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On January 25 2011 07:00 Danger-dog wrote:
Yeah, rock beats scissors beats paper, but sometimes, if you do it right, 3 rocks will beat paper
This, my dear sir, very much sums up one of the fundamental truths of starcraft 2.
Maybe even of Life itself 
Great Thread, all players should learn from this thread, macro is ALWAYS necessary and ALWAYS slips at some points even in master league.
I'm an upper diamond random player and my macro is really bad, if you are below diamond you can be pretty sure that your macro is terrible.
Oh and noone is saying that you shouldn't scout while macroing, that would be dumb, right?
ZERG
On another note: Zerg is THE macro race and as such they have to macro the most, as a zerg you need more hatcheries which will let you produce more units AND expand at the same time...
If you macro well as zerg you will have so much minerals and larvae that you can fend off attacks in the last minute by producing the units u need.
Rule of thumb: build drones until you need units.
Small build order example:
drones till 9-10 supply - > overlord
drones till 14 -> hatch at natural
drone then pool and extractor
drones till 16 supply-> overlord
Queen when pool finishes
2 spines at natural when finished
2 zerglings
continue making drones and overlords and get another queen in near future
this is a very simple basic build which is pretty safe - the 2 zerglings you should use to scout your opponent. leave 1 at xel naga and 1 in front of enemies base. if they die make another set.
this way you will always have a warning when ur opponent moves out.
If you kept up drone and larvae production you will in almost all cases be able to produce enough units and spine crawlers to hold off the attack in time.
best unit for this is the roach, FE into mass roach can win you SOOOOOOOO many games even in diamond, add in 3-4 queens and you will be safe from most air harrass as well.
As a zerg macro also means to know when to start making units and when to make drones again, which is largely dependant on scouting.
It's a bit harder for zerg but zergs also profit from it more than the other races, since zerg armies are not very micro intensive.
TERRAN
this macro style actually works ridiculously well with marines, them being the most versatile, most cost-efficient unit in the game. I have a friend who played himself into diamond EXCLUSIVELY doing 5 rax marine pushes.
He didn't even know the different damage types or unit counters or even which units could shoot air and/or ground, other than the fact that marines shot everything. just lol
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On January 27 2011 17:43 Vari wrote:
make a reasonable amount of units along with the drones
it can't be that hard to blind balance, it's not an all or nothing game right? you'd never be able to make enough units in a single wave if that was the case
I'm not so sure. You can't defend a 4-gate, even a slightly sloppy one, just by making a 'reasonable amount of units' blind - and even if you could, the same 'reasonable amount of units' would die to phoenix play, or void rays, or a zealot rush. 'Reasonable' for Zerg seems too dependent on what your opponent is doing.
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Ok, so now we know we can get into diamond with pure macro, and we can get into diamond with pure cheese, or by purely 4gating ...
But every one dimensional player will hit a wall at some point. And at that point he will either not be able to even recognize his weaknesses, or if he does, will have a very hard time improving on them, because of trained habits, and because his opponents outclass him so vastly in those aspects.
And then there is also the fun aspect. I'd be having nightmares if I'd do the same thing for hours and hours. If I'd wanna grind, I'd play WoW.
This insistence that macro is the only right way to play is just as stupid as this insistence that macro doesn't matter.
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On January 27 2011 20:43 imbecile wrote:
Ok, so now we know we can get into diamond with pure macro, and we can get into diamond with pure cheese, or by purely 4gating ...
But every one dimensional player will hit a wall at some point. And at that point he will either not be able to even recognize his weaknesses, or if he does, will have a very hard time improving on them, because of trained habits, and because his opponents outclass him so vastly in those aspects.
And then there is also the fun aspect. I'd be having nightmares if I'd do the same thing for hours and hours. If I'd wanna grind, I'd play WoW.
This insistence that macro is the only right way to play is just as stupid as this insistence that macro doesn't matter.
Well, I think what's going on here is that macro isn't the only way to play, but it's the best way to develop solid play. Macro builds the fundamentals; everything else builds on top of that.
