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Strategy vs tactics, or "why did I lose"?
When you read strategy guides, most of them concentrate on specific matchups or even build orders. Usually, guides don't cover the "basics", based on a widespread but obviously false belief that most players know them. However, the basics, or fundamentals, as I prefer to name them, have many levels. One of them is the purely technical level - how well do you micro/control your units or how many APMs you have. Another is however the understanding of game mechanics - here, many players seem to play without understanding key concepts, getting good results only due to sheer technical advantage / game experience.
When you watch a Brood War replay, you tend to know which player is generally winning at the moment. "Generally winning" is an abstraction of a key concept of the game - advantage. Here, I'd like to focus on two aspects of advantage in StarCraft - tactical advantage and strategical advantage. I'll try to discuss how to negate one using the other, how to build up each of them and how to transform them into each other.
First of all, however, I have to explain what tactical and strategical advantage means. Tactical advantage is the advantage determied by unit numbers, choice, position, upgrades and static defenses. Strategical advantage is the advantage determied by mining capacity, upgrade capabilities and the amount/placement of unit construction facilities, as well as the general tech level. This seems obvious and many will now ask "but how does it relate to game advantage like we see it"? So, here's an explanation of how your winning game of StarCraft should proceed.
At the start of the game, you usually want to build up strategical advantage. Your goal during a balanced game is to maintain strategical advantage over your opponent, while not having a significant tactical disadvantage. Then, you will want to turn your strategical advantage into tactical advantage, then proceed to finish off your opponent.
All of this looks pretty abstract, so let's look at some real examples.
Let's say a player does a 5 pool rush vs. a terran opponent who goes a balanced, 10-12 rax build. The moment the zerg player stops building drones and makes his SP, he's putting himself at a big strategical disadvantage. The moment he gets his lings hatched, he gains a big tactical advantage. He now has to use those units to build up a strategical advantage or he will lose. So, he rushes to the terran base, but the terran find the lings with a scouting SCV. Since they are far away, the terran manages to build a marine and put it in his mineral line before the zerglings arrive there. The tactical situtation is now a draw, but the terran holds a large strategical advantage = game winning situation.
The general rule of StarCraft (or 2 rules, to be more precise) regarding strategy and tactics are:
1. Building up tactical advantage means sacrificing strategical advantage and vice-versa.
2. You need to build up a decisive tactical advantage to break through your opponent's defenses, but the game is won by building a decisive strategical advantage.
So, what are the means of building up each type of advantage? We'll start with tactical advantage first.
The first and foremost means of building tactical advantage is the behavior known as "consuming". This means using up all your production facilities to produce units, as well as devoting all resources to those means. This causes your unit count to rise, which will obviously build up your tactical advantage.
Another means of building tactical advantage is unit placement. For example, in PvP, with an equal strategical situation, the protoss that's containing his opponent has a big tactical advantage, even with similar unit count, resulting typically in a game-winning situation.
Combined with unit placement is the idea of drops. Drops build up tactical advantage by delivering units in places where they are hardest to defend against. This is generally just an aspect of unit placement, in a way.
How do you build strategical advantage, then? First of all, as you probably guessed, the opposite of consuming, the technique known as "powering", builds up your strategical advantage. Powering means devoting all your resources to increasing your production and resource-mining capabilities - making workers, expansions, additional unit-construction facilities is all part of powering.
Teching is yet another way of gaining strategical advantage. It allows you for a wider unit choice, therefore expanding your production capabilities.
So, now that we know the theory, how to we forge it into practice? Well, the idea is first of all to know when we're at a strategical or tactical disadvantage, second of all know the balance between the tactical and strategical situation in-game, and last but not least know how to use that knowledge to secure a victory.
The first part involves a concept known as scouting and map control. If we know what our opponent is doing and know where his expansions/production facilities/troops lie and what he can produce, we know how we stand with our in-game situation. The more we're kept in the dark regarding our opponent's situation, the more we have to adapt to a wider possible range of tactical/strategical advantage/disadvantage, meaning that we cannot plan our actions well enough.
