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Hey guys,
I'm a Silver level Terran player on the NA server and Bronze on the SEA server. I was playing a game against a Protoss player on the NA server and basically I feel like I macroed pretty well. Non stop SCV production, expanding every 5sh minutes, minerals below 250 95% of the time (except when saving for a Command Centre or maxed out), was not supply blocked etc. Eventually I got up to 4 bases versing a 2 base protoss. I pushed at the 14 minute mark with about 110 marines (with the rest of my supply tied up in workers). He destroyed my push and proceeded to destroy me. I had a food lead for the whole game and when I was maxed I had about an 80 food lead.
So the point is, does this game illustrate why simply just macroing better and just 'a clicking' cannot get you to platinum league? I feel like I've been fed this fantasy that just producing SCVs and units and keeping money low will guarantee an automatic promotion into at least platinum if not diamond.
Cheers
PS: Here is the obligatory replay for you guys to ridicule -
http://www.mediafire.com/?8my8qzjn03n3m1p
 
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Don't make pure marines. brb watching replay
You took 0 gasses in a 16 minute game. You lost because you didn't have even the most basic upgrades. Stim, Combat Shields, Marauders, upgraded bio, vikings, medivacs, ghosts- all staple units/upgrades of TvP and all of them require gas.
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Zurich15327 Posts
So you lost one game? The "just macro better myth" doesn't guarantee you to get to Platinum without losing a single game. But yes, generally you should advance to at least Platinum by just macroing and a-moving. It will just take longer if you do things like making marines only against Protoss.
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Thank you kind sir. But it's not just this game, I've lost against banelings and siege tanks too. I feel like I've hit a wall.
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The macro better saying is just a somewhat guideline to getting better/improving your play. It is usually the most common problem among sc2 players.
Obviously if you macro'ed really well but still lost then it's probably not a macro problem but rather something else.
Maybe mechanics? positioning? Unit comps (lol pure marine)?
Please don't expect to get into diamond/plat by a moving after your maxed.
Chances are that they might be maxed as well/have better stuff
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I'm assuming "don't blindly follow gross oversimplifications on how to play", "don't be stupid", "have a better unit composition", and "seriously, don't be stupid" are also parts of getting promoted...
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So After watching the replay...I have to ask...when did u plan on getting gas?
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Seriously though 0 gas and you're asking about axioms you read on the forum. That is hilarious. When I loaded the replay.. I don't know, I was expecting you to have like 1-0 upgrades, stim but not combat shields, a lot of medivacs and he just got off really good force fields and had early fast colossus.
That's .. just wow. Yeah, you need gas.
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oh my i got trolled by downloading that replay ~~;
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I can't tell if this guy is being funny...
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it's not a myth
macro goes far deeper than just keeping your money spent, it's also about having a tight build that lets you get tech and certain upgrades faster than your opponent because you're spending money more efficiently
bomber's banshee builds are a good example, he has exactly enough to get an expand without a single hiccup in building/banshee production anywhere, there's no weird delay in his cloak variant
so sorry but literally making nothing but marines doesn't qualify as good macro because you're ignoring 85% of the game
if you are talking about destiny's famous rant about bad players, he said that the reason players couldn't make masters was mechanics, which also includes controlling your army well
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So this is what goes on in Bronze and Silver leagues 
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are you trolling? you never even made a refinery, have 14 barracks, and complain that you get destroyed by colossus?
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I dunno, I guess my inspiration was drawn from a mixture to prove this simplistic advice wrong and also Halby's mineral drill where he really simplifies it down to macro ONLY!
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Removed for lack of relevance...and from embarrassment
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On December 27 2011 18:13 ReketSomething wrote:
I can't tell if this guy is being funny...
On December 27 2011 18:13 Dark.Carnival wrote:
oh my i got trolled by downloading that replay ~~;
On December 27 2011 18:18 TG Manny wrote:
Things to note: (and I didn't watch rep)
Mauraders are a good bet to make in TvP
Upgrades are very important in all MUs, but Terran bio is one of the best unit comps for upgrade-based builds. +1 damage per marine shooting per shot results in a big spike in DPS, for just a 100/100 upgrade.
Medivacs make win-drops make bigger win.
