EPTWould anyone have time to critique my TvP playing in the replay below?
As terran I have a hard time making any progress in these sorts of standard macro games.
Thank you
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TvP macro game help.
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qet
Australia245 Posts
Would anyone have time to critique my TvP playing in the replay below? As terran I have a hard time making any progress in these sorts of standard macro games. Thank you Rep page Rep link | ||
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MeSaber
Sweden1235 Posts
Enemy builds Gate, Gas, Cybercore (??). Toss didnt harass you so you would be dead already if he did a proper build. Your exp CC finishes and there are no workers there already. Look around when stuff completes so you can plan ahead or act ahead, like pulling scvs towards exp. Enemey has poor amount of Gateways. Good window for attacking as he cant refill his army. You have more Factories than he has Gateways xD (5 vs 3). At 9 minutes did are sitting at 100+100 of scans. You could here scan and check for his gameplan which is arbiter tech. You would also see he only has 3 gates and is building a 4th (very low number of gates for having 2 exp). His army isnt forcing you to stay inside with vultures. You can go out and put mines on exps that you think he will take or mine inbetween his rallypoint (outside your base) to get some freekills. Even suicide some vults for probe harass. At 10:23 you have control of his potential exps. Your scanners are unused at 160+160. Put rally on those Factories btw. Your +1 is done but you dont have science yet so you cant keep upgrading. You started Starport though. Same here you lifted CC to float to no-gas exp but you didnt do a transfer asap. Once CC landed there should be scvs there already. At 10:43 your army production kind of stopped which is a bad thing. While your enemy is lacking production you should not. This way you get ahead in an attack and can keep momentum. You also dont keep building Factories either. At 11:03 you are at 1300 money. You went for a coffee. At your supply depot area you have 5 scvs just waiting to do work. Starport is done for a long time but no science facility started. 11:35 enemy actually done some Gates now. 12 to be exact. Good number. You still at 5 factories (2shops). You started 4 more factories. This is great. You should have started a new expansion too (top one). 12:42 science done. You started grades. Great! This is priority. 13:41 you started top exp. Your scans are 200+200+130. Use em. 15:30 you have limit. You need to move out. Camping will only give your opponent more advantage in terms of grades and expansions. 16:30 still limit. He attacked your top exp and this is fine, but you cant stand still. 17:30 4k money still camping. Ure mining your base but instead you should be proactive and attack so he cant attack you. 18:40 your psi went down but you dont produce anything. Results: Your awareness is zero because you lack control of your units/scans. If you knew where enemy were at all times you would play much better, this can be done by putting mines on map or just put a single vulture at places on map. Or scanning. You should make a ums map for practicing unit control with hotkey groups. Do you use the location hotkeys? If not you need to start doing that. Put F2 above your Factories and F3 at natural expansion, and F4 at main base. My main keys for terran are like this: 8-9-0 = scanners, 4-5 = starting CCs (main/nat) 6-7 = exp cc's (for scv prod) 1-2-3 = army which later becomes 1-2-3-4-5. army hotkeys are 1-2-3 vultures/gols, 3-4 tanks (so you can siege quickly), 4-5 vessel. If you are scared of arbiter drops you should do vessels(emp) OR ghosts(lockdown) and put them where arbiters will arrive. With this method you dont need mass turrets to kill an arbiter. The drawback being it costs a bit of gas. You can always use the vessels in your attack when you need to go out and keep em on defense until that. shift-tab twice to get teal color + red as enemy. This gives better vision on minimap to be alert when arbiter is arriving. You should check your minimap every 3-5 secs. After some time it becomes routine to do it and you wont even notice ure doing it. Just to clarify, you did ZERO attacks except for the vultures moving out in this game. The enemy didnt really have much knowledge of what you were doing either so it was 50/50. Use scans to your advantage and move out and take space on map. Get some map control and deny enemy expansions. Scan his main to be sure carriers arent arriving. Get vessel for vision vs cloak and emp vs arbiter AND gols ofc as it will make short work of em. Give the hotkey controlling some practice and get back with some more reps. GL HF GG  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqjBPUKMYoLAx8QZsq7PjWw/videos Here you can watch some games from Hiya (scroll a video until you find matchup/map you want) who at least makes ME a better player. | ||
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Highgamer
1448 Posts
