EPTI'm a low master level player myself, and I honestly never have time to really practice. A lot of people probably have written plethora novels on this subject, but here we go: How do you practice game insight and strategic decision making? In my opinion, several aspects are very important in starcraft 2. Micro and Macro are the biggest topics on which you will hear people most often. But, Micro and Macro are simply mechanics.
Insight and strategic decision making is less tactible though. You'll hear peopel say "that's an amazing decision", but you can't blindly replicate the great decision unless it's in that exact same situation. Standard play has a lot of repeating situations, and a lot of standard decicions, but as standard play bores the shit out of my pants. I prefer to play creatively And once you start being creative, you will have to know what you want to do next!
That's where I fuck up a lot :D Half the time I'm like "Let's go burn that mineral line with a hellion-drop, and moe my main army up through the middle to attack his expansion!", but once my pyromaniac eyes behold the blue streams of liquid fire, I just forget about what the fuck I was doing. After I kill like 15 drones, or 3 probes, I look at my minerals, remember that my main army is standing in the middle of the map, and I just attack that shit anyway. Then most of my army dies, and I have lost map control for the next 8 minutes of the game.
My macro is bad and I know that I can practice it, but a few days ago I had a small revelation. If I know what I want to do in the rest of the game, like kill someone with as much units as I can gather at the 18 minute mark, just before the zerg generally has broodlords, then I'm suddenly a super effective macro player. The problem is that I hardly ever dedicate to my plan. And I'm too one-dimesional. Macro'ing and defending till minute 18 doesnt put enough pressure on my opponents, so I have to set sub-goals.
Now here comes one of my revelations: What if I use more than 1 control group!
This sounds so simple that it's almost retarded, but belief me, it's not. How do players generally hotkey their units? Is it like air on 1 hotkey, ground on another, and harrass units on another? That's what I do at least! But harass is just some small gimmick that happens every now and then. What really screws me over is when I move out...
Imagine this situation:
Terran versus zerg, you have a 160 food army with tanks marines and hellions, and you move out to kill. Suddenly, 25 zerglings run past your army whooop, straight into your mineral line. My first reaction in a situation like that is this: "SIGH...... Alright, take my entiiiiiiiiree army.... slooooooooow...... defend this mineral line....... alright all zergligs dead, only lost 35 scv's there.... alright let's do it again and attack his main!"Then suddenly you hear a nydus worm in your main base, 30 zerglings killnig techlabs, reactors, and upgrade facitilites... What I do after that is just go for a base-trade, whcih I generally do not win. It's just tiring to go defend that stuff with my entire army.
But that's really fucking stupid! Where I went wrong in the first place is seeing my army as 1 big object that spews out death. Positioning isnt about where your 1 army is on the map, it's about how you control the dynamic map with a lot of units! And it's so easy to just forget that. Drops arent meant to kill mineral lines, drops are meant to annoy the shit out of your opponent so that he won't attack you as readily. And hellions, they're meant as a quick unit that can do a lot of damage to other small quick units. If you see an opening to do a lot of damage to economy, sure take it, but that's not the goal.
My sollution atm is that I just take my big terran death ball of marines and siege tanks, and stick that shit in 1 control group. But then I'll just go around and hotkey a bunch of hellions. I decided to estimate the amounts of zerglings. If it's like 50+, I'll make a group of like 10-15 blueflame hellions which are my defenders. They're the dynamic unit that just runs around the map to defend my expansions. I'll try to match the amount of hellions to teh amount of zerglings that run around the map. Why should I ever defend with my entire deathball again :D And as for drops, I started using them as a counter offensive. As soon as I see the enemy move out, you drop his base. It's small objectives, but with a lot of punch.
I know this is not the most inspiring piece of text, but I simply mean to say that starcraft is more than micro and macro. I got so engrossed in having to macro so well, that I got way worse at it. Focus on macro turns your game to a passive stalemate, while focus on micro just gives you the illusion of control. Maybe you win sometimes because of it, but unless you can think about your game plan while stutterstepping around a base for the next 2 minutes, focussing too much in micro can hurt you too much. Next blog will be about why people should be worried about the declining ninja rates, but until then, GG!