Toss late-game is scary with collosus, templar, and lots of gateways. Terran winning windows usually hit as toss is weakest from their tech investments, 8-11 minutes. The more you can cost effectively trade armies, the better. (toss tech can't stand well on their own, they must have a deathball around 'em to keep alive and effective.
Macroing isn't just keeping your buildings busy but it can also involve making the right stuff. If I am zerg playing infestor/BL late game against a bio+ghosts army that is SUPER scary so I lower my tech choices to muta until I can handle drops and funnel the terran into my BL ball and keep him from getting a lot of vikings. Zerg is the most obvious choice where you make the wrong stuff and you lose, but the same can be said of any MU.
Macroing harder, imo, refers to keeping production up, not getting supply blocked, etc. Macroing better means responding to what you scout (!!!) and making the right units to abuse weaknesses. You claim to have macro'd hard but if you're on 110 marines and 90 workers you did not macro well. terran cuts SCVs at 60 for mules to make up economy and free up space for army and marines are good on their own but need supportive units to keep alive. Back to zerg reference, if I have 100 banelings going for 100 marines, banelings win (except against Marine King Prime and MorroW etc etc....gods of the split) 100 banelings going for 76 marines and 7 tanks, marines win with minimal losses. Both situations require macroing HARD but the second macro's better (sees no teching from zerg or low on gas zerg with a lot of lings and not much of anything else)
I think this is at least part of the reason why it's a good idea to always download the replay lol
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On December 27 2011 18:16 inbox24 wrote:
I dunno, I guess my inspiration was drawn from a mixture to prove this simplistic advice wrong and also Halby's mineral drill where he really simplifies it down to macro ONLY!
if you a-move 0-0 marines with no combat shields or stim into like 3 colossus with range with sentry support, i think you have a much larger problem. and you can actually win with only marines in that league with good bunker placement.
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1. You didn't split your workers
2. You waited 5 seconds before you ordered your workers to mine
3. @2mins and 9 seconds you didn't build workers for like a full 10 seconds
4. You didn't scout your opponent for 7.5mins. This is a cardinal sin.
5. Not attacking until 14minutes with a pure marine force.
Number 5 is the most important. That's an example of bronze level decisionmaking. You are better than that.
Yes you can go a macro style with just marines but you have to be agressive. You have to keep forcing army trades otherwise your opponent will tech up and slaughter your marines with AOE damage dealers (eg collosi).
If your are going to play passive on the other hand then you need to at least keep up with his tech, in which case you should scout regularly to make sure you can coutner his forces.
And finally, I know you probably think macro sucks. And your game is an example that it is not the be all and end all of starcraft. But it is important and the reason why other posters put such emphasis on it is not because having good macro will instantly promote you to masters, but because it is the easiest aspect in your gameplay to improve on.
It is far easier to train yourself to build a worker ever 17seconds and not get supply blocked than it is to train your eye to correclty judge whether you should engage an enemy force or not. And it is far easier to get yourself promoted from such improvements as a result.
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There's no skill level at which macroing better doesn't benefit you.
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On December 27 2011 18:16 inbox24 wrote:
I dunno, I guess my inspiration was drawn from a mixture to prove this simplistic advice wrong and also Halby's mineral drill where he really simplifies it down to macro ONLY!
I've watched that video and while it's kinda cool, you need to realize that it is meant as a crutch for people with bad macro to play a passable game. It's not actually a good build, it's just a way for people that can't actually play the game to put up a decent effort.
I'm sure if you were actually a masters player, you could do a no-gas build up to maybe platinum or higher perhaps, but seeing as how that's not the case for you, the mineral drill is only meant to allow you to become comfortable with the game to the point that you are able to actually use the rest of the game besides barracks and marines and depots and OC's.
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I got to masters by macroing and attack moving.
You should be able to get out of silver.
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I cannot believe that you were actually serious lol. I was sure it was at least a semi troll.
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On December 27 2011 18:00 inbox24 wrote:
I pushed at the 14 minute mark with about 110 marines
If you're going to just make marines why not push WAY earlier when marines have a chance?
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What do you mean? I'm not trolling at all. Just wanted your opinions on it that's all. I seriously heard from the internet that just a-moving with 'perfect' macro would get you up from silver and gold at the very least. Now I'm not claiming to have perfect macro but my opponent was floating in the thousands I think.