The second one is something I'd call "game sense". This allows us to judge whether our production is better than our opponent's or what will be the result of a potential battle of our amassed troops. Knowing that is crucial to planning a successful strategy - making a brilliant plan won't help if we're convinced that our contain will hold and then the opponent manages to break out with almost no losses.
The last part requires us to use the "StarCraft rule of balance", which is: each action that builds up a strategical advantage also puts you at a tactical disadvantage and vice-versa. Actually, on an equal level of technical play, most people lose because they either don't know or neglect this rule. Let me show it on an example.
A zerg player manages to contain a protoss, who has just set up an expansion but has no observers. Both players are at 1 expansion, giving the zerg a serious tactical advantage and the protoss player a quite big strategical advantage. Now, the zerg player can do two things. He can either consume and create troops, building up his tactical advantage or he can use the containment to create expansions, putting himself at a strategical advantage. Let's see how this affects game play.
If the zerg choses to enhance his tactical advantage, he will sacrifice even more strategical advantage. At some point, the protoss player (having better production capabilities), will, apart from keeping his strategical advantage, start nullifying the tactical advantage the zerg has. At some point, the protoss player will gain tactical advantage and break out. Then, having both tactical and strategical advantage, he will proceed to win the game.
If the zerg uses the containment to build up a strategical advantage, the protoss player's prior advantage will nullify the tactical advantage even faster. But this time, the zerg player has been building up a strategical advantage, so at the moment the protoss breaks out, the zerg player might have enough strategical advantage to switch to consume mode and nullify the tactical advantage the protoss has gained by breaking out.
Most people lose their games by needlessly furthering their tactical advantage or their strategical advantage, instead of balancing them where there is a chance. Now, there's nothing wrong in building advantage, but remember the "StarCraft rule of balance" - there's always a cost. This is sometimes seen in a situation of a protoss player who gains advantage vs. a zerg with only a natural expansion. then mass expands, then loses the game because the zerg gets hive tech and starts dropping zerglings everywhere. I just saw a game where a terran player rushed (successfully) a zerg, forcing him to cancel his expansion hatchery (giving him a big strategical advantage), then, instead of using that to build tactical advantage (simply putting it, make enough troops with a balanced build up), he tried to fast expand to even more increase his strategical advantage. He put himself at such a big tactical disadvantage that the zerg player simply rushed him with zerglings. This is also a typical situation of a PvZ game with the protoss doing a purely tech build.
Of course, things aren't as simple as that. You might ask - well, how am I to break through my opponent's defenses if I don't build up tactical advantage. Well, that's one part I kind of lied to you about earlier. There are two types of tactical advantage, actually - global tactical advantage and local tactical advantage. Global tactical advantage is one you see when you look at the entire map. Local tactical advantage is something you see when you look at a single game screen. A typical example is a PvT game. If a protoss has a flank set up on the middle of the map, with shuttles ready to drop zealots inside a terran's push, and the terran has all his troops in his natural, the global tactical advantage belongs to the protoss. Moreover, the protoss has a large local tactical advantage on the middle. However, when we move to the terran natural, the terran has a slight tactical advantage there, meaning he will be able to defend any attack made by the protoss player.
Now, it's the time to introduce the rule of the thumb on the advantage balance: never build up global tactical advantage that will not give you enough local tactical advantage at your opponent's defense point to break their defenses. The same goes the other way - if you build up strategical advantage, always try to sacrifice global tactical advantage instead of local tactical advantage at your defense point. This rule is very often used by a 'diversion' tactic - if you do a drop at the same time as doing your expansions, you're sacrificing global tactical advantage (your general troops), but you're not really putting yourself at a big local tactical disadvantage since your opponent needs to pull back his troops to defend the drop, which gives you the time to mount a local defense (build up local tactical advantage) at your expansions. This is also the key rule for all the "camped-up zerg ZvP winners" who use very significant local tactical advantage (sunken/lurker defense) to offset the big global tactical disadvantage they suffer by powering/teching rapidly.
