|
You can't ride a bike without learning to balance first.
You can't win at fighting games without properly learning BnBs, when to throw, blocking, etc.
You can't win at tennis if you don't have your swings memorized to muscle memory.
You can't win at Starcraft if you can't macro better.
All these things detail what most would call the basics of each game/activity. Strategies are moot if you don't have the mechanics to pull them off because they won't work consistently and to their full potential: might as well call them gimmicks if you attempt them with poor mechanics.
I have friends learning the game who are always coming to me and complaining that they're dying to early game rushes because they're trying out some build like "3-gate robo" or "4-gate", and I always have to tell them that's nonsense and they're losing because their macro was piss poor and they would easily fall to a 2 zealot rush regardless of what he did. Macro better is always the solution to fix low level mistakes. So macro better!
|
After reading most of the posts in this thread, I'm beginning to think that "macro" is very poorly defined. If we think of "macro" as economic management, then it includes both mechanics and strategy.
The strategy dictates build orders and timings, and the mechanics is the execution. To say that "I want to have more stuff (better macro) in the late game", you cannot be playing an all-in build. Thus, strategy cannot be separated from macro, it is a part of it.
I believe when people talk about strategy vs macro, they are really talking about strategy vs mechanics, and most people think mechanics is more important than strategy, as a poor strategy well executed > a good strategy poorly executed.
From this train of thought, instead of telling someone to work on his "macro", it may be more precise to tell him to work on his "mechanics", as "macro" is too broad.
EDIT: Re-read first post again, the op is asking what if you make a bad reaction to another strategy. This falls into decision making, which is parallel to macro, as opposed to strategy, which is under macro.
|
On October 11 2011 02:02 D u o wrote:Show nested quote +On October 10 2011 21:47 Monkeyballs25 wrote:On October 10 2011 20:59 D u o wrote:On October 10 2011 07:08 Monkeyballs25 wrote:On October 10 2011 06:17 terranghost wrote:
Say you lose to a random strategy that involves voidrays which for the sake of this example is not something commonly seen in lower levels and you say well what other composition could I have gone. But then you throw the suggested compositions into your hat of strategies and now your macro slips more because now you have to scout more to find out what they are doing. Now you see another build/composition that is also not common that you want help against and you take more strategy suggestions and your macro slips even more. But if you had just durning the banshee problem had converted the 2k/1k trust fund you had into roaches and just fucking attacked you would of won and roaches can't even attack voidrays.
You can't completely ignore scouting unless you're doing some sort of aggressive early attacking play, because then you get to scout with your first attack 7RR style. After all there's not a massive window where your roaches can kill all his base before his voids kill all of your roaches.Not that I think that's bad advice, I absolutely love the idea of one build and unit comp that works perfectly for each matchup. I've got a rough build that works out that way for ZvZ, still trying to settle on ones for the other two matchups. I suppose ling/roach should work in the vast majority of situations in ZvP, and just try to end the game with superior macro and an all-in before you need other tech to deal with voids or colossi. I've seen some talk about a mass ling approach for ZvT, but I can't imagine that works against full mech. You can ignore scouting completely. You just have to prioritize a standard sort of play over scouting. Scout for his position early on. Bring worker back and do marine marauder medivac, or do zealot stalker colosus, or do roach hydra corrupter. Because all three if you're just out macroing your opponent is basically just a click or t a click and then you're just back to macroing. Not watching fight not focusing his important units becuase if you're just better than your opponent at macroing and the base sort of aspect of the game you'll do an attack and take an expansion and probably still trade roughly even for your opponent. Did you actually read my post or just the first line? I already said I play zerg, so let's look at roach/hydra/corruptor as the "standard play" you suggest. Then you suggest studying and copying a pro build. So two points come up immediately -I don't know *anyone* who goes roach/hydra/corruptor against Terran since maybe season 1. If you can find someone who does, please let me know. Maybe its common against Protoss still but I doubt it. -All the pro Zergs I do watch rely heavily on scouting, and tend to build nothing but drones until absolutely necessary. So either I ignore scouting and still make lots of drones and then proceed to DIE. Or I ignore your advice and learn to scout like they do and make the drones/army decision. Or go for a "make drones then blindly make army and do an early attack that at worst will collide with his early attack" approach. I get that you play two races that can make all purpose deathballs while also building their economy. But you don't seem very knowledgeable about the zerg equivalent, if one exists. In fact yours is probably the perfect example of a bad "macro better" kind