Reddit starcraft has recently been plagued by a lot of discussion around some lower level players complaining about the advice they get from diamond/masters level players. The usual advice is "focus on macro, you can get to diamond by macro alone". The complaints had to do with bronze/silver players saying they faced more cheese so they don't get to macro.
One redditor decided to put it to the test. He made a guest account, threw his placement matches, and then proceeded to play games just macro'ing to near max army of strictly stalkers then a-moving to victory.
I figured it was worth reposting this over here as I see a lot of the same conversations going on in the [L] strategy threads here (I'm only a platinum myself) and it's nice to see an attempt at some actual evidence behind an argument.
I might quibble that this is a pretty expansive definition of macro (he is doing a number of basic mechanical things at a much higher level that his opponents), but it's a pretty interesting experiment and he's obviously not using any unit composition or micro tricks.
I dunno, he didn't play many games and was playing high leaguers pretty quickly. Also, I want to see him try again as zerg. As zerg, you must adapt or you will die, at any level. You would have to have ridiculously good macro to beat for example a deathball protoss or biomech terran. As with no micro, you will get crushed in one battle and lose it all.
Of course macro is the main skill that will increase one's rank, but simply saying "only macro and you will be in diamond" is plain wrong. I'm in gold now, playing sivelr-platinum level players and there are a lot of timing pushes and aggressive plays that I just wouldn't be able to handle at all if I didn't scout and react.
EDIT: And ZvZ, it just won't work there period. Such a volatile match-up, being beaten in a paper, scissors rock without scouting your opponent you don't have a hope.
On January 24 2011 13:56 Tomo009 wrote: I dunno, he didn't play many games and was playing high leaguers pretty quickly. Also, I want to see him try again as zerg. As zerg, you must adapt or you will die, at any level. You would have to have ridiculously good macro to beat for example a deathball protoss or biomech terran. As with no micro, you will get crushed in one battle and lose it all.
Of course macro is the main skill that will increase one's rank, but simply saying "only macro and you will be in diamond" is plain wrong. I'm in gold now, playing sivelr-platinum level players and there are a lot of timing pushes and aggressive plays that I just wouldn't be able to handle at all if I didn't scout and react.
As a master league Zerg, i can tell you that macroing hard will get you definetly into diamond even as zerg. Protoss deathballs are deathballs because they can reach to that point without losing the game before or letting you get 5 bases, in bronze-plat, you can get to 200/200 before they get to that point (can't tell you how much faster i can max than people from that league, but if you macro correctly you can get like 3-10 minutes faster depending on how bad is the other player).
Just to note, i was given a new account like 3 months ago, and i went 15-0 only doing muta/ling every game, in any mu, so trust the people that tell you to macro, because it actually work, and is the fastest way to get to diamond/master.
OP thanks for sharing this, even day9 talked about doing just stalkers and seing ow far he could get, but i think he didnt have the time to do it
as zerg you should mass roaches and 200/200 roaches will beat any bronze-plat player (except if he mass air) composition, since basicly u'll have double his army, as this posts graph shows. zvz no exception(except mutas again in which case u should just mass hydra).
Macro isn't everything. However, it is the backbone of any strategy. If your macro is limiting your strategy, it becomes difficult to say what counters what, which tactics are useful in a given situation, simply because getting supply blocked and forgetting production cycles will make anything you do weaker than its potential. There is a reason pros and higher players alike say macro can get you to Diamond; macro is the limiting factor -- you can't really develop a good game sense or strategic repertoire if macro is limiting your play.
This sums up the argument for practicing macro nicely, if your macro is not excellent you are holding yourself back and everything you do will be naturally weaker.
On January 24 2011 13:56 Tomo009 wrote: I dunno, he didn't play many games and was playing high leaguers pretty quickly. Also, I want to see him try again as zerg. As zerg, you must adapt or you will die, at any level. You would have to have ridiculously good macro to beat for example a deathball protoss or biomech terran. As with no micro, you will get crushed in one battle and lose it all.
Of course macro is the main skill that will increase one's rank, but simply saying "only macro and you will be in diamond" is plain wrong. I'm in gold now, playing sivelr-platinum level players and there are a lot of timing pushes and aggressive plays that I just wouldn't be able to handle at all if I didn't scout and react.
As a master league Zerg, i can tell you that macroing hard will get you definetly into diamond even as zerg. Protoss deathballs are deathballs because they can reach to that point without losing the game before or letting you get 5 bases, in bronze-plat, you can get to 200/200 before they get to that point (can't tell you how much faster i can max than people from that league, but if you macro correctly you can get like 3-10 minutes faster depending on how bad is the other player).
Just to note, i was given a new account like 3 months ago, and i went 15-0 only doing muta/ling every game, in any mu, so trust the people that tell you to macro, because it actually work, and is the fastest way to get to diamond/master.
OP thanks for sharing this, even day9 talked about doing just stalkers and seing ow far he could get, but i think he didnt have the time to do it
I have no reason to doubt you and I'm certain that you can macro much harder than anyone I play. I do focus on macro, but my opponents like to take advantage of that. Especially biomech terran will set up defensive tank positions meaning once I get to 200/200, it doesn't matter as attacking into them would be suicide and they are basically free to split the map and catch up economically. And deathball protoss obviously the key is to have a larger army, but once they have critical mass colossi, my ground army is dead before my corruptors have a chance to take them out, no hope at all if I don't micro corruption and focus fire.
Also the massive amount of 2gate/proxygate/2rax/3raxallin etc on the NA server means it is necessary to have a reasonably early scout, I usually do at 14 at the same time as my gas.
well, it might be true that u can bruteforce ur way into low diamond by macro alone, but imho the higher level players are making it very easy for themselves to always only point out to the generic "bad macro" when lower players ask for help. often times, there are very obvious and more severe flaws in the play of gold/plat level players which simply get overlooked because every1 cries "hurrr durrrr ur macro suxxx, get better macro and u get to 3.5k masters level easily" whenever they see a single missed worker before the 8 minute mark.....
actually the graph of his game against the platinum player shows that the plat player had about the same ability to pump out units as he did, he just won because he went for the upgrades quicker. which is actually less of a macro ability than a longterm strategical decision which can be considered "expert/experience knowledge".
other than that, mass stalkers is by far the strongest t1 unit to mass mindlessly.
so yes, macro is the most important one of the fundamentals, and it can get u to high plat /low diamond on its own. but still i dont think a player should only start to think about anything like timings, strategy or micro once his macro has reached absolute perfection.
Try abusing mobility. If you have a better eco/better army as Z, try doing something like nydus worming into their base. If they're tanked up around the outside of your base, you can just throw away units into his main/expansions, because they can get replaced instantly. He'll take losses and/or have to withdraw.
The results of the experiment was completely expected. I'm currently a master league terran and I'm pretty sure I can get into diamond just by macroing stalkers and a-moving them. A lot of people are arguing for the sake of arguing - for instance, some ppl claim that just purely macroing will cost some games. Of course it is going to! However, what they fail to realise is that good macro will win more games in the long run.
For those zerg players wanting to repeat this experiment, I'll advice them to just mass hydra/roach. I'm pretty sure it'll work fairly effectively.
Macro is so important for someone just starting sc2. Knowing how sc2 econ works is huge and definitely should be the priority for beginning players. Obviously, once your good enough on macro you can incorporate things like scouting, reacting, micro, unit compositions, harassment etc into your game.
Nothing new here. Macro alone will easily get you into the 80th percentile, as shown. It's cool that he actually put his money where his mouth to put some tangible results next to the claim though.
like others have said macro is the success to winning battles. But at the same time a common T strat is the bioball. And marine/maurader can easily be rolled over by bling/ling, respectively.
Add me to the list of Zerg gold/platinums wanting to see the zerg equivalent to this "macro only, no scouting" strategy. i don't care how many roaches you have, one tank/thor drop on LT and AFAIK you are toast. Or voids harassing your mineral line on pretty much any map. I want to know the magic Zerg build order that will win without scouting. Mass hydra is not the same as mass stalker. I lose plenty of games where I have more food, more workers/bases, and more minerals/gas invested in my army. Will that same build order plus a-moving really beat a 15 nexus, an all in 4 gate, cannon contain, bunker contain, mass banshees, speedling all in, early mutas, or 1 base roach, all of which i my gold/plat opponents are capable of doing?
Why do people use absolutes? Why do some people take it literally? It's for the bronze-plat players that watch day9 to learn diamond-level strategies, without never becoming better since they don't understand that starcraft is 75%mechanics and 25% strategy on their level. Everyone should have the apm to keep up a solid economy while not rolling their banelings straight to siege line.
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.
Macro is the fundamental to learn. Everything else becomes rather simple to add to your play once macro becomes second nature, and execution ends up being much smoother as well.
Seems like all the platinum and lower players and still saying the same stuff even after this guy did this "experiment". I'm not saying that one guy doing this proves everything he claimed, but I'd say that's at least some solid evidence. Yet all lower level players continue on saying the same things.
I knew NOTHING about unit counters and things such as bonus damage to light/armored/etc. or any build orders. I didn't even use chrono boost or research warp gate technology (used mostly stargate/robo units). My apm was probably about 50ish, definitely much lower than 100. I went 3-2 placed into platinum then ended up getting like 24-14 into diamond.
I mean clearly you shouldn't focus ONLY on macro and do stalkers only every game like he did, but simply by improving macro and continually using resources you should naturally get better at the game. If you remember to continually produce units and workers then eventually you'll end up having more time left over to do other things like scout or upgrade/research tech/harass/etc.
When it comes down to it...just get better? I mean I'm not pro or ranked or anything but I have plenty of friends that play and complain about every aspect of starcraft and are too focused on the small things and advanced high level play rather than basics and fundamentals (primarily, MACRO).
They lose a game while sitting on 3.5k min and 2k gas and wonder what unit composition/counters and what micro tactics or gimmicks they needed to win.
I have done the same thing with a friend of mine (Terran). Hasn't played RTS ever previously, 0-5 in placement, Bronze. Told him how to make units and a-move them into the opponents base. Platinum within 5 days, Diamond a week later.
People don't say "focus on your macro" without a reason.
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"
This is the best analogy I've ever heard, this! Except macro really is the most important thing, but will not solely win you matches against people anywhere near your skill level. Hurr Durr micro will make you lose 100% of the time as well.
Of course people who are already great at the game look down on us and say if you macro liek me without anything else you will succeed. A better test would be to get someone who is only jsut starting to only ever macro, 3 for each race, 1000 games, then I will see this as a decent size data set to make conclusions from so people can be annoying and unhelpful.
We KNOW macro is the fundamental, we play that way, we are just not perfect at the game yet, without developing the other skills to supplement our macro, we will not get to test our macro against better players and improve further.
That was half a rant, but if a low level player is asking advice, don't just tell them to macro more, tell them all the large problems you notice in their game, sure you don't need to tell them about every tiny misclick, but also help on things like building placement, timing etc.
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"
This is the best analogy I've ever heard, this! Except macro really is the most important thing, but will not solely win you matches against people anywhere near your skill level. Hurr Durr micro will make you lose 100% of the time as well.
Of course people who are already great at the game look down on us and say if you macro liek me without anything else you will succeed. A better test would be to get someone who is only jsut starting to only ever macro, 3 for each race, 1000 games, then I will see this as a decent size data set to make conclusions from so people can be annoying and unhelpful.
We KNOW macro is the fundamental, we play that way, we are just not perfect at the game yet, without developing the other skills to supplement our macro, we will not get to test our macro against better players and improve further.
That was half a rant, but if a low level player is asking advice, don't just tell them to macro more, tell them all the large problems you notice in their game, sure you don't need to tell them about every tiny misclick, but also help on things like building placement, timing etc.
The problem is that for the vast majority of low level players, their macro flaws are infinitely more important than any other problems they might have. No sane high level player is going to look at a silver league player and point out a building placement flaw when he had 4k minerals and 2k gas after 10 minutes. Things like building placement or even timing really just don't matter if you can't macro decently.
I've hung around in a few low level channels recently and tried to help people out a bit. It amazes me every time how off they are in their analysis of their own flaws. Almost every single time they'll type something like 'I should have gotten a warp prism and harrassed more'. No, you had 4k gas. Make some freaking units. Low level players seem to treat their games as if they were playing chess, trying to outwit their opponents, where really, until you reach a high level, SC's a very very simple game of just making some goddamn units.
edit: Another thing is that things like timing really just can't be taught unless the player has a basic grasp of macro. How am I supposed to tell someone when to put down his forward pylon for a 4 gate when his warpgate upgrade is delayed by a minute because he forgot to chrono boost and his gates aren't even finished when warpgate finishes? Concepts like timing assume reasonably tight build orders from both players to have any meaning.
edit2: There ARE some other things that are important. Scouting for instance is important even at a very low level. However I'm confident I can beat any platinum and below player easily with nothing but roaches just by scouting and macroing well.
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.
Well, this is just it. How does someone get better at golf? By having good mechanics (swing and putting well). Anything else is really superflous at their level. I'll argue that macro is the only true fundamental. All others are more easily learnt than it.
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"
This is the best analogy I've ever heard, this! Except macro really is the most important thing, but will not solely win you matches against people anywhere near your skill level. Hurr Durr micro will make you lose 100% of the time as well.
Of course people who are already great at the game look down on us and say if you macro liek me without anything else you will succeed. A better test would be to get someone who is only jsut starting to only ever macro, 3 for each race, 1000 games, then I will see this as a decent size data set to make conclusions from so people can be annoying and unhelpful.
We KNOW macro is the fundamental, we play that way, we are just not perfect at the game yet, without developing the other skills to supplement our macro, we will not get to test our macro against better players and improve further.
That was half a rant, but if a low level player is asking advice, don't just tell them to macro more, tell them all the large problems you notice in their game, sure you don't need to tell them about every tiny misclick, but also help on things like building placement, timing etc.
The problem is that for the vast majority of low level players, their macro flaws are infinitely more important than any other problems they might have. No sane high level player is going to look at a silver league player and point out a building placement flaw when he had 4k minerals and 2k gas after 10 minutes. Things like building placement or even timing really just don't matter if you can't macro decently.
I've hung around in a few low level channels recently and tried to help people out a bit. It amazes me every time how off they are in their analysis of their own flaws. Almost every single time they'll type something like 'I should have gotten a warp prism and harrassed more'. No, you had 4k gas. Make some freaking units. Low level players seem to treat their games as if they were playing chess, trying to outwit their opponents, where really, until you reach a high level, SC's a very very simple game of just making some goddamn units.
edit: Another thing is that things like timing really just can't be taught unless the player has a basic grasp of macro. How am I supposed to tell someone when to put down his forward pylon for a 4 gate when his warpgate upgrade is delayed by a minute because he forgot to chrono boost and his gates aren't even finished when warpgate finishes? Concepts like timing assume reasonably tight build orders from both players to have any meaning.
edit2: There ARE some other things that are important. Scouting for instance is important even at a very low level. However I'm confident I can beat any platinum and below player easily with nothing but roaches just by scouting and macroing well.
Most players I play do have reasonably tight build orders, some of course don't and those are often the ones that throw me off and cause me to get crushed by some out their strategy. It's not very often I get out-macroed, but when I do it is usually due to my opponents ability to contain me, though some platinum players do just straight outplay in every way. You are definitely right in most regards, but what you are giving is a really extreme example, floating 4kgas is massive, I really doubt that ever happens. As a zerg I'm constantly annoyed at "we need more vespene gas" while I'm on 3/4 base, later into the game I know my queen injects and spending starts to fade away, that's what I'm working on now. But usually on 2 base or even 3 base I'm not really missing many injects at this point and my resources are quite low, though sometimes I over-gas for a while and have to transfer some drones over to minerals.
Just throwing my 2 cents in; I'm a master league protoss that just went on an extremely long losing streak, especially getting owned by zergs. My last match of the night, I told my zerg opponent such as he was pushing into my nat and his response was "you didn't macro well."
There were other things, such as my battle micro and attack timing that I could have improved on, but still, macro is something you can pretty much always improve in. Just to elaborate, my avg unspent resources were far lower than my opponent (probably because he spent a long time at max), but macro includes aggressively expanding as well as unit production and worker production.
TL;DR macro is a weakness of players all the way up and is probably the single most important skill to work on.
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"
This is the best analogy I've ever heard, this! Except macro really is the most important thing, but will not solely win you matches against people anywhere near your skill level. Hurr Durr micro will make you lose 100% of the time as well.
Of course people who are already great at the game look down on us and say if you macro liek me without anything else you will succeed. A better test would be to get someone who is only jsut starting to only ever macro, 3 for each race, 1000 games, then I will see this as a decent size data set to make conclusions from so people can be annoying and unhelpful.
We KNOW macro is the fundamental, we play that way, we are just not perfect at the game yet, without developing the other skills to supplement our macro, we will not get to test our macro against better players and improve further.
That was half a rant, but if a low level player is asking advice, don't just tell them to macro more, tell them all the large problems you notice in their game, sure you don't need to tell them about every tiny misclick, but also help on things like building placement, timing etc.
The problem is that for the vast majority of low level players, their macro flaws are infinitely more important than any other problems they might have. No sane high level player is going to look at a silver league player and point out a building placement flaw when he had 4k minerals and 2k gas after 10 minutes. Things like building placement or even timing really just don't matter if you can't macro decently.
