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On October 17 2011 08:26 aebriol wrote:Show nested quote +On October 17 2011 07:17 Monkeyballs25 wrote:On October 17 2011 00:51 aebriol wrote:On October 16 2011 23:54 Monkeyballs25 wrote:On October 16 2011 23:51 aebriol wrote:On October 16 2011 23:45 Monkeyballs25 wrote:On October 16 2011 23:39 aebriol wrote:On October 16 2011 23:19 Monkeyballs25 wrote:
Hell, I tried it vs Very Hard AI a couple times and lost to 2 gate zealot every time. You aren't doing what I said. Here's what you do: - 0 pressure. - Custom game vs very easy AI - Just do the first 6 minutes or so. - Over and over. After 10 repetitions, you should be able to do it exactly like a pro. Or near enough. It's not THAT hard. I did, I used YABOT with the no aggression from the AI option. And *I still couldn't do it correctly even after an hour*. Do you understand how different our starting positions are now? Would you mind just uploading one of those replays? Sure if you don't mind waiting till I'm back on my own computer, and if they're still saved  Probably another 6 hours or so. That's okay. I can probably tell you what your problem is with the build just by following the camera movement. Just curious as to where it gets confusing for you. http://drop.sc/45035http://drop.sc/45037http://drop.sc/45036K those should be all the practicing sessions, with some downtime fiddling with the YABOT UI. Don't spend too much time trying to analyse it though please I've basically moved on from that style of practice as its literally too much of a headache for me, I'll just stick to the more generalised roach/hydra macro approach as seen in my other replays in the thread. They're just posted there as you seemed doubtful as to why I'd be struggling to copy stuff. You just have one simple problem. You don't understand the purpose of rally points. The only thing you did wrong was, when your 2nd queen pops, you set the rally point of your main hatchery for drones to a mineral patch at your expansion. That's the timing that works out pretty good for having around 16 drones on minerals in main. And you don't have to bother with remembering to transfer the right amount of workers or such things. That said, I never do the +1 melee attack mass ling style, because I consider it inferior to roaches with +1 range attack myself, but changing the rally point will give you a much better economy regardless of what style you are going for.
Yes I'm liking the upgraded roaches too And that rally point trick should be fairly easy to implement, I'll start using that.
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eh. as far as i'm concerned macro better just means play better.
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About lower lever players like the original poster.
People always say that "you should macro better". And do nothing else?
Most lower level players like me (Platinum) are CASUAL. We have other games we play, other things to do, we don't want to spend time working on something boring like macro. (if you think 'macro' is not boring, you play way more rts games than me-) I just want to play cool games and win with cool ways. Battles, flanking, surprising opponent.
If I would happen to ask advice, I want to hear what cool stuff I could do to win, not "macro better".
You shouldn't have to consider the game like some kind of job.
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Italy12246 Posts
On October 17 2011 18:36 Coeus1 wrote:
About lower lever players like the original poster.
People always say that "you should macro better". And do nothing else?
Most lower level players like me (Platinum) are CASUAL. We have other games we play, other things to do, we don't want to spend time working on something boring like macro. (if you think 'macro' is not boring, you play way more rts games than me-) I just want to play cool games and win with cool ways. Battles, flanking, surprising opponent.
If I would happen to ask advice, I want to hear what cool stuff I could do to win, not "macro better".
You shouldn't have to consider the game like some kind of job.
What you could do to win ON THE LONG RUN is macro better. If you want advice on how to improve, in that one game, in that one situation, while not doing trying to be the best player you can be, maybe TL is not the place to ask for advice?
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I don't even understand this whole singling out of strategy as something to improve on.
How tough is it?
If he makes a certain set of units, you need to make a set of units that beat his. Knowing army composition is simple. Watch a few pro games to find it out, or try different army compositions and observe what does well. It would seem odd that you would need a whole thread to figure out that zerglings beat stalkers for cost. (In fact, when I lose with an army composition to something that I thought I it should beat, I will often ask my opponent their opinion on it. I made a bunch of roaches against marines the other day thinking that that was a good plan, until he just stimmed and raped all my shit. I spoke up: "Hey! I thought my roaches should have performed better than they did. Are they really just a bad choice vs mass marine/medivac?" The answer was a resounding yes. I had a hypothesis based off of an observation, and confirmation from the person who obviously knew how to overcome my decision)
If you weren't prepared with the right units to deflect an attack, you need to scout better. Put a unit in front of his ramp to see when he moves out, build appropriate units. Every 30 seconds, scout the front of his base to make sure you're making the right stuff.