of post that you really should avoid making entirely. Yes its true that zerg relies the most heavily on scouting but the reason why I suggest doing a roach hydra corrupter build is because its a non micro army you can literally just a click with it and if your macro is better come out at least even with your opponent. Again you go back to "that is a bad strategy" but i've beat players without using any strategy when I've played against them helping them. So you going back to "no pro players use that strategy" and "pro players rely on scouting to counter what your opponent does." Most of the lower zergs can't get away with the bare minimum and over react anyways and then they die 10 minutes after. Zerg is the hardest race to learn early on because there is that extra resource [aka larve] I've seen zergs at pro levels do roach vs terran i've also seen pro's add hydra into their play vs terran as well. the corrupter addition is namely for toss but lower tier players cant use mutas efficiently and macro they can't use bling properly and half the time they just fly their muta overtop of a shit tonne of stalkers or marine and lose them all anyways. A bulkier army like roach hydra is yes a lot weaker but you're not relying on an army composition to be strong you're relying on your mechanics to just be better than your opponent. You shouldn't start off scouting if you don't know what to look for and you shouldn't go looking for strategies if you don't have the apm for it. <snip>
Lingblingmuta is micro intensive, really? Its actually pretty A-movey if you have enough of them. I'd still put my money on that over roach/hydra against Terran. Or maybe roach/ling. I'll do some testing later. You still haven't addressed the scouting issue, other than saying "durr, bad players are bad at it". The 2 options I see are
-get good at scouting
-sacrifice the economy to get an early army
Atleast roach/hydra/corruptor is a good alternative to infestor play against Protoss. So that only leaves one matchup to sort out.
|
On October 11 2011 03:51 Monkeyballs25 wrote:Show nested quote +On October 11 2011 02:02 D u o wrote:On October 10 2011 21:47 Monkeyballs25 wrote:On October 10 2011 20:59 D u o wrote:On October 10 2011 07:08 Monkeyballs25 wrote:On October 10 2011 06:17 terranghost wrote:
Say you lose to a random strategy that involves voidrays which for the sake of this example is not something commonly seen in lower levels and you say well what other composition could I have gone. But then you throw the suggested compositions into your hat of strategies and now your macro slips more because now you have to scout more to find out what they are doing. Now you see another build/composition that is also not common that you want help against and you take more strategy suggestions and your macro slips even more. But if you had just durning the banshee problem had converted the 2k/1k trust fund you had into roaches and just fucking attacked you would of won and roaches can't even attack voidrays.
You can't completely ignore scouting unless you're doing some sort of aggressive early attacking play, because then you get to scout with your first attack 7RR style. After all there's not a massive window where your roaches can kill all his base before his voids kill all of your roaches.Not that I think that's bad advice, I absolutely love the idea of one build and unit comp that works perfectly for each matchup. I've got a rough build that works out that way for ZvZ, still trying to settle on ones for the other two matchups. I suppose ling/roach should work in the vast majority of situations in ZvP, and just try to end the game with superior macro and an all-in before you need other tech to deal with voids or colossi. I've seen some talk about a mass ling approach for ZvT, but I can't imagine that works against full mech. You can ignore scouting completely. You just have to prioritize a standard sort of play over scouting. Scout for his position early on. Bring worker back and do marine marauder medivac, or do zealot stalker colosus, or do roach hydra corrupter. Because all three if you're just out macroing your opponent is basically just a click or t a click and then you're just back to macroing. Not watching fight not focusing his important units becuase if you're just better than your opponent at macroing and the base sort of aspect of the game you'll do an attack and take an expansion and probably still trade roughly even for your opponent. Did you actually read my post or just the first line? I already said I play zerg, so let's look at roach/hydra/corruptor as the "standard play" you suggest. Then you suggest studying and copying a pro build. So two points come up immediately -I don't know *anyone* who goes roach/hydra/corruptor against Terran since maybe season 1. If you can find someone who does, please let me know. Maybe its common against Protoss still but I doubt it. -All the pro Zergs I do watch rely heavily on scouting, and tend to build nothing but drones until absolutely necessary. So either I ignore scouting and still make lots of drones and then proceed to DIE. Or I ignore your advice and learn to scout like they do and make the drones/army decision. Or go for a "make drones then blindly make army and do an early attack that at worst will collide with his early attack" approach. I get that you play two races that can make all purpose deathballs while also building their economy. But you don't seem very knowledgeable about the zerg equivalent, if one exists. In fact yours is probably the perfect example of a bad "macro better" kind of post that you really