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ORIGINAL POSTER'S NOTE. NEWEST REPLAYS WILL BE AT THE BOTTOM OF THE LIST, THANK YOU FOR YOUR CONTRIBUTIONS, THEY HAVE MADE ME A MASSIVELY BETTER PLAYER.
Hello TL,
I'm new to the game and decided that, unlike SC1, I wanted to get more serious in SC2. I decided on Zerg as a main race, owing to the awesome macro mechanic and the interesting interplay between the T1 units (too many roaches? Not enough lings to deal the damage. Not enough roaches? Too little damage soak and the lings get wasted)
I've recently started a winning streak after placing rank 80-ish bronze and losing my first seven games outright. I want some critique, however, to guide my advancement. Pick my play apart, ESPECIALLY strategically (bad micro can be solved by playing more games, becoming more accustomed to the macro, and being able to spend more "clicks" on my units). Where would you have scouted? When would you have pushed or harassed? Did my tech structure make no sense? WHY AREN'T YOU DRONING, ROWEN?! The more critique I get the better I can focus my attention and practice while I'm playing, and the faster I'll get up to the Platinum and Diamond levels we all want to play at.
WIN http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/92482-1v1-zerg-jungle-basin
ZvZ saw my roach/muta/ling topple a roach/bling/hydra tech path. Scouted early and read aggression so had to drop some spines. Should I have expanded sooner? Seeing no expand, should I have teched to mutas or gone for hydras? More scouting in mid-game? I felt very good about this win, so knock me down a few pegs! I know I missed a couple injections 
WIN http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/92487-1v1-protoss-zerg-shakuras-plateau
ZvP 5RR took on 4 gate. I made some pretty serious macro errors here. Forgot to hotkey my queen (!!), missed an inject because of it, was fumbling with hotkeying units the whole time. If you set it to player cam, right as I'm breaking the rocks out of my base there's ~10 seconds of NOTHING happening, this would be me fumbling with hotkeys. Still ended up as a win, so I guess I can chalk it up to poor opposition.
WIN http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/92913-1v1-terran-zerg-jungle-basin
MMM stops my 5RR but I'm able to contain and expo a couple times while denying his expo until late-game, where my muta harass becomes more like a muta army but the Thors still scared me. STILL keeping too many minerals around. Don't ask me why I suicided my lings against their wall in the beginning. I think it was a misclick and I just went with it, but it was yesterday and I don't recall completely!
WIN http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/92911-1v1-protoss-zerg-shakuras-plateau
Good Stalker/Zealot Macro keeps me out of their base with my lings, but I contain for most of the game and when they do push me off I have mutas to make sure I don't stay gone long. By that point I'm up three bases to one and and simply able to swarm him for the win.
LOSS http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/92952-1v1-zerg-steppes-of-war
Ah hah, a loss! Would love your thoughts on what I did wrong. I actually thought I was holding my own fairly well until the roaches arrived and roasted my lings. I think the problem may lie less with strategy or mechanics, there, and more just knowledge of the game. "How many lings do I need to toast 4 roaches? Well, 12 seem good enough, a-move!" and that was that. ZvZ, early spine crawler attempt denied leads to fast zergling pressure which I have to fight off with drones. I failed to cancel my first spine crawler, which set me back, but thought I equalized and actually came out ahead -- apparently my time killing zerglings and not mining came back to bite me in the ass. I haven't actually watched this replay, but I was CERTAIN I was ahead of him economically (thus the attempt at a FE once I held off the pressure) and it seems that's not the case. Read, review, and critique!
WIN http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/92997-1v1-terran-zerg-metalopolis
15 Hatch/15 Pool FE against a 2rax'ing terran ends up with Zerg map control which rolls over the Terran bioball. Not much to say here, it was a pretty standard game. Backtech to bling gets aborted before the speed upgrade when the terran tries to take a sneaky expo by flying his CC in and rushes his bioball out to stop my dozen-ish Mutas and I have to force the endgame right there. Some blings went boom, but they could have just as well popped from tank fire as busted the bioball for all I know -- was too busy keeping my fragile mutas away from those nasty marines while my lings ate them up.
WIN http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/94656-1v1-protoss-zerg-metalopolis
There's been a few losses in between these two, but none that I felt needed analysis. I knew even while playing my losses that I wasn't playing at my best, and what good does it do to critique sub-optimal play? The best advice is just: play at your best, and if you're not at your best, then don't play.
14 pool takes 2gate robo to the cleaners in a micro-heavy ZvP matchup on Metalopolis. Eventually the weight of my muta/ling army with superior econ crushes his 1-base stalker and colossi play, and the game is mine. I'd love a macro-centric analysis, however. I feel like my micro was good in this game, and overall my macro was strong as well, but my money ended up as OBSCENELY high and I couldn't seem to spend it fast enough! I ended up dropping an extra hatchery in my natural but perhaps it was too late to matter? Should I have expanded again with that extra money? I just have a long history of being CRUSHED by protoss warpgate/robo balls when I'm more than one base ahead. The opponent notes that I'm playing at a higher-than-silver level and I'd love to believe that's true, but if my money keeps staying sky-high like it is, I can't imagine I'm going to make it in platinum, much less diamond league.... Also a quick note about APM: I was spiking to 200+ APM in micro-intensive sections (managing lings and mutas attacking two parts of his base, etc). Is this enough to get by at platinum, which is my short-term goal, or should I be doing more APM exercises once I graduate to gold?
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First of all, don't say gg before your opponent when you win the game.
That game should have been over a LONG time before it was actually over. The guy went hive tech for no reason, had a pitiful drone count, and used his banelings against your roaches every chance he had. He had zerglings but didn't get speed. You opted for defense while he mounted a poor offense. For example, when he came in with zerglings for the second time, he attacked the spawning pool in plain sight of the crawlers. He could have killed the queen easily instead or pick off 3-4 drones, or even retreat.
As far as what you did. You scouted his early pool and went a crawler. That was good. You then threw down a second crawler. That I didn't like so much. You could instead make your own zerglings, which would give you the option to attack and defend. Notice at 5:30 you had over 300 minerals and tons of gas. You needed to be using that up or pulling gas drones off to minerals. At 9:30, you scouted the rocks at your expo. That's an ovie's job, your 3rd ovie should be watching that the entire game. You have lots of minerals and that count does not fall up to the end of the game. That money should be spent. Also notice how he's massing an army right beside you. You should have been controlling the xelnaga watch towers with a ling on each. You also should have upgraded your overlord speed or made an overseer. There are so many things he could do to screw you up. Your defensive posture could have backfired hard if he decided to go muta. That infestor pit could have been a spire and you would never have known. Without den or evolution chamber, and only two queens, he could have forced a game with just a handful of mutas. He could have gotten burrow with tunneling claws and just burrow right into your base leaving you no chance of retaliation. Anyways, at the end of the game he just stopped producing so there's not much to say.
Your opponent would have done much better if he took the expo in his own base. Anyways I got to sleep, you could try playing custom games on bnet with lost temple and such, I saw a lot of diamond level players, which I did not actually expect to. You can get plenty of worry free practice from that.
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On October 18 2010 20:11 ddrddrddrddr wrote:
First of all, don't say gg before your opponent when you win the game.
That game should have been over a LONG time before it was actually over. The guy went hive tech for no reason, had a pitiful drone count, and used his banelings against your roaches every chance he had. He had zerglings but didn't get speed. You opted for defense while he mounted a poor offense. For example, when he came in with zerglings for the second time, he attacked the spawning pool in plain sight of the crawlers. He could have killed the queen easily instead or pick off 3-4 drones, or even retreat.