If you're losing battles when you have the right army composition, you're fighting in the wrong place. Ideally, you should always be minimizing how much they are attacking you and maximizing how many of your units are attacking. ie: have ranged units against a wall or other tight position. Have ranged units in a concave. Make your melee units surround his. Easy peezy.
In short:
a) Make the right units
b) Scout to make sure you're making the right units
c) Don't fight in stupid positions.
But all those things are common knowledge. Telling someone to do those things is as useless as 'macro better'. However, since those are not time consuming endeavours (relatively little attention and few clicks to accomplish those things), all you CAN do is improve your macro.
Making better decisions (as far as strategy goes) will just come from experience and from thinking about why you lost. You can't "focus" on better strategy. You can focus on better macro though. Hit your injects. Tap through your buidings. Watch the minimap. Macro. Tap. Watch minimap. Macro. Tap. FOCUS.
Seriously, the only reason anyone really loses up until ~Grand Master level is because they fucked up simple stuff like scouting or macro.
And if your goal is to actually learn strategy, I'd recommend staying away from "standard BOs", as you're not teaching yourself proper analysis skills. Ask yourself what you should be building, why, and when. When you lose, ask yourself what area you fucked up in: "was it that I built the wrong stuff? Was it where I positioned things? Was my timing off?"
But again, like every other useless person in this thread has said, making adjustments to whether you expand at 7:00 or 7:45, or whether you go muta tech or roach tech in response to mech is pretty irrelevant if you're going to be sitting on 1k minerals and 700 gas.
There are a hundreds of answers to any situation, all are possible if you have the proper mechanics to support it. Asking for a strategy that is tailored around unspent resources seems to be the wrong direction.
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On October 17 2011 18:36 Coeus1 wrote:
About lower lever players like the original poster.
People always say that "you should macro better". And do nothing else?
Most lower level players like me (Platinum) are CASUAL. We have other games we play, other things to do, we don't want to spend time working on something boring like macro. (if you think 'macro' is not boring, you play way more rts games than me-) I just want to play cool games and win with cool ways. Battles, flanking, surprising opponent.
If I would happen to ask advice, I want to hear what cool stuff I could do to win, not "macro better".
You shouldn't have to consider the game like some kind of job.
I understand your position on this, but there are certain fundamentals that a person needs to learn before making any real progress.
I run soccer training camps, and I approach them similar to the way I approach coaching in Starcraft.
For a player who has never kicked a soccer ball before, I don't start off by showing them how to do the Maradona or how to push Forwards off side. You start off by showing how to do a proper pass. Where you put your plant foot, what part of your foot you hit the ball with; what direction you point your plant-foot, etc.
You get them to practice running drills and other general fitness. You practice throw-ins, and basic trapping with your feet and chest. etc.
Starcraft is no different. Unfortunately, the skills you need to start playing soccer are a lot simpler and translate a lot easier to other physical activities. If you can run, and have played any other sport for a year, you will pick up the basics for soccer very quickly. Starcraft is a different beast. Hopefully you enjoy practicing macro and that kind of improvement, as that will be the quickest route to enjoying the even richer aspects of an RTS such as strategy.
Also, there are other strategy games out there that have lower physical requirements than Starcraft. You could always try turn based games, or Relic's RTSs that were designed with the specific intention of relieving players of much of the management found in Blizzard RTS games.
Company of Heroes is a great game (companyofheroes.com). It might be of interest to you.
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Well the thing is ... if you are not trying to improve, you shouldn't post a 'please help me' thread. Then just be casual. Battle.net will match you against opponents of roughly your skill level (at the extreme bottom of bronze, or extreme top of GM, that might not be the case, but for everyone else), and just play and have fun.
But when you ask for help, you should expect people to point out the things that will help you improve your game the most with the least amount of effort.
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On October 17 2011 19:08 Mora wrote:
In short:
a) Make the right units
b) Scout to make sure you're making the right units
c) Don't fight in stupid positions.
But all those things are common knowledge. Telling someone to do those things is as useless as 'macro better'. However, since those are not time consuming endeavours (relatively little attention and few clicks to accomplish those things), all you CAN do is improve your macro.
Making better decisions (as far as strategy goes) will just come from experience and from thinking about why you lost. You can't "focus" on better strategy. You can focus on better macro though. Hit your injects. Tap through your buidings. Watch the minimap. Macro. Tap. Watch minimap. Macro. Tap. FOCUS.