should avoid making entirely. Yes its true that zerg relies the most heavily on scouting but the reason why I suggest doing a roach hydra corrupter build is because its a non micro army you can literally just a click with it and if your macro is better come out at least even with your opponent. Again you go back to "that is a bad strategy" but i've beat players without using any strategy when I've played against them helping them. So you going back to "no pro players use that strategy" and "pro players rely on scouting to counter what your opponent does." Most of the lower zergs can't get away with the bare minimum and over react anyways and then they die 10 minutes after. Zerg is the hardest race to learn early on because there is that extra resource [aka larve] I've seen zergs at pro levels do roach vs terran i've also seen pro's add hydra into their play vs terran as well. the corrupter addition is namely for toss but lower tier players cant use mutas efficiently and macro they can't use bling properly and half the time they just fly their muta overtop of a shit tonne of stalkers or marine and lose them all anyways. A bulkier army like roach hydra is yes a lot weaker but you're not relying on an army composition to be strong you're relying on your mechanics to just be better than your opponent. You shouldn't start off scouting if you don't know what to look for and you shouldn't go looking for strategies if you don't have the apm for it. <snip> Lingblingmuta is micro intensive, really? Its actually pretty A-movey if you have enough of them. I'd still put my money on that over roach/hydra against Terran. Or maybe roach/ling. I'll do some testing later. You still haven't addressed the scouting issue, other than saying "durr, bad players are bad at it". The 2 options I see are -get good at scouting -sacrifice the economy to get an early army Atleast roach/hydra/corruptor is a good alternative to infestor play against Protoss. So that only leaves one matchup to sort out.
Ling bling muta is more micro intensive than doing a roach style build yes. Because to be effective with a muta you need to not engage things meaning you either sit them in a corner thus not being effective or you focus on using them properly thus not doing what you should be doing. I'm saying break things up into steps or else I would say just do everything better. But since one cannot do everything better they should focus on the most important thing, that being macro. You can go into a game make 50 drones have the person kill you and then next game be like "oh i guess i don't make fifty drones I guess i make 40 and then begin making an army." If you lose early on thats not a bad thing because as i said before you're going into the game to learn how to macro better not learn how to hold off 2 rax or what have you sort of cheese. sure learning how to hold off a 2 rax will make you better and probably up your win percentage but it depends on how you hold it off what if you put down 10 spine crawlers to deal with it or made too many lings then you just lose 10 minutes later because he's got his expo up and has more workers than you. Going into a game knowing that you're going to make roaches and anytime you see something on your minimap you just a click to that position with a small group of your units and then you forget about it and then when you're ready to engage you put up an expansion and just a click inject and remax but not look at the fight until you've done literally everything else. where as ling bling muta if you just a click with your whole army a lot can go wrong in a quicker time period. I'm not saying don't make lings i'm not saying don't do ling bling muta im saying that strategy and scouting doesn't matter but dont' try and play like a pro if you're not focus on the most basic points and work your way from there. If scouting got you farther than having good macro everyone would be telling people to work on scouting. But macro will get you farthest the quickest so thats why everyone falls onto it. I'm not saying scouting isn't important im saying scouting is less important than macro and queen injecting.
And yet again you bring strategy into the mix. You can win with pure marine or pure marauder or pure stalker or pure roach or roach hydra or roach corrupter or ling bling or any mixture of early tier units if you just out play your opponent. You can be in the same league as someone but have better mechanics as them. Sure they might know a more optimal build or sure they might have a better unit composition than you that is more cost effective but you can do any unit comp and come out equal with them. The reason why i suggested roach hydra corrupter as a zerg is because its an a click unit composition no infestors that would do literally nothing if you juts a click, the unit mix is generally cost effective assuming that you're ontop of your injects and you reinforce with the roaches that died and you have a creepline to your reinforcement point and your upgrades are better than your opponents and your money is low when you reinforce and not just that you have no more larve. Aka if you just macro better than your opponent. Because in silver/gold I am sure you should be 20 food ahead of where the matchup should be and you should have better upgraded units than your opponent not only that but you should be reinforcing the second you lose a unit and the lower tier players are too focused on the battle that they stop queing or they stop warping in.
|
I went from bronze to platinum with one build order only practicing that build and perfecting my macro on it.