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Macro is the thing you should be starting with. Being able to use hotkeys, keep making workers and keeping your money low in the process. Eventually you will come to a point that pure macro can't win you games anymore, which is somewhere in diamond league. This is actually the first real moment you have to think of strategies and timings. But that's okay, since your macro is already solid, so strategies and timings will be easy to practice, because you can macro well without too much effort anymore. People in lower leagues usually get caught up in doing some fancy drop stuff, or strategy stuff that at some point they get back at their base to macro and they are like: Oh shit I've got 2000 minerals, totally forgot making units! And at the meantime forgetting to expand again, losing the game in the process
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On January 27 2011 17:15 InsaniaK wrote:
I wish it was this easy... Zergs can't just macro since we need non-stop scouting and constantly choosing between units and drones.
What's it with the Zerg martyr complex?
I mean yeah even if they have timing windows and army weaknesses to be exploited at higher levels that should be no issue in Bronze-Plat.
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On January 27 2011 21:15 diLLa wrote:
Macro is the thing you should be starting with. Being able to use hotkeys, keep making workers and keeping your money low in the process. Eventually you will come to a point that pure macro can't win you games anymore, which is somewhere in diamond league. This is actually the first real moment you have to think of strategies and timings. But that's okay, since your macro is already solid, so strategies and timings will be easy to practice, because you can macro well without too much effort anymore. People in lower leagues usually get caught up in doing some fancy drop stuff, or strategy stuff that at some point they get back at their base to macro and they are like: Oh shit I've got 2000 minerals, totally forgot making units! And at the meantime forgetting to expand again, losing the game in the process
Micro is the thing you should be starting with. Being able to use hotkeys, keep moving units and keeping your health high in the process. Eventually you will come to a point that pure micro can't win you games anymore, which is somewhere in diamond league. This is actually the first real moment you have to think of strategies and timings. But that's okay, since your micro is already solid, so strategies and timings will be easy to practice, because you can micro well without too much effort anymore. People in lower leagues usually get caught up in doing some mindless mass unit stuff, or strategy stuff that at some point they get back at their army to micro and they are like: Oh shit I've lost everything, totally forgot using units! And at the meantime forgetting to pressure again, losing the game in the process
See, without changing much letters, you can make the case for the opposite. Which is just demonstrating that there is no real argument for "macro rules everything". You need a more or less balanced mechanical skill set without letting anything slip too far behind.
Because if you have spent maybe 5-10% of your actions on your units, and you hit a wall at some point, because your opponents (gasp!) attack you where your army isn't, it's not like you can suddenly increase your APM 100% on actions you absolutely didn't train so far. You will have t absolutely relearn your whole playstyle.
You'll have to reshift focus, and suddenly your macro isn't what it used to be and your whole game falls apart, because timings don't work out anymore etc.
An efficient economy is very powerful. But it's also very fragile. The classic example is the pylon that powers 6 gateways ...
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So many people saying stuff like "macro isn't the only way" blabla. You're NOT freaking getting it. Macro isn't a way of play, it's the fundamentals behind your way to play. If I 12-14-15 rax marine rush for cheesy epicness I still need to make my supply depots, train my marines, time my buildings unless I want to stop reinforcing & lol about on 500+ resources.
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On January 27 2011 22:32 Schwopzi wrote:
So many people saying stuff like "macro isn't the only way" blabla. You're NOT freaking getting it. Macro isn't a way of play, it's the fundamentals behind your way to play. If I 12-14-15 rax marine rush for cheesy epicness I still need to make my supply depots, train my marines, time my buildings unless I want to stop reinforcing & lol about on 500+ resources.
And you re acting as if you don't need anything else. As if anyone is not macroing at all. I'm not assuming you never give any command to any unit either. Why? Because that's stupid.
You can't win games without moving units. You can't win games without producing units. Well, actually you can, but I won't dwell on that.
You can't win games without decision making, because nothing will happen. I don't say that, because it is stupid.
I also won't say that even more basic than micro and macro and decision making is game understanding, because you won't be able to do any of it without. Why? Because that's just as stupid.
Just improve your game understanding, your macro, your unit control, you map awareness, your decision making, all of it. Focus on what you like more. But don't start going around saying you only need one of those, or you don't need one of those.
