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Back In My Day :@![[image loading]](http://www.teamliquid.net/userfiles/17318.jpg?1254589689) Gather 'round children while uncle Chef rambles to himself
The Third Resource
The third resource is an old concept. You got your minerals. You got your gas. You got your concentration too.
Today I played a bunch of games. I had a lot of fun. After the sun went down I decided to just watch some replays (I have difficulty playing in the dark, and don't like unnatural light).
(I didn't think this would be hard to type... It didn't even cross my mind. But my hand actually hurts from playing more StarCraft than I have in a long time)
In any case, while watching my old replays I noticed something striking. The way I spend my concentration now is totally different from the way I spent my concentration back then. It wasn't wrong what I did back then, it was just totally different. I look like a different player. Frankly, I look like a smarter player.
The Macro Age
We live in the macro age. There have always been players who focused more on macro than anything else, but even if they wanted to there wasn't enough macro to do to put all of your concentration into it. These days perfect macro takes more concentration than most people have in total.
Did you see Day9's Funday Monday where he told everyone they have to expand every 5 minutes on the minute?
*Gafaws*
Sure, he revised it from 4 minutes, but that is still pathetic compared to the macro in BroodWar today. If you only have 4 bases 20 minutes into the game, you are just bad. Having 3 bases before 10 minutes is not uncommon with most maps (regardless of race).
This isn't putting SC2 down or anything, I am just being silly to make a point. The point being that it is possible to spend all of your concentration on macro alone. There is just so much to do now and it happens so fast, and if you're not doing it you feel like you're falling behind a player that is. That's how freaking tough this game has gotten.
The Scouting Age
Allow me to go back in time a million years, to before there was even an accessible proscene. Way, way before, when I was first taking melee seriously, there was a time when scouting was the most important aspect of BroodWar. The standard response in a help thread wasn't "You didn't make a enough units," it was "you didn't react to your opponent well enough," or "you didn't have good intel." Okay, maybe it wasn't exactly like that, since people have always had a million ideas about how to play StarCraft, but it was for me. You could have endless theorycraft about "If you do that, I'll just do this," "well if you do that, I'll just do this" ... And the conclusion was that whoever knew what their opponent was doing better was obviously going to win.
I will tell you right now that I come from the Tsunami school of thought for BroodWar. I didn't know Tsunami. Tsunami wasn't even part of the scene by the time I started taking melee seriously. But when I wanted to beat the people in the StarEdit.net melee mapping forum, and back up all the crap I had to say, Tsunami's Guide to Zerg was my bible. I don't mean I quoted from it. I mean I played the people from the forum and used the guide to give myself an edge that I shouldn't have had.
Before I started playing melee, I was a pure micro player. My favourite UMS was micro wars, so I had some good reason to believe I was good at StarCraft. Micro and tactics were what I brought with me, but Tsunami gave me scouting.
There used to be a time when if you asked 'what's a good build?' or 'what do I get?' (and I'm not making it up this time) the response was 'any build that goes beyond 14 or so supply is worthless, because it means you're not reacting to your opponent.'
Everything I did when I was first learning StarCraft was related to scouting. It's where nearly all of my concentration went, except when I had to micro. My overlord placement was phenomenal, I had lings patrolling key parts of the map, I sometimes burrow linged, and I parasited basically every game. I followed Tsunami's major rule that 'You must sacrifice an ovie to scout his base at least every 5 minutes.' Scouting came before efficiency. Before the lives of your army. Scouting is what allows you to flank. Scouting is what gives you time to run your drones from a shuttle, or hide them from incoming vultures.
Do you know at this time I was a 70-85ish apm player? I was never, EVER caught off guard by a drop. I was never guessing if I could attack or not. I knew how big his army was, I knew if I could win, and if I didn't think I could win I just stalled. That's proper Zerg play.
FLASH, WHAT'S HAPPENING?!
I don't play often anymore, because I like playing a series with the same player, so ladder doesn't offer that. For the last year or so I can't deny that 80% of my games have just been me dicking around against a computer.
Did you know that there's no reason to scout a computer?