I've hung around in a few low level channels recently and tried to help people out a bit. It amazes me every time how off they are in their analysis of their own flaws. Almost every single time they'll type something like 'I should have gotten a warp prism and harrassed more'. No, you had 4k gas. Make some freaking units. Low level players seem to treat their games as if they were playing chess, trying to outwit their opponents, where really, until you reach a high level, SC's a very very simple game of just making some goddamn units.
edit: Another thing is that things like timing really just can't be taught unless the player has a basic grasp of macro. How am I supposed to tell someone when to put down his forward pylon for a 4 gate when his warpgate upgrade is delayed by a minute because he forgot to chrono boost and his gates aren't even finished when warpgate finishes? Concepts like timing assume reasonably tight build orders from both players to have any meaning.
edit2: There ARE some other things that are important. Scouting for instance is important even at a very low level. However I'm confident I can beat any platinum and below player easily with nothing but roaches just by scouting and macroing well.
Most players I play do have reasonably tight build orders, some of course don't and those are often the ones that throw me off and cause me to get crushed by some out their strategy. It's not very often I get out-macroed, but when I do it is usually due to my opponents ability to contain me, though some platinum players do just straight outplay in every way. You are definitely right in most regards, but what you are giving is a really extreme example, floating 4kgas is massive, I really doubt that ever happens. As a zerg I'm constantly annoyed at "we need more vespene gas" while I'm on 3/4 base, later into the game I know my queen injects and spending starts to fade away, that's what I'm working on now. But usually on 2 base or even 3 base I'm not really missing many injects at this point and my resources are quite low, though sometimes I over-gas for a while and have to transfer some drones over to minerals.
I've watched quite a few gold and below matches recently and 4k gas is pretty normal. I've seen 3k/2k off 1 base from a silver Zerg. He had no idea why he lost.
If you're in platinum, I do agree that many more things start to become important. Some platinum players I've seen play had reasonable macro, but needed help with things like unit composition, expansion timings and the like. I was mostly talking about silver and below, although many gold players still have terrible macro.
I would like to see this done with the other 2 races just so people like my friends don't say something like, "O this works with protoss but there is no way it works as zerg" Me I wouldn't have the time or the patience to do that.
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.
Macro's far and away the most important fundamental to master because all other fundamental skills require macro to be of any worth. You can have great micro, if you've got 20 roaches less than your opponent, you're just not going win the battle. You can have great timing, but if you only have half the units you're supposed to have at that timing, it's not going to matter.
This is something most low level players just don't seem to grasp. A lot of them are actually more strategically-minded than some master players, many of whom play extremely standard and uninspired, but none of those things is going to matter if you don't have macro to back it up.
You can compare it to chess in that regard. To play at a high level, you need both a deep understanding of strategy and very good tactical abilities. However, even if your understanding of strategy is very mediocre, you can still be a pretty good player just by calculating (macroing in SC terms) well, but it doesn't work the other way around. You can have a great understanding of strategy, if you're terrible at calculating, you'll never get to a remotely high level.
It's the same with macro. You can become a decent player off macro alone even if that'll never be enough to be a great player, but you'll remain forever terrible if your macro's terrible, no matter how good your other SC qualities are.
got a new account for my off race, and was playing agains silver/bronze at first.
it is very obvious you're playing a weaker player when they just don't have as much stuff as you.
starcraft is a game about making units and multitasking. i would say most gold and below players have no idea what that actually means. i am speaking from experience here. i was in gold to start, until i had my epiphany: make as many units as you can, and do a lot of things at once.
with these two skills you will go high on the ladder.
really, things like "strategy" and such are more for BoX series. a 4 gate won't work if they know it's coming, cloaked banshee's every game will get countered etc. people on the ladder have no idea what you're going to do.
Macro is obviously the most important thing there is...however as one of those struggling very high gold players I find that the biggest thing that makes me hate the people that say "only macro to diamond" is, you really have to have good knowledge and unit comps to continue to macro. I can handle macroing well on a fast expansion now for example...but taking bases implies you can handle attacks, timing pushes and the like. This becomes even more challenging when you are trying to take safe 3rds/4ths. I don't know if by perfect macro you mean max out an army on 2 base and a move in? bc that doesnt seem like good macro as much of just a blind all in. I can do certain builds with very good macro, some strategies way better than others, but running heavy bio into full tank lines doesnt sound very smart to me..or banelings etc. There are limits to everything, and maybe that mentality is why im going to be stuck out of diamond forever, but I would much rather get to diamond well rounded and understand the game better than sit there and be one of those people that knows how to max out an army at 2 bases and sometimes win.
P.S. Also I dont think at high platinum level racing to 200 is viable often. (Ie. 200/200 bio ball ( medivacs assumably) vs a charge lot/stalker/collosi army and im pretty sure even with a 30ish supply lead you woudl not be able to kill your opponent).
One thing I noticed while trying to help a friend of mine is that he tries to think way too much, or he spams actions and stops thinking, or he pursues some elaborate plan or thinks that certain small things are important. So what I have been doing is asking him why are you like brainfrozen atm? What are you thinking about? Or with the idea of having a simple plan, I literally have to cut him off cuz he just keeps on rambling which is totally besides the point Or I see him spend 30+ seconds guiding a medivac around the map and does 0 macro. I ask him do you really think that drop will win you the game?
Anyway what I think is part of the reason people in the lower league can have a hard time advancing is because they are cluttered with all these different things they could do and don't know how to incorperate everything perfectly. Which is exactly my point, you shouldn't even try to, you just gotta build a solid foundation so later on you will actually have the ability to try and incorporate all the things.
On January 24 2011 19:55 Irre wrote: Macro is obviously the most important thing there is...however as one of those struggling very high gold players I find that the biggest thing that makes me hate the people that say "only macro to diamond" is, you really have to have good knowledge and unit comps to continue to macro
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On January 24 2011 19:55 Irre wrote: I can handle macroing well on a fast expansion now for example...but taking bases implies you can handle attacks, timing pushes and the like.
On January 24 2011 19:55 Irre wrote: I can do certain builds with very good macro, some strategies way better than others
This is exactly the attitude that the OP link is talking about when demonstrating this concept. You've said that "you can do certain builds with very good macro". If this was true even if other aspects of your play were bad you'd not be in gold, as demonstrated by the replays in the OP link.
If you look at the replays you will realise that the reason it works is because he always has a lot more stuff than his opponent at all stages of the game. It doesn't matter if he's attacked, cheesed, dropped, etc, the point is he always had significantly more stuff just a-moving into them. Timings and unit composition did not matter because the gap in army sizes and economy was always so large.
Too many people just don't believe you. It's not a problem of reddit, but rather speaks more of the large number of casuals that play that game.
The typical redditor is a casual silver/gold player who watches GSL. This in turn seems to qualify them for stuff like "I should be in master league but I inexplicably lose with the best economy."
/r/starcraftfeedback however, I've found to be a pretty decent subreddit.
I coached Protoss and Zerg Platinum Players to get into diamond and for zerg it is the same as for protoss. Their macro is often just very bad (Expanding to natural at 40 food. take a third after main mined out. way overproducing units)
I realised you really only have to teach one basic build per matchup and the importance of macro and really get them to understand (!!) that macro will win them the game and they easily get into diamond. That understanding is really important. I can talk before the match as long as i want that they have to constantly build workers and especially build drones. In the match they will ignore it again and fall into bad habits. You have to force them to build workers, production facilities and (for zerg) more drones than they are comfortable with. So they get to understand how powerful their mid and endgame can become.
So for every platin and below who is complaining that macro alone doesn't get you into diamond... Try it again. And check if you are really macroing... (Of course i am implying some normale intelligence in gameplay, so i expect them to know that blue flame hellions are not the right way to fight mass marauder)
If your macro sucks I can defeat your 4 gate rush with only 3 gates, and then proceed to expand, tech colossus and just roll over you while you are still sitting on one base. Actually, I do this all the time.
Macro is what gives you the ability to execute strategies. If you have 75% the income of enemy, whatever you do is going to be only 75% effective versus him. The longer the game lasts the further behind you fall and no matter how good strategic mind you have, you will lose to a player that has only 1/3 of your APM.
Just to clarify my earlier tiger analogy. I'm not disagreeing with the fact that perhaps macro is the single most important fundamental. Just as poor macro will cause you to lose every time, a poor golf swing will cause you to lose every time. Just as having a lousy swing will hardly be affected by fancy new shoes, poor macro will hardly be affected by any strategy, but as wearing uncomfortable shoes could have a negative effect, so could unit comp. If you are a complete newbie and you don't see your opponent going void ray and just mass zealots.,you can macro all day and still lose. "Duh" you say, but its still a unit comp decision, if even a small one. In this experiment, he used the stalker, perhaps one of the most versatile units in the game. He admittedly used observers "because they are necessary". Observers are tech. It takes a decision to make those. These all sound "duh", but that's my point. There are things that you may not even think about, that matter to someone who doesn't understand the game well.
Multitasking is perhaps the biggest challenge to a new player. And yes, focusing on macro is an excellent way to build that skill and greatly improve your game. However, just because you should focus on it, doesn't mean to ignore absolutely everything related to it. If you have extra minerals, build more production, right? Well, what production? More of the same is a very valid answer, but still a unit comp decision. And it has to be made while a dozen other things are happening at the same time. Don't scout? Well, if you are newer, and you don't scout his fast expand, you get behind in macro and lose.
Basically, what I am trying to say is at the lower levels, yes 100 times out of 100 the reason you lost was bad macro, but that doesn't mean pigeonholing yourself by not developing overall is a great idea either. Focus 100% of your focus on macro, and as that gets better then you can spend 99.999% on macro and the rest on scouting, etc. Then 99.998 on macro. But this idea that saying "you're new. just macro macro macro and it'll be easy to get to the top" to someone who doesn't even know how to properly macro is like saying "swing swing swing and in a week you'll be as good as tiger woods"
TL;DR Just because macro is the #1 fundamental, dont ignore #2
On January 24 2011 16:42 Turo wrote: starcraft is a game about making units and multitasking. i would say most gold and below players have no idea what that actually means. i am speaking from experience here. i was in gold to start, until i had my epiphany: make as many units as you can, and do a lot of things at once.
with these two skills you will go high on the ladder.
(Warning! Crap zerg posting!)
That (points up), in a nutshell, is it. However, the elephant in Mr. Roflstomps nutshell is the multitasking element.
From a personal perspective, the replays in the reddit post were very interesting (watched a couple, not all). If anything, I'd say my macro is only marginally behind Mr. Roflstomps*, but my overall level of play isn't grand enough to reach the underside of his boots to lick them because I just can't multitask like that. He could 1-A three stalkers to a random, unscouted likely expo location on my side of the map and literally halve my macro efficiency thanks to my inability to macro and scout / move army / read game / respond to pokes at the same time, and yet the superficial, crass response to viewing the replay of said "make TFB multitask attacks" would be "you've got a trust fund, look at all those injects you missed, your macro is crap" rather than the correct response of "you've to learn to do two things at once with no loss of efficiency in either".
As far as I'm concerned, all the reddit post proves is the absolute fallacy of "you only need macro to get to yada yada".
* In a left-in-peace situation, I'll hit 200/200 roach hydra with upgrades noticeably quicker than he gets there with stalkers, with my extra speed to 200/200 being entirely accounted for by my lower resource costs.
I am terran and got to diamond just by macroing =).
All my games are at least 18 minuts long, unless the other guy try to cheese his way into victory, which will make the game end quickly one way or another.
On January 24 2011 20:52 TehForce wrote: Of course i am implying some normale intelligence in gameplay, so i expect them to know that blue flame hellions are not the right way to fight mass marauder
Although I completely agree with the OP, I think you just can't take this "normal intelligence" for granted. I have a (former) bronze-reallife-friend with whom I like to 2v2 - the first thing I had to teach him was to frickin a-move instead of rightclick. His macro was "fine" after a week or so, but it doesn't matter if your superior army just runs around instead of fighting. While macro may get you into Diamond, I feel that for getting from Bronze to Silver or Gold it's mostly much more fundamental things than macro (even if it seems hard to believe that these even exist). To put it this way: Gold players usually have horrible macro, but they must do "something" right that puts them above Bronze and Silver players.
When I was teaching myself how to play Starcraft (this was way back in 2001) I would play 1v3 protoss computers on lost temple. I would also choose protoss and deliberately only mass dragoons (no forge or cannons for defense). I would begin the game by sending a worker to each enemy and distracting their workers (BW ai sucked, if you attacked their nexus early on they would send every worker to chase you for a minute). When the inevitable zealot rush came, I would dance my dragoons endlessly while maintaining constant probe, dragoon, and pylon production.
I did similar things where I would choose zerg and only focus on making hatcheries and drones, with a bare minimum of units required to hold off the initial rush (I would do this against 1 AI). For those who don't know, no MBS and no auto-mine made it relatively way more difficult to maintain a constant drone production and keep your money low when you hit 4+ bases than compared to SC2. It was these very simple training method I used to increase my APM, my multitasking ability, and my ability to continually update control groups as new units and buildings were completed.
After having these skills down, everything else required to learn BW (and subsequently SC2) came to me so easily, because I had a solid foundation of macro/micro multitasking ability to apply to any situation. For those who struggle in low leagues, following these strict training regiments really is the best way to improve. Being good at these things are applicable to ANY situation and will make you play better no matter what is happening in a game.
only macro -> leads into platinum and low diam. hmm. you just can't tell a gold level player to just macro, thats no fun. i think it is always possible to fokus on macro and still do some other things, even for low ranked players. and btw why do all low ranked players want into diamond?^^ its kinda hard and stressfull there....^^
but i played 5 placementmatches for my friend, and i always took terran, produced 1 scv and then attacked with all my workers and won 5 times xD
Its funny how you talk about Tiger Woods because thats actually very true.
when you take golf lessons you will start with an 7 iron and stay with that untill your swing is correct. after that you can try to do it with a hybrid or a driver, while still making sure your swing is correct.
People talking about teching and upgrades and chronoboost and w/e. Thats all macro too. Macro isn't making workers and expanding. Its spending all your money and building everything whenever it's possible, its having enough but not too many buildings, never letting them stand still, using your chronoboost and all that good jazz. when you do all of that very well ( your prob in diamond now), you can try a driver for a change.
Yes you can try the driver earlier but remember that it might be the swing that's wrong, not the driver.
Yes, obviously silver/gold/plat players shouldn't focus 100% on macro alone and forget all other parts of the game, they could have avoided 99% of their losses if they macro'd better, but obviously they should still improve their multitasking/army control/hotkeys/strategy/tactics/etc.
The problem with a lot of these lower level players, and something that I also have noticed. They don't want to focus on macro, everytime you let them analyze their own mistakes they say everything they did wrong except talk about those 4k mins/4k gas on 2 bases.
That's why higher level players always have this tendency to give "macro better" as advice, because altough improving those other aspects of your game will improve you as a player, macro is the fundamental thing that will get you into the higher leagues really fast.
It's like trying to teach someone to play guitar, and you are telling him, you should really get some lessons on basic music theory, and notes and learn some good fundamentals, and get a good playing style, and the other guy basicly goes, "no man, I'm just gonna practice playing this awesome metallica solo"
And then when you have worked on macro, and you have that more solid base to work on (no one has perfect macro ofcourse) they can start improving the other aspects of their game more.
And this is even true all the way into the master's league, for this I will use my own experiences:
I played zerg since I got into the beta (wich was around the time the friend invites came), and I played zerg since release untill a few weeks ago.
Now for the past couple of weeks (altough I haven't played a lot) I have been playing terran, taking a dip down to very low diamond, and yesterday being at around 2.6k diamond.
But everytime I look at my own replays to see my mistakes, it always boils down to, I should have made more production facility's, I should have put another expo down with those spare minerals, I should have macro'd better (because I always end up with excess resources).
Yes I could have looked at those games and said, well ye doesn't matter, I should have micro'd better, I should have harrassed more, but the truth is, if I had actually spend those excess resources I would probably have won instead of lost about half of my losses.
So even for an average diamond player like me macro is still the primary concern of my play, and if I can get the biggest flaws out of that I could probably start playing maybe some high-diamond/low-masters.
(and believe me, the rest of my play is also just mediocre at best, depending on who your comparing to, none of the other aspects of my play are noteworthy)
Edit: I totaly agree with OP. Lower level player probably can't and shouldn't try to do this. I am a lower league zerg player, and micro helps a lot aswell as macro.
"no, you need to work on multitasking as well as macro"
Herp.
Multitasking is a prerequisite of Macro.
Macro requires your attention to be split in at least 3 different places at any one time. (Resources, supply, Workers)
Focusing on macro will naturally raise your multitasking ability as you slowly get used to splitting your attention across multiple activities. Once macro starts to become natural to you, you will experience that happy moment where you can actually think clearly in game.
Once bouncing through your hotkeys to check production is second nature, even when someone drops your 3rd, you will be able to reposition your army whilst macroing, because you dont need to think about macro.. it becomes flow state.
Man i love saying exactly what other people are saying but in a much less refined manner.
On January 24 2011 22:20 Scrimpton wrote: Multitasking is a prerequisite of Macro.
Macro requires your attention to be split in at least 3 different places at any one time. (Resources, supply, Workers)
Nah, can't go with that at all. Macro is a single process in which a number of variables must be balanced, and all said variables are controlled entirely by the player - press structure hotkey, press hotkey for desired unit, desired unit pops out. In short, with macro we know what's going to happen. Yes, we're balancing a few things, but they're all very predictable indeed - it's "Whack-a-mole" with three holes, with the only real "complexity" being the speed at which the moles appear.