As far as what you did. You scouted his early pool and went a crawler. That was good. You then threw down a second crawler. That I didn't like so much. You could instead make your own zerglings, which would give you the option to attack and defend. Notice at 5:30 you had over 300 minerals and tons of gas. You needed to be using that up or pulling gas drones off to minerals. At 9:30, you scouted the rocks at your expo. That's an ovie's job, your 3rd ovie should be watching that the entire game. You have lots of minerals and that count does not fall up to the end of the game. That money should be spent. Also notice how he's massing an army right beside you. You should have been controlling the xelnaga watch towers with a ling on each. You also should have upgraded your overlord speed or made an overseer. There are so many things he could do to screw you up. Your defensive posture could have backfired hard if he decided to go muta. That infestor pit could have been a spire and you would never have known. Without den or evolution chamber, and only two queens, he could have forced a game with just a handful of mutas. He could have gotten burrow with tunneling claws and just burrow right into your base leaving you no chance of retaliation. Anyways, at the end of the game he just stopped producing so there's not much to say.
Your opponent would have done much better if he took the expo in his own base. Anyways I got to sleep, you could try playing custom games on bnet with lost temple and such, I saw a lot of diamond level players, which I did not actually expect to. You can get plenty of worry free practice from that.
Thanks for the input. I have trouble macro'ing away all my minerals at times, I'll try and focus more on it. The scout on my expo's rocks was because I saw units moving out of his base to the West, and since I didn't have watch tower control, wanted to make sure I wasn't about to have company. I figured if they were going for the rocks I could crush their army there and have a free ride to mutas and the coup de grace. Part of my thought process in taking the spine over the lings was concern that if he continued to mass lings and I went back to droning, I could be overrun. That comes down to scouting, I suppose. I know that Static Defense Is Bad, so I'll focus more on unit production. I reasoned that he wouldn't go mutas on one base, but that's faulty logic -- just because I wouldn't go mutas on one base doesn't mean that random bronze player won't. Scouting scouting scouting....
Good points about ovvie scouting my expo rocks and keeping an offensive posture. I'll keep that in mind in my next games.
Oh and thanks for the "gg" comment. I was being sincere -- it was a good game, but I see how it could come off as rude.
EDIT: how do you feel about changelings as scouts? You mentioned Overseers several times obviously for their detection and quick(er) movement speed, but they seem useful for changeling as well. Do you use this? I've tried a few times against admittedly AWFUL opponents, even for bronze (some dozen MMM and 3 Vikings by the time I'm up to ultra. Missile turrets and bunkers freaking EVERYWHERE), and they seemed useful, but tbh I don't know how they'd fare against better players.
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Changelings have been either useful or a waste of time from my experience. I tend to spot them easily, can't say if it's from poor use or I just notice when my zealots are moving around without being told.
However I have seen cool uses:
Like blocking their ramp as a nydus pops. Dropping a changeling during a skirmish so they're distracted and you can check on it a few seconds later and see a lot more than gambling if they'll notice a unit randomly running out from the back of their base (I've watched reps and found changelings getting a look in my main for over half it's lifespan due to tricks like this).
You can also drop a changeling at your entrance and run it out for a free way to scout around your area or just run it straight at the enemy and see what it finds. Telling it to follow the enemy's army can also be a nice move as that's harder to spot.
You said you wanted to get serious in SC2, and really the 1st thing that you need to work on is macro. You are scouting, so that is good and it will improve as you see more and more openings.
Massing games on ladder or with friends is great, and the main way to improve quickly.
There is something I can recommend:
I don't know if you're aware of it, but a great tool is the build order tester, there's a few around. Create a custom game and type YABOT into the search bar to find yabot-converted ladder maps. The instructions are found after the loading screen, and very simple.
You can try and follow some available builds already in there, or go with freestyle and it will track your build order.
The best thing about yabot is the ability to just restart the game in just a few seconds, allowing you to instantly start over when you screw up or want to try something different. This will help you tighten up some aspects of your play and make many actions second nature through repetition very quickly.
You can play against others or set the AI to easy for basic, no pressure practice or harder if you like.
It's great for practicing spending money and getting tech and expanding smoothly.
Kind of long-winded but I'm feeling all giddy and chatty after watching Boxer play.
Sorry if I'm telling you about something you already know.
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yabot is a great tool but it still pretty much broken since the last patch & were still waiting on an update? no save function etc,
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I didnt know save didn't work anymore, as i just freestyle every game. That's terribad.
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i'm at work, so unfortunately, i'm not able to look at it (i'm only gold, too :-(, so i'm working on getting better myself), but you'll find you'll learn a lot more from losses than from wins, if you really want to analyze your play.
In wins, your mistakes will kind of be overshadowed by your opponents mistakes, while in your losses, they become much more evident, so i'd suggest taking harder looks at them
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There's probably no real point to practicing build orders in YABOT right now. Practice the three key things that you need to do every game with every race and every build order: making workers, spending your money, and watching the minimap.
Until those fundamentals are solid, your timing will all be off anyway.
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It is utterly pointless to critique bronze level play. All games come down to same things not building workers and not spending your money. Until gold you can literally pick A unit and make just that with good macro and win almost every game with zero scouting. Well that is my 2c anyway.
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On October 19 2010 00:57 Deathfairy wrote:
It is utterly pointless to critique bronze level play. All games come down to same things not building workers and not spending your money. Until gold you can literally pick A unit and make just that with good macro and win almost every game with zero scouting. Well that is my 2c anyway.
I just dont get it why he got warned for this... Its true tbh. Just like day9 said... build pylons and probes/ scv's and sup depots/ drones and overlords + keep your money low. Warn day9?
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Eh, generally you need more practice, but the one thing I did notice throughout your entire game was that you weren't spending your money. If you watch your replay, you will notice that at your hatches you have almost 3+ larva the entire game. Spend those larva as fast as you get them. They won't regenerate if you don't spend them, and therefore you will have less units during the course of the game. Spending those larva should solve most, if not all, of your money problems.
I would have been broke on the amount of workers you had. I think it was 24 for 2 bases? Eh.
Also set a zergling at each watch tower. You would have seen there entire force if you had done that. Also, like said before, getting an ovie over the rocks is generally better than checking the other side of the rocks with ALL of your forces and then watching your main getting attacked.
For bronze league, focus more on your macro. If you really want to scout, just send a drone into the opponent base and set it on a patrol loop. It's funny when they try to kill it, silly bronze players.
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Changelings are awesome when they work (mid battle run-by, etc etc), but once you get to like gold they probably won't work too well unless you are a) playing someone who is tunnel visioned on something else or b) someone who doesn't realize that changelings even exist and can't figure out why his zealot is running around by itself with 5 hp.
I'm about 1600 diamond and yea...it rarely ever works lol best bet is to just sacrifice an overlord
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Well, I think it is important to know that a mineral patch is most effectively harvested by 3 drones, so you will have to get 24 drones for minerals + 6 for both geysers.
A big aspect of Zerg play is to basically power drones whenever you can & you would not believe how often you actually can! For example on Lost Temple: If you constantly scout his army composition, you can power drones like hell just until right when he moves out. The 50 secs that he´ll need to get to your base are enough to set up spines & the right units in most cases. Given the fact you do not want to play aggressive early on, which would be another possibility.
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I appreciate all the input, folks. It definitely gives me somewhere to focus my time. I'll keep an eye out for YABOT (Yet Another Build Order Tester? I see what you did thar...) updates and try it out, at the moment I really only know the one opening (5RR), so it's hard to react to early scouting.
On October 19 2010 00:57 Deathfairy wrote:
It is utterly pointless to critique bronze level play. All games come down to same things not building workers and not spending your money. Until gold you can literally pick A unit and make just that with good macro and win almost every game with zero scouting. Well that is my 2c anyway.
User was warned for this post
"Pointless" certainly depends on the point of view. It's pointless as a high-level player to try and improve your game by picking apart bronze level play. It's not pointless as a bronze-level player to have your games picked apart by higher-level players. Even if I could just mass zerglings EVERY MATCH and win with perfect macro, that wouldn't be teaching me much about the game, would it? Macro skills get better after massing games and practice. I can be getting better at something else while learning the muscle memory required to macro correctly.