Learning multiple build orders and match ups got me to diamond now I'm working on masters
|
Every time I start up a new account (recently mouz gave me a new one for Casting for example).. I just mothership rush every game until Diamond.. I'm sure it's been said many times already in this thread but "macro better" is just the truth sadly at lower levels. Every time I go into an opponents base at lower levels with my force, they never have the right amount of units out, be it through lack of workers/income or just plain bad unit production.
I understand Mothership rush isn't the best example of "macro better" but, you really can do anything at lower levels and win ezpz.
|
Just to expand on the roach/hydra/corruptor example, here's two replays from this evening. I haven't even looked at them myself yet.The Typhon peaks one was played right after the Shakuras one.
http://www.sc2rep.com/replays/(T)Drell_vs_(Z)Tamerlane/14283
http://www.sc2rep.com/replays/(Z)Tamerlane_vs_(T)Gecko/14282
Its...not too bad. I went with the "screw scouting and just build defenses blindly" option in the 2nd one, which would have worked out nicely for the first game too I think. I'll probably go with that in future. I'm not sure if the hydras are accomplishing much beyond sinking a bit more gas and deterring him from just going mass banshee, but I'll keep adding them in anyway. Corruptors feel unnecessary unless he turtles on battlecruisers or something weird like that. I skipped burrow in the 2nd game because hey, its not like I'm ever going to use it, and got my +3/+3 instead.
So yeah I'll just iron the kinks out of the "get lots of roaches" aspect and see how it goes.
|
I got to high Platinum league just doing Roach/Hydra as Zerg in all matchups. When I learned you are supposed to go Muta/Ling vs Terran, my mechanics were ready for it and I was promoted to Diamond.
I only realized I had to learn better strategy after I had been promoted to Master league 3 times and demoted twice. Macro is most important.
|
On October 11 2011 05:20 Monkeyballs25 wrote:Just to expand on the roach/hydra/corruptor example, here's two replays from this evening. I haven't even looked at them myself yet.The Typhon peaks one was played right after the Shakuras one. http://www.sc2rep.com/replays/(T)Drell_vs_(Z)Tamerlane/14283http://www.sc2rep.com/replays/(Z)Tamerlane_vs_(T)Gecko/14282Its...not too bad. I went with the "screw scouting and just build defenses blindly" option in the 2nd one, which would have worked out nicely for the first game too I think. I'll probably go with that in future. I'm not sure if the hydras are accomplishing much beyond sinking a bit more gas and deterring him from just going mass banshee, but I'll keep adding them in anyway. Corruptors feel unnecessary unless he turtles on battlecruisers or something weird like that. I skipped burrow in the 2nd game because hey, its not like I'm ever going to use it, and got my +3/+3 instead. So yeah I'll just iron the kinks out of the "get lots of roaches" aspect and see how it goes.
Just watched the one on shak. The very first attack you paid attention to it too much, you got roach early so you shouldn't need to use queens, this also caused you to lose an inject meaning your production is lower than it should be. You make way too many roaches, the initial 4 would have been fine for quite some time. After you hold off an attack like that you should expand and drone up. The reason is because no one is just going to attack with half of his/her army, once you killed it you are free to expand you're free to drone up. The problem i see with your play is that you don't make enough workers you're 1 behind your opponent and you don't have mules. Relying on your counter attack isn't really the purpose of what i'm trying to get here. You want the games to go on as long as possible if you attack you have the possibility of killing him or losing your army. The point of something like this is to just hold off w.e he throws at you with a bulky unit that will buy you a lot of time to judge if you need more in army or more in econ. If you only made 4 roach instead of 8 thats 4 more workers you would've had by the time you attacked those 4 workers would've made you 2 minutes worth of mining which is; 40 [minerals per minute] x 4 [workers] x 2 [minutes] which is 320 minerals minus the initial cost of 200, just by the point you attacked at it would've got you an extra 120 minerals.
Your money got high when the banshee rolled in and you shouldn't really be scared of them just morph an overseer and a click with both queens then ignore it.