I have to disagree on the "can't 'focus' on better strategy" thing. By watching lots of other games, learning what units are and are not capable of, learning the maps, etc you'll definitely improve your strategy.
Working on your strategy has its place, theres definitely something to be said for knowing how to engage. Hell, I played a game just the other day PvP. We were pretty even right through with him having perhaps a slight advantage in macro. He pushed out against my base with a more expensive and slightly larger army of mixed archon/gateway/colossi/immortal against my gateway/colossus/immortal army at my natural; I think he even had better upgrades. Result? Absolute slaughter because I knew when he was coming so I had my colossi nice and safe up on the cliff overlooking the ramp and it was just a case of focussing down his colossi with mine followed by wiping out the rest of the army and counter attacking to win. Finished with me having killed more than twice the amount of unit resources that he had (about 5500 to over 12k if I remember right) purely because I figured out how best to engage.
However, it is true that macro will get you far more "bang for your buck" in terms of improvement. Improve your strategy and micro and you'll occassionally pull off clever wins. Improve your macro and you'll be able to win the majority of your games up to a certain level by just flooding your opponent beneath huge tidal waves of units.
Company of Heroes is a great game (companyofheroes.com). It might be of interest to you.
Dawn of War 2 is an alternative that might be considered as well.
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I feel as though this is really getting exhausted.
It is simple. No matter what units you make, if you macro up in the first 7-9 minutes and attack in Bronze-Gold, you will win. Hell, if you macro up in the first 30 minutes and attack, you will win.
Obviously you could say "oh, what about DT?" Well, that is a pain, isn't it? But oh wait, it's bronze. He has 1 DT at the 10 minute mark. Just A-click the back of his base and build spore/turret/cannon/forge/lair/scan.
A big reason why it shouldn't even matter your strategy is that once you get out of bronze, guess what? You will never see those builds again. Scouting a bronze player is probably one of the most frustrating things I've ever seen. My friend recently played his way up from Bronze. The builds are awful. They cannon up their front and build either 1 production structure or 20, and never expand.
Build workers, build units, don't get supply blocked, expand. Simple STRATEGY for Plat! 
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This has probably been mentioned, but there's a limit to how much strategy one can do with very subpar mechanics.
For example i can tell you to build marines against mass voidrays... And if you were building marauders instead then yes this can help you.
But things like timings, and specific build orders are irrelevant if you're not executing them properly.
This doesn't mean that you shouldn't have a build order however... you should. You should have a build that you try to execute as well as you can, and eventually your mechancis will be good enough taht the build that you're doing is actually going to make a difference, and then it makes sense to go ahead and learn other builds.
Timings are pretty much completely irrelevant if your and your opponent's macro isn't smooth.
Still you can get strategic help from people in terms of what unit compositions to use against what other units compositions, and etc.
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Platinum players often wants easy answers to how do I beat this attack. And the truth is that many attacks requires good macro, timing and scouting to survive if you are playing a macro style. Even if the attack by it self is very easy to pull of.
When the higher league player look at the replay he sees maybe cyber delayed by 20 s in pvp or something, and thinks this is an auto-loss to 4 gate best to tell him to do it right.
Or in pvz when protoss camps, and the zerg should be ahead a lot in econ, but the zerg is just even saying "we are even in econ and army but I lost 150 supply when he lost 40 lol colossus voidray imba".
The higher league player only wants to give advice on what is the biggest reason for the loss and he sees things other ways you might loose vs other strategies because of bad macromanagement/build timings. He don't see how you can improve micro or decision making vs other things.
Macro is until master lvl is about 50 % motivation 40% knowledge and 10 % skill. Almost everyone can call down a mule, build 2 marines 1 marouder 1 scv and 1 supply during a 20 s timespan. Everyone can get the first 20 supplies correctly only he check up the correct way, and do it.
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On October 17 2011 18:36 Coeus1 wrote:
About lower lever players like the original poster.
People always say that "you should macro better". And do nothing else?
Most lower level players like me (Platinum) are CASUAL. We have other games we play, other things to do, we don't want to spend time working on something boring like macro. (if you think 'macro' is not boring, you play way more rts games than me-) I just want to play cool games and win with cool ways. Battles, flanking, surprising opponent.
If I would happen to ask advice, I want to hear what cool stuff I could do to win, not "macro better".
You shouldn't have to consider the game like some kind of job.
