogma".
Will you win games at low levels where you outmacro them somewhat but make enormous tactical/micro/scouting blunders? no.
Do you need really, really solid macro if you hope to ever be not terrible at the game? Yes. So why not get it out of the way? It also lets the game knowledge you get from experience to be based on games with good macro, rather than knowledge that might apply at lower levels but not work once people can make units properly.
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Calgary25939 Posts
On November 06 2010 20:51 Autofire2 wrote: Better Macro wont save you if they hard counter your army, it wont save you if you don't defend against early cheese, it wont save you if your understanding of positioning is so bad you lose 2x the food supply of your opponent. In fact, I feel like in all of these situations, better macro would save you. I think bad players don't know what good macro actually looks like. It's scary, and having a few high-tech units that hard counter your army will still lose to a fuckton of units being jammed down your throat.
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Zurich15241 Posts
On November 06 2010 20:51 Autofire2 wrote: I just wanted to point out that perhaps there is an overemphasis on how lower level players (defined as anything Plat or under, or at the very most Gold and under) should ignore everything else, get good Macro and A-move their way to victory till Diamond. I believe this is an exaggeration. I'd say this is not an exaggeration and it's EXACTLY how it works. I am planning to write an article about this in the future.
Exactly one week ago a newb friend of mine started playing multiplayer. Went 0-5 in his placements in the most ridiculous fashion and stranded in Bronze. He asked me for help. I sat down with him, had him play 2 games against the AI and told him how to make 3 barracks and make marine marauder from these barracks and attack move them into their death, and focus entirely on building more stuff.
He went on a 8 win streak immediately. He proceeded to win 2 our of 3 through Silver and Gold doing nothing but building marines and marauders and a-move them into the opponents base.
5 days (!) later he is exclusively matched against Platinum and Diamond, and maintains 50%, still doing nothing but a-moving his marine marauder groups, with the occasional stim.
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I'd also like to add that the "macro mindset" is a very valuable tool to start basing your learning of the game on. By focusing on macro, you should find yourself examining all facets of the game in terms of time and money, the two key metrics in macro. Therefore in analysis of your mistakes or of SC2 play in general, you will have a more concrete, specific way of approaching problems.
For example, in reviewing the mistake of suiciding bio into tanks, you will begin assessing that as the loss of exactly as much time and money as it took to produce that army, not just the dimension of, oh x unit "counters" y unit. In tactical situations such as looking at terrain and arcs, you can begin thinking... okay x minerals and y gas of my army is fumbling behind the main firing line due to poor positioning, wasting z seconds of potential firing time.
While you should also learn the dimensions of space and information, time and money I feel are lower level and also extremely relevant in thinking about builds, which will become more and more of a concern once your mechanics improve.
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While I'm certain you could show anyone how to 4gate/3rax/etc their way into diamond. I'm equally conviced you could show the same person how to staggerstep a small ranged group (rines/stalkers/roach/what have you) into diamond as well.
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Agreed esp. w/ Chill & Zatic. Macro is by far and away the greatest differentiator for winning and losing, at ALL levels of play.
Yes, you can get away with winning games with certain all-in kinds of builds and even get up to low-diamond that way, BUT you will find yourself at a loss if your attack fails. And you will end up just re-massing the same kind of attack on the 1-base or 2-base that your build order depends on 'cuz you don't know how to macro, which is an automatical loss against anybody who knows how to grab that 2nd or 3rd base against your 1-base or 2-base all-in.
Simple key ideas of learning to macro, from easiest to hardest: + Show Spoiler +(1) never be at a worker disadvantage for your race (usually means constant worker production) (2) don't get supply blocked, ever (3) learn to keep your avg resources unspent under 300 for 1-base (4) learn to keep your min/gas unspent under 600 for 2-base (5) learn when to grab your 2nd (6) figure out how not to die to common army compositions, fast rush builds (6b) this necessitates good scouting, poking, watchtower usage, learning enemy builds, and incorporating harass/multi-task... this isn't macro, but I'm putting it in here in terms of learning progression (7) learn when to grab your 3rd
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When the entire community screams "Macro is important" time and time again you tend to get the picture through repetition.
