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Hello everyone!!! I am not the fastest player, but i am usually calm of thought while i play and can scrap and multitask fairly well, but my macro is what i have been working on consistently now for a while. I have some things that i do while i play some times in games that i wanted to share with you all. I do play with both Terran and Zerg equally and normally alternate games playing a couple with each before switching.
Note: These tips are just ideas targeted mostly at players of a lesser caliber. They reduce the amount of things you have to remember or help you spend extra money fast. I hope they help you fellow bronze/silver players so we can move on up to diamond like everyone else 
1. excess money: After i have 2-3 bases, when my minerals are starting to come in faster and have more than 60 drones, my minerals start to add up quickly. I counteract this by making a cluster of 3-4 hatcheries w/ usually 2 queens (i like 1 queen for each 2 hatches, because i generally miss injects and when i hit them i can do 2 hatches at once w/ each)
These clusters of hatcheries help me to make an entire army at once instead of buildup up an army w/ consistent injects and macro.
Also, when i have excess minerals, i often use it to make like 8 overlords at once, for instance making my supply something like 70/150, allowing me to forget about having to make ovies or getting supply blocked and am free to just spam unit keys on my larva w/o stopping.
2. gas: I will normally select 2 drones, tell them both to build extractors, then i select 6 larva, build 6 drones, rally all 6 of them to the extractor, shiftclick 3 off, tell remaining 3 to go to the other extractor. Then i can leave, forget about it, when the extractors finish and 6 drones build, they will split up and fill both gases, and i go macro/fight elsewhere w/o worry.
with terran i will often build a refinery, then immediately select 4 scvs, send 4 to one refinery, deselect 2 of them and send remaining 2 to the other, similar to zerg.
3. supply: As said above, i dont normally get supply blocked due to spending my extra minerals on a ton of ovies. With terran i will normally tell my scv that is building a depot to que up another depot build next to it when hes finished, i always come back to him telling him to keep on doing this over and over.
plz tell me if these tips help.
The other purpose of this post is i was hoping people would also add tips that you use to keep your macro solid as well. I would appreciate any input on other tricks/tips that could help me.
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I agree that these tips will probably aid bronze level zerg players to win since unspent money is pretty much useless until you get into 200/200 time on lots of bases late. The idea of macro hatches is a part of the game for zerg.
I think a more constructive plan for helping them while not training them into bad habits would be, to implement a self check. I think most low level players lose awareness of the fact they aren't producing units/etc once battles start. If you can remember once a minute (more frequently as you get better) to say
Am I supply blocked or soon to be (make ovies)
Do I have more than 500 minerals ? (expand or macro hatch, + queen)
Have I kept spending my gas on tech and/or units (upgrades, tech structures)
If everything is good, keep making units and saturating with drones, if not spend the money to increase production, income, or tech. The most important part is to be aware of it. Throwing down 3-4 hatches at once is way too late.
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My tip for bronze/silver zergs would be to switch race as soon as possible. You hadn't invested a lot of time in this game yet. With switch you save yourself a lot of desparation, frustriation, saving your neurons and prolonging your life. Do it now 
User was warned for this post
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thats why i play both terran and zerg
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On January 31 2011 06:28 Pitrocelli wrote:My tip for bronze/silver zergs would be to switch race as soon as possible. You hadn't invested a lot of time in this game yet. With switch you save yourself a lot of desparation, frustriation, saving your neurons and prolonging your life. Do it now What kind of advice is that?
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On January 31 2011 06:37 Skamtet wrote:Show nested quote +On January 31 2011 06:28 Pitrocelli wrote:My tip for bronze/silver zergs would be to switch race as soon as possible. You hadn't invested a lot of time in this game yet. With switch you save yourself a lot of desparation, frustriation, saving your neurons and prolonging your life. Do it now What kind of advice is that?
Best advice any zerg will ever get.
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I agree that the above tips will help bronze/silver and even some gold zergs win more games. However, it's basically just putting a band-aid on top of a larger problem. If you start out doing things the wrong way, and win, when you finally get promoted to gold/plat, the problems will become more pronounced. And you'll get super frustrated because you're losing a lot more. You'll have to unlearn the bad habits and relearn new good habits to compete in the higher leagues. If you start out learning the good habits, you wold never have to unlearn the bad habits. It's kind of like the people that cheese their way to diamond, then come here and start threads asking for help, because they can't win anymore.
I agree that macro hatches are good, but if you need to build 4 macro hatches (on 2 or3 bases) to spend your money, something is wrong. You need to focus more on your larva injects, and make sure your getting gas. I find when i have a major amount of minerals, it's because I forgot to put guys in gas.
