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On May 08 2010 11:17 mrlie3 wrote:
The Basics;
1. Control group your command center/hatchery/nexus and always pump workers until you have around 30 per each base. You may need to stop worker production for special occasion, but that's for high level player.
2. Control group your production buildings and always pump some units, in fact ANY units, at all time. Any unit is better than no unit.
3. Always look at your supply count and add supplies as needed. You should do this whenever you are producing units.
4. If you have extra resources even though you are continuously pumping units, build more production buildings or expand.
5. Congrats, you just mastered the art of macro! Now go micro all your units while you're doing all these macro, and also don't ever stop thinking during the game about the strategies and counter-moves. Good luck! =)
Possible the worst pieces of advice ever given. 30 workers per base is way too many, 3 bases -> 120 supply just workers? Good luck ever getting to 3 bases.
Dont just pump any units, its the worst you can do, bad players usually lose because a) mechanics sucks too much, or b) they scout insufficiently or respond to scouted information poorly. So scout often and build units accordingly, theres a nice little help tool built in to sc2 that tells you what counters what. Number 3. and 4. above are actually good advice.
The most important thing you can do to improve your game is to play it when not in front of the computer: when eating for example think of what you did good/bad last game and try to mentally do better. This is something a lot of elite coaches tell their players in sports. Also watch a lot of replays, helps a ton.
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I'd say the most important skill to have in SC2 is unit balance and focus firing. SC2 is purely rock-paper-scissor, and if you have a slightly wrong unit mix you're dead. And if you use your rocks against the papers instead of the scissors, you might lose an important battle.
APM means nothing at all in Starcraft 2. 100 or 200, makes no damn difference
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i don't know if it had been said already, but try to figure out your weakness then try to focus on it to improove it.
another important thing is to have an idea for that single game what you want to come up with as your first push / attack and what you want to end up with as first composition against that enemy.
lets say for example you decided as terran to get fast vikings against that zerg to harras and your primary weakness is that you still have not developed any feeling for timing so what is possible at which stage in the game... then i think it is totally ok to intentionally queue up or scout badly in order to focus on how fast is it possible to execute your plan for the midgame.
So you figure out when is the earliest moment of having these vikings at a reasonable number. I know people playing with clocks or counting supply but i really appreciate developing an instinct / sense of what could be going on over there even if the ramp might be blocked somewhen so i can't scout.
Later when having developd such instict you focus on something else like not queueing or like scouting for specific buildings...
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On May 21 2010 23:08 Cheezy wrote:
I'd say the most important skill to have in SC2 is unit balance and focus firing. SC2 is purely rock-paper-scissor, and if you have a slightly wrong unit mix you're dead. And if you use your rocks against the papers instead of the scissors, you might lose an important battle.
APM means nothing at all in Starcraft 2. 100 or 200, makes no damn difference
Nah, you can get away without even those items. You'll get to high level play if you just build units. That means just know when to expand, constantly build workers until saturated, and keep your money down. With just that advice you'll be Plat. Now care about micro.
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I got placed in platinum easy without knowing what half of the SC2 units even do.
The secret: Macro. Develop a build order that gets you the largest army possible in the least amount of time. All that fine-tuning and what's-the-best-unit-combination-for-each-situation can come later.
At any level below platinum, players are still so bad that you can make the wrong units and win if you only make enough of them.
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I'm a noob so my advice probably means dik but:
To me its all about repetition/practice. First understand the concept/which build you want. I play random so, if terran I may start with a reaper harass to scout, then maybe scout/marine or some banshee harass. This can all change with what my scout finds and you have to be able to switch on the fly(ie zerg FE, I try early pressure). This to me, just comes from lots of practice.
As a noob, I also lack in switching from macro/micro. I find myself with 2000+ minerals + 1000+ gas after battles because I focus and stare at a battle. You won't see that at all in high level games. Those are things I try to work on. The speed of switching from macro/micro gets better the more you play. I basically can only play a few times a week so I'll never he at a high level.