Real multi-tasking in SC2 is, for the lack of a better way of putting it, playing that game of three-hole "Whack-a-mole" whilst carrying out a mobile phone conversation with your girlfriend without letting on you're playing "Whack-a-mole".
On January 24 2011 14:21 Black Gun wrote: other than that, mass stalkers is by far the strongest t1 unit to mass mindlessly.
If you micro. Otherwise stalkers are the most cost inefficient t1 unit in the game. They simply suck in a straight up fight. You need to take advantage on their runspeed and/or blink for them to be at all effective.
Being a scrub myself it also took me only 27 games reaching Diamond by focusing purely on macro ... something like A-Move and then not caring for my armies at all anymore, until i finished the macro cycles. Of course... often times you lose everything, but due to far superior macro, you just won't die and have another army ready in a short period of time.
Was ranked silver after my placement matches, never been playing rts games other than the single player. Zerg.
So the higher you get, the more important micro is ... but wtf... bronze up to low diamond - lawlz
If you micro. Otherwise stalkers are the most cost inefficient t1 unit in the game. They simply suck in a straight up fight. You need to take advantage on their runspeed and/or blink for them to be at all effective.
I think the reason that he picked protoss to do this test with, is because you cannot mass lings to 200/200 and win easily. There's alot of hard counters to them, that cause them to literally deal no damage. Same goes for marines, there's far too many things that cause them to melt into piles of goo. Stalkers, while they do have counters, do not get countered on the same level as marines versus banelings/colossus/HT/Tanks, or zerglings versus forcefields/banelings/stimmed marines+medivacs.
If you micro. Otherwise stalkers are the most cost inefficient t1 unit in the game. They simply suck in a straight up fight. You need to take advantage on their runspeed and/or blink for them to be at all effective.
I think the reason that he picked protoss to do this test with, is because you cannot mass lings to 200/200 and win easily. There's alot of hard counters to them, that cause them to literally deal no damage. Same goes for marines, there's far too many things that cause them to melt into piles of goo. Stalkers, while they do have counters, do not get countered on the same level as marines versus banelings/colossus/HT/Tanks, or zerglings versus forcefields/banelings/stimmed marines+medivacs.
That's not my point. A max stalker army is incredibly weak, especially if you 1a it because stalkers deal shit damage. Perhaps stalkers were chosen because they have the ability to hit everything. Regardless, 1a'ing a stalker ball into master league isn't impressive. Master league is not impressive.
On January 24 2011 22:20 Scrimpton wrote: Multitasking is a prerequisite of Macro.
Macro requires your attention to be split in at least 3 different places at any one time. (Resources, supply, Workers)
Nah, can't go with that at all. Macro is a single process in which a number of variables must be balanced, and all said variables are controlled entirely by the player - press structure hotkey, press hotkey for desired unit, desired unit pops out. In short, with macro we know what's going to happen. Yes, we're balancing a few things, but they're all very predictable indeed - it's "Whack-a-mole" with three holes, with the only real "complexity" being the speed at which the moles appear.
Real multi-tasking in SC2 is, for the lack of a better way of putting it, playing that game of three-hole "Whack-a-mole" whilst carrying out a mobile phone conversation with your girlfriend without letting on you're playing "Whack-a-mole".
No this is just yourself trying to kid yourself that it's not the same thing so that you have an excuse to not improve your macro tasks.
Multitasking between building probes, warping in units and building structures/pylons all at the right timings and quickly is no different between adding in other tasks like also moving a scout at the same time or splitting your army in two to defend a drop. It's just that the macro tasks make far bigger difference for amount of effort required than fancy stuff like killing off his scvs with your scout probe, or laying down the perfect force fields or microing back a couple of units in a battle.
Most of us has probably experienced being slapped here and there and then you scout him and notice he's yet to expand and you realize that you have a huge lead
That's not my point. A max stalker army is incredibly weak, especially if you 1a it because stalkers deal shit damage. Perhaps stalkers were chosen because they have the ability to hit everything. Regardless, 1a'ing a stalker ball into master league isn't impressive. Master league is not impressive.
Now, excuse me if I'm not following correctly, since I haven't read all the posts in the thread, but wasn't the point of the experiment to prove that you can just macro a 200/200 stalker ball and get into diamond league with that? I don't think this was made to show that stalkers are good, and it didn't even mention master league.
My point was, is that stalkers were chosen because they will not be instantly negated at a low league level (like marines/lings), which applies to this experiment, as it specifically deals with getting out of low level leagues. Do you disagree with this? It has nothing to do with stalkers being terrible, it has alot to do with other unit compositions instantly making your ball of units dissapear.
On January 24 2011 23:38 snazbaz wrote: No this is just yourself trying to kid yourself that it's not the same thing so that you have an excuse to not improve your macro tasks.
Multitasking between building probes, warping in units and building structures/pylons all at the right timings and quickly is no different between adding in other tasks like also moving a scout at the same time or splitting your army in two to defend a drop. It's just that the macro tasks make far bigger difference for amount of effort required than fancy stuff like killing off his scvs with your scout probe, or laying down the perfect force fields or microing back a couple of units in a battle.
I think that there's alot of truth in your post. I can't count the amount of games where I've done stuff like killing off building SCV's, gas steals, early ling harassment, killing 10 workers off with banshees, but still lost to him because he just had more units than me. Macro does seem like the aspect that has the most effect in a game, and it does correlate well into multi-tasking.
That's not my point. A max stalker army is incredibly weak, especially if you 1a it because stalkers deal shit damage. Perhaps stalkers were chosen because they have the ability to hit everything. Regardless, 1a'ing a stalker ball into master league isn't impressive. Master league is not impressive.
My point was, is that stalkers were chosen because they will not be instantly negated at a low league level (like marines/lings), which applies to this experiment, as it specifically deals with getting out of low level leagues. Do you disagree with this?
I don't. But you could do that with practically any ranged unit, marines included.
I don't. But you could do that with practically any ranged unit, marines included.
And as I said, marines get instantly killed without micro against banelings/tanks/HT/collosus. You can blindly counter them. Stalkers can actually shoot, and kill, their counters when you have enough of them. Sure, if your opponent only builds seventeen banelings against your 200/200 marine ball, you will win, but if he builds 100/200 worth of banelings (200 banelings), and you can't split that entire marine ball into 101 little batches before he hits, you will lose your army.
Roaches/maruaders wont work, because you can get blind countered by air, unless you win a base trade (entirely possible, unless you're facing terran). Hydras could work, but stalkers are easier to access and defend with in the early game.
Edit: And I'm not saying it's impossible to get to diamond by just building marines/roaches, it would just be harder than doing it with stalkers. Which would pay off in the end, since you'd have to work harder to get up.
On January 24 2011 20:52 TehForce wrote: Of course i am implying some normale intelligence in gameplay, so i expect them to know that blue flame hellions are not the right way to fight mass marauder
Although I completely agree with the OP, I think you just can't take this "normal intelligence" for granted. I have a (former) bronze-reallife-friend with whom I like to 2v2 - the first thing I had to teach him was to frickin a-move instead of rightclick. His macro was "fine" after a week or so, but it doesn't matter if your superior army just runs around instead of fighting. While macro may get you into Diamond, I feel that for getting from Bronze to Silver or Gold it's mostly much more fundamental things than macro (even if it seems hard to believe that these even exist). To put it this way: Gold players usually have horrible macro, but they must do "something" right that puts them above Bronze and Silver players.
Most lower level players enter a game with one plan in mind. They're going to make a unit, or a specific comp of units + Show Spoiler +
Okay, okay, one kind of unit
and attack at a probably late timing. The thing with late timings is, they're quite often counterable even if the other player is complete shit. Plat players don't know how to even react to getting attacked first, and that's where the cheesers advantage comes in at low level play.
^^ Who the hell uses banelings correctly in plat league? Any massable ground unit is "hard countered" by most of those options (collosus, tanks, etc).
1a isn't hard, bronze league players can do that.
Stalkers don't instantly dissapear against tanks. They take four shots each to kill. Sure, you have splash, but unless the person thinks to right click four tanks on one stalker (so as to avoid overkill), which surely, you can agree is harder than attack moving banelings into marines, you won't lose all of your stalkers by running into a tank line the instant that you do.
Marauders could do this, but again, it's not nearly as one sided as marines versus high templar, nor banelings.
back in the beta where rally units used to atk move.. i would make like 5 barracks with reactor rallying to enemy base and killing them even without any control or looking at their base sometimes... wished that still existed..
^^ Who the hell uses banelings correctly in plat league? Any massable ground unit is "hard countered" by most of those options (collosus, tanks, etc).
1a isn't hard, bronze league players can do that.
Stalkers don't instantly dissapear against tanks. They take four shots each to kill. Sure, you have splash, but unless the person thinks to right click four tanks on one stalker (so as to avoid overkill), which surely, you can agree is harder than attack moving banelings into marines, you won't lose all of your stalkers by running into a tank line the instant that you do.
Marauders could do this, but again, it's not nearly as one sided as marines versus high templar, nor banelings.
I already pointed that out. 1a'd stalkers are answered by most tech responses. No more or less then other t1 units
And I pointed out that you're wrong. And you haven't said anything to counteract my point, besides "lol plat players dunno how to move units lol", which is untrue.
I'll try to get to diamond on marines only, then, and see how it goes.
I already pointed that out. 1a'd stalkers are answered by most tech responses. No more or less then other t1 units
And I pointed out that you're wrong. And you haven't said anything to counteract my point, besides "lol plat players dunno how to move units lol", which is untrue.
I'll try to get to diamond on marines only, then, and see how it goes.
I'm wrong because tanks don't one shot stalkers? This thread has taken a turn for the worst.
I'm wrong because tanks don't one shot stalkers? This thread has taken a turn for the worst.
Yeah, that was my point. Stalkers don't instantly dissapear against tanks. If you build enough stalkers, you will kill tanks with them. If you build enough marines, they will still die to banelings/HT/colossus.
Like I said, I'll see how right you are by trying this with terran instead of protoss first. I'll do twenty games as terran, then twenty games as toss, and see which matchup has a higher win ratio. If you're right, it should be the same, or nearly so.
I'm wrong because tanks don't one shot stalkers? This thread has taken a turn for the worst.
Yeah, that was my point. Stalkers don't instantly dissapear against tanks. If you build enough stalkers, you will kill tanks with them. If you build enough marines, they will still die to banelings/HT/colossus.
Like I said, I'll see how right you are by trying this with terran instead of protoss first. I'll do twenty games as terran, then twenty games as toss, and see which matchup has a higher win ratio. If you're right, it should be the same, or nearly so.
I Don't think the point of this is "one unit can win any game" it's to focus on your macro.. make throw in some marauders, tanks and medivacs? I'm sure you can figure it out.
Why do you need to target fire Stalkers with four Siege Tanks to avoid overkill? The AI in SC2 does that for you. It's the reason Siege Tanks are so effective even with, what, 25 less damage than their BW counterparts? I played the experiment for a bit with Marines only and met the same level of success, literally letting them A-move at Banelings, High Templar, and whatever else I went up against and while losing a ton of supply, it was pretty much only half my army in exchange for the entirety of theirs. The hardest time I've had was throwing away dozens of Marines while knowing my opponent was going Colossus, but even then all I had to do was keep making Marines.
^^ Who the hell uses banelings correctly in plat league? Any massable ground unit is "hard countered" by most of those options (collosus, tanks, etc).
1a isn't hard, bronze league players can do that.
Stalkers don't instantly dissapear against tanks. They take four shots each to kill. Sure, you have splash, but unless the person thinks to right click four tanks on one stalker (so as to avoid overkill), which surely, you can agree is harder than attack moving banelings into marines, you won't lose all of your stalkers by running into a tank line the instant that you do.
Marauders could do this, but again, it's not nearly as one sided as marines versus high templar, nor banelings.
Instant hit attacks do not overkill in SC2, so you do not need to do anything to avoid overkill with tanks.
I Don't think the point of this is "one unit can win any game" it's to focus on your macro.. make throw in some marauders, tanks and medivacs? I'm sure you can figure it out.
The point of the experiment was to show how important macro is, in comparison to unit composition and micro. He ignored both of these aspects. My point was, is, that stalkers are one of the few units you can do this experiment with. He argued that it is no more or less viable to do this with marines. No tanks, no marauders, no medivacs, just like the experiment, I will only build marines as a parallel to stalkers, and see how it goes. I'm not saying it's impossible; I'm just saying it's going to be alot harder than doing it with stalkers.
Instant hit attacks do not overkill in SC2, so you do not need to do anything to avoid overkill with tanks.
I was under the impression that the AI would spread shots evenly so that it avoids overkill. My point in focusing the tanks was to take down a stalker instantly. If you right click twelve tanks on one stalker, do they all fire, or does it only allocate as many tanks as it'll take to kill the stalker instantly?
In the long run, this would be a bad idea, but my point was, was to show how much longer it would take to cause a stalker ball to dissapear, in comparison to attack moving a bunch of banelings at a marine ball.
If I were to do this "macro challenge" as any race, this is what my plan will be.
Protoss: 3-gate robo followed by expand. Make lots of warpgates + stalkers then a-move. Terran: 3-rax expand into MMM a-move. Zerg: 14-hatch into roach/hydra a-move.
The OP is not claiming that this pure macro style will win every game. Rather, the OP claims that this will yield a 50% win ratio against diamond players (i.e. get into diamond). The whole point of the exercise is to show that concentrating purely on macro will yield very decent results. In fact, just by doing the above will make a non-diamond a much better player.
On January 25 2011 01:06 goiflin wrote: I was under the impression that the AI would spread shots evenly so that it avoids overkill. My point in focusing the tanks was to take down a stalker instantly. If you right click twelve tanks on one stalker, do they all fire, or does it only allocate as many tanks as it'll take to kill the stalker instantly?
The AI allows Siege Tanks to target as they would normally (target closest attacking enemy) and then tells Siege Tanks to fire until the target is dead. If you select all your Siege Tanks and waypoint-up a bunch of Stalkers, they will focus down each Stalker in sequence, allocating only enough Siege Tanks that would kill each one. So, no, it does not "spread shots evenly." The AI literally only prevents Siege Tanks from firing at a target that is already dead.
On January 25 2011 01:11 Nuck wrote: What about the TvZ matchup, if your playing Terran? You have to micro against banelings, no matter what your skill level is.
On January 25 2011 00:05 Offhand wrote: ^^ Who the hell uses banelings correctly in plat league? Any massable ground unit is "hard countered" by most of those options (collosus, tanks, etc).
Most lower level players enter a game with one plan in mind. They're going to make a unit, or a specific comp of units + Show Spoiler +
Okay, okay, one kind of unit
and attack at a probably late timing. The thing with late timings is, they're quite often counterable even if the other player is complete shit. Plat players don't know how to even react to getting attacked first, and that's where the cheesers advantage comes in at low level play.
You're dramatically underestimating the caliber of a platinum player. Not to say that they're great by any means, but to say that they "don't use banelings correctly" is just being class-ist. The quality of play overall has improved since launch and there are some decent platinum players out there that just have one or two glaring flaws that cause them to be stuck. If you had said silver league I'd agree.
That said, I have watched a fair amount of low-level play when I'm bored. No one in their right mind is going to argue that macro isn't the best place to start and the most obvious and important flaw. But you wouldn't believe some of the other mistakes people make.
Some things I've seen:
- Absolutely no keybindings. Maybe a hatch/nexus/cc. None for army. - Half their army in one place when the other half is sitting in their base and there's a huge confrontation and they rush headlong into it. - Guy pushes in their base and they had half of their army afraid of drops so it's sitting at their mineral line and it takes them 5 full seconds to get their army together and by that point they're basically dead. - A-moving a respectable amount of lings into a zealot wall repeatedly. - No scouting whatsoever. Map is completely dark to them. - No clue how to handle things like banshees, DTs, cannon rushes, early pressure. - Running a huge army of marines into a tank line or banelings. - They basically never retreat.
All I'm saying is that yes, macro is the first and foremost thing. Most of them end up with 6000/4000 at some point during a longer game. But there are some things that we take for granted and seem like common sense that a bronze player just doesn't quite grasp.
My twos team and the person I probably play the most SC with is a plat level zerg. There's still the more glaring issues of no one ever taking a third. No one reacting appropriately to any tech. Harass being absurdly effective mostly by accident and being completely defended also pretty much by accident.
This is pretty awesome to see. To add just a little bit of perspective. I started out in bronze and would always read the just macro advice.
What that meant to me at first was just macro on 1-base and you can win. Obviously that is not macro.
Then I thought ok expand at 7-minutes ish and just macro off of 2-base and you can win. Hmmm, nope not really past a certain level and this is still not good macro.
Looking at the econ graphs for this guy, you can see his economy is constantly growing for 17-minutes. He is on 5-bases at the 17-20 minute mark. I think that is the hardest concept for us newer players with respect to macro, is that it pretty much means that you have a constantly expanding economy.
As a silver level player I can macro well off of 1-base. I can macro well with a 7-minute expansion off of two base. This is still not good macro.
I am learning now how to macro with a FE build and a third at 10-minutes or so but I still don't have it down where I can keep constant production and my money spent. It is another level for me to get to that point. But at least now I understand that expanding well is a key concept to macro.