So, where's the part I lied to you about? Well, it's the part about drops. I said drops are basically only a means of unit placement. Well, drops are means of building up big local tactical advantage as well. If I use 2 arbiters to recall my troops over a huge lurker contain, I'm building up local tactical advantage in a place of strategical importance and therefore changing the balance in global tactical advantage very drastically.
I hope I've shed some light on the "internals" of StarCraft strategy. What I suggest is, after reading this, try looking at some replays of gosu players and see how they maintain their balance between tactical and strategical advantage - it can be an illuminating experience if you look at it this way...
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Very nice article Ilintar, thank you.
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I'm not sure your tactical/strategical distinction is good or at all clear. But, nonetheless this is basically how your break it down:
tactics- what units you have and movement/positioning.
strategy- economy, buildings, tech, etc.
On to the two rules
1 - im not sure having a tactical advantage = less strategical advantage. The tactical advantage of containing effects exactly what strategicaly negatively? Your not going to have less eco or upgrade capabilities or buildings or tech all of a sudden. See, in this case your concepts are not clear enough.
2- I don't realize this as valid. A 4pooler can win because his untis are > the others. But, in order for him to win he needs the eco/bulding/etc advantage? No.
I applaude your effort, and you have given me things to ponder, and ill look over the rest later.
Fist thing I would work on is comeing up with better concepts for strategy/tactics.
(with help from dictionary.com):
tactics - "An expedient for achieving a goal; a maneuver." So, if your closer to winning because of a certain tactic such as 4pool, then you have a tactical advantage.
strategy - "An elaborate and systematic plan of action" So, if your plan of action is better then your oponents you have a strategic advantage.
But then, I dont see how strategy is much diffrent then tactics though if you follow those definitions, as strategy is made up of tactics and tacticts are part of strategy. I think you have the right idea to make a distinction between attackpower/ecopower, but you often go at it the wrong way from what ive read.
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 Lots of insight in this topic.
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Wow, that is like the pwn article. If we would follow that guide perfectly in a game then I think many people will be B- :O Nice read and thx!
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**Listen Carefully**
Mao Tze Dong's rule of thumb:
Strategy wise we should belittle our opponents, on tactical wise we whould take our opponent's seriously.
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"Strategy without tactics is victory seen from afar, tactics without strategy is the sound before defeat" -Sun Tzu
(Not entirely sure the damn thing goes that way though :O)
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On February 12 2006 20:55 Knickknack wrote:
On to the two rules
1 - im not sure having a tactical advantage = less strategical advantage. The tactical advantage of containing effects exactly what strategicaly negatively? Your not going to have less eco or upgrade capabilities or buildings or tech all of a sudden. See, in this case your concepts are not clear enough.
Of course I'm not saying tactical advantage means less strategical advantage. What I'm saying is that each action you do in SC requires you to pick - either you build up strategical advantage at the cost of tactical advantage or vice-versa. Instead of making the lurkers/hydras/scourge/possibly hatchery/sunken to the contain, you could be using the minerals to expand/make drones. Actually, you're sacrificing all your resources at the moment to maintaining the containment - this is often illustrated by games where the protoss breaks out early, over 90% of those games are ones where toss wins.
2- I don't realize this as valid. A 4pooler can win because his untis are > the others. But, in order for him to win he needs the eco/bulding/etc advantage? No.