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No, no it's irrelevant lol. Nothing really matters when you don't mine a single gas. It's like expanding when you have six workers or making medivacs to carry vikings. You need gas.
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so just mining minerals is perfect macro lol guess vespene gas isn't counted as a resource ._."
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In general, as a terran, it's harder to just make marines and a-move. If you're terran, I recommend MMM and a-move. Protoss will be able to just make stalkers and a-move though. Also, you'll need to get gas for upgrades (a part of good macro).
Also, you won't be able to win every game with it - plat and diamond are realistic targets though. Although, I'm quite tempted to just make marines and a-move as terran and see how far my master-level mechanics take me.
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Macro doesn't just mean constantly making units. It means making the right units. Stimless, unshielded 0/0 marines are only the answer when you're doing early aggression or a really tight timing where you get shield/stim while pushing. But those pushes are always accompanied with marauders, tanks, banshees; in other words gas heavy units.
Yeah you can't just skip gas and max out at 14 minutes on marines. I mean you can, you just won't win if they happen to make sentries, colossus, HT or archons lol
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On December 27 2011 18:47 inbox24 wrote:
What do you mean? I'm not trolling at all. Just wanted your opinions on it that's all. I seriously heard from the internet that just a-moving with 'perfect' macro would get you up from silver and gold at the very least. Now I'm not claiming to have perfect macro but my opponent was floating in the thousands I think.
Yeah, but when people say that they mean you have to macro up only SCVs. Why spend all that money on Barracks? Just spend them on more Command Centers and SCVs. Eventually you can overwhelm Silver level players with just SCVs.
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On December 27 2011 18:47 inbox24 wrote:
What do you mean? I'm not trolling at all. Just wanted your opinions on it that's all. I seriously heard from the internet that just a-moving with 'perfect' macro would get you up from silver and gold at the very least. Now I'm not claiming to have perfect macro but my opponent was floating in the thousands I think.
You know, you can also have a perfect macro, never having more than 100 minerals in stock and build pure SCVs and no army ? Is that gonna win you games ? I let you guess the answer.
PS : Let me know if you need a hint.
In the case you're really not trolling, let me give you a very simple math analogy. We usually advice beginners to focus on macro, because of how important it is compared to other aspects of the game at low levels. We could define (arbitrary formula by myself) efficiency by :
efficiency = Macro^3 * Unit compo * 0.5 decision-making * sqrt(Micro).
You can have an awesome macro, if the rest equals 0, then your efficiency = 0.
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To be fair to the OP, he has heard of the experiment where a protoss player made just stalkers with a-move and got into diamond league. However, this "macro-only" challenge doesn't transfer as well to the terran making only marines - MMM will be needed for the a-move.
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That's a really cute formula endy ^_^
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I understand now with that formula. Just each aspect of play (macro, micro, game sense, timing, etc) all contribute to playing the perfect game and therefore winning. It's just each contribution is different dependent upon the game circumstance, the players' skill level, and the map. Some aspects may have heavier weighting on the win than others.
That being said, do you think mass marauders (with upgrades) would work against Protoss in the same way that mass stalkers would as mentioned by Azzur?
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Though I think it's pointless to give another serious reply, you actually didn't really have that good macro during the game.
At 14:40, when you are maxed and move out, you have four mining bases. Your main has a reasonable amount of minerals left so you have four full potential mining bases. To have good saturation, you need between 16-24 workers at each mineral line. At that time point, your 4 bases have: 7/22/41/5 workers. This is the equivalent of having 2 bases mining. The protoss has only 2 bases, but full saturation at both of them, including the gases. The income rates are 1900/0 and 1420/448 for the two of you.
Essentially, you really didn't have a better economy than your opponent. In order to legitimately beat someone going mineral only and without micro, you have to have like double their economy or something. At best, you had an economy about 30% better than his, but that's forgetting the gas. When you include the gas rate, you two have identical economies. And since his units also use gas, his army is far superior to yours in efficiency.
You lose your entire army in the worst choke possible. Honestly, if you had just move commanded into his main and forgot about your army you would have had a better engagement. After the battle, you don't have a superior economy so you are crushed since you cannot reinforce.
tl;dr You actually had a crap economy and macro
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On December 27 2011 19:03 Probe1 wrote:
That's a really cute formula endy ^_^
Thanks ! I think it can describe where to put one's efforts into at low levels pretty well.