Summary/TLDR; Unfortunately at the lower levels a lot of players hold the idea of macro and expanding to be mutually exclusive. Most of us even looking at the econ graph would not quite notice that the econ never goes flat indicating a econ that stopped growing.
I generally dislike the idea that people say "macro hard and you'll get into diamond", but it's just a blurred statement that really doesn't help users accomplish their overall goal in being able to hold off pushes, harass and generally have a good time. Sure, he may be a beast at Macroing, but that's only one aspect of the game and ultimately, those players don't want to just get into diamond, they want to earn a playstyle that suits them.
If we all become macro drones we might as well go back to Age of Empires 2.
On January 24 2011 23:38 snazbaz wrote: No this is just yourself trying to kid yourself that it's not the same thing so that you have an excuse to not improve your macro tasks.
So why is it I suddenly end up with a trust fund whenever I'm distracted from macro tasks for more than a few seconds, and yet said trust fund fails to appear if I'm left in peace until after I've taken a fourth*? If that's not a failure to multi-task, I don't know what is!
* At which point I fully accept my macro totally can't keep up with resource production unless I'm deliberately under-droned.
On January 24 2011 23:38 snazbaz wrote: No this is just yourself trying to kid yourself that it's not the same thing so that you have an excuse to not improve your macro tasks.
So why is it I suddenly end up with a trust fund whenever I'm distracted from macro tasks for more than a few seconds, and yet said trust fund fails to appear if I'm left in peace until after I've taken a fourth*? If that's not a failure to multi-task, I don't know what is!
* At which point I fully accept my macro totally can't keep up with resource production unless I'm deliberately under-droned.
Because you ended up no longer macroing well? I mean, I totally understand the benefits of having strong multitask, but it's obvious that you're shifting your focus off of macro here, apparently playing in a way that not having macro'd in this time makes a difference, and claiming that multitask would've saved the day.
[B] You can compare it to chess in that regard. To play at a high level, you need both a deep understanding of strategy and very good tactical abilities. However, even if your understanding of strategy is very mediocre, you can still be a pretty good player just by calculating (macroing in SC terms) well, but it doesn't work the other way around. You can have a great understanding of strategy, if you're terrible at calculating, you'll never get to a remotely high level.
I'm a pretty high level chess player (2200+), and I'm not too sure about this analogy. I guess it kinda depends on what you define pretty good player as. I suspect that you would probably get to about 1400-1500 ELO (BTW for those who don't know chess ratings, a 1500 is probably the equivalent of Plat SC2.) and then hit a wall without ANY strategy, e.g., you don't castle, you don't play for control of the center, you don't have a plan. While tactics do play a huge role in chess (as macro does in starcraft), it cannot be described as everything.
On January 24 2011 23:38 snazbaz wrote: No this is just yourself trying to kid yourself that it's not the same thing so that you have an excuse to not improve your macro tasks.
So why is it I suddenly end up with a trust fund whenever I'm distracted from macro tasks for more than a few seconds, and yet said trust fund fails to appear if I'm left in peace until after I've taken a fourth*? If that's not a failure to multi-task, I don't know what is!
* At which point I fully accept my macro totally can't keep up with resource production unless I'm deliberately under-droned.
Because when you distracted you are adding an extra task to your current multitasking (of workers, buildings, supply, army).
Now the extra stuff that is distracting you is probably not as important as those macro fundamentals so you must force yourself to prioritize the fundamentals FIRST. That's the whole point of the thread/OP link. Once you can do the fundamentals well 1) You will find you are winning all your games until plat/diamond 2) You can start to mix in other tasks prioritizing from the next most important (scouting).
If what you say is true (your macro is good if you are not distracted) then you should be able to play a similar build (one unit, 1-A to enemy base, no scouting) and win most of your games up to plat/diamond too.
Don't forget that keeping your minerals low is not the definition of good macro. If you are missing probes you won't even have the minerals in the first place for example. Same with queueing anything, not expanding at the right time.
The best way to check how good your macro is to find a fairly standard replay of a good player doing the same build you do and pause it at say 7 minutes and count how many units/structures/workers he has and then see how many you have at 7 minutes when you play it.
Obviously you want to find a replay where nothing unusual happened before this point.
Yes he chose stalkers because they are safest to mass, yes it would be harder if you went pure marine. This doesn't invalidate his hypothesis. If you find it easier with stalkers then play protoss, there is no shame in that. If you want to stick with Zerg or Terran then do, just build a bit of everything.
A random mix of units will beat anything they have if you have a solid macro advantage.
These things are what I find somewhat displeasing with StarCraft, until the highest level, it's still just a game of who is best at not forgetting to constantly produce probes.
I'd love it if unit production and inject larva could be put to autocast and the game be more of a game of decisions instead of a game of remembering to press e,s, or d every 17 gameseconds. This is of course less the case with Zerg.
I'd also like it better if you didn't want to constantly produce workers but there was some optimum to periodically pause at before you got an expo up. I'd rather have like that max saturation occured at 15-18 workers or something, that would really make it advanrageous to know when to temporary quit producing workers.
But yeah, the truth of this game is that just fielding the largest army, not knowing counters, not micro, not scouting, not knowing the opponents race and knowing when you can expect a cloaked banshee to arrive does make the game. Of course, if both players have relatively even macro, these things do come into play.
Though, this is only the case of ladder, if you know your opponent's history and you know he goes mass stalker all the time, a nice DT rush or mass immortals stops that adequately.
On January 25 2011 02:58 Silmakuoppaanikinko wrote: These things are what I find somewhat displeasing with StarCraft, until the highest level, it's still just a game of who is best at not forgetting to constantly produce probes.
I'd love it if unit production and inject larva could be put to autocast and the game be more of a game of decisions instead of a game of remembering to press e,s, or d every 17 gameseconds. This is of course less the case with Zerg.
I'd also like it better if you didn't want to constantly produce workers but there was some optimum to periodically pause at before you got an expo up. I'd rather have like that max saturation occured at 15-18 workers or something, that would really make it advanrageous to know when to temporary quit producing workers.
But yeah, the truth of this game is that just fielding the largest army, not knowing counters, not micro, not scouting, not knowing the opponents race and knowing when you can expect a cloaked banshee to arrive does make the game. Of course, if both players have relatively even macro, these things do come into play.
Though, this is only the case of ladder, if you know your opponent's history and you know he goes mass stalker all the time, a nice DT rush or mass immortals stops that adequately.
Unless your definition of "highest level" is low diamond, you have no clue what you're talking about. Also, if someone actively practices their macro, they can reach that level in about a week or two. It's not rocket science.
On January 25 2011 02:58 Silmakuoppaanikinko wrote: These things are what I find somewhat displeasing with StarCraft, until the highest level, it's still just a game of who is best at not forgetting to constantly produce probes.
I'd love it if unit production and inject larva could be put to autocast and the game be more of a game of decisions instead of a game of remembering to press e,s, or d every 17 gameseconds. This is of course less the case with Zerg.
I'd also like it better if you didn't want to constantly produce workers but there was some optimum to periodically pause at before you got an expo up. I'd rather have like that max saturation occured at 15-18 workers or something, that would really make it advanrageous to know when to temporary quit producing workers.
But yeah, the truth of this game is that just fielding the largest army, not knowing counters, not micro, not scouting, not knowing the opponents race and knowing when you can expect a cloaked banshee to arrive does make the game. Of course, if both players have relatively even macro, these things do come into play.
Though, this is only the case of ladder, if you know your opponent's history and you know he goes mass stalker all the time, a nice DT rush or mass immortals stops that adequately.
Well obviously StarCraft is the wrong game for you.
On January 25 2011 02:58 Silmakuoppaanikinko wrote: These things are what I find somewhat displeasing with StarCraft, until the highest level, it's still just a game of who is best at not forgetting to constantly produce probes.
I'd love it if unit production and inject larva could be put to autocast and the game be more of a game of decisions instead of a game of remembering to press e,s, or d every 17 gameseconds. This is of course less the case with Zerg.
I'd also like it better if you didn't want to constantly produce workers but there was some optimum to periodically pause at before you got an expo up. I'd rather have like that max saturation occured at 15-18 workers or something, that would really make it advanrageous to know when to temporary quit producing workers.
But yeah, the truth of this game is that just fielding the largest army, not knowing counters, not micro, not scouting, not knowing the opponents race and knowing when you can expect a cloaked banshee to arrive does make the game. Of course, if both players have relatively even macro, these things do come into play.
Though, this is only the case of ladder, if you know your opponent's history and you know he goes mass stalker all the time, a nice DT rush or mass immortals stops that adequately.
It sounds like what you want is a turn-based strategy game, of which there are many quality games about. SC2 is not one of them though!
I have to admit that macro will definitely get you to gold or low platinum...but if you rise in gold or platinum, people at the high end are really good...I'm currently a 2200 gold player, 4th in my division...and I'm, playing against 1-10 platinum players and macro isn't their problem, nor is it mine. I have recently switched form an agressive style to a more macro oriented style...and it has helped me win slightly more games...but where I am and the people I play...mass stalkers will certainly not win you the game.
When you first join a league, you're likely playing the lower-end of the league. A really low diamond player is not as good as me...I've played them before.
I got to diamond by mainly doing timing pushes (I play as terran) or outmacroing opponents. I kept the money low by building more supplies than I need so I could produce an army from building hotkeys when in the battle but I usually not built many workers.
I only advanced from league to league when I got better sense of the game and when I was playing more intensively. Now after a month of break from Starcraft I got demoted to platinum and because I play only several games a week I might be demoted to gold soon as well. My macro did not get that worse, I still usually have lower unspent money score than my opponent but my muscle memory deteriorated considerably (now 30 APM ) and I die to shenanigans such as DT rush I had no trouble handling before.
So in my case I'd say playing standard games without all-ins or cheeses does get you to diamond eventually no matter what because you improve on general RTS skills
The thing about this is that he was already good when he started the new account. When i started my US account I messed up placement and went 2-3, got placed in silver.
I did get cheesed a whole lot for the first 30 games or so, by which time I was in plat. because I was the better player I just played my macro style and won alot. However it wasn't really my macro that won the games but the fact that I know how to defend cheese and macro at the same time, defending silver/gold level cheese is easy if you scout properly and know whats coming.
I do believe that learning to macro will help you improve faster and you will get promoted eventually, but a plat/diamond/master level player will always be able to beat a silver/gold player because they are better, so its not a fair test.
The real test would to be to take a silver level player and coach them, teach them nothing but how to macro and see how fast they start to climb the ladder.
Simple fact is that even most diamond/master players can still improve their macro, its something which you really should never stop working on. it will take a very long time before anyone has perfect macro, even the pro's
On January 25 2011 03:27 Malloy wrote: I have to admit that macro will definitely get you to gold or low platinum...but if you rise in gold or platinum, people at the high end are really good...I'm currently a 2200 gold player, 4th in my division...and I'm, playing against 1-10 platinum players and macro isn't their problem, nor is it mine. I have recently switched form an agressive style to a more macro oriented style...and it has helped me win slightly more games...but where I am and the people I play...mass stalkers will certainly not win you the game.
When you first join a league, you're likely playing the lower-end of the league. A really low diamond player is not as good as me...I've played them before.
I assure you macro is still one of your most significant problems. I am mid diamond Protoss and low diamond/high plat Zerg on my other account and still consider my macro to be a big main area that I need to refine. The fact that you don't admit it being a significant problem is probably the real reason you are still in gold.
On January 24 2011 13:56 Tomo009 wrote: I dunno, he didn't play many games and was playing high leaguers pretty quickly. Also, I want to see him try again as zerg. As zerg, you must adapt or you will die, at any level. You would have to have ridiculously good macro to beat for example a deathball protoss or biomech terran. As with no micro, you will get crushed in one battle and lose it all.
Obviously this is an inefficient way to play any race but i garuntee you just going 200/200 roaches will fare better than 200/200 stalkers or 200/200 marauders
On January 25 2011 03:34 emythrel wrote: I do believe that learning to macro will help you improve faster and you will get promoted eventually, but a plat/diamond/master level player will always be able to beat a silver/gold player because they are better, so its not a fair test.
"becuase they are better"? Better at what? MACRO. This guy literally didn't micro, and didn't use some sort of timing attack, or tech, or unit countering. All he did was macro, specifically to disprove this sort of assertion. Was he better at... A-moving? No, diamond level players can beat silver players just by being better AT MACRO. That's the point of this... it's an undeniable demonstration of that assertion. The guy put up a couple cannons, got a detector, and macroed like a fiend. This is how you win games.
Sc2 is about making units and multitasking. To get ti top diamond really all you need is the ability to make units efficiently, and know what works well with what. Making probes, expanding, build orders are all just means to an end.
At the higher levels it is more about multitasking, who can do more with the units they have.
Granted, if you have excellent multitasking, you can play at a higher level than you should if your macro is shoddy, but imo that will not get you into masters unless you have the right amount of units.
All strategies are jus means to an end. The end being having more shit than him.
On January 25 2011 03:34 emythrel wrote: I do believe that learning to macro will help you improve faster and you will get promoted eventually, but a plat/diamond/master level player will always be able to beat a silver/gold player because they are better, so its not a fair test.
"becuase they are better"? Better at what? MACRO. This guy literally didn't micro, and didn't use some sort of timing attack, or tech, or unit countering. All he did was macro, specifically to disprove this sort of assertion. Was he better at... A-moving? No, diamond level players can beat silver players just by being better AT MACRO. That's the point of this... it's an undeniable demonstration of that assertion. The guy put up a couple cannons, got a detector, and macroed like a fiend. This is how you win games.
Apparently it IS deniable, based on half the responses in this thread. I think it actually shows that it's not macro ability stopping people from progressing to diamond and beyond, it's attitude toward learning how to get better. If you can't help yourself even when everything is put on a plate for you - you're not going to get better.
Jeez, if I was gold or below and I read this thread I'd be copying the exact idea of ignoring everything but macro - copying the exact order and quantity of production buildings from the replays and practicing it until I was diamond, not whining that it's not a valid demonstration and there's nothing wrong with my macro..
On January 25 2011 02:58 Silmakuoppaanikinko wrote: These things are what I find somewhat displeasing with StarCraft, until the highest level, it's still just a game of who is best at not forgetting to constantly produce probes.
I'd love it if unit production and inject larva could be put to autocast and the game be more of a game of decisions instead of a game of remembering to press e,s, or d every 17 gameseconds. This is of course less the case with Zerg.
I'd also like it better if you didn't want to constantly produce workers but there was some optimum to periodically pause at before you got an expo up. I'd rather have like that max saturation occured at 15-18 workers or something, that would really make it advanrageous to know when to temporary quit producing workers.
But yeah, the truth of this game is that just fielding the largest army, not knowing counters, not micro, not scouting, not knowing the opponents race and knowing when you can expect a cloaked banshee to arrive does make the game. Of course, if both players have relatively even macro, these things do come into play.
Though, this is only the case of ladder, if you know your opponent's history and you know he goes mass stalker all the time, a nice DT rush or mass immortals stops that adequately.
Unless your definition of "highest level" is low diamond, you have no clue what you're talking about. Also, if someone actively practices their macro, they can reach that level in about a week or two. It's not rocket science.
Nope, mid diamond really. When you get promoted to diamond, you end up in mid-diamond. As the OP showed, you can get to diamond on macro alone.
On January 25 2011 02:58 Silmakuoppaanikinko wrote: These things are what I find somewhat displeasing with StarCraft, until the highest level, it's still just a game of who is best at not forgetting to constantly produce probes.
I'd love it if unit production and inject larva could be put to autocast and the game be more of a game of decisions instead of a game of remembering to press e,s, or d every 17 gameseconds. This is of course less the case with Zerg.
I'd also like it better if you didn't want to constantly produce workers but there was some optimum to periodically pause at before you got an expo up. I'd rather have like that max saturation occured at 15-18 workers or something, that would really make it advanrageous to know when to temporary quit producing workers.
But yeah, the truth of this game is that just fielding the largest army, not knowing counters, not micro, not scouting, not knowing the opponents race and knowing when you can expect a cloaked banshee to arrive does make the game. Of course, if both players have relatively even macro, these things do come into play.
Though, this is only the case of ladder, if you know your opponent's history and you know he goes mass stalker all the time, a nice DT rush or mass immortals stops that adequately.
It sounds like what you want is a turn-based strategy game, of which there are many quality games about. SC2 is not one of them though!
Nah, not really, I some-what dislike turn based strategy games because most all work with a map-hack anyway, I also enjoy the multitasking aspect of SC2.
True that SC is far from perfect for me, The StarCraft-style RTS is still as far as it goes really. My ideal game would lie some-what between Commandos and SC2, focussing on small-scale battles, multitasking, micro and decisions above all. Not about mechanical frivolries.
The point about SC2 is that there are things we all know we should do, like constantly be making workers, and doing it really is a pretty boring excercize, but being able to do it is what separates an experienced player from a low level player alone. From mid-diamond up though all these things I want some-what are there again as everyone then knows how to constantly create workers so scouting, countering, diversions and all that play a significant factor again, so I can't complain that much really, at least it makes the match at my level of play, which isn't world class, but experienced play nonetheless.
Or actually, in low level chess, the match is decided by who makes the least blunders too any-way. :')
OP is correct. I got into diamond with pure macro only and 1A atks even though I did not hotkey back in the days :lol: (even using RANDOM all the way). However problems arises when you are in diamond, your micro sucks. Just had no unit control at all.