You win when your opponent no longer has the strategical capability to build troops. Of course, many people will realize they've just lost and left, but this is a key concept in 2v2 games, where often a team breaks in, decimates a player's troops and ramp defenses, then is stopped and then they're suddenly surprised earlier on by how that player strikes back at him ("hey, we almost killed him, where'd he get that from?!"). In 1v1, once someone kills your troops they'll USUALLY proceed to kill your economy. It sometimes happens though that a player will take glancing blows to his exterior buildings, but no serious damage to his economy and then manage to defend himself - it's very important to understand he has NOT taken any serious damage strategic-wise - many people tend to forget it and eg. in TvPs, if they break in through the protoss defences once, they assume they'll do it again - but if the protoss has overwhelming macro, he can manage to win the game even though he loses the first middle-battle.
As for the concept naming, well, it's just naming. I think it's a good distinction since I always tend to think of tactics as the "smaller picture" and strategy as the "bigger picture". Names are not that important here though, the concepts are.
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On February 12 2006 21:30 QuietIdiot wrote:
"Strategy without tactics is victory seen from afar, tactics without strategy is the sound before defeat" -Sun Tzu
Would've been a good quote to add to the article :>
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Hmm, insightful and a good read. That happened to me in the other game I think. I got a good early game advantage with two gate zeal and follow-up reaver drop but I forgot to mind my base and didn't have enough probes and gates which eventually lead to my demise.
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Osaka25918 Posts
Quality post. This is the kind of thinking that this strategy section needs more of. Added to recomended threads.
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GrandInquisitor
New York City10836 Posts
I object to this. I'm very very tired, but I would make my objection as follows:
I don't believe Starcraft comes down to a battle of strategical vs tactical advantages. I feel that it is a battle of three advantages:
Quality
Quantity
Economy
Example, in a PvZ:
Quality: Going 3gate +1 speedlot or alternatively fast sair/reav
Quantity: 2gate hardcore pressure
Economy: FE
To an extent you should be spending on all of these. Furthermore, economy is the only one of those three that cannot actually win the game for you - but once you secure the quality/quantity advantage you should be extending your economic advantage rather than your quality/quantity, for your opponent will undoubtedly be pouring all his money into quality/quantity. Whether or not you can match that is irrelevant - by having your advantage you can afford to invest into an economic advantage such that once it completes, your spending on quantity/quality cannot be matched by him.
I think this lays out the 'tactical' section a bit more clearly, since spending on quality vs quality are two very different things.
a section i wrote for the wiki article a while back:
Generally, Starcraft strategy depends on effective spending. There are three areas to focus one's spending: unit quantity, technology, and economic strength. Skilled Starcraft players generally have a keen grasp of when to invest in each, depending on their race and the opponent's. For example, in the early game, a Protoss player may construct two Gateways relatively quickly in an attempt to seize the quantitative advantage. He could also construct a quick Cybernetics Core instead in an attempt to 'tech', or possibly expand rapidly with some Photon Cannons in order to gain the economic advantage.
In each case it is important for the opponent to make an educated decision on what to do depending on their races. For example, it is difficult for a Terran to defeat a teching Protoss through sheer quantity of first-tier units - if the Terran cannot win with his superior numbers of marines and medics by the time the Protoss technology kicks in, his troops will quickly die to reavers, psionic storms, range-upgraded dragoons, or speed-upgraded zealots (depending on what the Protoss teched). The Terran will not have an advantage in any of the three areas. Therefore, the Terran's best bet is to tech as well. If the Terran however sees the Protoss expanding quickly, they may be better off teching initially (perhaps dropping tanks on a cliff overlooking the Protoss expansion base, in an attempt to nullify the economic advantage).
In another sense, however, unit quantity matters less and less as numbers increase. When both sides only have 2 dragoons, it is unwise to spend minerals expanding because the extra 3 dragoons that could have been trained will be sorely missed in a battle against a numerically superior foe. However, if both sides have 24 dragoons, the value of additional troops is severely diminished, and the minerals are better spent increasing one's advantage in another area.
