So I've been an active reader on TL for a while now and been playing SC since the BW days.

I have recently switched from Random to Zerg in an effort to hone my skills on one race and also rise in the leagues a bit as I am just a Gold player at the moment.

I feel my ablilities are that of Platinum and hope to be there soon (been on a winning streak) however every one needs improvement somewhere right?

I recently played a ZvZ mirror match that I won because of two factors:
1) Did not allow my opponent to expand
2) Micromanaged much better than my opponent

I did however notice that my macro was shaky almost throughout the entire game.

My question to the TL community is if you guys could offer any tips on macromanagement especially mid to late game which is where i seem to lack any macro ability.

I control group my hatches and try to build constantly but my larvae injection leaves much to be desired and during Micro intensive matchups like this one my macro REALLY tanks.

I have uploaded my replay to SC2Replayed and the link is below:
http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/72893-1v1-zerg-xelnaga-caverns

Thanks guys.

Uhh Negative

United States1090 Posts

September 05 2010 22:46 GMT

Lol that game was funny. I don't why you didn't kill him when he only had like 6 crawlers and you had a nice roach/hydra army. Anyway, the first mistake came early when you put up double gas really fast which really you only want one gas that early. However, you didn't even saturate the second geyser so it was just a waste of a drone. Even worse is that later in the game you still neglected to put drones in the geyser when you low on gas. Also, you need to get a queen at each expansion to keep up with larvae production and just keep producing units/drones/ovies to spend your money. Another thing I saw was that you got lair up but it was a long time before you made any use of it. You want to take advantage of getting lair in some form as soon as it pops. You defended pretty well near the beginning but your spine crawler could've helped a lot if it wasn't in your mineral line doing nothing. Your injections were pretty good early game but got worse as the game went on (pretty normal but still want to work on that). I'm a 1k diamond player just in case you wanted to know.

Darthturtle

United States718 Posts

September 05 2010 23:15 GMT

My first question is "Why is your queen not hotkeyed?"

Your macro was kind of shaky, sure, but as much of that seemed due to the fact that you made things and then let them sit around for awhile. Second gas. Lair. I didn't see you mine out of that geyser for the rest of the game. I didn't see lair tech from time of completion at 7:48, to hydra den at 13:48.

You know how you always had money but never had gas? That was due to a combination of just having one geyser going for fifteen+ minutes, and trying to run a macro build with just one queen.

Keep all your hatches on one hotkey, keep all your queens on the next hotkey, then just select all queens, press v, hold shift, and backspace, click hatch, backspace, click hatch.

Bonkerz

United States831 Posts

September 05 2010 23:27 GMT

Put queens on 1 Hotkey then Hold Shift+V and Click on ur hatcheries on the minimap= Pwnage way to spit.

Sparta

United States41 Posts

September 06 2010 19:07 GMT

Thanks for the feedback guys. Lol I'm glad I could entertain you with some Gold league 'noobetry'.

To be honest I don't know why my queen wasn't hotkeyed either. I typically do.

I do have trouble however when trying the Shift-V trick on my minimap.. I don't know WHY i feel the need to actually see the larvae inject. lol

I definitely am taking the "early gas" advice tho, i've already sort of modified my gas build order and it is helping. And TOUCHE on the early lair tech suggestion. I don't know why I usually feel the need to upgrade to lair as soon as I'm able.

All great suggestions guys.. thanks again.

Glox

United States4 Posts

September 06 2010 19:13 GMT

You dont really need to hotkey the queens tbh. I just mouse box the hatch and hit v to spit. Queen always comes up on top. I find that faster then using 5 for my queeens. I do 123 army 4 hatches.

Sparta

United States41 Posts

September 06 2010 19:15 GMT

On September 07 2010 04:13 Glox wrote:
You dont really need to hotkey the queens tbh. I just mouse box the hatch and hit v to spit. Queen always comes up on top. I find that faster then using 5 for my queeens. I do 123 army 4 hatches.

This is exactly what I'm used to doing. I do hotkey my queen to snap the camera back to her but then just hit v and click the hatch anyway.

Truth is though I guess if I could improve my ability to SHift-V and click the minimap it would totally improve my game.

Ohdamn

Germany765 Posts

September 06 2010 19:31 GMT

it's just practise in my opinion..

try around what kind of larvae injection you like best

Latham wrote an amazing Guide covering the whole Zerg race
he explains all different ways of injection there:
+ Show Spoiler +

Technique 1: The simple way
Hotkeys 1-2-3(-4) = Units.
4 (or 5) All of your hatcheries.
Next hotkey is: main hatchery + main queen
Next one after that is: nat(short for natural) hatchery + nat queen
Next: 3rd hatch + 3rd queen.
…

What you do is press 5(or 6) two times, press v and target hatch. 66v+target hatch 77v+target hatch. You press 4 (or 5) s(for select larvae) and then d(drones) z(zerglings) t(mutalisks) etc.
In conclusion you have 55v*click*66v*click*77v*click*(…)4sdzttttttttttddzzzzzzdhhhhh etc.

Technique 2: Backspace + Shift
1. Put all queens on 1 hotkey.
2. Select queens.
3. Press Spawn Larvae hotkey (v)
4. Press Backspace once to center on a hatch.
5. Hold Right Side Shift. DO NOT RELEASE.
6. Spam left mouse click + Backspace
7. All hatches are injected.

Watch this video:

Technique 3: Minimap injection

1. Put all queens on 1 hotkey.
2. Select that hotkey (and all your queens with it)
3. Press v once and hold left shift.
4. Target your hatcheries on the minimap and left click. DO NOT LET GO OF SHIFT.
5. All hatcheries injected.
6a. Macro out of your hatches either by putting them all on 1 hotkey and selecting them and doing all the sddddddddddddddddddzzzzzzzzzzzzhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhtttttttttt
6b. Macro out of your hatches by putting each separate hatch on 1 unique hotkey doing 5sddd6szzz7sttt8sddd9sddd0shhh (old school StarCraft 1 style)

(whole thread at http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=137290 )

so just try around with it..also perhaps how you hotkey all your stuff (i hotkeyed each hatch on a different hotkey for a while but all hatches on 1 key improved my macro a lot)

and then it's really just practise...you get some kind of clock inside your head that tells you when your larvae pops

Day9 would probably say: "add injection larvae to your mental checklist!"
just try to remind yourself of it everytime you look on the minimap or something like that

H0bgawblin

United States109 Posts

September 06 2010 19:43 GMT

+1 for the link ohdamn, thank you very much. To op, I'm having the same problem with macro. I made a thread earlier that had some fantastic suggestions and links to some relevant day9 daily's. the thread was entitled "How did you end up developing Z macro?"

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