In the end my friend helped me improve my micro skills and guess how he did it. We played 2v2 against insane Comps (both protoss) on the typhoon maps. I would go Zerg and the partner would go as terran. Mass speedlings and mass reapers... and harass one side each (zergling takes the main path to their base and reapers use their cliff mobility to go the other side when you see their protoss army force... Just run away because no way either of you can beat it head on and when they follow u, ur partner rams up their backside and when they go back for them u ram up their backside). Basically what you learn from this is to reinforce your units while expanding.... Forced me to hotkey for quicker reaction and tada it gave me the basis of macroing and microing at the same time...
it's not that simple, if you macro too hard you will die to a timing push or cheese even at lower levels (as Zerg). Most T/P at lower levels play "build some probes/SCV, pump basic units, maybe get an upgrade and A-move at a fixed time inbetween 7 and 14 minutes. An overdroning Z easily dies to that. Best way as Zerg for lower level play is to build some basic army around 7 and then start droning. A macro hatch to make up for sloppy injects is useful, too.
Basically I identified these player types in lower levels: - weak or no macro play while trying to pull of fancy micro :-). However a timing push can hit you if you do not build an army somewhat preemptive. - macro only, likely to die to any kind of attack beyond 6 lings - turtle players being busy to defend their 1-2 bases (while you take the map). They start "harrass" 14'00 minutes in the game (uh). Once they are mined out, they wait for your attack .. - one trick pony/cheese players (fast muta, roach, banshee, void, mmm, dt push).
On January 25 2011 03:27 Malloy wrote: I have to admit that macro will definitely get you to gold or low platinum...but if you rise in gold or platinum, people at the high end are really good...I'm currently a 2200 gold player, 4th in my division...and I'm, playing against 1-10 platinum players and macro isn't their problem, nor is it mine. I have recently switched form an agressive style to a more macro oriented style...and it has helped me win slightly more games...but where I am and the people I play...mass stalkers will certainly not win you the game.
When you first join a league, you're likely playing the lower-end of the league. A really low diamond player is not as good as me...I've played them before.
Disagree. I'm at 2.8k masters zerg right now and I STILL get supply blocked and then I spam vvvvvvv a hundred times or my minerals float over a thousand for missing injects. my point is that your macro can ALWAYS improve. Macro is still my problem imo. I don't try infestor micro or stuff. I just try to outmacro them.
On January 25 2011 04:35 Schnullerbacke13 wrote: it's not that simple, if you macro too hard you will die to a timing push or cheese even at lower levels (as Zerg).
You will lose to cheese but not every single bloody game is cheesing... you will still get to diamond even with people cheesing you.
I started out in Beta, and after some games and practice, plus some good build order, I broke into Diamond league. now, after release, and a slight 2week hiatus, I find myself demoted into plat simply because I realized my problem is not macroing efficiently. getting supply blocked, and forgetting to continue to produce workers. I started playing this way last night on ladder, and against plat and gold players, literally, the only way I would lose would be because I forgot an obs for DTs, or ridiculous late game hard counters (stalkers don't fare well versus mass roach/hydra, tank/marauder, coollosi/immortal) Still, looking at the replays, I hit 200/200 about 50 food before my opponents (exception zerg). Even still, with total focus on macro, I always had enough units to hold off 4gate allins, 2rax, 4rax, ling allins, muta harass, 3gate robo, all sorts of timing push/allins.
After just one night, I have a new respect for not only Pros, and their immaculate and impeccable macro, but also Starcraft:Brood War and Starcraft 2. Really, after this experience, nobody but the highest .5% really have any say in so called "balance" because they are the only ones with equally perfect macro with which you can actually compare strength of strategies and reactions. They are the closest we have to perfect in terms of a scientific test pool, this due to their macro being (mostly) equal, whereas, anyone below (including probably up to mid-diamond) have such a valley between where their macro is and where it could be.
Eeryck has a really good thread on "what does 'just macro better' really mean? Cliff notes: it means several things at once: never getting supply blocked, always making workers, always making units from structures, and keeping money low.
As a high bronze player (but mostly facing silver/gold players so just waiting on that promotion), there are still lots of players with bad macro, especially past the 2nd base. You can win lots of games just by having more stuff, taking map control, etc., but not all. The most common "good macro" players at low levels who are best able to spend their money and produce units are people doing hardcore one-base attacks (I refuse to call something "all-in" unless it involves bringing the workers to the fight). Not something like the 4-gate rush, but somewhere in the 7-10 minute range they push off of one-base with a slew of units roaches/3rax/gateway+immortal push. In fact if you're trying to have "good macro" the next thing to learn is how to avoid losing to these pushes which usually hit before your expansion has kicked in.
I've been trying to read through this thread to the end and just couldn't quite make it. All these people trying to argue over specifics and talk about how they don't want to be a boring macro bot are completely missing the point.
No, massing 1 unit and a-moving at maxed is not good strategy and is not the "correct" way to play. No, macro is not the most interesting thing to think about/watch. No, micro/scouting/unit composition are not worthless in comparison.
All of this is besides the point. The point, which has been explicitly stated before this but I'll state again, is that macro is what allows these other elements of strategy to come into play.
You are not being mindless or boring by learning how to macro well. You are allowing yourself to execute strategies. Do you want to do a timing attack? Well, then the whole idea is to have as much stuff as you possibly can at that timing, so macro well. Do you want to get that awesome high tech unit that lets you be fancy with spells as early as possible? Then macro well so you can survive early attacks until you get that tech unit.
It can feel boring watching replays and just constantly looking at your nexus for probe production and supply to see if you are pylon blocked and gateways to see if they are idle. It can also be extremely boring winning games by just a-moving over your opponent's smaller army. However, the idea is the improve your macro to the level where these other elements can actually be utilized.
On January 25 2011 03:34 emythrel wrote: I do believe that learning to macro will help you improve faster and you will get promoted eventually, but a plat/diamond/master level player will always be able to beat a silver/gold player because they are better, so its not a fair test.
"becuase they are better"? Better at what? MACRO. This guy literally didn't micro, and didn't use some sort of timing attack, or tech, or unit countering. All he did was macro, specifically to disprove this sort of assertion. Was he better at... A-moving? No, diamond level players can beat silver players just by being better AT MACRO. That's the point of this... it's an undeniable demonstration of that assertion. The guy put up a couple cannons, got a detector, and macroed like a fiend. This is how you win games.
Apparently it IS deniable, based on half the responses in this thread. I think it actually shows that it's not macro ability stopping people from progressing to diamond and beyond, it's attitude toward learning how to get better. If you can't help yourself even when everything is put on a plate for you - you're not going to get better.
Jeez, if I was gold or below and I read this thread I'd be copying the exact idea of ignoring everything but macro - copying the exact order and quantity of production buildings from the replays and practicing it until I was diamond, not whining that it's not a valid demonstration and there's nothing wrong with my macro..
I think this post got to the real issue in this thread.
Funny how all the people saying macro alone will get you into diamond are actually in diamond or masters. Everyone who says it won't or its not as important/strong as others make it out to be is prefacing their argument by saying they're platinum or lower. And realistically people like to overmicro while usually there isnt much micro do be done in a battle once you cast your spells. Stop staring at the battle and build more units.
So listen to the diamond/masters people and focus on macro. I was stuck in platinum for a while before i decided to do absolutely minimal micro and put 95% of my focus on macro. Two days later i got promoted to diamond. Once you learn to make a ton of units and keep expanding while you counter your opponent's army comp, micro and other things come naturally as you gradually get higher apm.
I'm definitely winning a lot more by playing somewhat defsively and macroing like crazy, while also scouting the opponent's unit composition and making sure to challenge them any time they get +1 bases on me.
Having said that, the most important element to this for me has been working out some general stable build orders, scouting diligence, etc that would allow me to survive. I needed to be able to able to recognize when my opponent is doing something super aggressive ( or as people like to say all-iny) and know whether I need to change up what I am doing to respond.
The OP on the reddit thread is currently in gold according to sc2ranks, i'd imagine if he just did a few more things to scout/counter what the opponent is doing he could easily make it to platinum/diamond, but I seriously doubt he can do it just spamming stalkers and a-moving even if his macro is phenomenal. I'd love to be proven wrong though.
On January 24 2011 13:56 Tomo009 wrote: I dunno, he didn't play many games and was playing high leaguers pretty quickly. Also, I want to see him try again as zerg. As zerg, you must adapt or you will die, at any level. You would have to have ridiculously good macro to beat for example a deathball protoss or biomech terran. As with no micro, you will get crushed in one battle and lose it all.
Of course macro is the main skill that will increase one's rank, but simply saying "only macro and you will be in diamond" is plain wrong. I'm in gold now, playing sivelr-platinum level players and there are a lot of timing pushes and aggressive plays that I just wouldn't be able to handle at all if I didn't scout and react.
As a master league Zerg, i can tell you that macroing hard will get you definetly into diamond even as zerg. Protoss deathballs are deathballs because they can reach to that point without losing the game before or letting you get 5 bases, in bronze-plat, you can get to 200/200 before they get to that point (can't tell you how much faster i can max than people from that league, but if you macro correctly you can get like 3-10 minutes faster depending on how bad is the other player).
Just to note, i was given a new account like 3 months ago, and i went 15-0 only doing muta/ling every game, in any mu, so trust the people that tell you to macro, because it actually work, and is the fastest way to get to diamond/master.
OP thanks for sharing this, even day9 talked about doing just stalkers and seing ow far he could get, but i think he didnt have the time to do it
I can back this up as well.
Pretty much the only reason I'm in diamond is because I learned how to macro passably (hit injects on time for most of the early game if harassment isn't too severe, I don't typically get supply blocked until over 80 food or so and I drone like a MFer).
Learning when it's safe to expand as Zerg is pretty key, as well. I remember way back in the day when Fruitdealer won GSL 1, everybody was freaking out about drone timings and learning that it was actually safe to drone earlier and longer than most people thought. Day[9] was also (over)quoted saying that the best way to lose as Zerg is to get caught with your pants down overdroning.
Well, I adapted that philosophy to my expanding. I started expanding earlier and earlier just as an experiment (like pushing the envelope on droning to see how many drones I could get away with). I really surprised myself how safe it was to expand much earlier than I was original comfortable with.
I'd advise a lot of Zergs struggling with macro in platinum to play with expansion timings a bit. Obviously, if he's one-basing you there's no issue with 2-basing him until you've killed his aggression, but if you're wondering how to get the 200/200 army long before your opponents, try taking your 3rd much earlier than you usually would. You'll be surprised!
EDIT: Obviously, by expanding I meant taking your 3rd, not your nat. Just clarifying.
On January 25 2011 03:51 snazbaz wrote: Jeez, if I was gold or below and I read this thread I'd be copying the exact idea of ignoring everything but macro - copying the exact order and quantity of production buildings from the replays and practicing it until I was diamond, not whining that it's not a valid demonstration and there's nothing wrong with my macro..
I'm a 2400/#5 gold Z. I've played over 700 1v1s starting as a complete multiplayer RTS noob (i.e. no more exploiting predictable AI), so if nothing else I've seen a lot. Like most people at my level, I need to improve macro. It's not so much being unable to do it as not being sure exactly what I want to do. I'm pretty good at losing because I have too many drones, but that's still losing and clearly is still a failure, even if it's failing with the right overall mindset.
I haven't watched his replays, but it seems to me that the thought process would be thus: Always have a probe building on every nexus. If a mineral line is saturated, expand and maynard extra workers. Always have a stalker building; if you have resources for more stalkers than you can build, add a gateway. Always be building pylons so you never get supply blocked while you pump stalkers. Throw in a few cannons for detection/basic defense if you have leftover mins after the first three priorities are covered. Mass your stalkers where they can access all of your bases, hold off any pressure that comes while you're massing and once you're maxed attack.
So as Z, how would you proceed in an equally simple manner? If you max capacity on drones, you'll have no army and 6 undefended bases. If you pump roaches (T1 the analog to stalkers), you're at risk of being impotent to stop air attacks. Hydras come too late to help much if you get attacked off one base (which still happens in 95% of my games). I don't see the Z version of "massing a safe-against-any-kind-of-attack unit faster than the opponent", but it seems like there should be some way to compensate. If the answer is "you just have to know how to do it right" then the idea of "macro into diamond" doesn't apply to Z, right? It would be "be a diamond-level Z, nerf your account, then diamond-macro your way back to diamond".
Don't get me wrong -- I love the experiment and I'm just trying to figure out an equivalent "macro cheese" to practice myself. I'm interested to hear what better Z (or vZ) players would suggest for one.
On January 24 2011 13:56 Tomo009 wrote: I dunno, he didn't play many games and was playing high leaguers pretty quickly. Also, I want to see him try again as zerg. As zerg, you must adapt or you will die, at any level. You would have to have ridiculously good macro to beat for example a deathball protoss or biomech terran. As with no micro, you will get crushed in one battle and lose it all.
Of course macro is the main skill that will increase one's rank, but simply saying "only macro and you will be in diamond" is plain wrong. I'm in gold now, playing sivelr-platinum level players and there are a lot of timing pushes and aggressive plays that I just wouldn't be able to handle at all if I didn't scout and react.
EDIT: And ZvZ, it just won't work there period. Such a volatile match-up, being beaten in a paper, scissors rock without scouting your opponent you don't have a hope.
if you're in gold I can almost guarantee you that no one will do timing pushes. You might think they're doing timing pushes, but what they're really doing is moving out when they think they have a good sized army. Hell, I'm in mid diamond and I don't timing push except if they're putting up an expansion. I don't go, oh look this guys making a reactor on his factory, its going to take a while so I should push because he only has 2 rax and I have 3 gate robo.
I guarantee you will go to diamond with ok, nothing great, just macro focused play. Just rally units to one place, when attacked, attack his base and rally there, as zerg.
And it works z v z too. Just need to mass units earlier.
"Macro" doesn't mean always fast expo, mass drones before units. Against lower leagues I'd just mass speedlings, then banelings, then expand. Better mechanics would mean you nearly always win. Just like mid to high masters would beat me 9 of 10 times.
I dunno if this was all ready posted, but starting at bronze league would make things much different. You can't really practice macro until you are able to hold off the cheese and one base builds that you see from the bronze league, which is really where the problem would be. To get good at macro, you need to practice is longer, macro oriented games.
On January 24 2011 13:56 Tomo009 wrote: I dunno, he didn't play many games and was playing high leaguers pretty quickly. Also, I want to see him try again as zerg. As zerg, you must adapt or you will die, at any level. You would have to have ridiculously good macro to beat for example a deathball protoss or biomech terran. As with no micro, you will get crushed in one battle and lose it all.
Of course macro is the main skill that will increase one's rank, but simply saying "only macro and you will be in diamond" is plain wrong. I'm in gold now, playing sivelr-platinum level players and there are a lot of timing pushes and aggressive plays that I just wouldn't be able to handle at all if I didn't scout and react.
EDIT: And ZvZ, it just won't work there period. Such a volatile match-up, being beaten in a paper, scissors rock without scouting your opponent you don't have a hope.
if you're in gold I can almost guarantee you that no one will do timing pushes. You might think they're doing timing pushes, but what they're really doing is moving out when they think they have a good sized army. Hell, I'm in mid diamond and I don't timing push except if they're putting up an expansion. I don't go, oh look this guys making a reactor on his factory, its going to take a while so I should push because he only has 2 rax and I have 3 gate robo.
I think what he means is they're pushing based on the timing of *their own* upgrades, e.g. "I'm going to build as many marines and marauders as I can and attack the minute stim finishes" or "I'm going to build as many gateway units as I can and attack when zealot charge finishes". These attacks are almost always off of one base, so if you are trying to do any two base play you have to know how to fend them off. It's not rocket science, but it's one step more than "have good macro and expand, you'll always have more stuff then them and you can just a-move to win".
On January 25 2011 06:39 TheBrofessor wrote: I dunno if this was all ready posted, but starting at bronze league would make things much different. You can't really practice macro until you are able to hold off the cheese and one base builds that you see from the bronze league, which is really where the problem would be. To get good at macro, you need to practice is longer, macro oriented games.
The Reddit guy started in bronze league, throwing his 5 placement matches. Assuming you macro well, you should be able to hold off bronze league 1-base play... since bronze league 1-base play is backed up by bronze league level macro.
the reason everyone tells sub-diamond players to improve their macro is because it is the most sure-fire way to improve. And because there is sort of this macro ceiling, where if your macro does not improve you CANNOT win against a player with macro of a certain caliber, no matter how clever your strat and tactics are.
macro is to sc as cardio is to pro football. Yeah, strength and stamina are only one small part of the game, but as a demographic the NFL player pool is probably one of the fittest groups in the world, because if you're not huge, doesn't matter if you're standing in the right place; that running back is just going to RUN RIGHT THROUGH YOU. Unless you can get your macro into a certain range, you will never hang with diamond league players. So why force yourself to be 2x smarter than the other guy—sometimes that's not even enough!—when you can match his macro and just be a tiny bit smarter?
Edit: what sub-diamond players also often dont' realize about the game itself is taht its not stricktly counter-based. Yeah, rock beats scissors beats paper, but sometimes, if you do it right, 3 rocks will beat paper, and since a timing window exists where you will have the right number of rocks, rocks become the right answer to paper for a certain part of the game. And as timing windows open and close, counters and ideal compositions constantly shift around. And what determines when and where timing windows occur? Your macro! So if your macro isn't up to par, you're not even playing the same game as top level players—which means that you're going to have a lot of trouble countering their strongest timings.