If you're a casual player, then I don't understand why you care about winning/losing or ranks in the first place. If you actually do want to get better then you have to listen to advice of better players, which means you sacrifice a little bit of fun for some improvement.
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If a new player makes a thoughtful post asking for help that follows all the guidelines and somebody says "macro better" and nothing else, that is a trollish response. If they point out specifically how you could macro better, however, the advice should be valued. I've never played an RTS before last year, and I took all the "macro better" advice to heart and worked on nothing but my macro throughout my ladder time. I'm in masters now and I attribute a big part of that to working on my macro so much. Things like micro, surviving against cheese, and reactions to different unit compositions and playstyles are also very important to know, but none of this matters unless your macro is up to par.
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On October 17 2011 18:36 Coeus1 wrote:
About lower lever players like the original poster.
People always say that "you should macro better". And do nothing else?
Most lower level players like me (Platinum) are CASUAL. We have other games we play, other things to do, we don't want to spend time working on something boring like macro. (if you think 'macro' is not boring, you play way more rts games than me-) I just want to play cool games and win with cool ways. Battles, flanking, surprising opponent.
If I would happen to ask advice, I want to hear what cool stuff I could do to win, not "macro better".
You shouldn't have to consider the game like some kind of job.
Why would you ask for help in the first place then? Since you have no motivation to improve (witch is totally fine), why would you ask for help?
If you are looking for cool ways to win, this thread does not cover that imo. I have seen a few of those threads, and I cant remember seeing anyone saying "macro better" to a person who have asked for cheap ways to win.
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On October 18 2011 01:15 saynomore wrote:Show nested quote +On October 17 2011 18:36 Coeus1 wrote:
About lower lever players like the original poster.
People always say that "you should macro better". And do nothing else?
Most lower level players like me (Platinum) are CASUAL. We have other games we play, other things to do, we don't want to spend time working on something boring like macro. (if you think 'macro' is not boring, you play way more rts games than me-) I just want to play cool games and win with cool ways. Battles, flanking, surprising opponent.
If I would happen to ask advice, I want to hear what cool stuff I could do to win, not "macro better".
You shouldn't have to consider the game like some kind of job. Why would you ask for help in the first place then? Since you have no motivation to improve (witch is totally fine), why would you ask for help? If you are looking for cool ways to win, this thread does not cover that imo. I have seen a few of those threads, and I cant remember seeing anyone saying "macro better" to a person who have asked for cheap ways to win.
Well I won't argue about what the intended purpose of the TL strat forum should be, but I would like to point out that I did learn a really fun way to play thanks to the posts from D u o in this thread. Thanks!
And also the official forums can be just as dogmatic in terms of macro improvements and only using a small subset of unit comps, and have the added annoyance of trolling. This is actually a pretty good place to get advice on unusual tactics, like here http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=275501¤tpage=2
Maybe there should be a tag like [casual] or something so that the serious folks know that the poster just wants tips on a more enjoyable game and not a more useful but work oriented approach. Then they can stay clear of those threads.
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I really am shocked this thread is still going on
It basically boils down to 3 things
1. people do actually give good strat advice in addition to simply saying macro better- IMHO the OP created this discussion without ever providing thread examples where it happened
2. ppl are claiming they don't want to improve they just want to have fun- then don't ask for help on the most hardcore star craft site's strategy forum
3. people who actually understand the game are trying to explain to 1 and 2 that macro is actually necessary to execute a strategy well (think about Boxer at certain points in his career where he executes a harass tactic perfectly only to accumulate 1200+ minerals and just die to a counter attack cause he had no stuff)
so... can we end this thread already? We already have Plexa's sticky because of this thread so what further purpose is it serving beyond continuing a circular and never ending debate of a problem that never actually existed in the first place?
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On October 17 2011 04:27 Asday wrote:Show nested quote +On October 16 2011 21:23 DarQraven wrote:
Gotta love this thread, TL league elitism in a nutshell.
"Guys, we know we need to macro better. But when we ask for strategy help, could you actually try to answer the question?"
30-page responses: "You need to macro better. Also, you don't know what you're talking about."
And this is the community that lauds itself as "helpful, mature and welcoming". Well done, TL, well done. The thing is, we're right. I'm in Silver, and even I know (and accept) that it's not how I position my fucking zerglings, it's because I suck dick at being under 1000 minerals, and having more than one base. A lot of the people herping in this thread, saying they need strategy, or whatever, just remind me of this one time I called a fat girl "fat by hippo's standards", and she "proved" she wasn't by doing a starjump. If you want a "strategy", how about this: Pick a unit, make it. As Zerg, mass roaches on 2 base, then push. As Terran, make marines. As Protoss, make gateway units and collosi. Easypeasy. EDIT: And while I remember, can we PLEASE have this thread locked? Nothing new is ever being said.