It also summarizes what everyone has been trying to tell OP but in a clear way, because saying "macro is everything, yet not exactly everything" seems to confuse him.
Putting it in a mathematical way is unequivocal.
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On December 27 2011 19:08 Emporio wrote:
Though I think it's pointless to give another serious reply, you actually didn't really have that good macro during the game.
At 14:40, when you are maxed and move out, you have four mining bases. Your main has a reasonable amount of minerals left so you have four full potential mining bases. To have good saturation, you need between 16-24 workers at each mineral line. At that time point, your 4 bases have: 7/22/41/5 workers. This is the equivalent of having 2 bases mining. The protoss has only 2 bases, but full saturation at both of them, including the gases. The income rates are 1900/0 and 1420/448 for the two of you.
Essentially, you really didn't have a better economy than your opponent. In order to legitimately beat someone going mineral only and without micro, you have to have like double their economy or something. At best, you had an economy about 30% better than his, but that's forgetting the gas. When you include the gas rate, you two have identical economies. And since his units also use gas, his army is far superior to yours in efficiency.
You lose your entire army in the worst choke possible. Honestly, if you had just move commanded into his main and forgot about your army you would have had a better engagement. After the battle, you don't have a superior economy so you are crushed since you cannot reinforce.
tl;dr You actually had a crap economy and macro
But the thing is for the 'important' part of the game, that is, getting to be maxed, I had closer to max saturation on 3 bases. It was only after I got maxed I thought I could effectively now ignore my SCV building and saturation and just A click and win the game.
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Ehh, Emporio I think the finer notes of his macro are pointless. Although misguided, he's asking what went wrong. Gas production went wrong. Next time open 1 rax expo without getting an orbital command first (CC on 15) then get your orbital, first gas and then add two additional barracks. From there saturate your two bases while teching up to medivacs and making marine/marauder and adding on additional gas. Around 12 minutes add on a third base and start scouting heavily to see what his tech paths are. That should be good enough to get out of bronze/silver.
Getting to max isn't important. Getting to 200/200 is a byproduct of having a great economy to support units and upgrades for the units. Macro or die means spend minerals into more minerals via more workers, more CCs and more production.
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On December 27 2011 19:12 inbox24 wrote:Show nested quote +On December 27 2011 19:08 Emporio wrote:
Though I think it's pointless to give another serious reply, you actually didn't really have that good macro during the game.
At 14:40, when you are maxed and move out, you have four mining bases. Your main has a reasonable amount of minerals left so you have four full potential mining bases. To have good saturation, you need between 16-24 workers at each mineral line. At that time point, your 4 bases have: 7/22/41/5 workers. This is the equivalent of having 2 bases mining. The protoss has only 2 bases, but full saturation at both of them, including the gases. The income rates are 1900/0 and 1420/448 for the two of you.
Essentially, you really didn't have a better economy than your opponent. In order to legitimately beat someone going mineral only and without micro, you have to have like double their economy or something. At best, you had an economy about 30% better than his, but that's forgetting the gas. When you include the gas rate, you two have identical economies. And since his units also use gas, his army is far superior to yours in efficiency.
You lose your entire army in the worst choke possible. Honestly, if you had just move commanded into his main and forgot about your army you would have had a better engagement. After the battle, you don't have a superior economy so you are crushed since you cannot reinforce.
tl;dr You actually had a crap economy and macro But the thing is for the 'important' part of the game, that is, getting to be maxed, I had closer to max saturation on 3 bases. It was only after I got maxed I thought I could effectively now ignore my SCV building and saturation and just A click and win the game.
Absolutely not. The important part of the mineral drill is to have an overwhelming economy so that you can have terrible engagements and still win because you are making so many marines it doesn't matter how terribly you are trading them.
You can ignore making SCV's when you are maxed but if you saturate badly, you might as well have no SCV's. If you rewatch the videos, he does a very good job of making sure he always has good saturation on all his bases and expanding when he doesn't.
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Your macro is bad, a really good player could easily get to platinum by making pure marines against every race. I've beaten Low Diamond Zergs with pure marines no stim for the lulz, eventually got to 6 bases vs 2 (after I killed 2 of his expos) and I just had an endless stream of a-moved marines going towards his base.