If you killed it yay if you didn't well whatever. But its not worth getting up to 750 minerals. That's what the banshee whats you to do. It just seems that you're missing the whole point of someone telling you to macro better because you're still investing so much into defenses. You don't need as much as you think you do and that is why its ok to lose because you made too many drones but its not okay to lose because you made too many units.
All in all if you lose because of strategy. Thats fine. You made roaches he made banshee he killed you because roaches don't shoot up. Thats fine because you should've been making sure your money is low and that you're injecting. Just GG and be like ok he's playing to win, im playing to improve my mechanics so that i can win later vs that silly strategy without any effort at all.
|
So, please take it easy on us lower level guys and help us out. Remember most everyone was where are at some point.
This post represents the problem:
The idea that you need others to help you. Instead, try adopting the mindset that you can help yourself.
Many people on here are kind enough to offer incite, ideas, and resources of all kinds. Utilize that information and do not expect others to give you some cut and dried "secret" build that will take you to the Master league.
You alone can take yourself there and much higher through asking questions, staying open-minded, consulting resources, and being diligent in your work and preparation.
The reality in SC2 is the same reality everywhere else in life. Teach yourself and you will receive the greatest benefit.
Expecting other people to "help us lower league players out" downplays the idea that you have all the tools you need to help yourself out. It's one thing to put in work and ask specific questions. It's another thing to ask "What's the best TvP build derp?"
|
To be completly Honest, macro dosnt Really matter, untill diamond-ish, my friend made it diamond with 2 builds, but his macro was almost non existant, he works on one or two builds , that do not need high macro to win with, if you hold off his initial PuSh he loses,
To be good you need to be able to macro, but if you can execute good build then you can make it to diamond,
I dont like this but its True a good build can beat a better player
From What i can see from your original post your saying take it easy on lower level because they are to Lazy/ dont have time to work on mechanics, they say work on your macro, because if you have solid mechanics you should be able to look at your replay and say "I lost because my mechanics were bad" or "I lost because his build just beats mine" ETC...
I cant keep a train of thought, I'M watching IPL3 sorry if i misunderstood anything you said but this is my take on it
|
On October 11 2011 06:29 nqqvt3 wrote:
To be completly Honest, macro dosnt Really matter, untill diamond-ish, my friend made it diamond with 2 builds, but his macro was almost non existant, he works on one or two builds , that do not need high macro to win with, if you hold off his initial PuSh he loses,
To be good you need to be able to macro, but if you can execute good build then you can make it to diamond,
I dont like this but its True a good build can beat a better player
From What i can see from your original post your saying take it easy on lower level because they are to Lazy/ dont have time to work on mechanics, they say work on your macro, because if you have solid mechanics you should be able to look at your replay and say "I lost because my mechanics were bad" or "I lost because his build just beats mine" ETC...
I cant keep a train of thought, I'M watching IPL3 sorry if i misunderstood anything you said but this is my take on it
In a way, perfecting a build, even if it is a cheesy or all-in build, and using it successfully means you've mastered macro for that much amount of time. Let's say you want to go 5 rax marines in TvZ and you pull it off successfully. That means you make SCVs when you need to, put down the barracks when you need to, don't get supply blocked, and constantly make Marines. Then you go end the game by 7 minutes with a horde of units. Well, for those 7 minutes, your macro was pretty darn good.
|
Blazinghand
United States25550 Posts
On October 11 2011 06:35 Warlock40 wrote:Show nested quote +On October 11 2011 06:29 nqqvt3 wrote:
To be completly Honest, macro dosnt Really matter, untill diamond-ish, my friend made it diamond with 2 builds, but his macro was almost non existant, he works on one or two builds , that do not need high macro to win with, if you hold off his initial PuSh he loses,
To be good you need to be able to macro, but if you can execute good build then you can make it to diamond,
I dont like this but its True a good build can beat a better player
From What i can see from your original post your saying take it easy on lower level because they are to Lazy/ dont have time to work on mechanics, they say work on your macro, because if you have solid mechanics you should be able to look at your replay and say "I lost because my mechanics were bad" or "I lost because his build just beats mine" ETC...
I cant keep a train of thought, I'M watching IPL3 sorry if i misunderstood anything you said but this is my take on it In a way, perfecting a build, even if it is a cheesy or all-in build, and using it successfully means you've mastered macro for that much amount of time. Let's say you want to go 5 rax marines in TvZ and you pull it off successfully. That means you make SCVs when you need to, put down the barracks when you need to, don't get supply blocked, and constantly make Marines. Then you go end the game by 7 minutes with a horde of units. Well, for those 7 minutes, your macro was pretty darn good.