Warning: I'm one of those "macro and build-order execution come first"-guys, "without good macro-mechanics everything's in vain"-guys, so if you think that's boring or you're looking for different advice, pass me by. Long story short: I feel that you're just in a phase where your execution/multi-tasking cannot keep up with the knowledge/ideas that you have acquired. Your macro is flawed, your timings are off, and this sets you up bad for the lategame, as push-timings are key in TvP. But if you put in some more deliberate practice, clean up your midgame-macro and get your strategy-choices in order, then you're set to get a grasp of how you want those TvP-macrogames to unfold. I see you're using hotkeys, that's great, but you could use them much more frequently to make the most out of them, seems they're not yet 100% second nature to you. Just keep playing, focus on clean inputs (also with the mouse), and as you soak up more and more detailed knowledge about what to do, you'll be able to do much more, much quicker over time. Leaving out the aforementioned details for now: Your start up until the point where your expo and 2 factories are running is OK. One can see that you have a clear idea and build-order, step by step, up until this point. It'll need many subtle improvements against different builds obviously, but those have to be addressed one at a time, game after game. One thing maybe: I guess you hid your SCV in his/her main intentionally for so long, but that means that you don't see the fast nexus in this game, and you wouldn't see the possible DT/Reaver-tech in time to react. It's better to scout what Protoss is doing again earlier, and send another SCV if you lose the first one to quickly. During the 5th minute you can see some first severe hickups in your macro, and in the 6th minute it starts to slip noticably several times (SCV-queue interruptions and idle SCVs, unit-production interruptions, +1 attack-upgrade not started on time). This is exactly the phase where the game gets more and more complicated quickly, you'll just need lots of practice games to weed out macro-mistakes. Try to work on macroing as cleanly as possible especially in the midgame, or everything will be harder later on. I wouldn't worry about vulture-harrass until you don't miss SCVs/units/tech-timings in the midgame. As for your strategy: In the 8th minute you are simultaneously going for a) 5 factories, b) a second armory for double-upgrades, c) a rather late 3rd CC. If you macroed efficiently, there is no way that you can afford all that at once on 2 base. You have to make a decision earlier, to 1) either go for a 5 fact push - or 2) to take an expansion and get more upgrades while building up directly to a 3base-push. 1) If you decide to go for a 5fact push that is not an all-in, then take your 3rd while you are pushing, then go for more upgrades/factories. With this push, you either have to kill an expansion or do good damage otherwise - or you have to bring home most or at least some of your tanks. Just not: no damage dealt and no tanks left over. 2) If you go for double-upgrades and a strong 3base-push, then you normally start your 3rd CC on 2 factories and go up to 4 until the CC is finished. Also normally you want to take a 3rd gas for this. But you can do it on 2 gas if you cut some tanks and build more vultures instead. But you definitelly have to do it like this: start your starport when your +1 attack is between 1/3 to 1/2 done, start your 2nd armory when the starport is around 3/4 finished, start your science facility immediatelly when the starport is finished. Make sure you have enough gas for +2/+1 upgrades when the science facility finishes. See how from the 9th minute onward half or most of your factories are not building units for long stretches of time. In the 11th minute, your SCV-transfer is flawed, leaving you with 11 mining minerals in the main, but 17 each in the natural and 3rd. At 12.30 you are at 120 supply, when normally you could be at at least 170-180 supply and already pushing out. At 13.00 your +2 upgrade could be finished with proper tech-timings, but it's not even started. At 15.30 you're finally maxed and your upgrades are about to finish - but now Protoss has all the bases he/she wants, and recall galore to keep you in your base forever. That's why you have to be ready to push out earlier. In the rest of the game, one can see that you're struggling with army-control. See how slow your reaction to the recall is, and how your building-placement is blocking you from getting there quickly. Then you keep moving back and forth in your cramped base, you're out of position and Protoss can even attack right into you with mass-stasis. But that's what I meant: your execution/multi-tasking just can't keep up currently, it's just a matter of practice. So I would suggest: 1) Consciously pick your strategy for the mid- and lategame: 2base push with expansion behind it and later upgrades - or quicker 3rd base on 2-4 factories, then line up your +2/+1-upgrades well, and aim for a big push with 5 control-groups of units. (Or something else obviously, but those are two long-standing, major standard options) 2) Practice your strategy in ladder-games or singleplayer with a focus on macro and hitting timings. Don't worry about harrass/opponent interaction too much for now. Analyze your replays, and focus on weeding out obvious macro-mistakes and other stand-stills (SCV/unit-production stops, tech- or building-timings missed, bad SCV-distribution, etc.) 3) When you're confident in your execution of your strategy, then start working step by step on things like army-control, defensive positioning, scouting and reading your opponent. Analyze your replays for obvious tactical mistakes, and study streams/VoDs/replays of good Terrans to see how they deal with various situations. | ||
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qet
Australia245 Posts