I'm not super good at larva injects by any means, but I'm starting to get better. I use 5-9 for my queens. I am trying to get in the habit where when whenever there is a lull, I am doing 55,66,77,88ing to try to inject. Also, I force my self to look away during a battle to inject. I think that's one of the most important things to learn, because that's when most people's macro fails. Just get in the habit of not worrying too much about your army, and try to inject. 1 round of injects during a key battle can make a huge difference.
I do get supply blocked a lot as well and have been known to get frustrated and build 10 ovies at once, just so i don't have to remember it. However, I know that is bad. I'm starting to train my self to look at my supply every time I'm about to build a round of units. if I'm close to supply block, I'll throw an ovie or two in that round. At about 50 food, start building 2 ovies at a time.
It's all about building up chains and rhythm. Constantly look at your supply, and your queens to make sure you're injecting, and not getting supply blocked. Teach yourself that every time you do X, you should also do Y, no matter what. For example, every time you build a round of units, check your supply. Every time you check your supply, check if it's time to larva inject. Every time you larva inject, make sure your creep is spreading. Things like that are what will bring you as any race, not just zerg, out of bronze/silver into gold/plat. Refining it more will bring you to diamond, where you have to start worrying about micro a little bit.
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I like the gas tip for double extractor + drones, though I've been focusing on getting my gas timings better so I'm not floating a ton of minerals, and taking double gas + building 6 new drones to man the geysers sounds like an emergency response when you're already floating. Good to know though.
Since I recently moved and don't have the internet I've been playing against the fyn AI, on 2v2s mostly. You get a lot of practice at refining your opening because until your macro is halfway decent you will get stomped repeatedly. In a 2v2 you have to either hold off a lot of early pressure, or present early pressure on at least 1 opponent. Otherwise your teammate will get wiped and you'll fall shortly after.
Over the weekend I've tightened up to the point where in the first 10 minutes of the game I am:
- No longer getting supply blocked
- No longer missing injects
- No longer neglecting to scout
- No longer floating >500 minerals
I've still got a ton to work on, since I'm fairly lost at the mid game and of course the fyn AI has its limitations, but I feel confident about getting back to laddering once I get my internet back.
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On January 31 2011 07:06 Fugue wrote:
Over the weekend I've tightened up to the point where in the first 10 minutes of the game I am:
- No longer getting supply blocked
- No longer missing injects
- No longer neglecting to scout
- No longer floating >500 minerals
Are you doing anything specific that helped you tighten that stuff up? How did you teach yourself not to miss injects or get supply blocked?
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I'm not super good at larva injects by any means, but I'm starting to get better. I use 5-9 for my queens. I am trying to get in the habit where when whenever there is a lull, I am doing 55,66,77,88ing to try to inject. Also, I force my self to look away during a battle to inject. I think that's one of the most important things to learn, because that's when most people's macro fails. Just get in the habit of not worrying too much about your army, and try to inject. 1 round of injects during a key battle can make a huge difference.
Hey, two things, and both about Queens.
1.) Queens are a great place to dump minerals. Usually by end game I have 4-5 queens per hatch, because they are so great at tanking/transfusion is amazing/creep EVERYWHERE.
2.) You're gonna love this one, it blew my mind when I learned it (on these forums, actually): Put all your queens on a single hotkey. I use 3. Then, select all queens, press v, and click the location of the hatch you want to inject ON THE MINI-MAP. So, 3, v, click, v, click, v, click. The nearest queen will inject. Makes staying on top of injections WAY easier.
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On January 31 2011 06:28 Pitrocelli wrote:My tip for bronze/silver zergs would be to switch race as soon as possible. You hadn't invested a lot of time in this game yet. With switch you save yourself a lot of desparation, frustriation, saving your neurons and prolonging your life. Do it now
while i found this amusing, as i'm sure many others will, your wit is beyond measure... telling zerg players to switch races isn't helping anyone.... Zerg is weak atm, at another point they will be strong. In the future, as we converge on perfect balance they will have an advantage over people switching to zerg because they will have played it when it was weak.
Playing the weaker race is a great way to get better, if you are playing the weakest race and wining then you are obviously way better than your opponents because you are overcoming the weakness.
This thread was about helping people, if you had made a joke and then followed it with something constructive then I'm sure we would have all appreciated the humour and then carried on reading the post without pause.
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I've been working on my Zerg overall gameplay a lot lately too. A great way to learn your injects and work on multitasking in general is take an hour or so and pay a custom map, vs easy ai, where you expand as fast as possible up to 5-7 bases. From here on out marco hard by checking after an hour how count many times it took greater than (5-10secs based on skill) to inject.