On January 25 2011 06:39 TheBrofessor wrote: I dunno if this was all ready posted, but starting at bronze league would make things much different. You can't really practice macro until you are able to hold off the cheese and one base builds that you see from the bronze league, which is really where the problem would be. To get good at macro, you need to practice is longer, macro oriented games.
The Reddit guy started in bronze league, throwing his 5 placement matches. Assuming you macro well, you should be able to hold off bronze league 1-base play... since bronze league 1-base play is backed up by bronze league level macro.
Really? I dont see that anywhere in his post, the sentence "I created a new account with my extra guest pass, insta-quit my first 5 placement matches, getting myself into Bronze." kinda makes it sounds like he was zbove bronze all ready. Does he say somewhere else that he was all ready bronze?
On January 25 2011 06:39 TheBrofessor wrote: I dunno if this was all ready posted, but starting at bronze league would make things much different. You can't really practice macro until you are able to hold off the cheese and one base builds that you see from the bronze league, which is really where the problem would be. To get good at macro, you need to practice is longer, macro oriented games.
The Reddit guy started in bronze league, throwing his 5 placement matches. Assuming you macro well, you should be able to hold off bronze league 1-base play... since bronze league 1-base play is backed up by bronze league level macro.
Also adding that the common misconception of bronze players being able to cheese correctly is almost everywhere.
Low-mid bronze players really don't know how to cheese, but the top bronze usually do. Usually, you find cheese in silver+ because they actually know what a pylon is.
On January 25 2011 06:39 TheBrofessor wrote: I dunno if this was all ready posted, but starting at bronze league would make things much different. You can't really practice macro until you are able to hold off the cheese and one base builds that you see from the bronze league, which is really where the problem would be. To get good at macro, you need to practice is longer, macro oriented games.
The Reddit guy started in bronze league, throwing his 5 placement matches. Assuming you macro well, you should be able to hold off bronze league 1-base play... since bronze league 1-base play is backed up by bronze league level macro.
Really? I dont see that anywhere in his post, the sentence "I created a new account with my extra guest pass, insta-quit my first 5 placement matches, getting myself into Bronze." kinda makes it sounds like he was zbove bronze all ready. Does he say somewhere else that he was all ready bronze?
I created a new account with my extra guest pass, insta-quit my first 5 placement matches, getting myself into Bronze. I then used this super-secret strategy developed by oGsMC, Tester, and NsPGenius in a joint pro effort to defeat all opponents as Protoss: MACROSTOMP THE FUCK OUT OF YOUR OPPONENT USING ONLY STALKERS. No, really. That's all I did. Here's what I did: 9-probe scout. Make stalkers. Get upgrades. Make cannons to defend bases. Expand when I felt like it. A-move directly into opponent's base when near-max. Use absolutely minimal micro when necessary. I'm sure after watching the replays none of you will complain about micro, since I'm not even looking at the battle 80% of the time. I especially did not: Scout after my 9-probe scout. Threaten my opponent in any way prior to max-army attack. Multi-prong attack. Result: Currently 13-win streak. Highest-rated opponent was Platinum, but I'm confident pure-macro will get me into Diamond, since none of the games were even close at all. I didn't get 6-pooled, but I did get speedling and roach "rushed", but their forces were so pathetic that I beat them with my stalkers with almost zero micro. So, if you're in Platinum or below and you want to improve: Stop doing whatever fancy strategy you're doing, stop overthinking everything, and just macro. Ninjaedit: Oh, I also got observers because they're kind of necessary.
EDIT: Obviously he was beyond bronze level as a player, but he gave himself every possible handicap to force practically all of his wins to be the result of macro alone.
To all of you here still saying this macro = diamond is non sense, its like you literally assume that is what a player would do.
What the guy in the OP did was prove that you can, in fact, do nothing but macro and get into diamond. Yes, he massed stalkers which also serve the purpose of being anti air, but it doesn't change the fact he could get into diamond, you could do the same with hydra or marine maurader as well.
I'm also seeing alot of people say "well if you don't scout them I'm going to lose to cloaked banshees or mass voids, or X unit composition. And your totally right. If you played games and just macroed your going to lose some games to unscouted stuff, but remember you don't have to win anywhere near 100% of your games to get into diamond. Those losses to cheese (which you can often defend at very low levels with no scouting just because of macro differences) and to various unscouted unit compositions are accounted for in this. The guys still gets to diamond, which is the whole point.
I'm also seeing alot of people react to this as if its being advocated that you only macro and do nothing else. No one is saying that you have to be a brainless idiot and just macro; I mean its not exactly difficult to click a scout once to the opponents base and take a quick look at what he is doing. Even if you did that (only macro), its a great way to improve.
Let me explain. I think everyone pretty much agrees that macro is the most important SC fundamentals and usually one of the biggest weaknesses of anyone in the lower ranks. What people seem to forget is the best way to practice something is to pick a particular weakpoint and focus specifically on that. For instance if you know you're taking the too far to the inside in the golf swing, you would focus specifically on trying to move the club on a more normal path going back. There might be many other flaws you need to fix, but taking them one at a time makes it much easier to isolate once and fix it. In SC if you tried to say alright I'm going to work on my macro, my scouting, my multitask, and my battle micro when I play you're basically saying alright I'm going to practice playing better.
Most people don't like it when the advice their given is "play better". Its pretty difficult to just straight up "play better". So, knowing that macro is typically the biggest weakness and the most significant one if its weak, what do we do? Fix it of course.
How do you do that? The answer is isolate it and work specifically on that. You start off and you have one goal for the game, constantly make workers in while doing your normal build. What matters is that because habit. If it takes all your APM/multitask to make the workers and you dont even get your first pylon or pool down, so be it. But you keep trying to make workers and follow your normal build. Let me stress though, the priority is workers, if you can't do your build, oh well. Eventually as you do it a few times making workers because instinct and you begin to have some freedom to follow your build and develop a better innate sense of when you need to 0p or 4d or 1s or whatever. After maybe 10 or 20 games you'll probably be doing a pretty damn good job making workers up till 200/200.
After that you move on to step 2 which is doing the same thing as before but keeping constant gateway production. Constant probes is still top priority, but this is the new commandment, nothing else matters. So what if your base is getting run over by the opponent and you dont have the APM to go micro it, just forget it and let yourself die and keep up the macro. Keep in mind we aren't doing this to win games, this is not a strategy to win by any means. This is, in essence, a drill. We aren't worried about the results, but rather about the process and what we are trying to improve
Step 3 has the same as the previous steps, but we also add in that you now don't want to miss any pylons/OL/depot.
Step 4 ties it all together, you do the previous three while also trying to control your army in the field, at first you might only be able to do something with it a few times per game, but as you keep trying, while still keeping 1-3 as gospel, you'll start finding more and more places where you find you can do some army control.
At this point, you should have decent macro, and the ability to control your army to a reasonable degree while macroing. Now that you have the key fundamental down, you can begin to look more at improving the other aspects of your game. Additionally since your build is tight and your unit production is what it should be things like timings and how various strategy's play out will make a ton more sense than if your trying to focus on those aspects with 3k/3k banked of two unsaturated bases.
On January 25 2011 03:51 snazbaz wrote: Jeez, if I was gold or below and I read this thread I'd be copying the exact idea of ignoring everything but macro - copying the exact order and quantity of production buildings from the replays and practicing it until I was diamond, not whining that it's not a valid demonstration and there's nothing wrong with my macro..
I'm a 2400/#5 gold Z. I've played over 700 1v1s starting as a complete multiplayer RTS noob (i.e. no more exploiting predictable AI), so if nothing else I've seen a lot. Like most people at my level, I need to improve macro. It's not so much being unable to do it as not being sure exactly what I want to do. I'm pretty good at losing because I have too many drones, but that's still losing and clearly is still a failure, even if it's failing with the right overall mindset.
I haven't watched his replays, but it seems to me that the thought process would be thus: Always have a probe building on every nexus. If a mineral line is saturated, expand and maynard extra workers. Always have a stalker building; if you have resources for more stalkers than you can build, add a gateway. Always be building pylons so you never get supply blocked while you pump stalkers. Throw in a few cannons for detection/basic defense if you have leftover mins after the first three priorities are covered. Mass your stalkers where they can access all of your bases, hold off any pressure that comes while you're massing and once you're maxed attack.
So as Z, how would you proceed in an equally simple manner? If you max capacity on drones, you'll have no army and 6 undefended bases. If you pump roaches (T1 the analog to stalkers), you're at risk of being impotent to stop air attacks. Hydras come too late to help much if you get attacked off one base (which still happens in 95% of my games). I don't see the Z version of "massing a safe-against-any-kind-of-attack unit faster than the opponent", but it seems like there should be some way to compensate. If the answer is "you just have to know how to do it right" then the idea of "macro into diamond" doesn't apply to Z, right? It would be "be a diamond-level Z, nerf your account, then diamond-macro your way back to diamond".
Don't get me wrong -- I love the experiment and I'm just trying to figure out an equivalent "macro cheese" to practice myself. I'm interested to hear what better Z (or vZ) players would suggest for one.
Your best bet with Zerg is Roach/hydra, in my opinion. Though my opinion probably matters little, I am a protoss player.
It's still somewhat more complicated as Zerg -- since you can build drones or army. T or P can do both at once, so it's easy to "constantly build workers" while massing an army, but for Z it's not so simple.
Is the message actually "have one drone building at each base at all times" a la P or T production (with the rest of your larva going to army), would it be more like "spam drones for a cycle, then army for the next", or is the real answer "know the right combination from being good at macro and use that"?
The problem I have is that everyone says "just macro better", but for Z specifically, the only details tend to be along the lines of "learn when you can drone and when you can't." Unfortunately, I've seen precious few guidelines on how to determine that given what's happening in the game. Or even how to plan to use your larvae in an ideal situation, knowing that you'll be forced to audible at some point.
I'm not trying to complain or gainsay the point others have made, namely that macro is the most important thing to be good at and you'd do well to "spam" it at the cost of auto-losing the odd game when it's inappropriate. But for Z specifically, it's harder to follow that general advice correctly without any more information. If the answer to my concerns is simply "well, zerg is more complex and you have to figure out the complexities in order to improve", the idea of "macro is all you need to get to diamond" doesn't really hold water. I suspect that there are maybe just a few rules specific Z to keep in mind while "spamming macro" that aren't often enumerated . . .
Simply put this way. Even at plat league, it's so easy to expand inwardly because of he time they will nothing about it. You could even take the whole map before they even attack while they just make 2 void rays.
I dunno, he didn't play many games and was playing high leaguers pretty quickly. Also, I want to see him try again as zerg. As zerg, you must adapt or you will die, at any level. You would have to have ridiculously good macro to beat for example a deathball protoss or biomech terran. As with no micro, you will get crushed in one battle and lose it all.
Of course macro is the main skill that will increase one's rank, but simply saying "only macro and you will be in diamond" is plain wrong. I'm in gold now, playing sivelr-platinum level players and there are a lot of timing pushes and aggressive plays that I just wouldn't be able to handle at all if I didn't scout and react.
EDIT: And ZvZ, it just won't work there period. Such a volatile match-up, being beaten in a paper, scissors rock without scouting your opponent you don't have a hope
for zerg, macroing is, well, what zergs are known for. So zerg shouldn't work as well. Zerg is zerg for its cheap units and fast macro. That's why zerg won't do that well. If you are protoss and terran though, out macroing your opponent will be a good way to ensure victory. Most times. Unless the fact that strategy and micro balances it out
DayNine made a vid not long ago on pretty much the same topic. He literally just went through a low level replay showing how the [protoss in this case] player wasn't focusing on probes and pylons, and ended up quite far behind in supply and income.
On January 25 2011 06:55 Blazinghand wrote:The Reddit guy started in bronze league, throwing his 5 placement matches. Assuming you macro well, you should be able to hold off bronze league 1-base play... since bronze league 1-base play is backed up by bronze league level macro.
*sigh* look, yes, there are people with bad macro at the bronze/silver level, but it's just not that hard to learn how to 3rax or 4gate or do a big 1-base roach push, which starts showing up at high bronze. In fact, if you look at the army value for "typical bronze macro", you'll notice that their army values are about even at the 8-minute mark, which is roughly when those 1-base pushes come. http://i.imgur.com/nU1W7.jpg
...
Anyway, I thought Blazinghand was wrong and that there is a window where you will be "behind" if you try to expand against someone doing a hardcore 1-base push. There is but it's earlier than you think, and by the time a one-baser a-moves his army you can probably have enough to hold it off. If you expand early against a one-base player, you are behind in army value at 6:00, tied around 7:00, and ahead at 8:00, with some static defense (turrets/bunkers/spinecrawlers/cannons) to boot.
So the two pieces of advice I'd give TLers who haven't gotten to gold or platinum are: (1) watch your replays to see how your macro is (all parts --- don't supply blocked, build workers, etc) (2) play defensively after you expand.
EDIT: Yes I realize losses to this sort of attack are already accounted for in terms of getting to diamond in the redditors post.
So, I'm currently testing this and the results so far are (surprisingly?) amazing. I just rickroll every of my opponents, especially if they don't pressure me early on. My results so far are 6-1 or 7-1, not certain, and the game I lost was a 4Gate I have not been able to defend properly due to my lack of sentries. Adjusting his bronze-mindset (no Micro) a bit by adding blink and actually microing a littttttle bit, I seem to overwhelm most of the armies I face just by massing 3/3 Stalkers.
[B] You can compare it to chess in that regard. To play at a high level, you need both a deep understanding of strategy and very good tactical abilities. However, even if your understanding of strategy is very mediocre, you can still be a pretty good player just by calculating (macroing in SC terms) well, but it doesn't work the other way around. You can have a great understanding of strategy, if you're terrible at calculating, you'll never get to a remotely high level.
I'm a pretty high level chess player (2200+), and I'm not too sure about this analogy. I guess it kinda depends on what you define pretty good player as. I suspect that you would probably get to about 1400-1500 ELO (BTW for those who don't know chess ratings, a 1500 is probably the equivalent of Plat SC2.) and then hit a wall without ANY strategy, e.g., you don't castle, you don't play for control of the center, you don't have a plan. While tactics do play a huge role in chess (as macro does in starcraft), it cannot be described as everything.
Similarly I think you'll hit a wall at platinum with just macro and no strategy at all. However, basic strategy coupled with macro should easily be enough to get you into diamond, just as I think (correct me if I'm wrong) basic chess principles plus good tactics should be enough for a ~1800 rating.
Proposal for new test: Some strong Masters player should make a new account and purposely supply block themselves on 2nd pylon/overlord/depot every game. Other than that play as well as they can. So sortof the opposite of good marcro. See how high they can get. >
On January 26 2011 04:48 KillerDucky wrote: Proposal for new test: Some strong Masters player should make a new account and purposely supply block themselves on 2nd pylon/overlord/depot every game. Other than that play as well as they can. So sortof the opposite of good marcro. See how high they can get. >
Probably say something like you're not allowed to build the next pylon/overlord/depot until it says you have not enough supply to build something.
This is the sort of thing I really enjoy reading about, and why I have been concentrating on just two things this week (verrrry new player haha) fending off cheese so I can get in position to Macro, and then, Macro. More than once I've gotten my army to 200/200 and found that my opposition only just took his natural. I know I am playing against other noobs as a total noob myself, but I found that rather shocking to be honest, it seems that at lower levels people practice the strategies which get them the biggest win ratio for the least effort.
Cheese is great for that because you only have to perfect one build order, and for a newer, inexperienced player it is MUCH harder to fend off than it is to perform, so it's no wonder this stuff flourishes at lower levels of play.
I am a Gold-leaguer who would LOVE to ONLY concentrate on macro. I want to see what the Redditer's build orders are so I can emulate them to get a solid sense of timings. I cant wait to check this out.
Thanks for the advice from all the high level players in here.
A piece of advise: if you want to do what redditer did (ie:not scouting, massing only one unit...) dont use zerg. To be acceptably safe without scouting you need a race that can make workers and soldiers at the same time.
I think that macro fundamentals are the most important... as a platinum zerg player who knows he DEFINITELY needs to work on his macro.. does any masters league players or high diamond level players like to offer up a build for me to practice with?
it seems like the OP had a simple enough build so i dont see why we cant come up with a zerg one that can help me practice my macro
[B] You can compare it to chess in that regard. To play at a high level, you need both a deep understanding of strategy and very good tactical abilities. However, even if your understanding of strategy is very mediocre, you can still be a pretty good player just by calculating (macroing in SC terms) well, but it doesn't work the other way around. You can have a great understanding of strategy, if you're terrible at calculating, you'll never get to a remotely high level.
I'm a pretty high level chess player (2200+), and I'm not too sure about this analogy. I guess it kinda depends on what you define pretty good player as. I suspect that you would probably get to about 1400-1500 ELO (BTW for those who don't know chess ratings, a 1500 is probably the equivalent of Plat SC2.) and then hit a wall without ANY strategy, e.g., you don't castle, you don't play for control of the center, you don't have a plan. While tactics do play a huge role in chess (as macro does in starcraft), it cannot be described as everything.
Similarly I think you'll hit a wall at platinum with just macro and no strategy at all. However, basic strategy coupled with macro should easily be enough to get you into diamond, just as I think (correct me if I'm wrong) basic chess principles plus good tactics should be enough for a ~1800 rating.