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On January 27 2011 19:56 Umpteen wrote:Show nested quote +On January 27 2011 17:43 Vari wrote:
make a reasonable amount of units along with the drones
it can't be that hard to blind balance, it's not an all or nothing game right? you'd never be able to make enough units in a single wave if that was the case I'm not so sure. You can't defend a 4-gate, even a slightly sloppy one, just by making a 'reasonable amount of units' blind - and even if you could, the same 'reasonable amount of units' would die to phoenix play, or void rays, or a zealot rush. 'Reasonable' for Zerg seems too dependent on what your opponent is doing.
Most platinum or lower 4-gates and similar are like 1 minute late or more. In that 1 minute, you can have a massive unit advantage even if you're doing like... blind mass roach. Behold the power of better macro. Heck, mass roach is a pretty decent way of dealing with getting 4gated anyway - as long as you're on creep, stalkers can't really kite you.
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On January 27 2011 23:35 sylverfyre wrote:Show nested quote +On January 27 2011 19:56 Umpteen wrote:On January 27 2011 17:43 Vari wrote:
make a reasonable amount of units along with the drones
it can't be that hard to blind balance, it's not an all or nothing game right? you'd never be able to make enough units in a single wave if that was the case I'm not so sure. You can't defend a 4-gate, even a slightly sloppy one, just by making a 'reasonable amount of units' blind - and even if you could, the same 'reasonable amount of units' would die to phoenix play, or void rays, or a zealot rush. 'Reasonable' for Zerg seems too dependent on what your opponent is doing. Most platinum or lower 4-gates and similar are like 1 minute late or more. In that 1 minute, you can have a massive unit advantage even if you're doing like... blind mass roach. Behold the power of better macro. Heck, mass roach is a pretty decent way of dealing with getting 4gated anyway - as long as you're on creep, stalkers can't really kite you.
false, 10-15 seconds maybe.
Also, the point of this test was to win with pure macro. Also meaning no scouting. Therefore there would be no way to know a 4 gate is coming, no units, no spine crawler, dead.The point is pure macro right? So with zerg's mechanics that means you will have only produced drones and a couple of queens to defend yourself.
Obviously it was the principle of the thing, zerg's playstyle is entirely different, the race basically forces you to swap between macro and micro, neglect one and you die at any level.
Obviously macro is fundamental, obviously mine is still subpar. I am working on it. I don't think many people actually dispute the fact that macro is incredibly important, but "just macro and anyone will be in diamond 2000" comments are false. Starcraft is too complex to be described like that. Some people also just aren't as good, I'm still in gold and slowly climbing, I can assure you I focus on macro unless I'm on Steppes of War ZvT.
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United States99 Posts
On January 24 2011 14:46 Linconis wrote:
I don't doubt having extremely good macro would get you up to diamond. However, I look at the game a bit differently. Yes, macro is important to the game, but that doesn't overshadow the other fundamentals. It's like any other complex activity. All the fundamentals matter. I'd rather be medicore and well rounded with the ability to improve all of those skills than just be a macro monster who has to go back and relearn all the other fundamentals.
I don't doubt this is accurate, but its almost seems the same as if tiger woods played a round with only his 5 iron and then was like "See, You can get into the PGA just by having a good swing"
But to each his own. I just play this game for fun.
+5 for that awesome analogy 
And I have to agree with you, I think players with a ton of RTS experience just aren't in touch with how a lot of the skills that come naturally to them are more difficult for first timers to learn. While playing random 2v2 at Gold level, I see a lot of games where all the players are macroing pretty much evenly, but none of them know how to scout effectively, and although I will often fall behind in macro, I will be able to catch up because my superior scouting will allow me to deny expansions and harass much more effectively then my opponents.
I'm not arguing against the main point though, if I improved my macro I know I would do much much better, I just think that effective map control and scouting alone will win a ton of games at lower levels.
