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On August 18 2011 05:27 1Lamb1Rice wrote:
This may have been mentioned by someone else, but what about the aspect of mind games and trickery? Suddenly playing optimal and efficient doesn't pay off 100% especially if someone is going to purposefully not play optimal to trick you.
is this a serious post?
day[9] answered a very similar question on his daily, he said: if it looks like your opponent is doing X, but is actually sacrificing efficiency for the element of surprise in doing Y instead of X, then he just did a really shitty Y and you can in 90% of the cases just kill him because you have a better build/gameplan.
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On August 18 2011 04:41 Zestage wrote:
Hmm, that's a really good point... Instead of 15 hatch 15 pool 14 gas 16 ov whatever, for new players it should be something like "put down a hatchery first, then a pool when you get the money. As soon as your pool is down make gas, and make sure you are making overlords!"
Zerg is a bad example, because of the whole "build drones as long as you can" mechanic, but you get the idea...
@danglars, did i understand your post correctly?
You get the aspect of what I mean by a "loose" build order, yes. Memorizing and focusing on executing it flawlessly is not the goal in first couple lessons. It's having something that gives you units to work with, units to scout with early, and usually plans around maintaining worker production throughout it. It's a framework which puts off a few of the upper tiers of the pyramid while letting you practice Economy, Production, Army etc etc.
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I like this. Very important for lower level players to not get bogged down trying to take on the finer points instead of working on the basics. I think you should include scouting, but I'm not exactly where that would fit in. It can be as rudimentary as 'information' but as refined as 'dusting'
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this is awesome!!
thanks brotha for the awesome post.
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@bransom "knowledge about the game itself, gathering information, and properly responding to the given information all fall under the term "information." This proves that you haven't actually read the whole thing. Can you please read it before continuing? If your gonna keep saying that you read it but that "it's your opinion that info. should include knowledge" please refrain from doing things like that because they are counter-productive. I can understand wanting to change definitions and rearrange stuff, but say it explicitly, because the way you are formulating your responses really indicate that you have not read all descriptions.
@1Lamb1Rice I feel like this aspect should be included in the last step of the pyramid, "Dusting" for now. But I will revise this, as I do believe that it can pose some problem before getting to the top. I also feel that this might be included in proper scouting as low as the "Information" part, but seems too low. Let me think about it 
Thanks to all supporters and discussions I'll be working on final version soon
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Great read, mate! Appreciate your work. I'm sending this to a couple of my mates.
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On August 18 2011 07:18 Budha wrote:@bransom "knowledge about the game itself, gathering information, and properly responding to the given information all fall under the term "information." This proves that you haven't actually read the whole thing. Can you please read it before continuing? If your gonna keep saying that you read it but that "it's your opinion that info. should include knowledge" please refrain from doing things like that because they are counter-productive. I can understand wanting to change definitions and rearrange stuff, but say it explicitly, because the way you are formulating your responses really indicate that you have not read all descriptions. @1Lamb1Rice I feel like this aspect should be included in the last step of the pyramid, "Dusting" for now. But I will revise this, as I do believe that it can pose some problem before getting to the top. I also feel that this might be included in proper scouting as low as the "Information" part, but seems too low. Let me think about it Thanks to all supporters and discussions I'll be working on final version soon
OK, then take my argument and use the words "knowledge and information" to substitute for "information." I figured the two were interdependent upon each other, but perhaps I should have clarified. My argument still stands.
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@bransom I see your point, and it does make sense. I mean, who won't agree that you need to see a 6-pool coming to some extent? But remember that the pyramid is not an absolute, it is a mere guideline. You do not simply walk up the pyramid step by step. A player will sample all steps even if he is not particularly skillful.
Plus, I want to add that this is also a very theoretical and hypothetical concept. The point of the economy and production beeing lower than information is that IF you could outproduce your opponent - in a hypothetical way - you will beat him no matter what. This means that - again, hypothetically - if you could out-mine and out-produce your opponent while he 6-pools you, you will win. Of course you cannot. Also, in a 6-pool scenario, it is very very very very very easy to keep up with economy and production, which is why a player will feel that scouting will take predecence on them. The same phenomenon takes place with the 4-gate and micro - which I have covered in the article. I hope this makes sense and clarifies things.
@Alejandrisha Scouting is included in "information". Trickery and scouting the trickery (ex.: canceling a nexus to 4gate) is still a debate in my head as where to put it Thx
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On August 18 2011 11:10 Budha wrote:@bransom I see your point, and it does make sense. I mean, who won't agree that you need to see a 6-pool coming to some extent? But remember that the pyramid is not an absolute, it is a mere guideline. You do not simply walk up the pyramid step by step. A player will sample all steps even if he is not particularly skillful. Plus, I want to add that this is also a very theoretical and hypothetical concept. The point of the economy and production beeing lower than information is that IF you could outproduce your opponent - in a hypothetical way - you will beat him no matter what. This means that - again, hypothetically - if you could out-mine and out-produce your opponent while he 6-pools you, you will win. Of course you cannot. Also, in a 6-pool scenario, it is very very very very very easy to keep up with economy and production, which is why a player will feel that scouting will take predecence on them. The same phenomenon takes place with the 4-gate and micro - which I have covered in the article. I hope this makes sense and clarifies things. @Alejandrisha Scouting is included in "information". Trickery and scouting the trickery (ex.: canceling a nexus to 4gate) is still a debate in my head as where to put it Thx
I guess it's just the impression of a pyramid that makes me think the bottom is "most important" rather than just a stepping stone to the next level. Perhaps making it "The StarCraft Ladder" or something along those lines would help give off the impression that you are intending people to infer.