A few side notes and tips with this though;
-This forces you to use hotkeys if your not already.
-Focus on injects 1st then add little tasks to do( Wanna know how many banelings it takes to kill an Ultralisk? Make a Command center using NP) just make sure your macroing too!!
-Zerg's army generally wants to surround, etc... so focusing on positioning your units at the start of a fight is more important than missing 5-20secs of injecting
-Check each base in a replay 4x or 8x for your missing injects and why if you dont know.
-Doing this 3 times I never miss my injects much anymore and when I do, my mental alarm goes off
-I almost always use SP as my map of choice
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On January 31 2011 07:41 code_ wrote:Show nested quote +I'm not super good at larva injects by any means, but I'm starting to get better. I use 5-9 for my queens. I am trying to get in the habit where when whenever there is a lull, I am doing 55,66,77,88ing to try to inject. Also, I force my self to look away during a battle to inject. I think that's one of the most important things to learn, because that's when most people's macro fails. Just get in the habit of not worrying too much about your army, and try to inject. 1 round of injects during a key battle can make a huge difference. Hey, two things, and both about Queens. 1.) Queens are a great place to dump minerals. Usually by end game I have 4-5 queens per hatch, because they are so great at tanking/transfusion is amazing/creep EVERYWHERE. 2.) You're gonna love this one, it blew my mind when I learned it (on these forums, actually): Put all your queens on a single hotkey. I use 3. Then, select all queens, press v, and click the location of the hatch you want to inject ON THE MINI-MAP. So, 3, v, click, v, click, v, click. The nearest queen will inject. Makes staying on top of injections WAY easier.
1) I don't like having that many queens. 4-5 queens per hatch is a lot of food that can't really be used for an offensive army.
2) I'm not a huge fan of this method. You have to be pretty precise on the minimap click, and if a queen dies, or you forget a queen at a hatch or something else goes wrong, u have queens trying to trek across the map. But to each his own.
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On January 31 2011 07:15 Herks wrote:Show nested quote +On January 31 2011 07:06 Fugue wrote:
Over the weekend I've tightened up to the point where in the first 10 minutes of the game I am:
- No longer getting supply blocked
- No longer missing injects
- No longer neglecting to scout
- No longer floating >500 minerals
Are you doing anything specific that helped you tighten that stuff up? How did you teach yourself not to miss injects or get supply blocked?
Essentially, I played 2v2s against easy FynAIs. I'll switch to medium when I start winning too many of those (I outright lost about 25 games before I won even 1 - Fyn AI is miles ahead of the Blizzard AI)
I focused on a 14 pool 14 gas 18 hatch opening. Not exactly standard, but nothing ridiculous, either. When I started playing, I was droning up with just a handful of lings, and then they got wiped out and I was playing blind, overdroning, and getting stomped ~6 minutes in.
I already knew I had problems hitting my injects and getting supply blocked in the early game, so I focused primarily on smoothing out the kinks in my opening, making more initial lings, remaking them if I lost them, droning and getting overlords at better times. I was still getting stomped ~7 minutes in though, because I was building forces late, or screwing up with my lings and getting caught out by early aggression, etc.
Before long I was pretty tight with the opening, hitting the first 5 or more injects every time, spreading overlords nicely, using ling scouts. But I was just blindly building roaches or lings, and needed to scout a bit better. Now I was dying to banshee/void ray/mutas ~8 minutes in.
I also was paying almost no attention to what was going on outside my base. Thus, my computer ally might be getting double teamed and at that point it didn't matter how good my macro was, I wasn't going to hold against 2 computer players. But I might survive ~12 minutes if that happened
So I started trying to scout, and either my macro slipped or I just didn't pay attention to the overlord was saccing. But I started to get the hang of that, too, and now I was getting decent information on 1 of the computer players, and being able to do some harassment, keep an eye on when it expanded, etc.
I've still only won maybe 3 out of 30 games. Basically I learned these specific things because I died if I didn't do them. An AI will only take you so far, but this AI has enough different builds that you aren't really predicting what it's about to do and instead just try to react based on what you see. And even I saw it do some stupid things like constantly trying to take a 3rd in the same spot 4 times, but it'll force you to at least macro well if you want to stand a chance.
I used to play vs easier AIs and just try to expand all over, but I don't feel you learn as much when you aren't actually punished for mistakes. I'd start out feeling energised but I wouldn't even notice myself getting lazy and distracted.
