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On August 26 2012 09:21 Fencar wrote:
A problem with this that I have experienced is that with Terran, you have to learn Micro and Macro at the same time: You can't learn to Macro perfectly and then suddenly learn to Micro perfectly while Macroing perfectly, you have to learn the basics of Macro and then slowly start to add in Micro while Macroing, basically doing as much Macro as you can while during the breaks(production time) Microing as much as you can.
I did it the other way, so I relied on 3CC builds constantly, but then suddenly I had to learn to micro, which with Terran you have to learn or you die to AoE (unless you play Mech), so I was stuck at low masters for a long time.
You have to learn everything, the way I interpret the pyramid is more of a 'what to smooth out' kind of thing, like what to focus on.
I always thought of this picture more as a neat thing than an actual guideline anyway.
Something you see after you went from bronze to masters and go like: that's cool!
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The way I like to look at it is to look at my replays, and compare it either to my opponent or to my usual benchmarks. "Was my economy absolutely flawless? No? It was economy." is not the best way to play imo. If you're routinely beating your opponents economically, you don't need to do even better at economy to win. Instead, a replay analysis might go something like this, in a hypothetical game where a 2-base mech push kills me in ZvT.
Did I lose because of Economy? At X time, I had 62 drones to 34 SCV's, and my economy kept ahead of the Terran all game. No, I didn't lose because of Economy. I could have had 70-ish drones by X, but he could have had 40+ SCV's, too.
Did I lose because of Production? When my opponent pushed out, my opponent had way less army value and supply than I did. Even taking into account that the Zerg army has to be bigger, I am ahead here.
Did I lose because of Knowledge? I had a Muta/Ling/Bling army against a lot of Thors and Hellions, and lost the engagement hardcore. Did I know what to do against this army? Yes: Scout it and make mass roaches, and be aggressive.
Did I lose because of Information? I had no idea what my opponent's army was, and didn't counter it. His Hellion/Thor destroyed my Muta/Ling/Bling because of this. Yes, I lost because of Information.
Do this for enough games, and your focus needs to be on the lowest level of the pyramid you routinely lose in. (This level will change over time, up and down. If your economy is good enough to consistently outmacro Golds, you may find yourself losing economically in Diamond.) If I had held off my opponent's Hellion/Thor attack with mass roaches and then proceeded to win, he would have lost because of Economy: He wasn't making constant workers, and fell incredibly far behind, as shown in the first step. You don't even need to look at anything else. As long as the Zerg was safe in droning up that much (He went 1 Rax FE, so I was) he lost because of Economy.
Essentially, it's a useful tool for figuring out the most basic areas you are failing at. Rather than saying "Well, I really needed to flank with my Muta/Ling/Bling here on creep" you can say "If I sacced an Overlord at X time, I'd know exactly what was up and could mass roaches and just roll over him." Much simpler and easier to do.
This also works for shorter games, too. Let's use a hypothetical example where I get bunker rushed and lose.
How was my Economy? Fine. I built workers until my Pool finished.
How was my Production? Fine. I built lings after the Pool finished, had no idle larva for more than a few seconds.
How was my Knowledge? Fine, I know how to hold it off.
How was my Information? Fine, I scouted it promptly.
How was my Army? That was bad. I attacked into a choke and lost all my lings at a time I really needed to keep them alive. I also had a few lings in my main for a while that really could have helped out. I lost because of Army.
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Micro would be lower for Terren.
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Intresting pyramid, I will try practice on what i need acording to the pyramid to see if this will help me progressing. 
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Its really interesting to see that theres coming more and more guides and tips on how to improve effieciently thats like how it is done in sports and music. Like starting with concentrating on fundamentals and working your way up.
Back in the bw days the usual advice was "just mass game". I believe that with all these guides around people who spent the time and work to put this stuff into practice should be rising up in skill much faster than people who just mass gamed on ladder.
I will try it out for myself for sure.
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I think this is very ironic because this is how it was for me from bronze to diamond xD
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I got a warning that this is an old thread, which looks true in a sense. But on a long enough timeline the survival rate for all threads is zero. So whatevs.
I started playing a little while ago and pretty quickly looked around for something that would give me a good place to start getting better. This thread was one of the first things I found and has been the only bit of advice that is both understandable and seems to work consistently. Granted, that could just be me.