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On October 19 2010 01:06 TERATON wrote:Show nested quote +On October 19 2010 00:57 Deathfairy wrote:
It is utterly pointless to critique bronze level play. All games come down to same things not building workers and not spending your money. Until gold you can literally pick A unit and make just that with good macro and win almost every game with zero scouting. Well that is my 2c anyway.
User was warned for this post I just dont get it why he got warned for this... Its true tbh. Just like day9 said... build pylons and probes/ scv's and sup depots/ drones and overlords + keep your money low. Warn day9?
Because good habits start off early, and hes coming to a place that will teach him good habits at the begining instead of having to relearn everything at the end.
@Rowen,
First, what is your plan when you go into the game? Do you have a plan? I am not saying that you have to stick to said plan, but the fact that you have one. What I do, and I am a Diamond Terran, if you ever want some 1v1s let me know, I have a plan when I go in. For example, I see Zerg, I think in my mind, I am 3 raxing, building an engineering bay, getting stim, +1 weapons and slamming his expansion asap. Zerg will ALWAYS win the macro game. I scout with my scv and do my best to slow HIS expansion down. I can win 90% of the time on a 1 base game. So, develop a plan, but ALWAYS have contingencies.
On the second game, you dropped a pool on 13, and a gas on 12. Did you have a purpose? Speedlings? Were you going to lair? What is your reasoning behind doing that. What was your overall plan/
At 3:38 you drop the spine crawler, you did this because you feared early harass from lings from the other player. Why not just make lings and a queen? Mind you, Im not saying it was a bad choice, just what prompted that thought process. You are asking for strategy comments, Ill do my best 
At 4:23 you beat off his first rush. You have him beat in scv count, you know this because you know that zerg can not build 2 units at once, that early of a rush means he sacrificed scv count, so expand. You will have him beat. Make some lings to defend. Zerg are a macro race, you already know this, you need monies to macro.
Get better placement on your crawlers.
At 730 your macro drops. Focus on Macro, get better at it. You have WAY to much monies. Way to much.
If you notice, high level and programer zerg players, spread creep like a boss. You need the WHOLE map to be creeped up. I think spending the 150 for an additional queen to do this is worth it. SPREAD CREEP. GET THIS IN YOUR HEAD NOW. S P R E A D C R E E P. You didnt start spreading until almost 9 minutes.
You have map control, move your crawlers up to your front door so they can support your units.
YOU STILL HAVE TO MUCH MONEY! Build another hatchery in your base do something with it. The fellows that commented above have a point, you need to learn how to spend your money.
You have to few drones, honestly. I know I am saying you have to much money as well, but you need to have about 25-30 drones at each base.
You saw that he was going lings and roaches, why didnt you go mutas? Then you could harass and attack. Again, not saying wrong decision, but asking what your thoughts were.
At 14 minutes you beat his army and had a standing army, you should have expanded.
YOU HAVE TO MUCH MONEY.
Good micro at 1530
at 18 I recomend attacking with your standing army, and using your mutas to kill his mineral line.
YOU HAVE TO MUCH MONEY.
Yea bad form to gg before opponet. :/
Your doing good for a bronze player, polish up a bit and I expect to see ya in Diamond.
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I was all getting ready to help out a new member of the swarm, and then I saw these guys pretty much say exactly what I was going to. 
If you ever want some advice or want to get some help on anything, hit me up. TheMonkeyMon.667. Love helping out new players.
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Also add me, Igakusei.364. I'm always happy to practice with newer players who are actively trying to improve.
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My view of gg is that you're saying game's over. Imagine if you're playing chess, the loser will make the motion to resign or you keep playing until check mate. You don't tell your opponent "you lose, that was a nice game" because it would be rude no matter how nicely you put it. Changelings will die against good players, but you don't really need changeling to live very long, just enough to see what he's producing and his army size. About 5 seconds of life time will do that, and short of you dropping the changeling in plain sight and he goes directly to kill, you should see what you need to see.
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On October 19 2010 03:30 Rowen wrote:
"Pointless" certainly depends on the point of view. It's pointless as a high-level player to try and improve your game by picking apart bronze level play. It's not pointless as a bronze-level player to have your games picked apart by higher-level players. Even if I could just mass zerglings EVERY MATCH and win with perfect macro, that wouldn't be teaching me much about the game, would it? Macro skills get better after massing games and practice. I can be getting better at something else while learning the muscle memory required to macro correctly.
You're absolutely right. It's easy for me as a low diamond player to beat platinum players and below by simply not dying to cheese and making stuff. But if I want to kill a protoss player with mass ravens, I also have to understand a lot of basic RTS principles that most bronze players haven't exactly learned yet. I might recommend intentionally altering your style from time to time to focus on building up different RTS "skills." If you want to work on your macro, find a solid ground-based style that involves an early expansion. You can find several ideas on Liquipedia. This way your army doesn't need to be extensively micro-managed to be useful (as in mutalisk plays), and you can play every game with the goal of making as many units as possible. Especially early game, always make as many drones as you think you can get away with, then turn all that money into roach/hydra or whatever you're macroing. If you find yourself missing larvae injects, make extra hatcheries to compensate. The goal is that you're focused on having really strong macro every game.
Once you feel like you can consistently out-expand and outmacro your opponents and are mainly losing to cheese/allins/etc, switch it up and start playing really aggressive one base builds that don't have a difficult macro requirement. The focus here is to learn how to be constantly controlling your army (harassing with mutalisks, etc) without sacrificing your macro.
But as to your point about learning something else while improving your dexterity and muscle memory, I think that watching day9 and varying your style from time to time both help quite a bit with that. In SC1 I used to always fast expand (this was back in the day before terrans and protosses started fast expanding too) because I had trouble with keeping up with terran and protoss macro and didn't understand how NOT fast expanding could possibly not make things worse. Then I made myself learn some really aggressive low-econ openings and discovered that zerg can, instead of making a bunch of drones early for a strong economy, can use early units to gain map control and then make up the difference in economy later once they have that advantage. That's something that probably would have taken me a much longer time to understand if I hadn't forced myself to learn different ways of playing the game.
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On October 18 2010 20:11 ddrddrddrddr wrote:
First of all, don't say gg before your opponent when you win the game.
so true...its incredibly unfriendly and makes me angry every time...
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On October 19 2010 04:41 Effect010 wrote:Show nested quote +On October 18 2010 20:11 ddrddrddrddr wrote:
First of all, don't say gg before your opponent when you win the game.
so true...its incredibly unfriendly and makes me angry every time...
I'm sorry! I didn't know! I stopped, if it's any consolation! Shows what I get for trying to congratulate a player on a good game -- too many players just surrender out of a game instantly.
How do people manage their macro during micro-intensive sessions? For example (no replay as I'm not on my home computer), I played ZvP on Desert Oasis and end up storming their expo with roaches and lings against their stalker-heavy force. I need to micro to win, so after 30 seconds or so of heavy micro (with JUST enough time to throw in an inject as I queued up moves for my roaches to run circles around the expo's Nexus while the speedlings picked off the 3 remaining zealots), I look up to see over 1,000 minerals just laying around. I quickly queue up more lings and pop out a hatchery, but I'm still at over 500/500 of money just SITTING there.
Is it in my best interest to micro less and let units die in order to make sure their replacements are getting out in a timely fashion? How should I gauge when the units that are alive are more important than the units I need to build? A similar thing happened to me in a ZvZ on Blistering Sands where I end up pushing through their destructible rocks to avoid the (metric shit-) ton of spines at their ramp, and have to corner up my roaches to keep from being surrounded by their slowlings. By the time I'm done micro'ing around and have won the fight, my mineral count is 800+. Is this just a matter of increasing APM and wisdom to know what's likely to happen next, so I can ignore some micro?
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You are hotkeying your hatches, right? That's the easiest and most important way to spend money. Just try to hit the hatch hotkey every few seconds to make sure there aren't any larva ready to spring to life as a unit. I'll check your reps when I get home from work.