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remap the townhall key (backspace) to tilde (`) then put queens on 3. spawn mutant larva on grid is X sooo you can inject all your hatches thusly:
`3xCLICK
all you need to do is make sure you click the center of your screen. You can accomplish this so fast that you may need to do a cycle of "`````" ensure that you made the injects work but pretty soon you will know what to look/listen for to determine the success of the maneuver.
Make sure you are looking at a hatch the has a queen other wise you will order a queen to travel to that lone hatch.
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On January 31 2011 06:28 Pitrocelli wrote:My tip for bronze/silver zergs would be to switch race as soon as possible. You hadn't invested a lot of time in this game yet. With switch you save yourself a lot of desparation, frustriation, saving your neurons and prolonging your life. Do it now
I say that to people all the time but I find myself always running back. Zerg for life! Even if they do have to overcome questionable issues. Go Zerg <3
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I'm a gold level Zerg that is starting to get the idea of how the race works. The tips everyone is giving is very helpful.
To me, the key to playing Zerg is knowing when to build drones and when to build units.
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At some point as zerg, you're going to accrue thousands of minerals with literally nothing to use them on. That's when you start army trading and using all your stored larva injects.
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Don't get into the habit of having "2-3" extra hatcheries. On two or three bases with one extra macro hatch, drone saturation and consistent larva injection you should have more larva than you can conceivably use. Building extra hatcheries once you have 1K unspent minerals is a short term solution destined to prolong bad habits.
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On January 31 2011 13:46 Ten Tron wrote:
I'm a gold level Zerg that is starting to get the idea of how the race works. The tips everyone is giving is very helpful.
To me, the key to playing Zerg is knowing when to build drones and when to build units.
*Cough* http://day9tv.blip.tv/file/4210235/
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While this is a good method to help cure the symptoms of poor play (high floating unspent minerals, high energy levels on your queens), it is far better to address the key underlying issues that are causing such symptoms (overall poor mechanical skill and experience).
If you're a Bronze or Silver player, this method that the OP posts in will help you win specific games, because extra hatcheries to compensate for missed injects is better than missing injects and not compensating, but it won't really help you improve, because its a safety net that is allowing you to make the same macro mistakes over and over again.
By all means if you have a specific game you really want to win (like a tournament or a friend you want to beat or something) and you notice yourself floating minerals and queen energy, make this to fix the problem, but during ladder games directing your effort towards repairing the damage done by fucking up your injects is a poor idea when you could better be focusing on not fucking them up to begin with.
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On January 31 2011 09:10 Bucky0Hare wrote:
remap the townhall key (backspace) to tilde (`) then put queens on 3. spawn mutant larva on grid is X sooo you can inject all your hatches thusly:
`3xCLICK
all you need to do is make sure you click the center of your screen. You can accomplish this so fast that you may need to do a cycle of "`````" ensure that you made the injects work but pretty soon you will know what to look/listen for to determine the success of the maneuver.
Make sure you are looking at a hatch the has a queen other wise you will order a queen to travel to that lone hatch.
I'm a huge fan of this sort of method, but I remap the backspace to tab, and the 10th control group to tilde, and I put my queens on that. Once you get used to it, you can inject so many hatches on time, and it also keeps your injects lined up together.
tab tilde v+click, tab v+click, tab, v+click, repeat as necessary.
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As a bronze* zerg whose macro's actually not to bad (far from perfect though), I'm not to sure about that lot as it sounds more like a cover-up for the issue than an actual fix. Personally, I've worked on macro (as a specific macro-only exercise) by...
Pick a 1v1 pool map, and fire it up against a level of AI I know I can beat blindfolded.
Attempt to execute a build that would be used in a real match.
Focus on never, ever missing an inject, and think "drones" constantly.
Off two hatches, make two overlords per round of injects at the main unless there's an overwhelming reason not to.
As the game goes on (usually around the 10 min mark), take a third the moment there's the minerals to do it, take a fourth if you fancy it.
...and crucially, don't just do a "go kill him" the moment you're in a position to win, keep going until 200/200 (with what you consider to be a reasonable army composition, including upgrades, not just spamming stuff to increase the food count) is hit then go kill him, but keep injecting and replacing units while you do it.
(then go kill him)
Then, fire up the replay and pay specific attention to...
Were hatcheries saturated with drones?
Did I get supply blocked? If so, when and why?
At what point did injecting queen energy top 50? Why?
When was 200/200 hit?
Did any large unspent piles of resources develop? If so, when**?
How many larvae did the hatches have when the AI GG'd?
...then do it again, trying to remedy any obvious flaws, and trying beat previous timings.