I agree with "The W" here. There's a crucial difference between "having good macro" and "playing a macro game"... when HuK does a 6-gate attack, even if he has no intention of taking a 3rd base, he's macroing perfectly off of his existing bases. He has good macro without playing a macro game.
This becomes even more clear on a 1-base all in. If you're doing an all in like say, a Thor rush in TvP, it's super super crucial that you not get supply blocked, since you're trying to hit a timing window. That being said, I'm not sure the best way to improve as a player is to spam 1-base allins ._.
|
On October 11 2011 06:48 Blazinghand wrote:Show nested quote +On October 11 2011 06:35 Warlock40 wrote:On October 11 2011 06:29 nqqvt3 wrote:
To be completly Honest, macro dosnt Really matter, untill diamond-ish, my friend made it diamond with 2 builds, but his macro was almost non existant, he works on one or two builds , that do not need high macro to win with, if you hold off his initial PuSh he loses,
To be good you need to be able to macro, but if you can execute good build then you can make it to diamond,
I dont like this but its True a good build can beat a better player
From What i can see from your original post your saying take it easy on lower level because they are to Lazy/ dont have time to work on mechanics, they say work on your macro, because if you have solid mechanics you should be able to look at your replay and say "I lost because my mechanics were bad" or "I lost because his build just beats mine" ETC...
I cant keep a train of thought, I'M watching IPL3 sorry if i misunderstood anything you said but this is my take on it In a way, perfecting a build, even if it is a cheesy or all-in build, and using it successfully means you've mastered macro for that much amount of time. Let's say you want to go 5 rax marines in TvZ and you pull it off successfully. That means you make SCVs when you need to, put down the barracks when you need to, don't get supply blocked, and constantly make Marines. Then you go end the game by 7 minutes with a horde of units. Well, for those 7 minutes, your macro was pretty darn good. I agree with "The W" here. There's a crucial difference between "having good macro" and "playing a macro game"... when HuK does a 6-gate attack, even if he has no intention of taking a 3rd base, he's macroing perfectly off of his existing bases. He has good macro without playing a macro game. This becomes even more clear on a 1-base all in. If you're doing an all in like say, a Thor rush in TvP, it's super super crucial that you not get supply blocked, since you're trying to hit a timing window. That being said, I'm not sure the best way to improve as a player is to spam 1-base allins ._.
It's almost like people think that Masters/GMs just played long macro games until they knew how to macro by heart. It never starts like that. I will guarantee you that almost every high level player started out learning how to perfectly 4gate/3rax/roach+speedling rush over and over until it didn't work anymore. Once those builds were perfected and being stopped, adjustments were made to include a critical upgrade, or a tech building, or an expansion and harder macro. The perfect 7 minute 1base build was then adjusted to a 10 minute 2-base build....then developed into a 2-base 12 minute timing....then a 3-base 15 minute push. Every addition developed a new key timing that hit a weakness in the opponent's build, while still adjusting the early play to not die to any of the timings that already existed.
Starting out learning how to *perfectly* 1-base all-in is actually a great first step. That's where all of your learning begins.
|
As it has been said many times on this post, macroing better will win you games in lower leagues. I was in bronze once and would stockpile massive ammounts of resources quickly (Since I was at least smart enough to constantly make scv's), But then I realized "If I spent that 3k minerals on only marines, I will have 60 more marines" and since my army was around 20 marines and 5 siege tanks, thats a big number. Adjusting your build will help for sure (Ex. The mass queen post), but quite often the easiest way out is better macro, since you can use it in ALL matchups, not just in 1 perticulat situation.
|
Focus on getting better, not on winning. Trying to win games can end up being very detrimental to your improvement as a player. You should focus on proper macro, adding your units to control groups, etc.. More often than not, the one control group syndrome is a result of trying to win, when you should be trying to get better.