Macro doesn't just mean "get a good economy", it's laying your entire strategic infrastructure in forms of buildings, units, and their underlying strategy.
If someone comes up to me who has never played starcraft and wants to learn, I'd teach macro skills in form of building workers first since that is the most logical starting point. When you look at most lower level replays the player that loses often skimped on workers or attempted a strategy that they couldn't afford. Macro isn't the 'be-all-end-all', but it's the best place you can start.
Obviously players aren't just going to sit in their base and do nothing. They'll make some forces and try to attack. They'll scout an opponent and make a construct counters. They'll play the game the way they think they should play and learn from losses the optimal paths to achieve their strategy.
I won't disagree with you that posting a replay on the forums, especially from a low level, will net a lot of "get a better economy" and "macro better" one-liners. It's often easy to see this when the supply differential is hugely against your favor and your army gets rolled by superior numbers alone (zvp in BW for isntance has the most obvious examples with zergs who have inferior economy management losing to a protoss that knew how to make probes). You don't really see too many helpful tips in remembering worker production and when to put down buildings down, so I'll make a point to advise people on this next time I review a replay.
Even with better macro tips, I agree that, even if macro is your biggest issue, you shouldn't be excluded from advice on unit composition, placement, and advantageous times to strike. I'm sure this is what you were looking for in your Jungle Basin game (unit positioning) and your tvz (scouting, minimizing affects of fungal growth, dealing with banelings, and good compositions would be excellent areas to improve, though it's hard to say without actually seeing a replay).
Thanks for pointing things like this out. I'll make an effort to be more helpful to forum posters!
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Austin10831 Posts
Plenty's been said here so I'll try not to belabor the issues. I understand part of your frustration in dealing with what seems to be a glib dismissal of lower-level players. Being told to simply macro and forget everything else seems to fly in the face of the new player's common sense and intuition. They read people talking about strategy and see games where micro plays a crucial role and start to believe that these skills are equally important in becoming a good player, and they’re right. Sort of.
For the new player, macro should be the all-important focus. This is not because macro is the only important part of their game, but because a) it’s the fundamental building block of mechanical play and b) it doesn’t come naturally. Your strategy will eventually evolve organically from what you play, what you read and what you see. Your micro will become increasingly better with the more games you play as your muscle memory develops and you become more comfortable controlling units. Macro, on the other hand, is a skill that requires work because it’s the one area where deficiency isn’t always apparent, and improvement will be very slow until you’re able to identify these deficiencies. It’s easy to see when you mis-micro or mis-read an opponent’s strategy, but many newer players have no concept of how lacking their macro is at times. They find themselves out-massed and frequently aren’t sure why they lost. They come to TL and ask for advice, but they don’t really want to hear that they have to work on their macro because macro is hard. They want to believe, with their superior intelligence, that strategy and tactics should win out, but that’s not what Starcraft is.
I think part of this can be attributed to the designation “Real-time strategy” being something of a misnomer for Starcraft. While it’s clearly accurate, strategy is not what separates good players from bad; solid mechanics are the defining trait of high-level play. It’s the area that requires the most work but will yield the most gains.
You’re right in that ignoring all other aspects of development is the incorrect way to learn. You attacked into a much better concave than yours and your macro was for naught as you threw away your advantage. But that isn’t the fault of the advice. If you didn’t know not to do that before, you know it now, and you can incorporate it into your frame of reference for the future, but that doesn’t mean that you should be focusing on learning things like that at the expense of learning how to macro. It goes without saying that everything you learn along the way is important, but your actual focus should be developing your macro. Often times when new players are given other advice, they can tend to place too much importance on the wrong things and get frustrated when it doesn't really improve anything.