I think you guys have some pretty high standards for "good" chess players, as I'm sure making it to 1500 (let alone 1800) from nothing would be much more difficult than making it to plat from no rts background.
Correct me if I'm wrong, that just seems really hard :/
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.
Quite the opposite! Zergs can 'just macro' way better than the other races, you just have to know when to stop 'just macro'ing and actually make enough units to survive.
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.
Quite the opposite! Zergs can 'just macro' way better than the other races, you just have to know when to stop 'just macro'ing and actually make enough units to survive.
and we know that by scouting .. so if this isn't allowed a zerg autolooses
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
Really, I believe it since my play is 90% macro. Maybe I don't give myself enough credit, but you can get to diamond with good macro and micro slightly above abysmal. I sure got there that way.
On January 24 2011 13:31 malphigian wrote: Reddit starcraft has recently been plagued by a lot of discussion around some lower level players complaining about the advice they get from diamond/masters level players. The usual advice is "focus on macro, you can get to diamond by macro alone". The complaints had to do with bronze/silver players saying they faced more cheese so they don't get to macro.
One redditor decided to put it to the test. He made a guest account, threw his placement matches, and then proceeded to play games just macro'ing to near max army of strictly stalkers then a-moving to victory.
I figured it was worth reposting this over here as I see a lot of the same conversations going on in the [L] strategy threads here (I'm only a platinum myself) and it's nice to see an attempt at some actual evidence behind an argument.
I might quibble that this is a pretty expansive definition of macro (he is doing a number of basic mechanical things at a much higher level that his opponents), but it's a pretty interesting experiment and he's obviously not using any unit composition or micro tricks.
this pretty much sums reddit's attempt:
On January 24 2011 14:46 Linconis wrote: 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"
Just macro, no scout, mass units is somewhat of a delayed cheese. The simple fact this worked just goes to show how shallow league placement is while also being a slap in the face of Starcraft as strategy game.
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
Have you ever played ZvP? Even with scouting it's hard to see a 4gate since he denies almost all scouting with zealt+stalker. A 4gate will completely ravage a zerg if he doesn't know it's comming, and if the zerg mistakes something else for a 4gate he's fucked in the macro game. So no balance is pretty much impossible vs protoss. Also vs terran if no scouting was to be done you'd have to prepare for A LOT of things.(banshee/thor/2rax/hellion) in which case you'd have to make a million spinecrawlers+sporecrawlers while going roach+ling+bling.
Quite the opposite! Zergs can 'just macro' way better than the other races, you just have to know when to stop 'just macro'ing and actually make enough units to survive
Yes, but with zerg you dont "know" when to stop droning, you have to find out by scouting your opponent. Maybe at very high levels, when the opponents follow their build orders perfectly, you can know exactly when to stop droning. However if you oponent is suboptimal, you need to scout him to see if you can eke a few extra drones to take advantage of his poor execution. However this also requires a great deal of knowledge from the zergs part, as he has to know what hes seeing and how to react to it. Just macroing just wont work for zerg.
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
Man, if blizzard wanted the zerg to work like the other races they wouldnt have bothered to create a larva mechanic. Zerg cant compete with the other races unless it makes as many drones as it can in the early game.
The strength of terran is it long range units and defensive capabilities, the strength of protoss is its spellcasters and warp in, the strenth of zerg is its larva mechanic: to be capable of only making drones and then make units at the last minute. If you take away the only strength zerg has, how do you expect to win against the other races?
And yes, you can technically make all the units necessary at the last minute, havent you ever played with zerg? Its a nerve racking race, you feel SO undefended...
And you also need to scout to know what unit composition you are fighting, try to kill a 4 gate with only zerglings if you opponent is minimally capable of using forcefields or terrain to his advantage.
On January 24 2011 14:36 Chill wrote: Nothing new here. Macro alone will easily get you into the 80th percentile, as shown. It's cool that he actually put his money where his mouth to put some tangible results next to the claim though.
Ya on Weapon of Choice Chill has been saying this since day 1. As a Platinum player I can say this is definitely true. Early game I am pretty good, but in the late game my Macro is terrible! That is why I cannot get out of Platinum (although I don't play much).
If you ever wanna improve the most in any league lower then Diamond, just practice purely Macro. Im not talking just 1a your whole army every time, but focus like 90% of your attention on your Macro.
Great too see someone put the effort into actually proving this is true, although I never doubted it/Chill!
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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 ...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?)
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.
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.
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.
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)
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.
On January 28 2011 19:52 snafulator wrote: 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
Or switching to terran and building tanks, so keep that in mind, you need to either have perfect macro, or play terran
Just messing with you, I honestly get the point you're trying to make, when you focused on all-out macro and minimal defense you were dominating your opponents. I'm trying to work my way up to diamond myself so it's good to know that this is making a big difference for other players.
There's two types of players in the lower leagues (and being one of those perpetually stuck at the top of gold players, I have some experience with this):
1 - The casual player who doesn't really care about advancing or significantly improving 2 - The players that want to improve but don't have the tools/knowledge to do so
This is mostly addressed to group 2 since I doubt group 1 would even be asking on a forum about ways to improve.
For group 2, "macro better" doesn't help if you don't know what to look for. I'll borrow the Tiger Woods analogy from earlier since I happen to play golf. When I started, I took a golf class in college and learned the very basics that you would learn in such a class. I could hit the ball consistently but the results of the contact were inconsistant. Sometimes it was straight, sometimes it went far, sometimes it didn't do either. I knew I needed to improve my swing so I started going to the driving range to work on it by myself. Soon I could hit the ball straighter and farther a bit more consistently. Howver, after a few months of playing, I hit a wall at a horrible 20 handicap and just could not improve. At that point, I finally got around to going to a trainer. Lo and behold, all my "improvements" were the problem. I was correcting mistakes with mistakes and limiting my game. I had to unlearn and relearn everything about my swing and ended up dropping 17 strokes from my handicap.
The same concept applies here. "Macro better" is not helpful unless the specific flaws in a player's macro are pointed out. If the player knew what to work on, he would be doing it. This is what sets Day[9] apart in my opinion. His newbie reviews have been invaluable to me and I'm sure most other newbies by pointing out specific flaws and specific mistakes of reasoning common to everyone in the lower leagues. That's the information players need. It's not that a gold leaguer is ignoring the "macro better" advice; his view of what good macro is just differs from that of a master league player. That gap is what needs correction so the gold league player knows specifically what to work on.
Despite that, there has been some solid advice in this thread. The link to the macro benchmarks thread is amazingly helpful IMO and deserves a whole lot more love than its getting.
In fact, if anyone is interested, I can think of an interesting experiment to show the difference in macro between lower and higher league players. Have two players (one gold or lower, one master league) play in separate games against AIs to a predetermined point in time then stop the game and look at where both players are. Developing those types of benchmarks give lower league players much higher quality feedback on where they are in the process.
If any master league players are interested in doing this, I'm a high gold and would be fine with playing as the scrub since I'm actually curious how far I still need to go.
Going straight for stalker macro does help a lot when you start playing competitive. I'm one of those who love playing SC2 online against and together with others, but I'm scared of playing ladder and loosing. Being afraid is obvious stupid, cause it is a game and you should just have fun playing it. I often screw up games, because I get distracted by being harassed or being under early pressure. But I do and feel better when just macroing and knowing what to do next, despite doing a fancy build which is good against a specific race or build (when you can handle your build).
So keep doing macro when you're knew to SC 2, it will improve your play a lot. Once you play calm and concentrated start working on you micro and all those 'fancy' builds.
I'm interested in seeing whether he will actually get into diamond, for it seems that diamond players, without being harassed, are able to sustain a macro comparable to his while doing other cute things.
Right now, the title misleads. I do hope that he gets promoted though, so that I can present this as incontrovertible proof to my friends in lower leagues. I have a firm belief in the power of macro, reinforced by countless facepalms (OMG I could have won if these 1000 floating minerals are 10 zealots). But we just need an evidence as blunt as this one to convince others.
I don't think the complaints about the advice to "just macro" were directed so much at the idea that macro is all-important as the attitude of the higher level players.
When Masters/Diamond players give advice to lower league players along the vein of "just macro" they often have a very condescending tone. They act as if macroing well is the easiest thing in the world, forgetting how much work they themselves had to put in to get good at it.
I think it is the idea of saying "just macro" that bothers the lower players, not necessarily the fact that they do need to work on only their macro.
if it was phrased a bit differently, ie "work on keeping your probe count high, your pylon count matched to your supply needs, and your money low through producing units and production facilities", I think things would be a bit less confrontational.
macro is an important thing but not the only one. sure u can win by only macroing but what if the enemy does the same? terran has mules which mine like crazy, zerg can make workers super fast and toss can use chrono boost which gives u 1 worker extra. if u think about it terran rlly needs mules if they dont want to fall behind and zerg needs time to make those drones. starcraft all comes down to time management. it all depends on what u do with ur time and how much apm u can use. macro is thus the most important thing to do but u should be worried about cheeses etc. thats why poking at the enemy base is important. it gives u the info u need to make good decisions. zerg, for example dont make enough drones with the time they're given. when they dont do that, they will fall behind no matter what they do.
I beat a 2600 master zerg under a restriction that I was only allowed 4 sentries for the purposes of getting my expo up and 1 zealot to defend vs early ling pressure, and no other units except for stalkers. IMO if a protoss player can't pull this off vs low master league zergs, then his macro isn't good enough... you can only do this vs zerg though, because PvP doesn't really have a macro game and PvT requires observers.
It makes me sad to see diamond and below players asking "what should I do vs X?" as a disguised way of asking "what is the magic unit composition that will allow me to win this game against someone who is way better than me, and happened to be using X?"
If he wants to win by a-moving alone, he should have chosen terran instead (LOL). I honestly would be surprised if he managed to get to diamond with just pure stalkers (though i guess if its now with the master league, its doable). I feel that in broodwar, macro is a lot more important because it was very difficult to macro perfectly (due to no mbs or automine). Therefore, the skill gap between those who macroed perfectly (or near it) vs those who couldn't was MUCH larger.
Maybe slightly off-topic, but IMO newer players shouldn't practice raw macro.
I think working on basic game knowledge and having some knowledge of what to do in every matchup (build orders and stuff) is more important than working on macro at the lower levels. Macro is something that needs to be practiced and would come with practice, you can't just be aware of the fact that your macro is poor improve it within a few games.
By practicing a certain build order and not just thinking about macro, you would also practice something viable at the mid-diamond levels and above by going through the motions of the build and improve macro at the same time. You probably won't get into diamond as fast by building 70 stalkers every game and a-moving them but league results shouldn't be a goal if you really want to get good.
Diamond is not that hard to get into. A solid build order, macro and COMMON SENSE will get u there. U cannot micro your way into diamond but u can macro your way into diamond or cheese if u feel u cant play on even grounds. When u just worry about macro u focus more on multitasking then anything during this time. U have to do 10 things at one time and that goes up when the game gets longer. Thus u r practicing on the main part of starcraft MULTITASKING. If u cant multitask then u will have a problem at this game in the higher leagues.
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.
If this is true, I expect an equivalent build for zerg will be posted soon. It'll be nice not to die because I mistook a banshee rush for a hellion rush anymore.
It seems like people are taking the "macro gets you to diamond" too literally. It doesn't mean completely ignore build orders and counters. It has more to do with keeping mineral count down, and production up.
Build orders are an important part of your macro, so I don't see how it's separate.
I think the advice higher level players are trying to stress is for the low level player not to focus so heavily on controlling their army. Instead they should be focusing on keeping money low and maxxing out for a push. High level players encounter cheese all the time, so it's not an excuse, but more of a distraction to macro. Suddenly you have to deal with something unexpected, and this breaks your mental rhythm, you stop producing units, money builds up and you get overwhelmed. This is the problem high level players tell low level players to try their best to avoid. Saying things like: "You can get to diamond on macro alone" is simply stressing the importance of making units, workers, supply room and teching instead of controlling units flawlessly. Once you have solid mechanics and can macro without having to think too much about it, you're able to expand your gameplay into unit control, since your macro is not so much of an issue.
Let's face it. Most low-level players have terrible macro pretty much the moment they start controlling their units. It's called tunnel vision.
The only problem with this is that the person got to diamond with a new account. For someone with 500 games played you won't get into diamond on macro alone since you will be playing mid diamonds at one point. Playing mid diamond you ned macro and good decision making
On February 01 2011 01:12 dUTtrOACh wrote: Let's face it. Most low-level players have terrible macro pretty much the moment they start controlling their units. It's called tunnel vision.
I think you're dead on here, I'm a mid-level gold player, and I have been analyzing my replays recently to try and find the points where my macro drops off. As soon as I get into the action I start missing queen spits and overlords. I think I'm great at getting the right unit comps and my builds are certainly getting better, but It has recently become painfully obvious that simple mistakes are holding my play back significantly.
After reading this thread I decided to work on my macro more and so far my win-ratio is going down (I am playing terran in platinum btw).
I am using: 1-rax FE vs terran. I win if terran does not do fast siege tank push.
Against protoss I try 2-rax FE. Most pressing issues are all-ins with sentries or protoss expanding himself and outmacroing me into colosus ball of doom. Everything else seems manageable with 2-base economy unless protoss gets storm without suffering enough economic damage.
Zerg all-ins are easy but it is difficult to win against macro zerg in far positions so I am trying 2 rax bunker rush and I always kill the expo so far but I don't know what to do afterward ... and die horribly to roach all-in counter because my stim is not done and I have overproduced marines. If I don't bunker rush then zerg usually tries to macro himself and it all depends if he gets enough mutas to deny my third.
It seems that my problem is getting supply blocked often. In half of my games this caused my to lose, so yes, my macro is holding me back still
On January 28 2011 19:52 snafulator wrote: 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
Wow how did I miss this thread, would have helped me a lot ><
IMHO Macro>Scouting>Decision Making>Micro Reasoning: Macro is important because with good macro you will defeat players with almost any unit composition having a 20-100% advantage(over time) in MOST games up to mid/high diamond.
Scouting so you can avoid cheese, and get those easy wins 10-60% of your games can be cheese depending on your league. Scouting, also so you can know when to stop macroing and build units, or when your opponent is most vulnerable.
Decision making so you can counter and make good unit compositions/survive all-ins/cheese.(surviving all-ins in addition to macro and good scouting will get you to master league)
Micro after accomplishing all of this will take you to a professional level.
Why can macro take you to diamond? Because you will win MOST of your games due to running over your opponent with sheer force. Of course you will lose SOME of your games to cheese/well timed all-ins/heavy harassment. To get to diamond you only need to win maybe 52% of your games. To get into diamond quickly you need really good macro and really good scouting with some decent knowledge of unit compositions.
Also, a good mix of any of the above listed skills will take you to diamond, you just need a better combination of these skills then most other players. A good mix will take you far, because all of these skills are intertwined within the game of sc2. However, having decent scouting/decent macro, will take you farther then decent decision making/decent micro. What does your micro and decision making matter if your opponent has 2-4x as many units and knows when to attack you(scouting)?
I would like to see a masters league player try this challenge with a twist:
Throw all placement matches, but then win and lose 10-20 games with ~50% wins (on purpose). Then attempt to get to diamond through the same methods.
The reasoning behind this is that when you are placed, bnet is still not very sure of your rank, and so you can progress through the ranks much quicker. Had there been a larger sample of games, then we might find that it is more difficult to get into diamond.
I think the main problem is... most casual players want to do more than just make units and a-move. They don't feel like spending even a week learning to do this well. I'm not accusing or blaming... the funnest part of the game for me is the harassing of workers, small fights, and big battles that require micro. The thing casual players need to realize is, SC2 is a competitive game, so taking a few days to learn something critical will pay off a lot.
On February 01 2011 23:10 DFarce wrote: I would like to see a masters league player try this challenge with a twist:
Throw all placement matches, but then win and lose 10-20 games with ~50% wins (on purpose). Then attempt to get to diamond through the same methods.
The reasoning behind this is that when you are placed, bnet is still not very sure of your rank, and so you can progress through the ranks much quicker. Had there been a larger sample of games, then we might find that it is more difficult to get into diamond.
Just a thought.
I'm pretty sure the only thing that might change is that it takes a bit longer. However, once you always (or at least significantly more than 50% of the time) win against opponents from league X you will be matched against players from the next higher league. If you perform well, you will be promoted.
Looking at the OP, we see clear evidence that everything up to gold gets demolished by his style. Hence, at least plat will be reached in no time. It might be hard to get to diamond since overall skill slowly improves and so does the overall makro. However, one will always be able to beat players with significantly worse marko without thinking of unut compositions and micro at all. And this is the point to be taken home.
On February 01 2011 23:10 DFarce wrote: I would like to see a masters league player try this challenge with a twist:
Throw all placement matches, but then win and lose 10-20 games with ~50% wins (on purpose). Then attempt to get to diamond through the same methods.
The reasoning behind this is that when you are placed, bnet is still not very sure of your rank, and so you can progress through the ranks much quicker. Had there been a larger sample of games, then we might find that it is more difficult to get into diamond.
Just a thought.
with a 50% win ratio on purpose it would be pure luck if you get relegated directly into diamond in the first very fast reevaluation the bnet does in the first 20-30 games, cause it will throw any type of opponent at you depending on your very fast changing MMR from bronze and if you perform well up to diamond, but if you want to get relegated directly into diamond you need to especially win that games against the diamond opponents in that phase.
if you then randomly throw away games, it would be only luck if you make it or not.