It suits The Macro Age, really. You do your own thing and you try to make as much shit as you can. That's kind of fun in and of itself. But it's strange too. When I looked at my replays today I saw myself doing things I don't do at all anymore. Shift clicking ovies around the map to make them look like they're going somewhere. Making sure I have almost all of the map in sight. Moving my army a lot, without attacking. It's hard to believe I forgot all that, but when you haven't played in awhile and you're spending 100% of your concentration on macro and a few big attacks, you don't even notice they're gone. But they're important. They're the reason so many stupid players catch me off guard. All I'm thinking is 'okay, whoever macros and micros better will win. That's the only way to win. Don't forget to snipe templar. Don't forget to do other random thing.' It's so strange to realise that's how I've started playing. Just thinking because I don't play enough to climb the ladder, all I need to do to win is make more shit because I know I can. But there's no class in that.
What the Hell Did You Just Read?
Honestly, I didn't intend this to be such a personal history of my play, and I apologise if it was dull. What I really wanted to get at was how we spend the concentration resource. Whether we are just spending it to make units, or whether we are spending to make our units do things that aren't just 'attack the enemy.' Do we even notice all the ways we can spend our concentration?
Remember a Manifesto7 RWA: EpisodeFrench is a really smart player. He thinks about the game while playing, which most people forget to do in the middle of the action.
I remember wanting to be that kind of player :O
And today I was, so yay me  I didn't do the same things I used to do, but I finally started thinking instead of just recalling truisms of StarCraft that don't make for special games.
BACK IN MY DAY HATCHERIES COST 350 MINERALS AND THOSE PATCHES WERE REALLY FAR AWAY AND STUPIDLY PLACED!
 
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good read
The vast number of different ways in which you can allocate your concentration is part of what makes BW so much fun
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I thought 'the third resource' was time. :O
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When do I play best?
When I disrupt that resource
without spending it.
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No, that's the 4th dimension 
Some recent action in the proscene with Terran's 2basing for a really long time and showing examples of how they are just spending concentration differently. Even though it seems like 3-4 base Terran vs Zerg should be the only way to play if it's possible (especially under Flash's control), it is really cool to see a Terran spending all his concentration controlling the map and screwing up the Zerg instead of just focusing on himself.
Not to say the people in the proscene don't scout a lot anyway... But when it comes back to viewers like us, what we take away from it is that 'our game has to look like this by this time or we are doing something wrong' so we always end up saying 'oh we didn't macro well enough' when we lose... When there are really a lot of other ways we lost.
+ Show Spoiler +http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3xQ-_7V4jY In the Baby game, it isn't 2 base play but it is a great example of concentration being used on units instead of macro. By both players really, since the map very much suggests the need for this kind of play. Baby has 4 bases and I bet he had like 5k minerals too, since his army was really not as big as it would be if he used all his concentration on macro.
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Good read
holy... i'm a reaver! :DDDD
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I think what has changed in my gameplay over the years is that I am less challenged by all the tasks that need to be done whereas before I was struggling just to macro, just to micro or just to scout, just to build that one building at the right time. I didn't hotkey things properly and was trapped in a state where I would click on the minimap, do a task there, click on the minimap again, do something there etc. In essence everything was late and could be done better. The game was about prioritizing what was more important and doing just that and neglecting something else.
I think to the beginner that is how you will view the game because of the user interface. You have a tiny fraction of the map on your screen. It's easy to think that the most important things are there to be seen and be controlled at all times. The minimap looks tiny and insignificant. The unit icons seem to just be there so you can count how many units you have on your screen. It even has clicky buttons on the bottom right so you don't have to remember any hotkeys. The game is MADE to be played poorly.
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United States4126 Posts
Newer SC2 players should definitely give this a read
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Hm. Even before I started to take melee more seriously I knew all the hotkeys for creating buildings and units. The second you start clicking bb to build barrack or bc to build cannon, you realise it is so much more satisfying.
I remember when I used to watch replays of other players and I would think they were bad because they weren't escorting their peon transfers and they weren't attacking the other players peon transfers. That used to be such an important part of my play, always punishing people with my superior presence on the map, and always making sure I couldn't be punished. I haven't even thought about that for such a long time really. You see it sometimes with speed vultures that just happen to catch units off guard, but you don't see it on purpose that much. I did it with speedlings, which are arguably much less efficient at it, but still did the job well.