When you’re learning to golf, the most important part is your swing. There are a ton of other aspects to becoming a solid, well-rounded golfer, like putting or chipping, but being a great putter becomes irrelevant if you can’t get the ball to the green. The same concept applies to starcraft. You can have great strategy and unit control, but if you don’t have the macro mechanics to execute that strategy or make enough units, those two important aspects are ultimately irrelevant. The thing to take from this is that, although it may be worded somewhat crudely at times, being told to simply focus on your macro is probably the best advice for a lower-level player.
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Honestly, a common pitfall even into mid diamond is to see your army in a good position and just push forward and assume a win (and focus your attention elsewhere and macro or something). I've won a ton of games by just pulling back until the other guy is in a bad position and forcefielding up their escape route.
FF is probably the easiest example because the littlest bit of micro could decide a low level game, like blocking the ramp to a main while shutting down the natural.
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When my roomie started playing SC2 he was having a pretty rough time because he'd never played an RTS before...had no idea what to do. Didn't know about control groups, shift queuing, etc.
I just stood behind him while he was playing every once and awhile and would be like ZOMG SUPPLY DEPOTS, MUUULE, BUILD ANOTHER RAX, PROBES, EXPAND"
He started beta in bronze and now he's in (low) diamond.
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The reason macro is most important for newbies is that it doesn't come down to trying to out control or be in 4 places at once on the map. If you simply have more stuff than your opponent there's nothing he/she can do to beat you. Once you get economy and unit production down you can move onto performing cute tactics and such. I play random 2v2s and 4v4s doing absolutely bs strategies like cannon rush into FE + high templar, or take 4 bases and go mass baneling. And those things work because I just have so much more stuff than my opponent, even if he has a nice army composition.
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Woah, great feedback
I think bad players don't know what good macro actually looks like. -Chill
That's entirely, entirely possible. I think of Macro as
- Get a good economy. For T, my race, I think this means make workers constantly from all bases, especially in the early game, think of taking your second ASAP-around 50 for me (basically when siege mode comes out) unless there are special circumstances like a failed attack against me etc.
- Follow a smooth build order (something I oddly still struggle with...its weird how many times I mess up by upto 50+ minerals or 25 gas given that its only the first couple minutes of play) and, on that foundation, keep your money low by making new production buildings, units, SCVs and CCs when I have the money
- Keep building supply depots. This is by far my toughest task though ive gotten a lot better by hotkeying one SCV to 9 whose sole job it is to mine, build a depot, go back to mining, build a depot etc and then later in the game I put 2 or 3 SCVs to that task.
- Keep making units from every production building. The easiest task, at least for me. You instinctively always want more units.
I guess I must be missing something, but what else falls under the purview of Macro?
Zatic-
Exactly one week ago a newb friend of mine started playing multiplayer. Went 0-5 in his placements in the most ridiculous fashion and stranded in Bronze. He asked me for help. I sat down with him, had him play 2 games against the AI and told him how to make 3 barracks and make marine marauder from these barracks and attack move them into their death, and focus entirely on building more stuff.
He went on a 8 win streak immediately. He proceeded to win 2 our of 3 through Silver and Gold doing nothing but building marines and marauders and a-move them into the opponents base.
5 days (!) later he is exclusively matched against Platinum and Diamond, and maintains 50%, still doing nothing but a-moving his marine marauder groups, with the occasional stim.
Wow thats amazing. I would love to see that article, if you're producing it, or replays of your friend (high level reps theres so much going on its almost impossible to pick up on these basics)
Brood, Survius and Fairytail, thanks a lot. I don't want to quote everything because it would be quite long but its not only good advice, but a good explanation as to the disconnect, in a sense, between the understanding of SC2 between different levels.
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To answer the original question:
Yes. Particularly in a game without many hard counters. Unless you count Protoss Air Vs Anything but roaches and zealots.
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