It's not all that hard during a fight to hit "6srrrzzz" or whatever you need to build and you don't even have to be looking at your base.
Edit: I keep editing as I think of things. If you think that Macro is your problem, just focus on one solid build. 5RR is ok, I am currently at gold on the back of speedling expand, so whatever works for you.
Do you have your own (Link #1) Day9 Mental Checklist? It seems weird to compartmentalize your actions, but it frees up so much mental energy to actually playing better. Try to get in the rhythm of "Check my minimap, is there action? Ok, I made some units, time to spread creep. Ok I spread creep, time to check if I need to spawn larva. Ok I spawned larva, time to check my food to see if I need to make overlords..." and so on. If you don't try to do everything individually, you will basically be going "OOOOOOOOOOOOOH SHIIIIIIIIIIIT" and try to do everything at once, which leads to doing them all poorly.
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On October 19 2010 05:41 Rowen wrote:Show nested quote +On October 19 2010 04:41 Effect010 wrote:On October 18 2010 20:11 ddrddrddrddr wrote:
First of all, don't say gg before your opponent when you win the game.
so true...its incredibly unfriendly and makes me angry every time... I'm sorry! I didn't know! I stopped, if it's any consolation! Shows what I get for trying to congratulate a player on a good game -- too many players just surrender out of a game instantly. How do people manage their macro during micro-intensive sessions? For example (no replay as I'm not on my home computer), I played ZvP on Desert Oasis and end up storming their expo with roaches and lings against their stalker-heavy force. I need to micro to win, so after 30 seconds or so of heavy micro (with JUST enough time to throw in an inject as I queued up moves for my roaches to run circles around the expo's Nexus while the speedlings picked off the 3 remaining zealots), I look up to see over 1,000 minerals just laying around. I quickly queue up more lings and pop out a hatchery, but I'm still at over 500/500 of money just SITTING there. Is it in my best interest to micro less and let units die in order to make sure their replacements are getting out in a timely fashion? How should I gauge when the units that are alive are more important than the units I need to build? A similar thing happened to me in a ZvZ on Blistering Sands where I end up pushing through their destructible rocks to avoid the (metric shit-) ton of spines at their ramp, and have to corner up my roaches to keep from being surrounded by their slowlings. By the time I'm done micro'ing around and have won the fight, my mineral count is 800+. Is this just a matter of increasing APM and wisdom to know what's likely to happen next, so I can ignore some micro?
At higher levels of play you'll be required to take breaks during fights to build buildings, transfer miners, buy upgrades, inject larvae, defend against harassment, etc. but until at least platinum if not higher you should be fine doing 6srrrrrrrrr or whatever you're making (which only takes a second or two during the fight) and catching up with the other stuff afterwards. This is especially true if you're doing bronze friendly builds that don't rely on constant aggression and harassment, since 90% of the time you've probably got nothing to do other than macro. This way money should really only build up if you manage to supply block yourself right before a fight. 1000 minerals at the end of a fight isn't a big deal (especially if you're fighting at his base), but I've watched a few bronze replays where players let their minerals get upwards of 2-3k while sitting on 2 bases with 8 drones at each.
But like I said earlier, one really good way to train your ability to do both micro and macro at the same time is to FORCE yourself to play one of those really aggressive builds for awhile. You'll certainly lose more at first as it takes awhile to get used to, but you'll probably be happy with what you learn from it.
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in the OP you wrote ZvP as PvP
*wrote out a full review and then realised it was all already covered while i was reading *
if your going to call gg (or similar) for your opponent when you win, dont use an abbreviation; it makes it obvious that your sincere
i.e you got horribly smashed: your opponent calls "gg" and/or "wp"
compare that to him/her typing "good game" / "well played"
assuming your not going for bm anyway
On October 19 2010 01:06 TERATON wrote:Show nested quote +On October 19 2010 00:57 Deathfairy wrote:
It is utterly pointless to critique bronze level play. All games come down to same things not building workers and not spending your money. Until gold you can literally pick A unit and make just that with good macro and win almost every game with zero scouting. Well that is my 2c anyway.
User was warned for this post I just dont get it why he got warned for this... Its true tbh. Just like day9 said... build pylons and probes/ scv's and sup depots/ drones and overlords + keep your money low. Warn day9?
the OP asked for help and got trash talked randomly
he didnt have to post that it was pointless, the bronze is even in the title
even if the advice is solid, delivery still matters
On October 19 2010 05:41 Rowen wrote:
How do people manage their macro during micro-intensive sessions? For example (no replay as I'm not on my home computer), I played ZvP on Desert Oasis and end up storming their expo with roaches and lings against their stalker-heavy force. I need to micro to win, so after 30 seconds or so of heavy micro (with JUST enough time to throw in an inject as I queued up moves for my roaches to run circles around the expo's Nexus while the speedlings picked off the 3 remaining zealots), I look up to see over 1,000 minerals just laying around. I quickly queue up more lings and pop out a hatchery, but I'm still at over 500/500 of money just SITTING there.
Is it in my best interest to micro less and let units die in order to make sure their replacements are getting out in a timely fashion? How should I gauge when the units that are alive are more important than the units I need to build? A similar thing happened to me in a ZvZ on Blistering Sands where I end up pushing through their destructible rocks to avoid the (metric shit-) ton of spines at their ramp, and have to corner up my roaches to keep from being surrounded by their slowlings. By the time I'm done micro'ing around and have won the fight, my mineral count is 800+. Is this just a matter of increasing APM and wisdom to know what's likely to happen next, so I can ignore some micro?
its a bit of a practice thing, generally if you can a-move and still win the battle, or at least come out close, you want to be making more units
generally in starcraft, micro < macro, up until a decent level of diamond, a move + macro will win you most games anyway
in words similar to those day9 has previously said: ignore the battles untill you macro so well that you have time to look away from your macro and start microing
i hotkey queens on one tab, shift +v and click the hatcheries, then hatches on a second key to make the units, check the minimap, spread creep, check the minimap, do stuff until just before the new larvae spawn <move units, defend, attack, tech, expo, supply>, check the minimap, rinse and repeat
havnt really got the <> bit sorted in an order, and it kinda varies in the game anyway
learning a solid BO would get you to at least silver/gold
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Link #2:
Drone Timing/Production, courtesy of Day9
Game 1, ZvZ Jungle Basin - Feel free to keep the speedlings out of your base checking stuff out. If shit starts going down, just bring them back to your base. I think one of the biggest hurdles of bronze/silver level play is just being too passive. You don't want to lose your base, but neither does the other guy. You're so busy turtling up that you miss the opportunity to just completely kill him. Especially with an army of speedlings and three spines at your base, your army can be outside of your base, it's safe enough. I mean, you might not be familiar with that map, but you had vision on the entire map just because you had the OL at the bottom of the ramp and one at his natural.
You had two drones mining that bottom gas geyser most of the game, watch out for that.
Try to keep the units out in the field. Keep your eye on the minimap and let THAT tell you when you need to get back to your base.
Game 2, ZvP Shakuras Plateau - Your opponent will never spawn in the near position on this map (unless this has changed, let me know). Try to move your drone to build the spawning pool before you can afford it - like, get a drone on the way to build it at around 185 minerals, then BLAMMO Spawning Pool. There is rarely a reason to gas steal, especially in Bronze. After that, you just won because you had more units.
It's funny how much different your two builds are, just because of that little bit of early pressure you took in Game 1. You want to hold the pressure then get right back to your build. Look at it this way, if you hold off the rush and get back to your build, you HAVE to be in a stronger position because in order for him to rush he had to cut harvesters, but you're right back where you belong.
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On October 19 2010 08:50 Cyber_Cheese wrote:
in the OP you wrote ZvP as PvP
Fixed, thanks!