Yeah, it sounds a bit dull, but I actually found that approach far, far more useful than attempting to practice straight-up macro in games against real people as the unpredictability of real games tends to detract from the data gained from the replay, and in my case I found it bloody hard to ingrain the actions necessary whilst handling all the weird, cheesey crap that gets thrown at me in ladder matches.
* Okay, so my ratio of practice games to ladder games is probably in the region of 10 to 1, and after three quick ladder experiments over the weekend (the first since before Xmas) I appear to be out-building opponents by about 2.5 to 1, but it says bronze, so bronze I am. Either way, I'm pretty crap.
** The when bit's important here because, to my mind anyway, as long as the size of the resource pile is balanced with the number of larvae available to make stuff with, it's probably not to big. There's nothing more gratifiying than "okay, so you've beaten the army, but gimme a few seconds and I'll have another one just as big, hope your shields are recharged" (yes, I appreciate this is very map-dependent, especially at my level).
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I think it is important to avoid reinforcing bad habits, such as rallying drones to gas long before the extractors are completed, or building excessive overlords/debots/pylons out of order. However, I also think it is important to cultivate in-the-moment decision-making by doing what is best now (for example, building a macro hatch at 1000 minerals). Zerg especially needs to be able to respond situationally to the needs of its economy, so practicing achieving this balance off the cuff (rather than with a more precise build order) is beneficial. Afterward, reviewing the reply to analyze the moment that caused the excess minerals is crucial to improvement is well.
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go roach only since the roaches are too cost effective in comparison to other zerg units, roaches are even cost effective to damn immortals..
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On January 31 2011 07:15 Herks wrote:Show nested quote +On January 31 2011 07:06 Fugue wrote:
Over the weekend I've tightened up to the point where in the first 10 minutes of the game I am:
- No longer getting supply blocked
- No longer missing injects
- No longer neglecting to scout
- No longer floating >500 minerals
Are you doing anything specific that helped you tighten that stuff up? How did you teach yourself not to miss injects or get supply blocked?
Train vs a super easy ai. You don´t have to worry about any aggression at all so you can purely concentrate on you macro.
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Thanks to everyone who replied
My macro is improving by the day. Today i held off a 4 gate, then went to 3 bases and crushed him. really starting to feel better about macro. I have just been using 1 extra mac-hatch and concentrating on always injecting.
I had no idea you can hotkey queens then hit V and click mini-map around the hatches. That is actually soooo much easier than what ive been doing.
Also I learned from artosis that whenever i inject my hatches on the minimap, go ahead and spread my creep another round, keeping them on a timer of 30 seconds. My creep is getting sick, sometimes its to my 3rd before i am, or getting close to opponents front door on smaller maps.
I think many of you are right about not wanting to train yourself into bad habits. For this reason I have stopped some of the things i was doing. However I did want to note that when i make 3 eggs to drones and point them to the building extractor, they and the extractor finish at same time, so i dont know why not to do this? it just makes sense and never takes drones off minerals.
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oh, also, can you have all the queens selected then just hit V+click, V+click, V+click, or do you have to tab through, selecting each queen in particular?
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You can select them all and inject click, but I think you have much better control if you hotkey your larvae-injecting queens individually, as this will ensure nothing funny happens, like a queen walking all the way to another base because they one nearby already had larvae on it. Learning to double tap your 3 to 4 queens constantly is a good habit because you'll always know when you can inject, and you'll always see what's going on at your bases. I think it's a lot better than hotkeying all of them together.
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Silver zergling here. I've watched plenty of top zerg players and I've seen plenty of "trustfunds" gathering up if they're allowed to macro. I prefer expanding + as little defense as I can afford and I inevitably reach a high mineral count (not so much with the vespene, especially if I'm going air).
When I do the 200/200 push I have larvas stacked up and can immediately gather up a new force instead with said trustfund. Isn't this how macro zerg should be played, or am I getting things all wrong? :C
P.S. The inject -> shift+space (for hatch cycling) did wonders for my inject rate.
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Can all the zerg players stop pretending there special for playing zerg in this thread? Like seriously, I play Terran not because some think there OP (I don't personally think they are but you opinion is you own).I think it gives people the wrong idea, I played T in brood war and wanted to in SC2 but all the bad reputation they get to me is a lie. Zerg is a very strong race it's just that maps are what screw them over
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Russian Federation823 Posts
Are there any objections to the Queens-SHIFT-method? I'm getting quite used to it, so while i'm still bronze i can get rid of this habit.