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On January 27 2011 23:35 sylverfyre wrote:Show nested quote +On January 27 2011 19:56 Umpteen wrote:On January 27 2011 17:43 Vari wrote:
make a reasonable amount of units along with the drones
it can't be that hard to blind balance, it's not an all or nothing game right? you'd never be able to make enough units in a single wave if that was the case I'm not so sure. You can't defend a 4-gate, even a slightly sloppy one, just by making a 'reasonable amount of units' blind - and even if you could, the same 'reasonable amount of units' would die to phoenix play, or void rays, or a zealot rush. 'Reasonable' for Zerg seems too dependent on what your opponent is doing. Most platinum or lower 4-gates and similar are like 1 minute late or more. In that 1 minute, you can have a massive unit advantage even if you're doing like... blind mass roach. Behold the power of better macro. Heck, mass roach is a pretty decent way of dealing with getting 4gated anyway - as long as you're on creep, stalkers can't really kite you.
can someone explain to me (since im a noob) how to blind mass roach? cause usually i scout and build roaches when i see the opponent moving out.. whats a good drone/overlord/roach ratio to build to be able to blind mass roach? (is assuming 6 larva per cycle accurate? 2for normal larva and 4 from queen?)
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It's cool because now I can show this to my friends who go 'nah man it doesn't work'
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u cant just macro purely wthout scouting. be prepared for that too
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On January 27 2011 22:22 imbecile wrote:Show nested quote +On January 27 2011 21:15 diLLa wrote:
Macro is the thing you should be starting with. Being able to use hotkeys, keep making workers and keeping your money low in the process. Eventually you will come to a point that pure macro can't win you games anymore, which is somewhere in diamond league. This is actually the first real moment you have to think of strategies and timings. But that's okay, since your macro is already solid, so strategies and timings will be easy to practice, because you can macro well without too much effort anymore. People in lower leagues usually get caught up in doing some fancy drop stuff, or strategy stuff that at some point they get back at their base to macro and they are like: Oh shit I've got 2000 minerals, totally forgot making units! And at the meantime forgetting to expand again, losing the game in the process Micro is the thing you should be starting with. Being able to use hotkeys, keep moving units and keeping your health high in the process. Eventually you will come to a point that pure micro can't win you games anymore, which is somewhere in diamond league. This is actually the first real moment you have to think of strategies and timings. But that's okay, since your micro is already solid, so strategies and timings will be easy to practice, because you can micro well without too much effort anymore. People in lower leagues usually get caught up in doing some mindless mass unit stuff, or strategy stuff that at some point they get back at their army to micro and they are like: Oh shit I've lost everything, totally forgot using units! And at the meantime forgetting to pressure again, losing the game in the process See, without changing much letters, you can make the case for the opposite. Which is just demonstrating that there is no real argument for "macro rules everything". You need a more or less balanced mechanical skill set without letting anything slip too far behind. Because if you have spent maybe 5-10% of your actions on your units, and you hit a wall at some point, because your opponents (gasp!) attack you where your army isn't, it's not like you can suddenly increase your APM 100% on actions you absolutely didn't train so far. You will have t absolutely relearn your whole playstyle. You'll have to reshift focus, and suddenly your macro isn't what it used to be and your whole game falls apart, because timings don't work out anymore etc. An efficient economy is very powerful. But it's also very fragile. The classic example is the pylon that powers 6 gateways ...
Of course you double pylon important stuff. That's not related with micro, so sorry.
Also, your "opposite".
A "classic" example is a stalker vs 2 zealots. The stalker can micro endlessly against the 2 zealots, but his macro really is terrible. The macro user, however, just needs to send the 2 zealots and start macro-ing again. He reappears with 4 zealots now as his economy just became efficient, and the micro user can't do anything.
Decision making is important, but it's not micro. It's a whole different category from micro and macro, so I wouldn't bring it up in a micro vs macro situation. If you can defend cheese and just macro like a beast, sending 10 zealots vs 8 super micro stalkers is worth it as you can replenish. Units lost doesn't matter if you can create an even bigger force 2 minutes later.
Macro-ing vs zerg is a whole different topic, imo.
An efficient economy can replenish despite probe losses. Can a 1 base micro user do that?
Chrono-boost + rally to mineral line and all of a sudden your economy is back on track because you had a good one in the first place.
Micro-ing should come second. Once you become a great macro-er, if you can combine micro-ing with it you'll be a great player.
Having 5 stalkers attack compared to 3 stalkers is better, right? Now, if you can slowly learn to micro, it'll be much easier than learning to micro than macro.
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On January 28 2011 09:35 iChau wrote:
Having 5 stalkers attack compared to 3 stalkers is better, right? Now, if you can slowly learn to micro, it'll be much easier than learning to micro than macro.