Once you get better, the wins will come naturally.
|
On October 11 2011 07:10 ArcticFox wrote:Show nested quote +On October 11 2011 06:48 Blazinghand wrote:On October 11 2011 06:35 Warlock40 wrote:On October 11 2011 06:29 nqqvt3 wrote:
To be completly Honest, macro dosnt Really matter, untill diamond-ish, my friend made it diamond with 2 builds, but his macro was almost non existant, he works on one or two builds , that do not need high macro to win with, if you hold off his initial PuSh he loses,
To be good you need to be able to macro, but if you can execute good build then you can make it to diamond,
I dont like this but its True a good build can beat a better player
From What i can see from your original post your saying take it easy on lower level because they are to Lazy/ dont have time to work on mechanics, they say work on your macro, because if you have solid mechanics you should be able to look at your replay and say "I lost because my mechanics were bad" or "I lost because his build just beats mine" ETC...
I cant keep a train of thought, I'M watching IPL3 sorry if i misunderstood anything you said but this is my take on it In a way, perfecting a build, even if it is a cheesy or all-in build, and using it successfully means you've mastered macro for that much amount of time. Let's say you want to go 5 rax marines in TvZ and you pull it off successfully. That means you make SCVs when you need to, put down the barracks when you need to, don't get supply blocked, and constantly make Marines. Then you go end the game by 7 minutes with a horde of units. Well, for those 7 minutes, your macro was pretty darn good. I agree with "The W" here. There's a crucial difference between "having good macro" and "playing a macro game"... when HuK does a 6-gate attack, even if he has no intention of taking a 3rd base, he's macroing perfectly off of his existing bases. He has good macro without playing a macro game. This becomes even more clear on a 1-base all in. If you're doing an all in like say, a Thor rush in TvP, it's super super crucial that you not get supply blocked, since you're trying to hit a timing window. That being said, I'm not sure the best way to improve as a player is to spam 1-base allins ._. It's almost like people think that Masters/GMs just played long macro games until they knew how to macro by heart. It never starts like that. I will guarantee you that almost every high level player started out learning how to perfectly 4gate/3rax/roach+speedling rush over and over until it didn't work anymore. Once those builds were perfected and being stopped, adjustments were made to include a critical upgrade, or a tech building, or an expansion and harder macro. The perfect 7 minute 1base build was then adjusted to a 10 minute 2-base build....then developed into a 2-base 12 minute timing....then a 3-base 15 minute push. Every addition developed a new key timing that hit a weakness in the opponent's build, while still adjusting the early play to not die to any of the timings that already existed. Starting out learning how to *perfectly* 1-base all-in is actually a great first step. That's where all of your learning begins.
Still a problem with your logic. If you learn long games you learn your short game too, if you only learn your short games, you don't learn your long game plan.
I would rather teach someone how to set up 2 base with a strong pressure into a 3rd base rather than limiting someone to being 1 trick pony doing 1 base all-ins. The further into the game you go, the more situations that allow for learning to happen.
If you do a perfect 1 base all-in and it can get you to X league with X number of points, that is going to make you hit a wall much sooner than learning how to attack and expand at the same time with crisp timing pushes.
1 base all-ins are going to teach bad habits about cutting scvs at X number. The only good they will do is help work on micro and hitting a certain timing. Relying only on a timing attack and hoping that your opponent isn't good enough to hold it off is setting yourself up for failure in the long run.
Even though I say all of this, I do advise people to play around with different builds for the purpose of having fun. On the other hand SC has and always will be an economy based game, the person who can hold a better economy while being able to defend all-ins and heavy aggression is going to be the superior player in the long run. That is why most people advise macro macro macro.
|
Still a problem with your logic. If you learn long games you learn your short game too, if you only learn your short games, you don't learn your long game plan.
You have to survive the short game to get to the long game. Take it step by step. When you're learning a piece for piano, you don't do it by playing the whole thing over and over. You break it down into sections. But you're right. Short game is relatively easy to get an understanding of, so what most people really need is learning long games, or pretty much what to do after they have an expansion.
If you do a perfect 1 base all-in and it can get you to X league with X number of points, that is going to make you hit a wall much sooner than learning how to attack and expand at the same time with crisp timing pushes.
And when you hit that wall, you make adjustments to your build that result in longer games. That's exactly what he said, there's no logical problem there.
1 base all-ins are going to teach bad habits about cutting scvs at X number. The only good they will do is help work on micro and hitting a certain timing. Relying only on a timing attack and hoping that your opponent isn't good enough to hold it off is setting yourself up for failure in the long run.