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@kusto:
If you can inject properly and on time consistently with that method, you can keep doing it. I personally think individually hotkeying queens is better because you're less likely to have weird errors like a queen walking across the map, and it's really easy to just cycle between them. But again, if you are used to a method and it works well (you never miss injects EVER and queens don't go stray), then stick with it.
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On January 31 2011 06:05 wheelchairs wrote:1. excess money: After i have 2-3 bases, when my minerals are starting to come in faster and have more than 60 drones, my minerals start to add up quickly. I counteract this by making a cluster of 3-4 hatcheries w/ usually 2 queens (i like 1 queen for each 2 hatches, because i generally miss injects and when i hit them i can do 2 hatches at once w/ each)
These clusters of hatcheries help me to make an entire army at once instead of buildup up an army w/ consistent injects and macro.
Also, when i have excess minerals, i often use it to make like 8 overlords at once, for instance making my supply something like 70/150, allowing me to forget about having to make ovies or getting supply blocked and am free to just spam unit keys on my larva w/o stopping.
To echo another poster, you shouldn't need 4 macro hatcheries off of 3 bases. If you do, you're missing a TON of injects, or you're letting larva sit around for a VERY long time at your hatcheries (remember, a hatchery with 3+ larva no longer produces 1 larva every 15 seconds), or likely both. In most cases, you shouldn't need more than 1 if you keep injecting, keep producing, keep expanding, keep upgrading, etc. If you do need them, go ahead and make them, but the goal should be to spend your money without them. Also, don't forget: if you can defend it, you're better off building that hatch at an expansion. Even if you don't mine the minerals, you can put some of your Drones on gas there, which also helps spend your money (since you can use more of your larva for expensive units that inevitably require gas).
2. gas: I will normally select 2 drones, tell them both to build extractors, then i select 6 larva, build 6 drones, rally all 6 of them to the extractor, shiftclick 3 off, tell remaining 3 to go to the other extractor. Then i can leave, forget about it, when the extractors finish and 6 drones build, they will split up and fill both gases, and i go macro/fight elsewhere w/o worry.
When you're building the extractors, you can actually box as many Drones as you want, only the Drones building anything will go anywhere. Shift build to make it a touch easier.
As for assigning Drones to the Extractors, a number of players will box a group of approximately 6 Drones, click on one extractor, shift click off 3, click on the second Extractor, and then either shift click off 3 and assign any remaining back to minerals or grab another Drone and assign it to the Extractor depending on how many you actually boxed. It's essentially the same idea as rallying the Drones the way you do, except it works regardless of whether you're building Drones or not, etc.
3. supply: As said above, i dont normally get supply blocked due to spending my extra minerals on a ton of ovies. With terran i will normally tell my scv that is building a depot to que up another depot build next to it when hes finished, i always come back to him telling him to keep on doing this over and over.
I'm not sure this is the right way to approach this either. A better way (in my opinion) is to make the Overlords you'll need when each inject pops. It depends what you're producing and how tight your macro is, but something like 2 Overlords per hatchery with Queen (and 1 for any hatchery without a Queen) with every inject should keep you safe. You can adjust that as necessary: if you're making nothing but Zerglings, you aren't going to need that many Overlords.
As far as methods for larva injecting, I'm a big fan of "the backspace trick", but I remapped backspace to the ~ key. It lets me keep all my Queens on one hotkey, which I like, and injecting is just a matter of 6 shift+v and then spam ~ leftclick (with shift held) for each hatch, which feels easier when you're on 4 or 5 hatches than 6 6 v click 7 7 v click 8 8 v click 9 9 v click.
Regardless of what you do and how you get there (backspace, double-tapping individually hotkeyed Queens, double-tapping individually hotkeyed Hatcheries, whatever), it's important to look at the progress bar on the Hatchery often: it shows you when the larva inject is going to "pop off", which both means that you need to build units and that you need to inject again. It's also reliable regardless of how badly you screw up injects, unlike checking the Queen's energy, which gets weird if you get behind on any of them.
This is actually one of the things that it took me the longest to realize. I was firmly of the opinion that I didn't need to spam APM to try to look cool (and you don't), but that doesn't mean that there isn't a benefit to quickly checking a number of things frequently. It actually makes it tons easier to macro if you keep checking how long you have till your larva pops, how long till your upgrades finish, how is your Drone saturation, then pop over to some lings and poke them around, check your resources, check your supply, etc. It takes a bit of work, but the better you get at it, the more you get out of it.
edit: fixed some botched quotes.