"Focus firing is better than spreading damage, right? Now if you slowly learn to replenish faster, It's be a lot easier than learning to macro then micro."
Still the same. Even if your macro is twice as good as mine, if I focus fire and move my low health units out, I'm killing you more than twice as fast. And I won't mine out as fast.
Not to mention that it's easier to learn to micro with lower unit counts, and the benefits are more significant there too. And it's also easier to improve your macro from there, exactly because macro is mainly mindless button mashing at certain intervals, without having to even leave the battle.
If you have big armies, and never really looked at the battles before, good luck with improving under those circumstances. Unlike with sprinkling more macro into your play, which can be done gradually without upsetting your style too much, if you want to improve micro on top of power macro, you really have to relearn the whole game almost from scratch. Because this is when you start multitasking. And this is where you really need mouse precision. This is where you really need to learn to read formations and positions and angles.
Concentrating on macro may yield the fastest and strongest initial results. But it also just means that the wall you will hit is just that much harder and higher.
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On January 28 2011 11:52 imbecile wrote:Show nested quote +On January 28 2011 09:35 iChau wrote:
Having 5 stalkers attack compared to 3 stalkers is better, right? Now, if you can slowly learn to micro, it'll be much easier than learning to micro than macro. "Focus firing is better than spreading damage, right? Now if you slowly learn to replenish faster, It's be a lot easier than learning to macro then micro." Still the same. Even if your macro is twice as good as mine, if I focus fire and move my low health units out, I'm killing you more than twice as fast. And I won't mine out as fast. Not to mention that it's easier to learn to micro with lower unit counts, and the benefits are more significant there too. And it's also easier to improve your macro from there, exactly because macro is mainly mindless button mashing at certain intervals, without having to even leave the battle. If you have big armies, and never really looked at the battles before, good luck with improving under those circumstances. Unlike with sprinkling more macro into your play, which can be done gradually without upsetting your style too much, if you want to improve micro on top of power macro, you really have to relearn the whole game almost from scratch. Because this is when you start multitasking. And this is where you really need mouse precision. This is where you really need to learn to read formations and positions and angles. Concentrating on macro may yield the fastest and strongest initial results. But it also just means that the wall you will hit is just that much harder and higher.
Try the 5 stalkers vs 3 stalkers with the unit tester. Micro, and show a replay. I'll teach you something.
You might be able to win, but soon after you see 4 stalkers come. The cycle repeats.
Some basic micro-ing is just allowing most of your units to attack, that's a given, if you know how to macro, you can easily move your army in to allow a nice arc. That's a basic micro tactic that easily allows you to start macro-ing again. Doesn't require much.
Also, macro-ing is rather a very fast sequence of actions, so it's comparable with multi-tasking as well. Make probes. Check warp gates. Warp in. Make pylons. Move units. Make probes. Check warp gates. If you're able to micro and multi-task units like a beast (you act like it), then you can become a macro beast as well.
Also, mining out fast is only if you're 1 basing. That's dumb. A macro-user tends to expand a lot and have great income. If my macro is twice as good as yours, that's 8 stalkers vs 4 stalkers. You want to micro 4 stalkers against 8 stalkers? Lol, you can try, but more stalkers will come like I said in my 1st sentence, and nonetheless I bet the 8 stalkers will be able to kill the 4 stalkers even without micro-ing.
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yesterday i was plat toss with 31-23 win/loss around 750 points with 6 months of not touching sc2 at all and only 4gate experience, then i saw this thread and looked out for an Terran "macro build order" because i wanted to switch my race..
i found this http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=185963
i played the whole night from 0oclock untill now and im in diamond now with nearly 2000 points and 23 more wins than losses
the whole thing i did was doing the build order again and again, after i executed the build order from the thread, i was just making siege tanks to defend the expansions and expand really hard. after that i "countered" what the enemy was building (unit wise)
so i say macro only can work
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I recently coached a friend of mine, who was in bronze after 400 games, all the way to diamond on only macro in only 140 games.
His promotion to the diamond league is conclusive evidence that macro alone will get you there since he has literally the worst unit control in the world, no understanding of the game and is even unable to use hotkeys due to being terrible.
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EPT