On October 19 2010 09:59 ScholarZero wrote:Drone Timing/Production, courtesy of Day9Game 1, ZvZ Jungle Basin - Feel free to keep the speedlings out of your base checking stuff out. If shit starts going down, just bring them back to your base. I think one of the biggest hurdles of bronze/silver level play is just being too passive. You don't want to lose your base, but neither does the other guy. You're so busy turtling up that you miss the opportunity to just completely kill him. Especially with an army of speedlings and three spines at your base, your army can be outside of your base, it's safe enough. I mean, you might not be familiar with that map, but you had vision on the entire map just because you had the OL at the bottom of the ramp and one at his natural. Try to keep the units out in the field. Keep your eye on the minimap and let THAT tell you when you need to get back to your base. Game 2, ZvP Shakuras Plateau - Your opponent will never spawn in the near position on this map (unless this has changed, let me know). Try to move your drone to build the spawning pool before you can afford it - like, get a drone on the way to build it at around 185 minerals, then BLAMMO Spawning Pool. There is rarely a reason to gas steal, especially in Bronze. After that, you just won because you had more units. It's funny how much different your two builds are, just because of that little bit of early pressure you took in Game 1. You want to hold the pressure then get right back to your build. Look at it this way, if you hold off the rush and get back to your build, you HAVE to be in a stronger position because in order for him to rush he had to cut harvesters, but you're right back where you belong.
Keeping lings out and doing things (short of taking the Watchtowers) requires more micro, which is more APM-intensive than I feel I'm able to do at the moment. Keeping them in my base when I know I can see every move they make seems to make more sense to me since I can focus on macro instead of "where are my lings NOW?" I'll give it a shot though -- more micro+macro = more practice doing both at the same time, in a situation where if I misclick or fail to notice something it's likely not to get my early pressure wiped out.
I'm more gas stealing to be a pain in the ass than any REAL threat. It gets in the opponent's head and I like the mental aspect of it. I've noticed a lot less early pressure since I started gas stealing, leading to the thought that (at least in Bronze), if I'm able to pull off a gas steal and cancel/rebuild two or three times, it makes the other player feel like I'm on a higher level and less likely to push out, leaving me to do the aggression and expansion.
A new replay is posted. I had the feeling about halfway through (once I denied their expo at their natural) that the game was over and I could have just rushed and won, but wanted to play it safe and mass a bit more. It might have blown up in my face with that Thor push at the end, but I figured with one base mined out and another one close, they wouldn't be able to counter what I was doing with my three, then four bases. I ended up pushing to Ultra by the end in the thought of busting through their front wall, but no need.
New thought -- Nydus drops. Good/bad/ugly? How many Nydus Networks do you make to ensure its success? They take so long to morph in, I'm always afraid of losing the building before it can finish. Perhaps two or three worms at once will help?
Banelings + Nydus @ mineral line = lolwin? Or does anyone ovvie drop blings? Seems to me three or four blings could WRECK harvesters.
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On October 19 2010 10:01 Rowen wrote:Fixed, thanks! Show nested quote +On October 19 2010 09:59 ScholarZero wrote:Drone Timing/Production, courtesy of Day9Game 1, ZvZ Jungle Basin - Feel free to keep the speedlings out of your base checking stuff out. If shit starts going down, just bring them back to your base. I think one of the biggest hurdles of bronze/silver level play is just being too passive. You don't want to lose your base, but neither does the other guy. You're so busy turtling up that you miss the opportunity to just completely kill him. Especially with an army of speedlings and three spines at your base, your army can be outside of your base, it's safe enough. I mean, you might not be familiar with that map, but you had vision on the entire map just because you had the OL at the bottom of the ramp and one at his natural. Try to keep the units out in the field. Keep your eye on the minimap and let THAT tell you when you need to get back to your base. Game 2, ZvP Shakuras Plateau - Your opponent will never spawn in the near position on this map (unless this has changed, let me know). Try to move your drone to build the spawning pool before you can afford it - like, get a drone on the way to build it at around 185 minerals, then BLAMMO Spawning Pool. There is rarely a reason to gas steal, especially in Bronze. After that, you just won because you had more units. It's funny how much different your two builds are, just because of that little bit of early pressure you took in Game 1. You want to hold the pressure then get right back to your build. Look at it this way, if you hold off the rush and get back to your build, you HAVE to be in a stronger position because in order for him to rush he had to cut harvesters, but you're right back where you belong. Keeping lings out and doing things (short of taking the Watchtowers) requires more micro, which is more APM-intensive than I feel I'm able to do at the moment. Keeping them in my base when I know I can see every move they make seems to make more sense to me since I can focus on macro instead of "where are my lings NOW?" I'll give it a shot though -- more micro+macro = more practice doing both at the same time, in a situation where if I misclick or fail to notice something it's likely not to get my early pressure wiped out. I'm more gas stealing to be a pain in the ass than any REAL threat. It gets in the opponent's head and I like the mental aspect of it. I've noticed a lot less early pressure since I started gas stealing, leading to the thought that (at least in Bronze), if I'm able to pull off a gas steal and cancel/rebuild two or three times, it makes the other player feel like I'm on a higher level and less likely to push out, leaving me to do the aggression and expansion. A new replay is posted. I had the feeling about halfway through (once I denied their expo at their natural) that the game was over and I could have just rushed and won, but wanted to play it safe and mass a bit more. It might have blown up in my face with that Thor push at the end, but I figured with one base mined out and another one close, they wouldn't be able to counter what I was doing with my three, then four bases. I ended up pushing to Ultra by the end in the thought of busting through their front wall, but no need. New thought -- Nydus drops. Good/bad/ugly? How many Nydus Networks do you make to ensure its success? They take so long to morph in, I'm always afraid of losing the building before it can finish. Perhaps two or three worms at once will help? Banelings + Nydus @ mineral line = lolwin? Or does anyone ovvie drop blings? Seems to me three or four blings could WRECK harvesters.
One is fine, especially if you hide it somewhere. Maybe run a ling into his army right before you start to distract him. I see platinum/low diamond players not see nydus worms all the time that are just sitting there in plain sight, so I don't think you have to go to great lengths to make sure he can't stop it. Just don't do strategies that rely on getting a successful nydus worm up. I played a TvZ once (platinum level) where the zerg literally sat in his base on 10 drones and made nothing but roaches and then hydra, while repeatedly dropping nydus worms in my base. I had fast expanded so I had to scramble to stop the first few, but before long my economy kicked in and I waltzed down to his completely undeveloped base and rolled over him. Don't be that guy
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Keeping Lings out is no more micro intensive then checking the minimap every few seconds and moving them. You should be looking at the minimap periodically anyway, just right click where you want them to go. Increasing APM is just about giving yourself more stuff to do and doing it; your APM will increase on its own.
You can do overlord drops with banelings, it takes a while to get set up because you have to get banelings, overlord speed and ventral sacs (which takes a long time) and you have to not die in the meantime. It would definitely be in place of any Muta work, though - people tend to get more air defense once they see mutas flying around.
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Have you watched the two Day9 videos linked in my earlier posts? They are so good.
They are sooooo good.
You need to watch them.
They are so fucking good.
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On October 19 2010 03:43 TheMilkMan wrote:Show nested quote +On October 19 2010 01:06 TERATON wrote:On October 19 2010 00:57 Deathfairy wrote:
It is utterly pointless to critique bronze level play. All games come down to same things not building workers and not spending your money. Until gold you can literally pick A unit and make just that with good macro and win almost every game with zero scouting. Well that is my 2c anyway.