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On December 27 2011 18:57 endy wrote:Show nested quote +On December 27 2011 18:47 inbox24 wrote:
What do you mean? I'm not trolling at all. Just wanted your opinions on it that's all. I seriously heard from the internet that just a-moving with 'perfect' macro would get you up from silver and gold at the very least. Now I'm not claiming to have perfect macro but my opponent was floating in the thousands I think. You know, you can also have a perfect macro, never having more than 100 minerals in stock and build pure SCVs and no army ? Is that gonna win you games ? I let you guess the answer. PS : Let me know if you need a hint. In the case you're really not trolling, let me give you a very simple math analogy. We usually advice beginners to focus on macro, because of how important it is compared to other aspects of the game at low levels. We could define (arbitrary formula by myself) efficiency by : efficiency = Macro^3 * Unit compo * 0.5 decision-making * sqrt(Micro). You can have an awesome macro, if the rest equals 0, then your efficiency = 0.
If you mean that decision making is less important than macro and unit comp at low levels, then shouldn't it be raised to a lower power instead of adjusting the entire formula with a constant?
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On December 27 2011 19:14 Emporio wrote:Show nested quote +On December 27 2011 19:12 inbox24 wrote:On December 27 2011 19:08 Emporio wrote:
Though I think it's pointless to give another serious reply, you actually didn't really have that good macro during the game.
At 14:40, when you are maxed and move out, you have four mining bases. Your main has a reasonable amount of minerals left so you have four full potential mining bases. To have good saturation, you need between 16-24 workers at each mineral line. At that time point, your 4 bases have: 7/22/41/5 workers. This is the equivalent of having 2 bases mining. The protoss has only 2 bases, but full saturation at both of them, including the gases. The income rates are 1900/0 and 1420/448 for the two of you.
Essentially, you really didn't have a better economy than your opponent. In order to legitimately beat someone going mineral only and without micro, you have to have like double their economy or something. At best, you had an economy about 30% better than his, but that's forgetting the gas. When you include the gas rate, you two have identical economies. And since his units also use gas, his army is far superior to yours in efficiency.
You lose your entire army in the worst choke possible. Honestly, if you had just move commanded into his main and forgot about your army you would have had a better engagement. After the battle, you don't have a superior economy so you are crushed since you cannot reinforce.
tl;dr You actually had a crap economy and macro But the thing is for the 'important' part of the game, that is, getting to be maxed, I had closer to max saturation on 3 bases. It was only after I got maxed I thought I could effectively now ignore my SCV building and saturation and just A click and win the game. Absolutely not. The important part of the mineral drill is to have an overwhelming economy so that you can have terrible engagements and still win because you are making so many marines it doesn't matter how terribly you are trading them. You can ignore making SCV's when you are maxed but if you saturate badly, you might as well have no SCV's. If you rewatch the videos, he does a very good job of making sure he always has good saturation on all his bases and expanding when he doesn't.
Interesting point about the not having SCVs part. I guess you're right about that. But then I should've just transferred about 15 SCVs to my fourth and that would have given me full saturation right?
I think I will practise the build that Probe1 suggested. It sounds more well rounded, making medivacs will take me some time to get use to as I only have 20ish apm lol.
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On December 27 2011 19:14 Probe1 wrote:
Ehh, Emporio I think the finer notes of his macro are pointless. Although misguided, he's asking what went wrong. Gas production went wrong. Next time open 1 rax expo without getting an orbital command first (CC on 15) then get your orbital, first gas and then add two additional barracks. From there saturate your two bases while teching up to medivacs and making marine/marauder and adding on additional gas. Around 12 minutes add on a third base and start scouting heavily to see what his tech paths are. That should be good enough to get out of bronze/silver.
He's using a guide on youtube + Show Spoiler + that advocates simplifying the game to its absolutes to concentrate on macro at the expense of absolutely everything in order to see how much more powerful macro is compared to unit composition or micro or anything.
While I might not agree that this is the best way to improve, it's a legitimate practice and means of improving a very (very) specific aspect of play, and I wanted to point out to him why improving by macro alone is not a myth. He has been disillusioned that macro alone isn't enough and that you need sprinklings of micro and unit comp and stuff like that, and while for the normal silver/bronze player trying to improve, that is how you develop, by focusing on macro but also improving on other aspects, I wanted to clarify that "perfect macro" is indeed enough at his level of play. The sooner a player realizes that his macro is deeply flawed even down to the simplest and easiest parts of it, the sooner he will drastically improve.