Those are the kind of opportunities that just don't happen when you are playing super safe and only worrying about a little part of your base and the enemy's entrance.
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Although I really only played UMS back in the day, I've been meaning to get back to BW. It's things like this that make me want to get into BW, for realsies this time.
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Sigh, the more and more I think of it, the more I miss scbw. Sc2 just isn't as gratifying and rewarding when you feel like you accomplish something extremely difficult. The skill gap just isn't as apparent and as difficult to overcome.
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I just played a miraculous ZvP in which the Protoss couldn't take a piss without me knowing. Every time he moved out and let his templar drift just a little behind his army, I knew about it and sniped them with 5 hydras. Every time he tried to do some shuttle antics, I knew 10 seconds before he knew where he was gonna drop.
You can set players up so much when you track their movements properly... It's really gratifying to play Zerg that way I also rushed 1 queen and it parasited at least 7 times over the course of the game haha... His main and nat were mined out by the time he was finally able to get a third.. and the only reason he got it was because the 2 zergs I left saw his probe, but didn't do anything about it and I was busy else where... I perhaps should have partolled them, which would have made them do it automatically... Since he just build 4 cannons out of their sight haha... But I stopped a lot of other unescorted scout attempts, and when he was moving his army I set up my hydras at bottle necks before his zealots could get there ...
uuuhg so satisfying :D Watch the replay with just my vision, you see pretty much everything that's going on. Watch with his vision... He can see his main base and his army... hehehe.
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Excellent read. I will try to stop doing fancy things, but that's what keeps the game fun.
'You must sacrifice an ovie to scout his base at least every 5 minutes.'
I must incorporate this in my play now.
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=) that was a really remarkable story, i feel like i was taken back all the way the age of empires 1 and dial up =p
The technology from back then compared to know is a complete joke, but as a kid growing up with world made of digital life and knowledge in a pure and form... It feels good to be nostalgic =p
As for distribution of apm... hmm this makes me want to look at my sc2 replays and check out what im spending my apm on =|
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Yenku used to run his probe through my mineral line while scouting every game because that's what pros sometimes do to look fancy. But then I would box my peons and glitch them over his probe and kill it in half a second: "NO, YOU'VE LOST THE PRIVILEGE OF SCOUTING!"
Little tricks are fun, but don't lose sight of their purpose :O Sometimes concentration is better spent elsewhere.
edit: While I was writing it, I was thinking about talking about APM more, but I feel that it's misleading. Thinking about the game is a part of concentration, which doesn't include actions per minute. It takes a half a second to decide where you are sending an overlord, but that's half a second you aren't doing much else. So different areas of concentration can subtract from your APM as well. Now if you scout things, you'll find you'll have more things to do, but you'll also notice that you're less frantic about those things and can do them a little more calmly: Plan out how you want the battle to go, posture yourself, and do everything right, instead of doing it in the middle of the battle and losing everything because you told your zerglings to move 50 times when they could have been in a pre-built concave ready to attack.
So in a way, concentration is a part of StarCraft that can't be empirically measured... You can just see it in the number of things the player is doing to create opportunities, and the number of opportunities the player is missing.
I find it really interesting to think about Going from basic logic like "if I drop while attacking he'll have to try to fix things in two places at once" to a much deeper understanding and ability to spend concentration intelligently, rather than randomly. I see your shuttle incoming, and I see your army incoming, so I will prepare for your shuttle in a way that will require less effort when you engage with your army.
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There is also the whole meta-gaming aspect of playing like that, the fact that your opponent will probably start to rage. Personally I know there is nothing more annoying than players who snipe probes when they leave to build an expo, snipe templar, ect. Some games I just get to the "ahh fuck it" point, and a move into certain death- just wanting to end the pain 
Also, regarding APM- as TLO brought up yesterday on the daily some players should actually try to play slower, so they make less, more efficient actions. Thanks for this, it brings up an interesting (albeit extremely irritating to play against :/) aspect to the way Starcraft can be played.
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EPT