User was warned for this post I just dont get it why he got warned for this... Its true tbh. Just like day9 said... build pylons and probes/ scv's and sup depots/ drones and overlords + keep your money low. Warn day9? Because good habits start off early, and hes coming to a place that will teach him good habits at the begining instead of having to relearn everything at the end. @Rowen, First, what is your plan when you go into the game? Do you have a plan? I am not saying that you have to stick to said plan, but the fact that you have one. What I do, and I am a Diamond Terran, if you ever want some 1v1s let me know, I have a plan when I go in. For example, I see Zerg, I think in my mind, I am 3 raxing, building an engineering bay, getting stim, +1 weapons and slamming his expansion asap. Zerg will ALWAYS win the macro game. I scout with my scv and do my best to slow HIS expansion down. I can win 90% of the time on a 1 base game. So, develop a plan, but ALWAYS have contingencies. On the second game, you dropped a pool on 13, and a gas on 12. Did you have a purpose? Speedlings? Were you going to lair? What is your reasoning behind doing that. What was your overall plan/ At 3:38 you drop the spine crawler, you did this because you feared early harass from lings from the other player. Why not just make lings and a queen? Mind you, Im not saying it was a bad choice, just what prompted that thought process. You are asking for strategy comments, Ill do my best At 4:23 you beat off his first rush. You have him beat in scv count, you know this because you know that zerg can not build 2 units at once, that early of a rush means he sacrificed scv count, so expand. You will have him beat. Make some lings to defend. Zerg are a macro race, you already know this, you need monies to macro. Get better placement on your crawlers. At 730 your macro drops. Focus on Macro, get better at it. You have WAY to much monies. Way to much. If you notice, high level and programer zerg players, spread creep like a boss. You need the WHOLE map to be creeped up. I think spending the 150 for an additional queen to do this is worth it. SPREAD CREEP. GET THIS IN YOUR HEAD NOW. S P R E A D C R E E P. You didnt start spreading until almost 9 minutes. You have map control, move your crawlers up to your front door so they can support your units. YOU STILL HAVE TO MUCH MONEY! Build another hatchery in your base do something with it. The fellows that commented above have a point, you need to learn how to spend your money. You have to few drones, honestly. I know I am saying you have to much money as well, but you need to have about 25-30 drones at each base. You saw that he was going lings and roaches, why didnt you go mutas? Then you could harass and attack. Again, not saying wrong decision, but asking what your thoughts were. At 14 minutes you beat his army and had a standing army, you should have expanded. YOU HAVE TO MUCH MONEY. Good micro at 1530 at 18 I recomend attacking with your standing army, and using your mutas to kill his mineral line. YOU HAVE TO MUCH MONEY. Yea bad form to gg before opponet. :/ Your doing good for a bronze player, polish up a bit and I expect to see ya in Diamond.
I tend to disagree with most of his general advice except the "YOU HAVE TOO MUCH MONEY" thing. Spreading creep for example is a wonderful thing, but by the looks of the game you didn't have the mechanical power to spend your money efficiently, creep is not important at all compared to efficient droning/spending of money, ignore the fact that high level players do it for now.
As for the "go into the game with a plan" and the quoted example he gave is completely useless to a zerg player. Do not ever go into a game saying "i'm going roach/ling this game and am going to harass early" or whatever, zerg is a reactionary race and you must play it as such, your army composition will depend entirely on your opponents' army composition.
Also just to be picky, terran will not ALWAYS lose to zerg in a macro game unless either a) the terran has inferior macro or b) the terran does not force the zerg to build an army.
In regards to the game itself, you are better than any bronze player I have seen, your macro was far from perfect but it was better than most gold/platinum players i have seen and you actually scout which is rare below gold, I expect you to rise fast once you get the mechanical power to play zerg.
Keep playing games, learn when you can and cannot build drones, build your muscle memory and i expect you to rise quickly.
edit: do TRY to spread creep by all means but do not make it a priority over general resources management.
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On October 19 2010 10:35 zbedlam wrote:Show nested quote +On October 19 2010 03:43 TheMilkMan wrote:On October 19 2010 01:06 TERATON wrote:On October 19 2010 00:57 Deathfairy wrote:
It is utterly pointless to critique bronze level play. All games come down to same things not building workers and not spending your money. Until gold you can literally pick A unit and make just that with good macro and win almost every game with zero scouting. Well that is my 2c anyway.
User was warned for this post I just dont get it why he got warned for this... Its true tbh. Just like day9 said... build pylons and probes/ scv's and sup depots/ drones and overlords + keep your money low. Warn day9? Because good habits start off early, and hes coming to a place that will teach him good habits at the begining instead of having to relearn everything at the end. @Rowen, First, what is your plan when you go into the game? Do you have a plan? I am not saying that you have to stick to said plan, but the fact that you have one. What I do, and I am a Diamond Terran, if you ever want some 1v1s let me know, I have a plan when I go in. For example, I see Zerg, I think in my mind, I am 3 raxing, building an engineering bay, getting stim, +1 weapons and slamming his expansion asap. Zerg will ALWAYS win the macro game. I scout with my scv and do my best to slow HIS expansion down. I can win 90% of the time on a 1 base game. So, develop a plan, but ALWAYS have contingencies. On the second game, you dropped a pool on 13, and a gas on 12. Did you have a purpose? Speedlings? Were you going to lair? What is your reasoning behind doing that. What was your overall plan/ At 3:38 you drop the spine crawler, you did this because you feared early harass from lings from the other player. Why not just make lings and a queen? Mind you, Im not saying it was a bad choice, just what prompted that thought process. You are asking for strategy comments, Ill do my best At 4:23 you beat off his first rush. You have him beat in scv count, you know this because you know that zerg can not build 2 units at once, that early of a rush means he sacrificed scv count, so expand. You will have him beat. Make some lings to defend. Zerg are a macro race, you already know this, you need monies to macro. Get better placement on your crawlers. At 730 your macro drops. Focus on Macro, get better at it. You have WAY to much monies. Way to much. If you notice, high level and programer zerg players, spread creep like a boss. You need the WHOLE map to be creeped up. I think spending the 150 for an additional queen to do this is worth it. SPREAD CREEP. GET THIS IN YOUR HEAD NOW. S P R E A D C R E E P. You didnt start spreading until almost 9 minutes. You have map control, move your crawlers up to your front door so they can support your units. YOU STILL HAVE TO MUCH MONEY! Build another hatchery in your base do something with it. The fellows that commented above have a point, you need to learn how to spend your money. You have to few drones, honestly. I know I am saying you have to much money as well, but you need to have about 25-30 drones at each base. You saw that he was going lings and roaches, why didnt you go mutas? Then you could harass and attack. Again, not saying wrong decision, but asking what your thoughts were. At 14 minutes you beat his army and had a standing army, you should have expanded. YOU HAVE TO MUCH MONEY. Good micro at 1530 at 18 I recomend attacking with your standing army, and using your mutas to kill his mineral line. YOU HAVE TO MUCH MONEY. Yea bad form to gg before opponet. :/ Your doing good for a bronze player, polish up a bit and I expect to see ya in Diamond. In regards to the game itself, you are better than any bronze player I have seen, your macro was far from perfect but it was better than most gold/platinum players i have seen and you actually scout which is rare below gold, I expect you to rise fast once you get the mechanical power to play zerg.
Thank you! It's nice to get some encouragement, although my recent win/loss records seems to be encouragement enough (I keep trying to post a replay of a loss, but I'm on a 14 game winning streak and I'm not about to "throw" a game just to get critiqued!)
EDIT: Two new replays are posted, same opening, same end result. 15 game winning streak now, and going strong.
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If you play any custom games I'd love to spectate you and try and pick up some tricks. I'm in Bronze as well, but from the looks of your replays and the sound of this thread you are miles better than I am.
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I have to say that as a low level zerg player myself (Bronze), threads such as this really not only help me learn as well, but make me feel proud. I know it might be strange to say, but seeing all the help thrown Rowen's way just makes me feel better about being here at all. I want to thank everyone, including Rowen for asking for help.
Edit: Completely off-topic I know, but I felt the need to say it.
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O damn, you're playing hell of a lot better. Okay, small things to worry about. Against an army heavy on marauder instead of marines, go zerglings instead of roaches because you can't retreat very well with roaches, especially off creep. When you saw the banshee, you did a great job morphing queens and overseer, but remember to keep the overseer on hand so you can see them when they cloak. Mass mutas works great up until platinum league when people will start going thors, so keep that in mind as you enjoy muta harass for a while yet. When routing your units in this map, remember to use shift move to ensure they don't run through the front entrance to get to the expo due to bad pathing. Your main base minerals ran out and you didn't transfer your drones. Remember to do so. You only did 1 upgrade the entire game, air attack. Remember to do so for all he unit types you use. You had a lot of minerals at the end, be careful of that. At the last battle, you saw thors, remember to look up magic box when using mutas against thors.
