|
I stopped playing sc2 roughly three months back when I caught a huge loss streak and got really discouraged by it. :D Now I feel like playing again and I hope to get some pointers. I was a low diamond zerg player if that matters, and I'm guessing I'm at most at low platinum now.
I remember the basic hotkeys and strategies and my micro has gotten at least a bit better as I've played today. Having said that, my macro is unbelievably bad, and every single game I've played today, whether I won or lost I've had over 1k minerals by the end.
The replay I uploaded is a custom game where I have over 1k minerals (at the end over 4k) for over 15 minutes and can't just seem to be able to get rid of them. Surprisingly I won the game in question but this game shows best out of all the games I've played today just how bad my macro is, and that's why I added this replay despite I won. Some advice would be much appreciated.
Replay url:
[url blocked]
|
Improving macro (although macro is a lot more than just keeping money low) is fairly straight forward as zerg. I'll watch the replay in a bit because these tips will help no matter what.
1) Get your larva injects down to the second. You should be using some hotkey setup to spawn larva quickly.
2) If you are producing just cheap units (lings, drones, roaches, not sure about blings) with your bases saturated then you will need an auxiliary queen/hatch pair thats not at an expo in order to maintain constant unit production without stockpiling. As a general rule for learning, if you find you are larva blocked, or closely so, then feel free to plop down an extra hatch and queen
3) If you find your minerals are getting high, spend extra on lings (see (2)), expansions/drones, or spine crawlers (not too many).
4) If you don't have a spire or ultracavern to sink extra gas into, then get more upgrades, also its OK to transfer guys off gas temporarily.
5) In general, if you tech to a hive and go for broodlords or ultras, your resources will drop incredibly quickly, because they cost very little larva to make, cost a ton of money, and take up less supply than spending that money on cheaper units.
gl
[/EDIT] Yeah, that seems about right, you were doing flawlessly until you pushed out, when you missed a larva inject for a bit. Your queens slowly started accumulating energy at that point aka not spawning as fast as possible (1). Then you switched to just roach production, and weren't able to sustain it (2). Your resources were high yet you stopped getting upgrades after 2/1 (I think) (4). As well, your minerals were high, and you were only on 3 base and didn't have gold, it can't hurt to throw down the expo (3) and a few spines. Finally, note how when you switched to producing ultras, your gas dropped down below 1k again? (5). And if you are maxed, its obviously ok to let your minerals stockpile as long as you are getting your larvae injects.
|
Thank you for the reply. Lots of good advice and I'll definitely have to remember this.
I've seen it discussed a lot, but what do you think is the best way to inject and for that matter, what should I do to avoid forgetting injections? I currently have all hatcheries on 4, and then each single hatchery paired to a queen on 5,6,7... etc. and then press 55 + v and target hatchery and so on, but I'm not sure if this is the best way to do it. I have heard about the backspace injection method but if I've understood it correctly that requires me to take my right hand off the mouse(?) and I don't really like that. Any thoughts?
Also, when you build an auxiliary hatchery do you always buy an additional queen for it, or will you simply use the nearby queens excess energy on the auxiliary hatchery in case you forget to inject for a while?
More advice is welcome. 
|
On January 09 2011 02:13 Teaboar wrote:I have heard about the backspace injection method but if I've understood it correctly that requires me to take my right hand off the mouse(?) and I don't really like that. Any thoughts? Also, when you build an auxiliary hatchery do you always buy an additional queen for it, or will you simply use the nearby queens excess energy on the auxiliary hatchery in case you forget to inject for a while? More advice is welcome.
Iirc, you put your left hand/fingers on the right-side shift, not the right hand/fingers. Also, for the auxiliary hatchery, yes you need an extra queen. Just put it next to your main hatchery and hotkey the double queens and double hatcheries, and you can still easily inject.
When you have excess queen energy, you will usually have excess minerals, so you might want to get an extra hatch again.
Also, imo, it's a good idea to use the queen's excess energy once for creep tumours. So if you have 3 queens with excess energy, just plop down creep tumours.
|
As well, once patch 1.3 hits, you will be able to change around your hotkeys. I plan on switching space and backspace functionality.
More information on the Shift+backspace method is available Here
|
Oh okay, for some reason I thought you had to press v+right shift+backspace all at once, but I guess not. In any case I think I wont use that method yet if I'll be able to bind the hotkeys differently in the near(?) future.
I've played some more games and I could use some more pointers. I haven't uploaded any more replays but I'll try to explain instead. The first problem is that I absolutely suck at mirror games. I really don't remember what to do, since basically every diamond zerg I've played has beaten me. I really dislike it when both players go for speedlings and banelings since my micro isn't good, so I usually go for roaches. What tends to happen is that he just spawns truckloads of speedlings and harasses my expo and my main while my roaches are either on the other side of the map or trying to keep up with the speedlings at my base which is fairly pointless. I've tried throwing up a few spine crawlers in the mineral line but generally the speedlings still do their job an put me pretty far behind and that's when he hits me with mutas and that's usually game.
The other matchup I'm having problems with is when I play vs a protoss that fast expands. I know that I should stay one base ahead of my opponent, but I have a very hard time doing that since I'm afraid that he'll walk right over me when I invest everything into my economy.
Aside from that I was wondering if the standard build orders for zerg have changed in the last few months? I generally go for 15pool, 14hatch when I play against protoss or terran and 13pool, 12 gas when playing vs zerg. Would I be better off using a different build order?
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