Not necessarily. 1 base all-ins don't teach long game macro, but they do teach short game macro. And you need good short game macro to get good long game macro.
|
On October 11 2011 10:45 Warlock40 wrote:Show nested quote +Still a problem with your logic. If you learn long games you learn your short game too, if you only learn your short games, you don't learn your long game plan. You have to survive the short game to get to the long game. Take it step by step. When you're learning a piece for piano, you don't do it by playing the whole thing over and over. You break it down into sections. But you're right. Short game is relatively easy to get an understanding of, so what most people really need is learning long games, or pretty much what to do after they have an expansion. Show nested quote +If you do a perfect 1 base all-in and it can get you to X league with X number of points, that is going to make you hit a wall much sooner than learning how to attack and expand at the same time with crisp timing pushes. And when you hit that wall, you make adjustments to your build that result in longer games. That's exactly what he said, there's no logical problem there.
Well that is what I said in my post, surviving on 2 bases, have a good timing attack/aggression while taking a 3rd. This tests your transition from 1 base macro into 2 base macro (transferring workers, when to throw down your structures, not getting supply blocked and being able to hold off early aggression from your opponent).
Instead of hitting a wall with 1 base play (which doesn't take much macro focus at all) you can focus on 2 base play and adjust your play to hold off their 1/2 base aggression. The point is that if you keep winning within 10 minutes with perfect 1 base macro, it becomes that much harder on 2 base.
Either way if a player is focusing on 1 base play, he only has a 1 base plan and has to rely on a little macro, a lot of micro and crisp timing. If the player goes for a 2 base play he focuses mainly on macro while also having to be careful with units and having crisp timing to hold off any early pressure. The difference is that the 1 base player is actually not pushing himself to his limits by staying on one base and will almost always have shorter games than the player going for 2 bases and making just enough units to hold off 1 base tech/aggression.
Not necessarily. 1 base all-ins don't teach long game macro, but they do teach short game macro. And you need good short game macro to get good long game macro.
This is what is wrong though. Short game macro teaches less than long game macro. The community should be teaching pressure builds into expansions, not finger crossing builds that hope they didn't scout and put up extra bunkers to stop your push.
|
On October 11 2011 02:50 w3jjjj wrote:
After reading most of the posts in this thread, I'm beginning to think that "macro" is very poorly defined. If we think of "macro" as economic management, then it includes both mechanics and strategy.
The strategy dictates build orders and timings, and the mechanics is the execution. To say that "I want to have more stuff (better macro) in the late game", you cannot be playing an all-in build. Thus, strategy cannot be separated from macro, it is a part of it.
I believe when people talk about strategy vs macro, they are really talking about strategy vs mechanics, and most people think mechanics is more important than strategy, as a poor strategy well executed > a good strategy poorly executed.
From this train of thought, instead of telling someone to work on his "macro", it may be more precise to tell him to work on his "mechanics", as "macro" is too broad.
EDIT: Re-read first post again, the op is asking what if you make a bad reaction to another strategy. This falls into decision making, which is parallel to macro, as opposed to strategy, which is under macro.
Well put. This was my biggest frustration as a lower level player reading TL: not that I disputed that I needed to improve my macro (I knew I did) but that there seemed to be so little consensus on what this actually meant.
The holy trinity that everyone agrees on is "always make workers, don't get supply blocked, spend your resources." But I knew that these three on their own weren't enough, since I could fulfil these criteria making nothing but drones, queens and hatcheries, and it also doesn't capture macro mechanics like inject or chrono (or expanding). There must be something more, but what? Everyone had a different answer. Some people seemed to think of macro as everything other than controlling individual units during battle, in which case "macro better" becomes almost content free advice.
As a Zerg player I ended up adding two more items to the holy trinity: scout, and use the scouting information to figure out when to make units. (I'm not sure whether or not people would define these as macro, but either way I think they are things that people should be working on even in Bronze). If I do these things over a lot of games then eventually I have a sense of how many units I am going to need at different points in the game and against different strategies, which in turn gives me a framework in which I can apply the "macro better" advice. Effectively I try to refine my build and mechanics to make it all happen as fast and efficiently as possible.
This works OK for me and I don't pay a whole lot of attention to micro for the most part (I'm in Platinum, so I assume I have a way to go yet before I worry about it). However I have learned that there are times when poor or nonexistent micro will lose the game outright - e.g. losing a large muta ball to stimmed marines - and I do focus on it in those situations.
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