This is the kind of instruction I was was available for everything else. The pyramid makes perfect sense! It's like a list of the things that have the largest impact on performance in-game. If you don't have the bottom, the stuff at the top won't make up for it.
Anywho, I have an example of why the pyramid works. A lot of the discussion seems to be theoretical because it's impossible to replicate the conditions of a game. But the challenge missions are always identical. So, things like economy don't really matter in the first one, because #duh. But Information does matter since the whole point is to figure out which terran counter which zerg units. I already had a pretty good idea, so I went with that and got the first achievement. The next time through I experimented with different formations. I tried to arrange my defense so that everyone had nice overlapping fields of fire and whatnot. That carefulness got the second achievement. But then I got stuck. I won every engagement but I always lost too many units. So I did some more research and found that there were some situations in which an active defense (moving around) was better. So I tried kiting and focus-firing and that got the last achievement.
Knowledge got me the first achievement (which units to pick)
Army got me the second achievement (how to position them)
and Micro got me the third achievement (moment by moment commands)
This thread is just kind of a thank-you to the people who put the pyramid together and explained how to use it and a bump to be sure that anyone else who's new is more likely to see how it works.
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Wow, this is an old one.
After reading it though I thought to myself I wish I saw this back in 2011. Could have helped me.
I think the new method of the Staircase is very similar and also works though.
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Despite the original post being 3 years old, what you can garner from it is immeasurable. As someone who has only made it as far as plat (and that was in HotS beta) I really appreciate that this thread exists. Thanks OP, truly
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I like how you put the emphasis on the base of the pyramid. That's something that helped me a lot at lower levels.
I will always remember this example of Jakatak teaching players to simply build marines, workers and barracks until they have no more money. I feel it's a way better approach to the game than confuse lower level players with '' it depends, if he does X you do Y ''. You don't need that info at lower levels because you don't even have to production and mechanics to utilise a strategy.
I did this with a friend who hated the game. Taught her only about the steps of the pyramid she was at, without ever bothering her with the higher steps, and it made her love the game much much more. I think one very important thing to remember is that the player needs to feel competent and good at what he's doing. Focusing on your step of the pyramid and evaluating yourself only on that is a great way to have fun !
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1 Rax FE Spam marines!!! no micro!
I actually got to platinum doing this on a smurf account. Funny stuff. This definitely makes the game easy for lower league players. Even though the OP says the Pyramid is NOT an absolute truth, I beg to differ. It's pretty dam close. Keep this thread bumped man!
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These steps describes exactly how I got from bronze to master.
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those mid levels is exactly what i needed to read. best necro ever. keep this alive.
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Very useful mental framework to understand your own progress and improvement.
Makes sense with my experience from bronze to diamond over the past few years, currently scratching Masters and management like you theorize. Good stuff :D
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Good Stuff! But I think you should change FORCE to LEVERAGE
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I wanted to thank Budha for the work put into the pyramid, it makes for a really nice, easy way for a player to visualise a route to improvement. I used it as the basis for a Planetary Annihilation pyramid I put together because I think it's a clever training tool.
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I think the idea was let’s just go into this blessedly free of concept,” says frontman Colin Meloy. “The idea was let’s give ourselves time and let the songs dictate what that cohesiveness would be. That was something we had never done. It was conceptual in the sense we wanted to to take away all concepts, and as an experiment take all the time we needed to make the record.”
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Bot edit.
User was banned for this post.
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On January 13 2015 07:05 Quitch wrote:I wanted to thank Budha for the work put into the pyramid, it makes for a really nice, easy way for a player to visualise a route to improvement. I used it as the basis for a Planetary Annihilation pyramid I put together because I think it's a clever training tool.
Absolutely brilliant. I've taken possibly a permanent break from Starcraft for personal reasons, but I still love to read about it, follow it and watch it on twitch. Namely because of the poker and chess elements of the game. I want to actually learn poker and play poker because I believe that would reinforce very important thinking skills that carry over to Starcraft. Obviously this aspect is "Play the player, not your hand."
You see any of my other posts, I'm usually flaunting the idea of play less, think more. Which is pretty important if you are still improving below Masters level. Or, if you are an aspiring pro player in Masters, playing less, and learning more is pretty critical to not only your consistency, but to efficiently learn new skills, strategies, play styles and your thinking process in a game.
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EPT