For your zvp. Good early pressure. Keep your lings in front of your roaches because stalkers get bonus damage against lings and lings are cheaper. Also should stay a bit further back so if he dares come off the ramp to take pot shots, you can run the lings up, surround, kill the stragglers, and retreat. Your position was not optimal while you were bottling him. Angle toward the right so he can't easily cut off your escape path and reinforcement with force fields should you need it. He didn't even use his spells so it wasn't an issue but it could have been. You again did not upgrade your army. DO IT! Roach speed, attack, defense should all be priority when you had as much mineral as you did. Now that you're doing games where you outmacro the opponent by a lot, experiment with tier 3 units and infestors. You will be needing them later against stronger unit combinations and it's better to use it when you have power overwhelming at your disposal. Besides, nothing cooler than rolling 200 banelings down the street.
If you're doing this every game, you should be at least platinum league. Interestingly enough I've stopped making mass mutas the same time I got into diamonds, just fyi.
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On October 19 2010 15:10 Majblitz wrote:
I have to say that as a low level zerg player myself (Bronze), threads such as this really not only help me learn as well, but make me feel proud. I know it might be strange to say, but seeing all the help thrown Rowen's way just makes me feel better about being here at all. I want to thank everyone, including Rowen for asking for help.
Edit: Completely off-topic I know, but I felt the need to say it.
Hello to everyone, my first post here, long time lurker tho.
I would like to thank everyone who put into this thread, thanks to Rowen for asking for help also.
As a bronze player myself i stopped laddering and started cusotoms plus a hell lot of research around here, day9 and so on.
It helped me immensly. I took day9 advice and started going one BO (5RR) and transitioning from it, practiced it alot and when i laddered yesterday i couldn t belive how much easier it seems now that i actually know what i am suposed to do even if it gets skewed sometimes (the timings mostly).
I always wanted to come out here and say guys help me please, but i found out that no bronze level players posted because bronze is still stuck on 3 things: macro, spending resource and scouting.
So i thought a 1600 diamond would simply say nothing to a thread like that, the answer is obvious.
This thread also helped me so i thank you all for taking the time and look at Rowen s replays and also providing us with your thoughts on improving.
tip hat to all of you and TL in general
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Ah hah, a loss! OP is edited, and would love your thoughts on what I did wrong. I actually thought I was holding my own fairly well until the roaches arrived and roasted my lings. I think the problem may lie less with strategy or mechanics, there, and more just knowledge of the game. "How many lings do I need to toast 4 roaches? Well, 12 seem good enough, a-move!" and that was that. ZvZ, early spine crawler attempt denied leads to fast zergling pressure which I have to fight off with drones. I failed to cancel my first spine crawler, which set me back, but thought I equalized and actually came out ahead -- apparently my time killing zerglings and not mining came back to bite me in the ass. I haven't actually watched this replay, but I was CERTAIN I was ahead of him economically and it seems that's not the case. Read, review, and critique!
LOSS http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/92952-1v1-zerg-steppes-of-war
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On October 19 2010 10:35 zbedlam wrote:Show nested quote +On October 19 2010 03:43 TheMilkMan wrote:On October 19 2010 01:06 TERATON wrote:On October 19 2010 00:57 Deathfairy wrote:
It is utterly pointless to critique bronze level play. All games come down to same things not building workers and not spending your money. Until gold you can literally pick A unit and make just that with good macro and win almost every game with zero scouting. Well that is my 2c anyway.
User was warned for this post I just dont get it why he got warned for this... Its true tbh. Just like day9 said... build pylons and probes/ scv's and sup depots/ drones and overlords + keep your money low. Warn day9? Because good habits start off early, and hes coming to a place that will teach him good habits at the begining instead of having to relearn everything at the end. @Rowen, First, what is your plan when you go into the game? Do you have a plan? I am not saying that you have to stick to said plan, but the fact that you have one. What I do, and I am a Diamond Terran, if you ever want some 1v1s let me know, I have a plan when I go in. For example, I see Zerg, I think in my mind, I am 3 raxing, building an engineering bay, getting stim, +1 weapons and slamming his expansion asap. Zerg will ALWAYS win the macro game. I scout with my scv and do my best to slow HIS expansion down. I can win 90% of the time on a 1 base game. So, develop a plan, but ALWAYS have contingencies. On the second game, you dropped a pool on 13, and a gas on 12. Did you have a purpose? Speedlings? Were you going to lair? What is your reasoning behind doing that. What was your overall plan/ At 3:38 you drop the spine crawler, you did this because you feared early harass from lings from the other player. Why not just make lings and a queen? Mind you, Im not saying it was a bad choice, just what prompted that thought process. You are asking for strategy comments, Ill do my best At 4:23 you beat off his first rush. You have him beat in scv count, you know this because you know that zerg can not build 2 units at once, that early of a rush means he sacrificed scv count, so expand. You will have him beat. Make some lings to defend. Zerg are a macro race, you already know this, you need monies to macro. Get better placement on your crawlers. At 730 your macro drops. Focus on Macro, get better at it. You have WAY to much monies. Way to much. If you notice, high level and programer zerg players, spread creep like a boss. You need the WHOLE map to be creeped up. I think spending the 150 for an additional queen to do this is worth it. SPREAD CREEP. GET THIS IN YOUR HEAD NOW. S P R E A D C R E E P. You didnt start spreading until almost 9 minutes. You have map control, move your crawlers up to your front door so they can support your units. YOU STILL HAVE TO MUCH MONEY! Build another hatchery in your base do something with it. The fellows that commented above have a point, you need to learn how to spend your money. You have to few drones, honestly. I know I am saying you have to much money as well, but you need to have about 25-30 drones at each base. You saw that he was going lings and roaches, why didnt you go mutas? Then you could harass and attack. Again, not saying wrong decision, but asking what your thoughts were. At 14 minutes you beat his army and had a standing army, you should have expanded. YOU HAVE TO MUCH MONEY. Good micro at 1530 at 18 I recomend attacking with your standing army, and using your mutas to kill his mineral line. YOU HAVE TO MUCH MONEY. Yea bad form to gg before opponet. :/ Your doing good for a bronze player, polish up a bit and I expect to see ya in Diamond. I tend to disagree with most of his general advice except the "YOU HAVE TOO MUCH MONEY" thing. Spreading creep for example is a wonderful thing, but by the looks of the game you didn't have the mechanical power to spend your money efficiently, creep is not important at all compared to efficient droning/spending of money, ignore the fact that high level players do it for now. As for the "go into the game with a plan" and the quoted example he gave is completely useless to a zerg player. Do not ever go into a game saying "i'm going roach/ling this game and am going to harass early" or whatever, zerg is a reactionary race and you must play it as such, your army composition will depend entirely on your opponents' army composition. Also just to be picky, terran will not ALWAYS lose to zerg in a macro game unless either a) the terran has inferior macro or b) the terran does not force the zerg to build an army. In regards to the game itself, you are better than any bronze player I have seen, your macro was far from perfect but it was better than most gold/platinum players i have seen and you actually scout which is rare below gold, I expect you to rise fast once you get the mechanical power to play zerg. Keep playing games, learn when you can and cannot build drones, build your muscle memory and i expect you to rise quickly. edit: do TRY to spread creep by all means but do not make it a priority over general resources management.