a lot of information to digest there. Then you keep moving back and forth in your cramped base, you're out of position and Protoss can even attack right into you with mass-stasis. Yes unit control is a big problem. I have great difficultly hotkeying a large army and getting them to move anywhere. I was trying to move some of them out of the way so I could select others and hotkey them. But yes it was very cramped behind the bridges. Just to clarify, you did ZERO attacks except for the vultures moving out in this game. Yep that's right, and happens to me very often. something I need to work on. I tend to spend all my time managing my base and never attacking, so the protoss can just expand wherever he wants. anyway, thanks again. I can see now that I essentially lost that game early on from the many cumulative macro and build order errors, but the protoss just played it safe before killing me. will just take some more practice to be able to hold my own in such a game. | ||
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Highgamer
1448 Posts
On December 10 2020 16:53 qet wrote: Yes unit control is a big problem. I have great difficultly hotkeying a large army and getting them to move anywhere. I was trying to move some of them out of the way so I could select others and hotkey them. But yes it was very cramped behind the bridges. In these situations - like getting recalled and having to move everything through narrow paths or s.th. comparable - it is just really confusing and frustrating, lots of commands have to be re-issued constantly, units have to be 'manually' shoved up ramps... Not really time to think and practice during all this. So what I would do is take the time to open up a singleplayer game, macro up a big army, hotkey it and just practice moving it around. See how the different unit types behave when moving together, how units tend to clump up and bug out in certain locations and find ways to avoid it. You can also re-enact a complete push across the map to practice the whole succession: the hotkeying, siegeing/unsiegeing several times, laying mines and pulling the vultures back, positioning vessels. That way you can (allow your fingers/brain) to develop a routine for this, making it much easier to pull of in a real game. I think I use a standard hotkey-setup for big lategame armies, by having 1 and 2 for vultures, 3 and 4 for tanks, 5 for goliaths and vessels, then mb 6 or 7 for even more reinforcements. I'm also a big promoter of picking up more advanced unit-organizing-mechanics rather sooner than later, like: - ctrl+leftlick (to select up to 12 units of the kind that you click if there are several on your screen; oftentimes boxing is better though because it's not random what you select) - shift+leftclick/box on a units or unit-icon (to add/remove units to/from your current selection, nice to quickly fill up/sort your ctrl-groups; don't forget to save the newly arranged ctrl-group at the end) - shift+number (to add your selected units to an existing ctrl-group) With these techniques firmly under your belt you can fill up and rearrange your ctrl-groups on the fly in seconds. It's also helpful in many situation to know that the game treats sieged tanks and unsieged tanks differently as far as selection is concerned. So if you have two 'mixed' ctrl-groups of sieged/unsieged tanks in each group, and let's say you want to leave all the sieged ones behind for example and have them in one group, then you can quickly turn them into a 'sorted' ctrl-group by ctrl-clicking them (and saving the group), and then do the same with the unsieged tanks. | ||
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MeSaber
Sweden1235 Posts
Make a UMS with computer attacking you with plenty of forces where you practice 1-2-3(-4-5) hotkey controlling, mine laying during fights, sieging (i dont use custom hotkeys so i always reach for "O"), emp with vessel could be good to practice too. This is imo the fastest way of learning controlling forces as you get it shoved in your face every 1-5 minutes instead of building a whole base everytime before having an army, 10-15 minutes delay in real games. You can make a Micro map which resets every time a player dont have any army left, just T v P with different army compositions, get a partner to play this map with you, preferrably a Protoss who wants to practice his race. In the end id say its all muscle memory, routines, great methods (like using hotkey-bar as efficient as possible, like not putting army on 7-8-9-0 xD). There is also an alternative to 1-2-3 army 4-5 cc. Its namely 1-2 CC 3-4-5-6-7 army 8-9-0 scans. Why this is good is because 1-2 CC is the "awkward/unergonomical" one where you 1s,2s like so and with army usually 1a2a3a (which could be awkward just as 1s2s is, but instead the army part isnt awkward but scv production is). So instead your army becomes the ergonomical part of your control like 3a4a5a6a7a (im very comfortable with clicking this). The other good part about 1s2s, 3a4a5a6a7a is that your CC's never needs to be replaced like 4s5s does which becomes army from time to time. Its questionable how useful it is to have 4-5 CC's hotkeyed later game where you instead can use F4-select cc-s, F3-select cc-s instead. At the beginning of the game its obviously very useful to keep your SCV production without pauses (and at so never forget it as you constantly check 4-5 hotkeys with your fingers, a lot of APM spam comes from this just as factory checks (2-3) could be). And as i mentioned in earlier post your Factory space should be on F2 (F2 because its ergonomically the closest hotkey to your fingers and will be used the most). So to summarize as you can see i have a lot of inner thoughts about efficiency/ergonomity in my play and this is for the sole reason of being able to play long games or to play more games before i get exhausted. Im pretty confident you can wrap up some good thoughts behind your hotkey positions now and make good use of em seeing as ive just told you WHY you should do it. Now you just gotta fixate those hotkeys and make it muscle memory to use em. | ||
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