Furthermore, battles are a key factor in the gameplay. After winning a decisive battle, it is generally unwise for the victor to immediately try to finish off the opponent, because they are most likely concentrating all their resources on constructing troops to match the victor's army. Instead, it is more important to expand, while making sure that the loser doesn't. Although the loser of the battle may end up with a slight troop numerical advantage, the victor's economic strength is so great that the loser cannot possibly hope to match the massively increased flow of units. This is why many players frequently exit before all their buildings are destroyed - they realize after losing several critical battles they can no longer maintain map control and can do nothing to prevent the victor from securing a massive economic advantage, to be converted into superior troop quality and quantity.
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I think he means this:
Tactical advantage:
The advantage that you can use right now (like your army size)
Stratigical advantage:
The advantage that you can use later (like your ecnomical advantage)
To the ground, tactical advantage wins you the game while stratigical advantage being the derivitives of the tactical advantage. ^^;
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On February 12 2006 22:22 GrandInquisitor wrote:
I object to this. I'm very very tired, but I would make my objection as follows:
I don't believe Starcraft comes down to a battle of strategical vs tactical advantages. I feel that it is a battle of three advantages:
Quality
Quantity
Economy
I picked the tactical and strategical elements on purpose, because they allowed me to focus on the generals without going into in-depth race/matchup specific discussions. Quality and quantity both make tactical advantage, this is obvious. Being able to pick the proper unit mix constitutes a good player as much as good micro does, but since this is matchup specific, I didn't include it here since it would make my article too obfuscated and thus dim the main point.
What I wanted to point out is how "spending on economy" and "spending on quality/quantity" influences the game advantage. If you can explain the in-game balance in terms of quality/quantity/economics instead of strategy/tactics, have a go, but I think that strategy and tactics are concepts of a higher level than quality/quantity/economics are. As I pointed out, there is more to strategy than just pure economics (for example, your supply/production status as well as your upgrade capabilities and your tech state) and there's more to tactics than just unit quality/quantity (most importantly, unit positioning and local unit concentration).
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You're right that all players have and use (to various degrees of success) an innate sense of this balance in the game. But I didn't see this theory in writing until Hautamaki wrote about the Power/Mass equation so many years ago.
EDIT: his site is down now but Google Cache recovered the article. I'm posting it here, with all proper credit due to the original author:
Timing
This is one of the great principles of starcraft. Well, here's how it goes. Imagine, if you will, a line graph. The verticle measurement is power. The horizontal measurement is mass. Here is their relationship: At the beginning of the game, you must choose how much you will power and mass. Massing means you produce armies (the player with more mass indicates the player with an army that can defeat the enemy's army in an open fight. Also known as map control). Powering means you skimp on or ignore army production to improve economy (more power indicates you have a greater income then the enemy, and the ability to spend that money. In other words, you aren't overpowering an enemy if you have 5 expansions to his 2 if you are only producing units out of 3 gateways compared to him producing out of 7 gateways. You'll be richer then Fort Knox but minerals can't fight battles, only the units you buy with them can). The more you power early on, the more you can mass later on, but the more you risk an enemy who is massing attacking and killing you. The more you mass, the more you can attack and pressure your enemy with a superiour army, but the more you risk getting overpowered if he survives your attacks.
Throughout the whole game, you are balancing your massing and your powering. Powering is essentially playing for the future, while massing is essentially playing for the present. Great differences in style exist here because every player has their own natural tendency towards either massing or powering. In general, if at any time your mass exceeds the enemy's mass but your power is less, you should try to lever it to your advantage by either powering harder or attacking him. If your power exceeds his power but your mass is less, you should play defensively and protect yourself from any kind of harassment until your power pays off into an ability to outmass. In a good game power and mass comparisons between the two sides switch back and forth several times. One player will power harder and get damaged by the enemies mass, who then powers harder himself, and so on.
At no time in any game should a player allow himself to get behind in both mass and power at the same time without losing a major engagement. The only way that can happen is if one player powers signifcantly harder then the other, and the other player fails to attack him or pressure him at all. Keep that in mind for several reasons.