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this is painful to read troll or not
being maxed on unupgraded marines 14 mins into the game is not indicative of good macro
getting to be maxed is not the "important" part of the game
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Ok so what is the optimal saturation per base then? Is it 2 lines of SCVs or 3?
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On December 27 2011 19:19 inbox24 wrote:
I think I will practise the build that Probe1 suggested. It sounds more well rounded, making medivacs will take me some time to get use to as I only have 20ish apm lol.
apm at that level can ALWAYS be improved by doing the same build over and over again. hell, i was able to go from 90 apm to 110~120 just from refining a couple of builds for each matchup over 6 months or so. going from 20 to 50 shouldn't be that difficult or take a long time.
most of apm comes from always knowing what to do next. more practice = more apm. (but only to a certain level, of course. please don't apply this in the same way you have applied MACRO BETTER so far)
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On December 27 2011 19:21 inbox24 wrote:
Ok so what is the optimal saturation per base then? Is it 2 lines of SCVs or 3?
2 lines. it's not OPTIMAL, but it's as good as you get before you start getting diminishing returns, and it's easy a level to maintain during a game when you have so many other important tasks to do.
eventually you will be able to eyeball and tell that you have the right amount of workers.
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So it's 16 scvs on minerals per base then. That means in my replay I should have had almost 6 bases with the amount of SCVs I had?
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On December 27 2011 19:25 inbox24 wrote:
So it's 16 scvs on minerals per base then. That means in my replay I should have had almost 6 bases with the amount of SCVs I had?
yes, you had too many scvs. around 60 is fine for terran after you've gotten your third up and running given they also have mules.
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On December 27 2011 19:21 inbox24 wrote:
Ok so what is the optimal saturation per base then? Is it 2 lines of SCVs or 3?
Personal preference.
At 2 lines (16) you are getting the maximum minerals/second PER WORKER. At 3 lines (24) you are getting the maximum minerals/second PER MINERAL LINE. In otherwords, 24 workers gives you the maximal economy possible with the number of bases you have while 16 workers makes each worker as efficient as possible.
Most Zergs I've seen tend to go closer to 16 since Zerg expands so much and has weaker army units, it makes sense to lower saturation and free up supply, while Protoss tends to go closer to 24 since they expand slower and have stronger individual units, ending up with a deathball which is less sensitive to an additional 12 supply. Terrans seem to be anywhere in between since they have mules, so mineral saturation isn't quite as important.
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Macro and a-move will get you to at least platinum (i am a platinum terran), but you NEED gas. You can't expect to beat ling/bling, colossus or siege tanks with 0-0 marines, no stim, no shields. Try this: Get 3 geysers after you set up your expansion and saturate them all at once. Get 2 tech labs on barracks, start stim and shields, (start producing marauders and get concussive shells as well if you're playing vs toss). Next 100 gas goes to factory, then immediately a starport with a reactor (maybe get the factory to make the reactor for the starport while this is building and then swap). You should also have 2 engineering bays by this point since they only cost minerals (try not to forget them). After you have the reactor starport all the gas goes to marauders, medivacs, one armory and bio upgrades. Keep up the macro and start a-moving after stim and combat shield finish (should be way before 14 mins and you'll have a much stronger force anyway). I know that getting the first gas at 13, second when you start factory is better, but I figure this would be easier for you to execute since you want to emphasize macroing so much. Try to practice this vs ai in "very easy" mode so you can refine your timings somewhat before taking it to the ladder.
This is pretty much how i got to platinum and it was pretty fast. Pure macro is about 90% of it, the rest is your build order execution (getting tech buildings and upgrades as soon as you have the gas) and reacting well to cheese/rushes as you'll encounter plenty of those along the way. good luck!
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Sorry Emporio I didn't realize what you were referring to! My bad.
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On December 27 2011 18:08 ymir233 wrote:
I'm assuming "don't blindly follow gross oversimplifications on how to play", "don't be stupid", "have a better unit composition", and "seriously, don't be stupid" are also parts of getting promoted...
yeah, seriously.