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On January 31 2011 06:28 Pitrocelli wrote:My tip for bronze/silver zergs would be to switch race as soon as possible. You hadn't invested a lot of time in this game yet. With switch you save yourself a lot of desparation, frustriation, saving your neurons and prolonging your life. Do it now User was warned for this post
I completely agree.... I know you were warned for it, but I am also a high-zerg who wishes I hadn't invested so much time in this race.
At OP.. I like the tips, especially about the macro hatch which is definitely an important aspect of zerg mid-late game which is helpful to be understood early in a zerg's ladder career
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On January 31 2011 19:34 TearDrop wrote:Show nested quote +On January 31 2011 07:15 Herks wrote:On January 31 2011 07:06 Fugue wrote:
Over the weekend I've tightened up to the point where in the first 10 minutes of the game I am:
- No longer getting supply blocked
- No longer missing injects
- No longer neglecting to scout
- No longer floating >500 minerals
Are you doing anything specific that helped you tighten that stuff up? How did you teach yourself not to miss injects or get supply blocked? Train vs a super easy ai. You don´t have to worry about any aggression at all so you can purely concentrate on you macro.
Couldn't disagree more. If you want to practice build orders, use YABOT or somesuch. If you play vs super easy Ai, your macro is going to instantly start to slip when you play someone who isn't playing ridiculously passive, and you'll have no sense of the drone/army balance required early game.
If you are going to train with an AI, make it the most difficult Ai that isn't cheating. That way you're learning to scout, hold off aggression, and macro. I'm now on 1v1s against medium fyn Ai, and surviving to the 12 minute mark playing for macro games, holding off 4gates, banshee rushes, and doing my best to keep everything smooth. When I win I feel it's more due to deficiencies in the Ai rather than me performing superbly to get into the midgame, so I'm getting better, but still have a ways to go.
If I could ladder right now I would, but if you're practicing for 1v1 ladder, the closest thing to it is best, I say.
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Can I just add a useful tidbit for lower level Zerg's...?
Macro hatcheries are a great way to help spend your excess money. More lava means more potential drones/units.
I try to drop a macro hatch when my minerals begin to creep towards 1200+. Consistantly doing this will help keep your money low. (Or atleast it does for me)
It's also great casue when you see a push comming (Hopefully you've got ovies spread around and some lings for scouting) you can spend all those Lava to make units, and hopefully hold off the push.
Anywho, hope that helped. Certainly would've helped me had I known that at the begining.
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My silver tip:
Just a-move your army into the battle and forget about it (ok, maybe check opponents unit combo).
Keep the screen at your base and try to never miss an inject and use every larva. As soon as you can't spend all your money anymore it's time to get an additional hatch (expand or marco hatch).
People spend way to much time focusing on the battle IMO.
Once you start winning by purely outmacroing your opponent you can shift your focus back to the battle. By then you should be able to macro "remotely" (i.e. without being in the base).
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2 basic rules I try to follow:
1 keep making overlords as necessary
2 always be making *something*. Don't just go back and make things when injections pop, or after you finish scouting. Say, "I'm making drones" and just keep hammering away 1sd, 1sd while you're doing whatever else you're doing. When you want to kick off army production, same deal, "I'm making roaches" 1sr 1sr 1sr. This will keep your hatcheries from sitting on 3 larva, and dramatically increase your production rate, along with good queen injections.
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THE KEY TO MACRO MECHANICS:- by CyberD
Use The Process: CAP -- TAP -- MAP (this is how i remember it in the correct order).