One, if you are being contained by a superiour enemy force but you still haven't lost a major battle (which could include a successful raid on your probes) then you know he is massing very hard. Meaning that you are almost certainly ahead in power. Therefore don't panic and feel obligated to attack his superiour force. Gradually two things will happen: your greater power will turn into greater mass for you, and he will be forced to power himself to match your power(thus slowing down his own massing). Both things will mean that soon enough your army will be a lot tougher then his. Keep an eye on him and be ready to attack him at that time.
Two, if you don't attack him when you get the chance, then eventually his own power will kick in and allow him to outmass you once again, putting him ahead in both mass and power at the same time. At that point there's little you can do, so make sure you use your greater mass when you get the chance to, either using it to shield a bigger grab for power of your own, or to hurt him and slow down his own power in some way, or some combination thereof.
Expanding is the main form of powering for protoss. As a protoss, your armies will not be affected in any significant way by probe production so there is almost never a need, especially once you're past the early game, to stop probe production. It's just a given. Therefore when a toss powers, he does so in one great big leap. When you expand you must take a dip in massing (how big a dip depends a lot on what part of the game your in. Your first expansion is huge, if you already have 3 a 4th is not a very big deal). The dip comes while you construct an expensive nexus, increase your probe production (since your new nexus is now adding its probe production to your expenses, usually only matters with the first and second expansions) transfer probes (which dramatically decreases income for the few seconds that they are enroute), and dramatically increase your construction (probably the biggest expense). With the new income about to roll in you want to be ready for it, so making extra pylons and gateways (and tech if it's your first expansion, since you want both templar and robotics once you have your nat in most games, against any race) is a definate must. All told, for your first expansion it will probably be a minute to two minutes after your nexus completes before it pays for itself and you're back caught up to the enemy. That means that on our graph your power has gone way up, but your mass has probably barely increased at all. This leaves you vulnerable until your mass catches up a minute or two later, depending on the enemy. If he's expanding at the same time or close to it, probably neither of you are in any danger.
Once you've had some battles, it gets tough to get an accurate notion of your comparative mass and power graphs, so you have to keep on scouting to make sure you're working with the right assumptions. Throughout the whole game you want to know which of you has the most power and which has the most mass. That way you always know whether you are obligated to attack (if you have more mass and less power) and when you can afford not to. If you get behind in both mass and power, the game is probably close to over. You probably need to do something desperate like expand somewhere the enemy isn't scouting even though you can't defend it and hope that he doesn't scout it. Or provoke a major battle with him and hope to win it through superior micro, even though your army is weaker.
Keep the mass/power equation in mind at all times during the game and always use it when deciding whether or not to attack or expand.
EDIT2: Here's how he defined power and mass, as long as I'm digging up broken webpages from google.
Mass: A holistic term that describes the fighting effectiveness of your current army. Used as a verb, it entails focussing primarily on immediately increasing your mass, or fighting power. Mass takes into consideration tech units you have which are hard counters. For example, if you have 2 DTs in your army and terran does not have any detection, but 8 tanks, you actually have more mass than him because in a fight your DTs would win. However, you have to keep in mind that as soon as terran does acquire detection, he will have way more mass than you, so your mass advantage, if based only on a hard counter tech unit, could be very short lived.
Power: A holistic term that describes your ability to mass over the long term. It includes economy, capacity to upgrade (example: building a forge is powering. Starting an upgrade in that forge is powering. Once that upgrade completes, it goes directly to your mass), tech level (for example rushing to carriers is a powering strategy, even if it means you are sacrificing economy to do so, because it will give you the ability to quickly outmass a terran who has no anti air units once you finish it. However, if you sacrifice too much economy to do so, you may be powering slower than terran, because, if, once you begin to produce carriers, he can produce wraiths, goliaths, and/or ghosts fast enough to kill your Carriers, you will obviously fail to outmass him), and ability to produce troops (ie, having 4 mining expansions is pointless if you only have 3 gates to buy units with).