For one, we ARE talking about a bronze level player, and Im sorry, I totally disagree with the fact that, "I am going to react to everything the other player throws at me" I guess Im part of the old school where I prefer to force the player to react to me. Admittedly, I am a terran player and not a zerg player, and as it seems you ARE a zerg player, the only advice I can offer is from accross the battle lines. I do play Terran and I can say the one race I usually feel more comfortable with beating IS zerg. Not that I think that Terran is OP, but because I think zerg is just so hard to play. Thus, I will retract my advice in honor to yours, as I am a bronze level zerg player and a diamond level terran player. Also the fact that spreading creep NOW will help him develop good habit later? /shrug
I agree you are at the very least a high gold low plat player, especially once you fine tune your mechanics.
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Also the fact that spreading creep NOW will help him develop good habit later? /shrug
I agree, learning to spread creep is something that needs to be learned eventually, but generally players who have trouble spending their resources lack the mechanical practice to do so. He could follow either of our advice, I tend to find people will get better much quicker if they focus on something to improve on, rather than just general play and as such I just prioritised what should be improved on; but yeah either way would work fine imo.
Mass mutas works great up until platinum league when people will start going thors, so keep that in mind as you enjoy muta harass for a while yet.
This is 100% wrong, no other way to put it. Mutalisks will always be a standard unit in ZvT. I will explain why. Firstly in relation to thors, yes thors will demolish mutas if you 3a into them or w/e, however platinum level + zergs know how to "magic box" mutalisks against thors, if you search for this in TL forums you should get a guide on how to do it, PM me if you have any questions about it.
ZvT is all about containment on both sides, the terran player wants to contain the zerg so he doesn't expand all over the place and the zerg player wants to contain the terran so he doesnt drop/cliff abuse/expand and just generally use you as a punching bag. Mutalisks are the best unit to facilitate this bar none, infestors are the only other viable unit I have seen used in place of mutalisks for containment. (fungal growthing drops, slowing his push etc.) This applies at all levels, in fact i would go as far to say that mutalisks are even more useful at higher levels due to the ammount of utility they have that lower level players would not use.
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And speaking of mutas, I tried a FE build against a terran I didn't have pegged for early aggression. Kept the path to his base LINED with ovvies and the Watchtowers to have plenty of warning if I needed to mass lings, and went 16 Hatch 15 Pool (I think, maybe it was 16/16). Ended up with a GIANT economic advantage and pushed to Mutas to contain, which worked like a charm. A backtech to blings might have helped against the MMM but he pushed before I got the speed upgrade and I was micro'ing mutas when they all went poof so I honestly don't know how much damage they did. I ended up swarming his bio ball and wiping it out then rolling over his base with my huge econ lead. There's a bit of banter at the end -- again I haven't watched this replay, but he believes he could have rolled over me had he pushed when he originally scanned, which is possible, but with the advance warning I would have had from my scouting ovvies, I think I could have put out an army in time. Guess we'll never know. Also added to OP.
WIN http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/92997-1v1-terran-zerg-metalopolis
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You're definately getting the hang of zerg, if you use mutas you gotta be careful they are extremely fragile, I have lost plenty groups of mutas to a slight mistake and a group of thors
About overlord placement, you did very well. However do be careful because if you lose control of the game and have to go on the defensive they can go overlord hunting and cripple your supply/economy. This is less of a problem against terran though, they seem to be more content to turtle, also they have no real way to take air superiority from you, both zerg and toss opponents do.
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Bump a few days later with a new replay. I've progressed to Silver now and feel, as my opponent said at the end of the match, that I'm playing at a much higher level than I'm ranked. I'm still winning 66%+ of games and the ones I lose convincingly I watch the replay and think to myself "Who is this noob behind my keyboard?" For example a Scrap Station ZvP where I scout his complete wall-in, check his unit comp is VERY light on gateway units and he stays on one base, and think "Void rays void rays void rays void rays" but NEVER find a stargate. Instead of thinking he's proxying them like any normal player, I assume I'm wrong and he's just doing...nothing? Of course void rays show up and rape my three queens and I scramble to try to defend but lose 10 minutes later. I knew what he was doing, I was CONVINCED, then talked myself out of it and failed to defend the attack I knew should have been coming. *headdesk*
Here's the replay I wanted to show you though. I play a similar-rated Protoss on Metalopolis, do my now-usual 14pool to expand and scout his 2gate robo. I fend off his early pressure pretty well and harass for the rest of the game until he finally buckles under the weight of muta/ling. Please critique my macro, specifically, as my money got OBSCENELY high but I was simply unable to spend it! I eventually dropped a second hatch (my third, total) in my natural to get more larvae out but was still making more than I was spending. I couldn't justify getting another expo since HE hadn't, and in my experience if I overextend and take two more bases than the protoss player, he'll simply crush me with a larger army, but I couldn't seem to spend any more money! Should I drop more in-base hatches??
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I thought it was important to show the community how far I've come because of your help (and in no small part, day[9]'s dailies). I know this is a bit of a necro, but hopefully you'll indulge me my graciousness to those who helped me out from back when I thought having below 600 minerals was "good enough"
http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/105896-1v1-terran-zerg-scrap-station is my latest game, and actually my last game before promotion into Platinum. Near the end of the game my minerals still shoot a bit high but I was frankly out of things to spend it on until my newest expo finished. I three base an essentially one-basing Terran on Scrap Station who attempts some cute tank drop crap before being pretty well slaughtered by my ling/bling/muta gang.
My play has improved unbelievable amounts since I originally made this thread, and I wanted to thank you all for giving me the advice I needed to go from bronze noob to propelling up the ranks and hitting platinum. May diamond come soon~
Thanks,
Rowen
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It's always good to see bronze players try to improve, ask for help, then learn what you should be doing and then learn to actually do it and become a better player. Congrats on working your way up the ladder, instead of becoming a b.net forum poster complaining that zerg is underpowered.
7:30- You have a lot of drones... really a lot, and almost no army. Looks great for this particular game, but keep in mind that you'll be running into more players who will be putting 10 roaches or stalkers into your base by this point in the game.
Nothing much to the game after this. You have a giant econ advantage, easily shut down a weak drop, and completely overwhelm a considerably weaker player.
13:00- You have 2000 minerals... still need to spend a little faster. I recommend 1 (or more if needed) extra hatchery in your main for the sole purpose of extra larva, you can never have enough lings if you can afford them. Expansions are best of course, since they let you get more gas and make more non-zergling units. You could also spam spinecrawlers/spores at your newest and most vulnerable exp, if it feels threatened... just get rid of that money one way or another.
I have no doubt you'll be diamond soon, you did just about everything right in this game. Also your APM is double mine, and I've been in diamond since early on... just keep fighting the war against unspent minerals and soon I'll probably be asking you for advice. Come to think of it maybe I should post a thread and ask sometime... my APM's always been abysmal and I've never quite understood how even new players surpass me so easily, I must be doing something wrong.
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@ Chocobo: First, awesome name. :D Second, APM is about muscle memory and knowing your current move, your next move, and the 10 next moves after that. :D Having a plan, being able to modify that plan then going back to your plan when you dealt with the thing that interrupted your plan is a decent mindset to work with. Also, the key I found to improving my APM is to have a solid foundation of play, which is your macro. Injects, expanding, creep spread are the keys to solid Zerg play.
Using SC2Gears, my APM about 1 month ago was about 60APM, which in game APM is ATROCIOUS. It's like 40 APM in game. It was sad. Now I'm hovering around 90-100APM, which is roughly 70ish APM in game. Some of it is warm up spam in the beginning, but after I get 2 base and start my creep spread, upgrades, multiple injects, ect, I'm averaging around that 90-100 mark. Most of that is from trying to build a solid foundation of play. Watch the Day[9] Daily when he live coaches DJWheat, as it gives you a pretty good idea of what your thought process should be and what you should be clicking on or looking at.
ALSO NOTE: APM!=skill. APM means how fast can I click a button or mouse button. Watch other players. Is it wasted APM? Wasted APM=wasted mouse clicks=wasted time which could have been spent elsewhere. If your play is tight, and your mouse/hotkey clicks are efficiant, your APM may be lower, but each click has more benefit to your overall goal of victory.
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EPT