Scouting: knowing what you're opponent is doing is vital. Knowing where he is expanding is also key. I won a game yesterday because my opponent didn't detect a base where I was massing BCs. Seriously, its pretty hard to win massing BCs since it takes so much time/mineral intensive. But it was gg as soon as he saw the fleet.(I had extra minerals from focusing on micro lol).
You can research and know all the strategies(thats why I started using ghosts) but the best way to learn is by practice/repetition.
please be gentle. 8^P
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On May 22 2010 01:11 Biochemist wrote:
At any level below platinum, players are still so bad that you can make the wrong units and win if you only make enough of them.
This. (That's why the game is balanced at that level, whoever builds wins  )
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Practice. Practice. Practice. Practice.
A few DTs don't hurt either
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The desire to be the best is all you need. If you have that everything else will fall in place. You'll do all the research and optimizations you need instinctively.
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Wow, five pages of good advice.
I was able to put at least one good bit of advice to use yesterday: Reacting to your enemy's build. I was playing a ffa and I positioned an overlord in the middle of the map early on. Late in the game, as I was killing one of my opponents, I just barely caught a glimpse of mass voidrays. I started pumping corruptors and hydras so that when the battle finally came I was able to clean him up.
And also, I've seen some people asking this. I am ranked silver in 1v1 and gold in 2v2. I have a good friend as a 2v2 partner and we work well together. My main race is zerg (which is the only thing that irks me about Day9 -he is very terran oriented in some of his specific strategy talk). So I feel I'm at the perfect position to improve. I'm not playing consistently at the gold or plat level, but I'm about bronze and copper and I have a good enough grasp of the game to understand the advice given here.
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I'm no pro, I really just started playing this game a matter of weeks ago, but I've managed to hit #1 in a platinum division, which isn't bad (although I realize there is HUGE disparity within platinum, the best platinum players would demolish me completely) and what I've noticed the most important things to be are scouting and understanding what options your opponents have based on their build order and unit composition, getting your mechanics to a point where you can manage several bases without slipping up, and being able to micro effectively in battles. If you can do those 3 things I really feel they're the key components to the game.
Scouting obviously allows you to counter what your opponent is doing. Denying scouting and having scouting information of your own gives you a massive advantage. Being able to micro units in a battle can make the difference in a close battle very easily. I've played many people who I beat simply because when we both had 2 zealots, I target fired 1 of his zealots and walked my wounded lot around the healthy one while he didn't. Same concept obviously applies in bigger battles, but micro has the biggest impact when you have few units. Then Macroing multiple bases efficiently will allow you to have constant unit production and let you keep your food limit as high as it can be.
I think once you can master those 3 things, it's just about being creative and thinking on the fly.
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On May 08 2010 11:18 Slayer91 wrote:
Most bad players will watch units for upwards of a minute and then make 5 additional barracks because they were not using the current ones.
This is essentially what I do. I always watch because of the potential for useful micro, but I tend to just sit there while mins explode. Wish I knew a good cure for ogling.
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Also, I would advise that if you want to learn you should play 1v1 ladder games and avoid things like FFA where people just turtle, get 200 food of 1 unit, and then attack move across the map. These games will help you learn to macro a bit, but even then you're usually not getting harassed or attacked until everyone has max food, so you don't get realistic macro practice with the distractions you'll get in a real game.
edit - oh, and watch good players and try to understand why they're doing the things they do. Don't just copy them mindlessly, but think about why they're doing something and what situations it would be appropriate for you to use it in.
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sound macro will take you very far; get a good economy and keep on building units (such that you're never > 400 mins) and you'll do very well. From there try to get good army compositions and micro, etc.... also, play 1v1's; your mistakes are much more apparent in 1v1s and they cost you more, so you'll learn much faster
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i didn't read the thread but i'm guessing this will probably help you a lot more than any comment in here.
play alot and watch your replays.
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I say scouting is the number one help in improving after you get the basic mechanics. Without it, you'll be guessing your strategies too much.
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EPT