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As a low level starcraft player who has just started playing starcraft2, I think this provides a great way to start getting good at it. Thank you so much!
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i like this idea. Good work! hopefully this gets refined and corrected if there are pros that spot errors in this.
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Seems like Knowledge should be first of all of them as if you dont know anything about the game its basicly impossible for you to win even with production if you dont know what your doing
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Zurich15324 Posts
I like this a lot, thanks for the write up! Agreed on basically everything.
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I guess any (replay)self analysis can be based on this order.
Why did i lose? Check your play from bottom to top.
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On August 24 2011 23:11 NemesysTV wrote:
Seems like Knowledge should be first of all of them as if you dont know anything about the game its basicly impossible for you to win even with production if you dont know what your doing
think of it like this:
if you have knowledge of the game, but no production or economy, you will know what to do with the units but you won't have any units to do anything with.
if you have knowledge and production, but no economy, you will build very little units in comparison to your enemy, and then even if you know what to do with those units, you will still lose because his stuff doesn't need to be as efficient as yours.
if you have knowledge and economy, but no production, you will have the resources to produce, and you will know what should be best to produce, but you still won't have it because your not producing.
if you have economy and production, but no knowledge, as long as you have 5 times more stuff than your opponent you don't need to know what the units do, "they kill stuff" is enough, and if you don't know the units "kill stuff" then what are you doing playing a game about killing your opponent!?
if you have economy, production and knowledge however, then you will have lots of stuff that you know how to use, and so the power of "economy+production" is multiplied.
the pyramid isn't "you need the lower step to do the next" it's "the above steps can only have it's full potential used if the below steps are satisfied"
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@Roblin Couldn't have explained better myself Thx Roblin! I think I will add this quote to the original post
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I think "Force" shifts in league level.
The higher the league, the less important force is.
On the sub-masters level, force is insanely powerful, just poking and prodding around, taking opponent's focus elsewhere. He will slip massively in all the other steps, mainly production, but also eco.
Thus, on sub-masters level, Force is probably on-par with even information.
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I am impressed. Very good post.
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This pyramid is great. It's not perfect, but I never assumed that for a game as complex as SC2, blindly following a strict hierachy of improvement would be. To me, it requires operating under the following assumption:
Every level is important. However, you can only achieve 100% of a level if you have 100% of every level below it. For example, we'll use Bransom's information example.
I am playing against a progamer, and I have a maphack. In order to perfectly react to my unlimited information, I must know what it means, and what I have to do about it. I must master knowledge. Now that I know what to do, I must be able to make everything I have to make in order to do it. I must master production. However, I cannot produce everything unless I have the money I require, so I must first master economy. The fact that I can perfectly utilise the army I create doesn't matter unless I can get as much money as I can, spend it properly, and know what to spend it on in order to exploit my information.
I also love the idea of using this to analyse a replay. In fact, I feel this is where it is most suitable. You lost. Why?
Did your opponent get an economy better than you? If he did, why bother looking further.
Did he produce more stuff, relative to the amount of money he had? If he did, fix that first.
Did you just not know what to do, despite having the mechanics? Learn what to do for next time.
Did you fail to know what he was even doing in the first place? Work on scouting better, so you can see it coming next time.
Could you have countered him by using your army better? Prepare your army that way next time.
(Note: Because of the presence of Zerg, Economy can be really difficult. In PvZ or TvZ, I think it'd be better to look at your own economy, and see how much you were getting, vs. how much idle larvae he had. It's not perfect, but Zerg fucks up most generalisations of economy. Alternatively, if you're already at a high enough level, look at how much you had vs. how much he had, and compare it to what you should have. E.g, if Zerg should have 50 drones when you have 40 probes (Numbers are arbitrary))
Again, it's so RIGHT. It doesn't matter if you were producing stuff if you didn't have the money to produce enough of it. It doesn't matter if you knew what you needed to make if you didn't make it. It doesn't matter if you scouted him if you couldn't interpret that info. It doesn't matter if your army could have prevented his win if you didn't know what he was doing. Naturally, it is important to use your opponent as a benchmark, that way when you didn't make your 67th SCV for 3 seconds, that's not cause to end your analysis unless he played more perfectly, despite the fact that you actually lost because you only produced 8 units in the first 15 minutes. This avoids the trap of trying to have 100% perfect economy before even giving a crap about production.
That's where I see the pyramid being used for me, not as a strict hierachy of improvement, but as a way of analysing every loss. And naturally, that will lead to improving: I'm in Platinum, but I can still lose a game due to Economy (I didn't expand to my fourth early enough, despite the fact that I could have!) and then I know where to focus my efforts. It's also a FANTASTIC way of seeing results. If I'm losing all my games due to Knowledge and Information, then I can feel good if I start losing because of Army, because it meant I had all the info I needed, which means I didn't make any scouting mistakes.
So think about using it in that way. I think it's a more effective analysis tool than a method of what to focus on at any given time. Either way, it's a great model. Thanks so much for this.
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Incidentally, in Norwegian "Dusting" means moron.
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EPT