On February 01 2011 23:10 DFarce wrote: I would like to see a masters league player try this challenge with a twist:
Throw all placement matches, but then win and lose 10-20 games with ~50% wins (on purpose). Then attempt to get to diamond through the same methods.
The reasoning behind this is that when you are placed, bnet is still not very sure of your rank, and so you can progress through the ranks much quicker. Had there been a larger sample of games, then we might find that it is more difficult to get into diamond.
Just a thought.
But still, macro is all you need to get to Diamond. I didn't know a thing about RTS before playing SC2, heck the first match I played on bnet I had like... 3 Marines at the 7 minute mark .
But once I understood the importance of macro I started to get better. I always did a 2Gate Robo in every matchup, wich helped me to focus on only macro. I didn't know about unit compositions, or micro, or counters, I just focused on getting more units, and I won lots of games like that.
Obviously I can't win with just macro anymore, but I need good macro to win.
On February 01 2011 23:10 DFarce wrote: I would like to see a masters league player try this challenge with a twist:
Throw all placement matches, but then win and lose 10-20 games with ~50% wins (on purpose). Then attempt to get to diamond through the same methods.
The reasoning behind this is that when you are placed, bnet is still not very sure of your rank, and so you can progress through the ranks much quicker. Had there been a larger sample of games, then we might find that it is more difficult to get into diamond.
Just a thought.
But still, macro is all you need to get to Diamond. I didn't know a thing about RTS before playing SC2, heck the first match I played on bnet I had like... 3 Marines at the 7 minute mark .
But once I understood the importance of macro I started to get better. I always did a 2Gate Robo in every matchup, wich helped me to focus on only macro. I didn't know about unit compositions, or micro, or counters, I just focused on getting more units, and I won lots of games like that.
Obviously I can't win with just macro anymore, but I need good macro to win.
Macro (And scouting) is probably everything until you reach diamond. Then you realize you can over macro. I didn't realize it until I started actually counting how many drones I had at each base at a given time (usually when say the toss would attack). You figure out well then, anything above 23 drones against a 4 gate will probably lose. If I drone up to 50+ drones against a FE 6 gate build then I die. And I learned certain things like it's perfectly fine to be behind in drone count (or even) against certain builds for prolonged periods of time, on the contrary you will probably die to pushes in certain cases where you're ahead in worker count.
On February 01 2011 23:10 DFarce wrote: I would like to see a masters league player try this challenge with a twist:
Throw all placement matches, but then win and lose 10-20 games with ~50% wins (on purpose). Then attempt to get to diamond through the same methods.
The reasoning behind this is that when you are placed, bnet is still not very sure of your rank, and so you can progress through the ranks much quicker. Had there been a larger sample of games, then we might find that it is more difficult to get into diamond.
Just a thought.
But still, macro is all you need to get to Diamond. I didn't know a thing about RTS before playing SC2, heck the first match I played on bnet I had like... 3 Marines at the 7 minute mark .
But once I understood the importance of macro I started to get better. I always did a 2Gate Robo in every matchup, wich helped me to focus on only macro. I didn't know about unit compositions, or micro, or counters, I just focused on getting more units, and I won lots of games like that.
Obviously I can't win with just macro anymore, but I need good macro to win.
If you can sustain that nice ratio you'll end up top 200 =)
Thanks, but it might take me a while before I reach that point. Since I was focusing mostly on Macro I neglected develompent on other areas, which is now hurting my play. Specially, I found my multitasking cappability to be really low, and my APM is proof of it (I have between 60~90 APM).
Improving macro is really important, it really is, but it shouldn't be done at the expenseof all the other habilities required in Starcraft. Imbecile said it best:
On January 28 2011 11:52 imbecile wrote: 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.
I'm glad someone actually put this to the test. I'm book marking it so I can show my friends that want to learn how to play better.
I actually had a bronze player say something along these lines to me: "Man, I'm so sick of being in bronze. My macro is good and my MICRO IS AWESOME! I need to be in Diamond so people will at least respect me as a player. Will you play my account for me to get me out of bronze?"
I obviously said no, and that his macro was badand his micro was subpar. The REASON his macro was so bad is because he thought his super-pro-baller-status 'micro' would make up for him only having 1 zealot and 4 stalkers against 8 marines 10 marauders. And the entire time he was doing this 'gosu micro' he wasn't macroing.
/sigh
People need to learn to recognize their own mistakes and analyze their own replays. It all becomes so apparent why you lost if you just put a little effort into figuring it out.
Macro is important because with good macro you will defeat players with almost any unit composition having a 20-100% advantage(over time) in MOST games up to mid/high diamond.
Scouting so you can avoid cheese, and get those easy wins 10-60% of your games can be cheese depending on your league.
0-100% of statistics are completely random and arbitrary. I am between the ages of 0-92. The USA has between 11 and 86 states. We are on the 1st 2nd or 3rd expansion of Starcraft 2.
Macro is the fundamental of this game, because it is resource-focused. Without money, you cannot do anything.
I like the experiment because it shows that macro-oriented can bring you up. But it's not the end-all. Macro in this game can benefit any strategy, because if you manage resource spending better than your opponent, you could easily have more stuff. But, you still have to be smart about spending money. Buying a Twilight Council, then warping in a round of units, then realizing that you have extra money so you spend it on Blink, but then don't really utilize it, is stupid. The BASICS of macro is spending money, but to actually have good macro is not just to have low money, but to have spent the money on things that get shit done in the game you are playing. Those early lings not scouting? Get them on watchtowers and use any leftovers to destroy rocks at an expo or something. Have extra Zealots or some extra minerals, and maybe Chrono Boost about 15 minutes in? Warp in a round of Zealots and send them expo raiding, then Chrono up your Gateways to replace them, then think about expanding or if you drove the opponent's army away from a key point of defense, strike it or catch the force off guard.
Even all-ins would be better with good macro.
It's just how the game works. But macro itself is more than just spending money, it's how you spend money and how quickly you spend it. Sure dropping 4 gates when you have 1.2k minerals is a good idea, but maybe next game consider dropping those 4 gates earlier, or at least some of those 4 gates earlier to start increasing production capacity.
Of course at lower levels, such as Gold, Bronze, or Silver, having great macro above all else can win you games because you can just have more shit. But when people can keep up with having as much shit as you, then you need to start trying to keep your shit coming while doing other things, because macro alone rarely differentiates a player unless one player is ridiculously better.
If you need people to tell you these things then you don't understand macro well enough anyway. When someone tells you to macro better, they should be more specific, because there are a lot of aspects to macro. While you can generalize them into resources, supply, and production, each of those also has more nuances that need to be considered. Such as, when to get supply started so that production can smoothly go along but you don't choke your minerals, timing expansions, timing gas, managing gas with minerals, worker production, and of course defending your economy is important and making sure that when it gets stopped you can start it up ASAP.
You know, someone needs to write a macro guide, something in-depth that actually explains macro on a more fundamental level so people can stop just saying "macro better."
Also, not all cheesers are born equal. If the cheesers were competent they wouldn't be in a lower league. If anything, the "more cheese in bronze" statement means that cheesers stay in bronze because they don't focus enough on fundamentals to actually get better.
That's kinda where the "you can't straight macro as zerg because of cheese and timing attacks" argument falls apart for me, because you're assuming the cheese is of the highest level, when in reality it'll probably be poorly-executed and very late.
I'm a platinum Zerg; the system matches me against 1500-2500 diamonds whenever I go on a little (2-3 game) win streak, then I lose a few, etc. The VAST majority of my losses are from bad macro; I lose with enough money to have had enough troops to have wrecked my opponents deathballs on a regular basis.
I'm confident that if I could macro a lot better and make in-game decisions a bit better I would roll a lot of opponents at my level. However, I must say that thus far I find it hard to actually accomplish the desired improvement at macro It's seems very natural to want to watch where the action is occurring, and less natural to ignore the battle to build more drones!
Well since zerg macro includes.drone timings and such lately I have been finding it hard to manage this properly. Usually its just little things like making a round of drones instead of lings. When I lose a game from things like this it makes me mad as I know what went wrong, how it went wrong and what to change next time. As such it should be easy for a diamond player to macro his way into diamond as the player must as a.general rule of thumb have more usefull experience.
Heh ... I find I often know the result (3000 minerals, no base) is not ideal but even after watching the replay I'm not always not quite sure when I should have built a macro hatch, expanded, or built troops rather than drones.
On February 02 2011 07:51 formthehead wrote: Also, not all cheesers are born equal. If the cheesers were competent they wouldn't be in a lower league. If anything, the "more cheese in bronze" statement means that cheesers stay in bronze because they don't focus enough on fundamentals to actually get better.
That's kinda where the "you can't straight macro as zerg because of cheese and timing attacks" argument falls apart for me, because you're assuming the cheese is of the highest level, when in reality it'll probably be poorly-executed and very late.
This should be added to the OP IMO. I've been joining alot of xel naga caverns obs custom games recently so I can watch people go at it while I do homework. It is amusing to see 2 bronze players go at it. Where one bronze will for example cannon in terran for example. And the terran will be trapped in his own base not wanting to move out But if you look at the terran he will only have 1 rax producing marauders qued up all the way have both vespene geysers and 1000 minerals 500 gas in his trustfund. So against this cheese say all the resources were marauders the bronze level cannon rush would be broken out of so easy but instead the player who looses too the cheese will just Rage in chat or Rage out of the game. On a side note they are also to wary of the unit counters list occasionally you will see bronze player who you can tell has been working on their macro and the fight will be say 12 roaches vs 1 immortal in the center of the map and the roach player won't even try to engage and will just run away.
I have already pulled out my guest pass and as soon as I know I have the opportunity to play straight (ie most likely spring break) I will do the same thing as zerg. Just to prove to my zerg buddies that it can be done. I however I am debating on the mix of units that I should go every game.. Do you think roach hydra or muta ling would be easier for someone in bronze to macro? + Show Spoiler +
After I showed my zerg friend this thread (he's a friend in RL) he said "Obviously this only works because toss are horribly broken and I can never beat a good force field placement with a baneling bust or 7RR. Lings need an upgrade so they can fly."
On February 02 2011 07:51 formthehead wrote: Also, not all cheesers are born equal. If the cheesers were competent they wouldn't be in a lower league. If anything, the "more cheese in bronze" statement means that cheesers stay in bronze because they don't focus enough on fundamentals to actually get better.
That's kinda where the "you can't straight macro as zerg because of cheese and timing attacks" argument falls apart for me, because you're assuming the cheese is of the highest level, when in reality it'll probably be poorly-executed and very late.
This should be added to the OP IMO. I've been joining alot of xel naga caverns obs custom games recently so I can watch people go at it while I do homework. It is amusing to see 2 bronze players go at it. Where one bronze will for example cannon in terran for example. And the terran will be trapped in his own base not wanting to move out But if you look at the terran he will only have 1 rax producing marauders qued up all the way have both vespene geysers and 1000 minerals 500 gas in his trustfund. So against this cheese say all the resources were marauders the bronze level cannon rush would be broken out of so easy but instead the player who looses too the cheese will just Rage in chat or Rage out of the game. On a side note they are also to wary of the unit counters list occasionally you will see bronze player who you can tell has been working on their macro and the fight will be say 12 roaches vs 1 immortal in the center of the map and the roach player won't even try to engage and will just run away.
I have already pulled out my guest pass and as soon as I know I have the opportunity to play straight (ie most likely spring break) I will do the same thing as zerg. Just to prove to my zerg buddies that it can be done. I however I am debating on the mix of units that I should go every game.. Do you think roach hydra or muta ling would be easier for someone in bronze to macro? + Show Spoiler +
After I showed my zerg friend this thread (he's a friend in RL) he said "Obviously this only works because toss are horribly broken and I can never beat a good force field placement with a baneling bust or 7RR. Lings need an upgrade so they can fly."
Speedling into roach-hydra seems best, with muta-ling you're too dependant on harassment.
On February 02 2011 07:50 RageOverdose wrote: You know, someone needs to write a macro guide, something in-depth that actually explains macro on a more fundamental level so people can stop just saying "macro better."
Nobody needs to write it, Day9 already put it out in his mental checklist for macro; 1.Are you making probes? 2.Is your supply near the cap? 3.Are you keeping your money low? 4.Are you building units?
And for game awareness; 5.Watch the minimap. 6.What is your opponent doing/what does he have? (also includes you making the proper responsive unit composition, aswell as scouting possible expansions which you can attack). 7.Have a plan (unit upgrades, drop timings, builds, expanding etc)
Repeating that mantra in my head throughout a game gave me some pretty immediate and awesome results, have to say.
On February 02 2011 09:43 YaySC42 wrote: Heh ... I find I often know the result (3000 minerals, no base) is not ideal but even after watching the replay I'm not always not quite sure when I should have built a macro hatch, expanded, or built troops rather than drones.
Hatches are simple... do you have more than 300 minerals and no larva? Put down a Hatch, doesn't matter where.
Or if you have no gas and a lot of minerals and don't want to make lings, put down a hatch. You should never have 3k minerals, especially as Z, considering an extra Hatch is useful for you even in base.
On January 24 2011 13:56 Tomo009 wrote: I dunno, he didn't play many games and was playing high leaguers pretty quickly. Also, I want to see him try again as zerg. As zerg, you must adapt or you will die, at any level. You would have to have ridiculously good macro to beat for example a deathball protoss or biomech terran. As with no micro, you will get crushed in one battle and lose it all.
Of course macro is the main skill that will increase one's rank, but simply saying "only macro and you will be in diamond" is plain wrong. I'm in gold now, playing sivelr-platinum level players and there are a lot of timing pushes and aggressive plays that I just wouldn't be able to handle at all if I didn't scout and react.
EDIT: And ZvZ, it just won't work there period. Such a volatile match-up, being beaten in a paper, scissors rock without scouting your opponent you don't have a hope.
"Only macro and you will be in diamond" is not plain wrong. To me there are three aspects in starcraft : macro, micro, and strategy (also there is luck but lets count that one out).
most people already have decent micro and decent strategy (they know how to move their units around, how to shoot, fire, stop, run, etc. etc. and also they know what basic "builds" units and whatnot to be using/getting)
but what just about all copper/silver players suffer the most from is the macro. Sure they can focus on improving micro/strategy before macro, but macro will give them a huge boost in performance whereas micro/strategy will give them small gains to their already weak gameplay.
I think one of the reasons people don't have good macro is because macro isn't really that much fun. To put it simply, some people prefer winning micro battles in gold to winning macro battles in diamond.
On February 03 2011 05:42 bqzg wrote: unfortunately this isn't true for zergs . I'm high diamond and 80%-90% of my losses come from cheese/rush builds, not macro games.
"macro games" is not equal to "I'm pumping out 60 drones without any combat units, screw it if he attacks me he is a cheeser/rusher".
Efficient macro is not only using your minerals, but also being safe while doing that (which is the hardest part about it). I can say for sure that macro at 2,9k Masters is still pretty bad often times and I'm pretty sure that you can make it into high diamond or even Masters without doing fancy micro stuff or map specialized BOs or something like that.
On February 01 2011 11:55 Gantz.z wrote: IMHO Macro>Scouting>Decision Making>Micro
I think it's funny that "Decision-Making" is 3/4 on this list.
"because of my excellent macro, I had 200 supply worth of Speedlngs at the 10 minute mark, I knew he was on one base from my awesome scouting. Noting that he had siege tanks and marines in bunkers with blue flame hellions behind them. I decided to attack, but I lack confidence in controlling my units so I just a-moved into his base."
Honestly, I'm just being an ass here. I felt like your points were very valid, with the exception that making good decisions is the most important part of the game, because it extends to every aspect of your play.
Macro is the single most important part of the game. Using a good macro build, and just building units and expanding will win you a lot of games. I have played games where my natural has been killed of many times. I have played games where I only survived by pulling all my drones in order to fight off a 4gate.
Despite being "behind" in these games and barely holding on I have ended up coming out 5-6, or even 7 bases against my opponents 2. At that point there is nothing they can do. You can just send waves and waves of units on attack move. Eventually you will just starve them out / overrun them.
I'm only a gold level zerg, but I have found that by just focusing heavily on my macro I have been winning more and more of my games.
What I did to improve my macro a lot was 2v2. Get a partner to play a bunch of games with. Share control, and don't touch a single combat unit the entire game. Focus entirely on keeping your money low, expanding, and getting your worker count up. Eventually macro will become second nature and you can devote more attention to what you are doing with your combat units.
On February 01 2011 11:55 Gantz.z wrote: IMHO Macro>Scouting>Decision Making>Micro
I think it's funny that "Decision-Making" is 3/4 on this list.
"because of my excellent macro, I had 200 supply worth of Speedlngs at the 10 minute mark, I knew he was on one base from my awesome scouting. Noting that he had siege tanks and marines in bunkers with blue flame hellions behind them. I decided to attack, but I lack confidence in controlling my units so I just a-moved into his base."
Honestly, I'm just being an ass here. I felt like your points were very valid, with the exception that making good decisions is the most important part of the game, because it extends to every aspect of your play.
I think he's saying that you scout and then make decisions based on that. Unless you have great game sense and you're able to make decisions based on that, it's better to rely on scouting.
It's hard to tell what he's saying because decision making is very broad, such as from scouting or just doing what you're doing.