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About map control then. I've seen this mentioned several times in this thread and there are different forms of map control. People say different things but mean the same thing, because of differences in definitions.
Map control is actually a very dynamic thing, and just because you have greater map vision, or your units well positioned across the map doesn't mean that you have map control. The player who has map control is the one who is free to move about, probably because his mass is greater, and the opponent cannot prevent him from roaming freely, or securing expansions.
Though there are different degrees of map control, and you can actually have map control even though your mass is less, because of things like better positioning, opponent is lacking detection, or your mobility is greater and your opponent is vulnerable back home, preventing him from moving out without getting counter-attacked. This more dynamic map control style is usually found with zerg, where the power in a straight up engagement against protoss or terran would mean defeat, but you'll use his weakness back home or lurkers to stall him and restrict his movements, and let your higher expansion count turn into greater mass later on when the opponent has defense and vision.
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ZvP has a really good example of changing map control. If the toss starts with a DT he can keep the zerg in the first 2 bases for a little while. Then the zerg can lurker contain so he can expand. Then the zerg turtles with sunkens while the toss has map control with the greater mass. And finally the extra power pays off and ultra/ling rolls out and rocks the toss.
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What I'm saying is that each action you do in SC requires you to pick - either you build up strategical advantage at the cost of tactical advantage or vice-versa. My point was that at times one can gain a tactical advantage for nothing besides the time spent on that action. Using your definitions, tactics does not always effect strategy.
I'll rephrase #2 as, need more unit power to be > his unit power, need more economy power to win. Obvisouly you need to use your units such that yours > his to break this army. Then, because you have more unit power you will have more economy power before you win? Like you point out, not necessary, as one realising that they will lose may just leave. If you don't count someone leaving, then i suppose its true, but its an obvisious statement.
Ha, why change the words to fit the concepts when you can change the words to fit the concepts.
As i get into the article it seems you go to the mass/power distinction now. And you associate this with your tactical/strategical distinction. But, they do not fit exactly. This is probably why you mistakenly believe tactics/strategy (as you describe them) always effect each other. Consider this. You need to sacrifice power to have more mass, at least for the short term. But, you dont always have to sacrafice power in order to have superior unit positioning.
Most people lose their games by needlessly furthering their tactical advantage or their strategical advantage, instead of balancing them where there is a chance. I like this point. If you read my pvp guide, youll notice that i attempt to maximise my strategical advantage, but only to a certain point. I'm not sure if this is why most people lose though...
Now, it's the time to introduce the rule of the thumb on the advantage balance: never build up global tactical advantage that will not give you enough local tactical advantage at your opponent's defense point to break their defenses. The same goes the other way - if you build up strategical advantage, always try to sacrifice global tactical advantage instead of local tactical advantage at your defense point. These are good points as well. For instance, dont spread yourself so thin that they can break your main force with less force. Also, if your ahead in mass, your likely behind in power, so go for consentrated defensive play. I think that its not always beneficial to have enough local advantage to break them down though, just enough to stop them from breaking you down, so you can go for an advantage elsewhere.
Pretty good overall. I'ld change some things, and work on making some things more clear though.
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Great article overall, very insightful. I liked how you downplay micro/macro and emphasize the important of strategy (in a general sense, not how you used it). I have horrible micro for my skill level, my macro isn't too great, and there is a 1 in 200 chance that a person who beats me has a lower apm than me. What puts me at the skill level of where I am is my sense of the strategical aspects of the game.
I think that it's possible to play a game strategically perfect, while it's impossible to play a game with perfect micro and macro. Knowing what is the best move to do in every situation, spotting and setting out to take advantage of your opponent's weakness, and what you described as "game sense" can be a lot more important than actually executing your moves.
One thing people can get out of this is that micro and apm isn't what always makes a good player good.
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WCS