OP, of course you can prove the 'myth' wrong by macroing perfectly while making sure you do everything else as wrong as possible. Macro, and don't be dumb basically.
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Edited out unnecessary flame.
The objective of macro is to get a more potent army. That includes gas and timing your tech and upgrades right so that you don't float resources unnecessarily.
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On December 27 2011 18:00 inbox24 wrote:Hey guys, I'm a Silver level Terran player on the NA server and Bronze on the SEA server. I was playing a game against a Protoss player on the NA server and basically I feel like I macroed pretty well. Non stop SCV production, expanding every 5sh minutes, minerals below 250 95% of the time (except when saving for a Command Centre or maxed out), was not supply blocked etc. Eventually I got up to 4 bases versing a 2 base protoss. I pushed at the 14 minute mark with about 110 marines (with the rest of my supply tied up in workers). He destroyed my push and proceeded to destroy me. I had a food lead for the whole game and when I was maxed I had about an 80 food lead. So the point is, does this game illustrate why simply just macroing better and just 'a clicking' cannot get you to platinum league? I feel like I've been fed this fantasy that just producing SCVs and units and keeping money low will guarantee an automatic promotion into at least platinum if not diamond. Cheers PS: Here is the obligatory replay for you guys to ridicule - http://www.mediafire.com/?8my8qzjn03n3m1p
I don't understand your issue. You had an 80 supply lead, nearly double his. You don't see the power in that when it's actually a GOOD unit composition?
On December 27 2011 19:25 inbox24 wrote:
So it's 16 scvs on minerals per base then. That means in my replay I should have had almost 6 bases with the amount of SCVs I had?
Depends on the map. 20 is full saturation usually. In most games you don't have the luxury of more than three mining bases.
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There's a lot more to macro than just massing minerals.
Mineral and supply management are only two of the many components of macromanagement, and to think that you can win by merely massing resources and a single unupgraded unit is, quite frankly, idiotic (or massive troll)
Macromanagement also includes, critically, gas management, unit composition, and techs.
It's actually amazingly easy to coordinate barracks and command centers pumping 50 mineral, 1 supply units all game long. It's also amazingly useless. It's incredibly difficult to manage multiple types of buildings that are producing 3-4 different types of units with different costs and build times while also managing research for them.
Basically, micro just covers unit control. Macro covers almost everything else.
The only things left out of the micro/macro view are scouting and certain types of decision making. Scouting is often critical but it can't be done well without good multitask (which comes naturally from having the good mechanics of solid micro/macro) and decision making just comes from practice.
Mechanics are the majority of this game. That's why macro is stressed so much, because mechanically it's almost always the most taxing part.
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LMAO
Macro is about managing your resources, notice the ''S'' at the end of resources. Yeah, that includes gas...
Macro is also about keeping up with your upgrades...
Marines without stim, smh...
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This was said before, but if you are going pure marines, attack when you have 20 to 30 of them. They have diminishing returns after this point. You have to go full aggression the whole game for it to have a chance. I have beaten protoss players that went 1 base colossus against my marine only and beat terran players that went marine only with one base colossus because they attacked too early and with bad micro.
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United Kingdom20285 Posts
If you want to compare macro, dont look at how much stuff you had, look at average unspent resources relative to income
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United Kingdom20285 Posts
On December 27 2011 21:35 TiTanIum_ wrote:
This was said before, but if you are going pure marines, attack when you have 20 to 30 of them. They have diminishing returns after this point. You have to go full aggression the whole game for it to have a chance. I have beaten protoss players that went 1 base colossus against my marine only and beat terran players that went marine only with one base colossus because they attacked too early and with bad micro.
The latest attack id do with pure marines would be 8 from a 6 rax all in, you really do need to be agressive with them, they are unarguably one of the best if not the best t1 units, and need to be used as such
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0/0 marines w/o combat shield, stim or medivacs is not a unit to build your entire army from.
Banelings, colossus, tanks. Each race has one unit there that even if their macro is 1/2 your skill level, their unit composition will be at least 3x more effective. You will not beat even a silver/gold level player if they understand basic unit counters, by attacking with 110 completely un-upgraded marines.