Now before telling you the process, you must understand this is something that has to be done constantly, NOT every minute or 30 seconds, BUT between most of your actions and most definitely when you are idle. This is the main mechanic of macro; to be constantly building whatever is available to you, with the given time, without the need of queuing. :D
Applying The Mental Process
CAP -- Pop CAP/Income -- Info Gathering/Building Macro -- Eye Location: Top-Right
This is merely your first action that you will be doing in the cycle, the entire purpose of this is to keep yourself up to date on your population cap and income, and therefore be able to base decisions on what to spend your money on (supply/units etc). This is also where you BUILD STRUCTURES/SUPPLY if necessary. This may sound self explanatory, but it is merely the process of constantly looking at you CAP and building SUPPLY that ensures good macro and keeps your money down. and you'd be surprised how often you don't look at your CAP... does "build more supply" sound familiar  (Tip: if your minerals are getting high in the early stages of the game, you may find you need to build supply)
TAP -- "The Tap" -- The Unit Macro -- Eye Location: Bottom-Centre
So you may be asking what the hell is "The Tap", well ill tell you... Just make sure that you are competent with hot keys and that you are selecting buildings via hot key NOT clicking them ... now for this example I will be using Terran & assuming I have the hot keys:-
1. Command Centre (Nexus/Queens)
2. Barracks (Gateway/Hatch)
3. Factory (Robotics/Lair)
4. Starport (Stargate/Hive)
5. Engineering Bay (Forge/Evolution Chamber)
Now "The Tap" is merely the process of taping each number hot key and LOOKING at the bottom of the screen to see the building's current status and deciding there and then whether anything needs to be built, then moving on to the next hot key. This ensures you know the current status of all your buildings and are constantly building from your production structures, here is an example of a cycle of TAP using the designated hot keys:-
TAP "1" -- Command Centre -- SCV at 80% -- Build SCV -- TAP "S"
TAP "2" -- Barracks -- No Production -- Build Marine -- TAP "A"
TAP "3" -- Factory -- Siege Tank at 30% -- **Skip**
TAP "4" -- Starport -- Reactor Still Building -- **Skip**
TAP "5" -- Engineering Bay -- Just Finished Building -- Upgrade Weapons -- TAP "E"
It is as simple as that. However, it takes quite a bit of practice to implement since you will keep forgetting at first, but forcing yourself to do it again and again will make it pretty much an automatic reaction, which is what you want when you begin to start focusing on strategies. The only problem is that this relies on the fact that you should constantly be hot keying buildings/units, again this is a learned process that will become more natural in time, but you will also find as you initiate the TAP that you will notice something is missing and then add the appropriate hot key, the more things you have hot keyed in your TAP cycle the better. Finally and most importantly it allows you to macro while NOT focusing on your base, allowing you to macro in battle or elsewhere you are looking & remember it's not set in stone, there is no use cycling through buildings if they are redundant (i.e the factory in marine/medivac)
MAP -- MiniMap -- Info Gathering/Army Decisions -- Eye Location: Bottom-Left
The minimap not exactly key to macro, but key to VICTORY. This screen provides you the most IMPORTANT information available to you and gives you the means to travel anywhere on the map via instantaneous click. It lets you know where your troops are, and where their troops are. What decisions you should make and so on... It is critical that you spend MORE time looking at the minimap than the main screen. But why is the mini map MORE IMPORTANT than the main screen? :-
When not in battle
1. The minimap shows you everything that is going on via the combined sight radius of ALL your structures and units.
2. It shows you an enemy army before they attack your base (yes, that's right folks ), allowing you to move to defend before they attack (not at the time there is an audio announcement and its too late!)
3. The minimap is a reminder to expand, if you look and see you have enough minerals an you know you have an advantage already over your opponent... why not?
4. When Zerg the minimap is your BEST indication as to whether to morph drones or not!
When in battle
1. The minimap allows you to co-ordinate your forces and see where they are positioned throughout the map (A good way to pick up stray forces that were neglected to be hot keyed)
2. It shows you if there are multiple points of attack occurring (i.e reapers/mutas at back of base). It is so IMPORTANT that you look at your minimap during a battle, cause if you don't nothing will be there when you return home (Even I have fell victim to this on many an occasion)
3. If you are on the attack it also ensures your reinforcements are not being intercepted
Final Thoughts
So really the mind set you got to have is to always be in macro mode, constantly producing units, and being aware of your money/supply. From applying the process you will come to notice that you are making a clockwise motion with your eyes as you go from CAP to TAP to MAP and over time this becomes natural, you will realise that you already know what your supply is because your eyes have constantly being traversing the screen without you thinking about it. Essentially once you break the habit of staring directly at the centre of the screen, you will become more engaged with the game and start enjoying yourself a bit more. Hope This Helps
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On January 31 2011 07:41 code_ wrote:
...2.) You're gonna love this one, it blew my mind when I learned it (on these forums, actually): Put all your queens on a single hotkey. I use 3. Then, select all queens, press v, and click the location of the hatch you want to inject ON THE MINI-MAP. So, 3, v, click, v, click, v, click. The nearest queen will inject. Makes staying on top of injections WAY easier.
First time poster, so be gentle...
You can just hold shift (I use 5 for queens). So; 5, v, hold Shift, click, click, click.
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On January 31 2011 06:52 Pitrocelli wrote:Show nested quote +On January 31 2011 06:37 Skamtet wrote:On January 31 2011 06:28 Pitrocelli wrote:My tip for bronze/silver zergs would be to switch race as soon as possible. You hadn't invested a lot of time in this game yet. With switch you save yourself a lot of desparation, frustriation, saving your neurons and prolonging your life. Do it now What kind of advice is that? Best advice any zerg will ever get.
Ooops. I guess I wasted 6 years of my life. ><
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EPT