That's exactly the thing. No one cares or disputes if you're right. OP even confirms you're right, right there on page 1.
This thread is saying that people would like a licence to discuss strategy or ask questions about it even under the shameful conditions of not being able to macro perfectly. Imagine that...
When someone ask for the counter to a 3rax ghost push, they want to know the counter to a 3 rax ghost push, regardless of whether you think they are worthy of receiving this information. You either give them the information they asked for, or you don't answer, simple as that.
Stuff that is irrelevant:
- Whether they can actually perform this counter properly, that's up to them to learn.
- Whether you are satisfied with their mineral banking.
- What league they would be in if they kept their minerals under 200 at all times.
- Whether or not they could beat the specific strategy they mention by macroing like a boss.
None of that is relevant. You don't get to decide whether or not someone can try to 'properly' counter a strat or they just have to suck it up and play brainlessly until their macro is up to your goddamn standard.
When someone makes an open-ended thread, saying "critique my play", and they're banking 2000 minerals, by all means: comment on their macro.
If not, keep those unwanted and useless comments out of the thread.
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On October 17 2011 18:19 Far.771 wrote:
eh. as far as i'm concerned macro better just means play better.
That;s surprisingly true.
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On October 17 2011 22:46 Echo_ wrote:I feel as though this is really getting exhausted. It is simple. No matter what units you make, if you macro up in the first 7-9 minutes and attack in Bronze-Gold, you will win. Hell, if you macro up in the first 30 minutes and attack, you will win. Obviously you could say "oh, what about DT?" Well, that is a pain, isn't it? But oh wait, it's bronze. He has 1 DT at the 10 minute mark. Just A-click the back of his base and build spore/turret/cannon/forge/lair/scan. A big reason why it shouldn't even matter your strategy is that once you get out of bronze, guess what? You will never see those builds again. Scouting a bronze player is probably one of the most frustrating things I've ever seen. My friend recently played his way up from Bronze. The builds are awful. They cannon up their front and build either 1 production structure or 20, and never expand. Build workers, build units, don't get supply blocked, expand. Simple STRATEGY for Plat!
I think the best solution for this thread is for everyone to quote this guy and just spam it, because he is exactly right, and the thread itself is going absolutely nowhere.
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I'm in platinum league (was in diamond before my couple month break, but probably deserved to be in platinum at the time), I'm moderately casual, but willing to put in some practice. I also haven't played in a few months, but have started again recently--I think this may have affected my outlook some.
I was always falling into the trap of trying to improve strategy, keeping up with the current metagame, getting build orders down, etc. Why do I call this a trap? For the following reasons:
- It does actually help you improve some in the short term, if you have leveled out in matchmaking. I.e., if you are against equally skilled opponents, and you improve your build, or start using a solid build while before you weren't using a solid build, you will notice a difference, and win a bit more.
- But, then you will advance a bit further, hit opponents with either better mechanics or similarly improved builds, and get stuck again. Where do you go from here?
- I would get very frustrated at this point. As other posters have pointed out, it sometimes felt random to me, or arbitrary, that my opponent managed to get more units than me in some games. I would know my macro wasn't as good as it could have been, but for some reason I kept downplaying the importance of this... I would KNOW I missed a bunch of larvae injects, but would still focus on the strategy, the build, the unit compositions... I don't know why.
- It is more fun to focus on strategy. Its where the fun thinking comes in--how do I out think my opponent. This makes it more appealing.
One thing that made it hard, or at least made me think it would be hard to start getting back into the game after a break of a few months would be catching back up on strategy, the metagame, builds, etc. Which builds are still viable on which maps now? Etc etc.
Its a little intimidating and time consuming trying to catch up on all that. So I figured I'd bite the bullet and work on my mechanics a bit instead. And to those who say you can't improve quickly--that isn't the case. If you really focus on one thing, you can improve quickly. I would tell myself in the past that this is what I was going to do, then I'd go into a game, do that for the first 10 minutes, and forget to focus as things got intense. But if you can keep focusing (in my case, tapping my hatchery and keeping up with injects), it works rather well... and its rather ridiculous the difference it makes.
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