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I got into masters with such large delay that all I could do was a-move and hope for the best during season 1. You need to take gas and tech x.x I could do nothing but make zlots all game long but with 0 upgrades and no charge I'm fairly certain I would lose to a diamond player. Might be a good thing to try in a practice game but idk... lol
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i hope you also realize "macro" involves vespene gas, i hope you realize it's not hard to hit a hotkey and hit "a" a bunch of times, then a different hotkey and hit "s" a bunch of times. what makes you think THAT is macro?
macro involves not only just purely making units, it involves knowing WHAT unit to make, WHAT UPGRADES TO GET AND WHEN, how many rax/fact/ports you can have at x time in the game with y amount of workers, etc etc etc.
macro is not 4aaaa5ssss
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Making solely marines against a race that has probably the best vs. light AoE in the game... with not even combat shields or upgrades, what did you expect?
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you can easily get to diamond with minimal micro
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On December 27 2011 18:06 inbox24 wrote:
Thank you kind sir. But it's not just this game, I've lost against banelings and siege tanks too. I feel like I've hit a wall.
Did people taking this seriously miss this post or something?
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How can you macro well if you don't get gas. lol. This is a great way approaching to be better however. Know you have learned how to macro decently with only marines, try to do it with some upgrades, and later with some marauders mixed in.
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You're encountering a worst case scenario, by fighting against colossus with marines. Same thing with banelings. I think if you just apply a little bit of common sense in your unit composition, then the "macro better" philosophy will take you a lot farther. Try just mixing in some marauders (a newb-friendly unit imo) and see how much farther you can get.
Also, upgrades count as part of macro. Especially for marines, the effects are tremendous. Combat Shields is 22% more hp. +2 Weapons is 33% more attack power. These two in combination are nearly the same as having 62% more marines.
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On December 28 2011 08:40 Dfgj wrote:Show nested quote +On December 27 2011 18:06 inbox24 wrote:
Thank you kind sir. But it's not just this game, I've lost against banelings and siege tanks too. I feel like I've hit a wall. Did people taking this seriously miss this post or something?
Well i mean, a lot of the game comes down to building more than one single unit.
Even destiny's little "I'm going to go mass queen" build got him into silver before he started faltering from his original goal and building other units / doing other things, because he was in danger of losing, because mass queen is just ridiculous.
If you just A-move with a ton of marines, and keep up the pressure, but walk into a line of siege tanks, or just walls of banelings, you're going to lose tons of units without even doing damage. You're supposed to make up with your lack of micro by overwhelming them with pure force. But if you don't overwhelm them well enough (i.e. they can trade so cost efficiently, that your entire army gets demolished and you lose to counter attacks), then yes, you're going to continue to lose...
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Macro involves more than just, "make units"
"make basic obvious not oversimplifying this just for the sake of being intentionally dense so you can make an argument later that it's not just 'macro'" is not quite what you're going for.
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I've lost games going mass marines with 2/2, combat shield and stim at the 16 min mark. I think I will just do marine - marauder from now on until my mechanics improve.
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Constantly making SCVs or any other worker is a myth. The only times where this holds is where you are not at a point in the game where your opponent can effectively attack you. You can only know when these situations arise based on critical scout timings you can determine by watching professional players. Moreover, constantly producing units is a myth because of the same information detailed above. Tech timings and to some extent factory/barracks timings work the same way. However, if you have not rigorously practiced a particular matchup, the factory/barracks timings only apply in some all in push situations.
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Good troll? I actually can't tell.
For clarifications sake, macro means more than keeping money low.
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I played another game on Shakuras, this time against Zerg. I feel like I macroed pretty decently for a Silver level. My average unspent throughout the game was around 700 and I was up to 5 bases at the end with my resource collection rate around 1881 (which according to this calculator gives an SQ of 97. This time I did mine gas, got all the infantry upgrades (except Nitro packs) and 2/2 as well. I also managed to churn out a MMM composition.
Replay: http://www.mediafire.com/?382vco21i2123fs
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On December 27 2011 18:04 Probe1 wrote:
Don't make pure marines. brb watching replay
You took 0 gasses in a 16 minute game. You lost because you didn't have even the most basic upgrades. Stim, Combat Shields, Marauders, upgraded bio, vikings, medivacs, ghosts- all staple units/upgrades of TvP and all of them require gas.
I read the OP and was legitimately wondering if there was any glaringly obvious oversights under his definition of macro, and then i read this post and died. Thank you sir
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EPT
