I'm a bronze protoss. Everyone's always telling me that I should macro and that I can win games through sheer macro. I complied, and played a few games where I, as the midgame progressed, had 3 expansions up and running at once. This makes for a grand total of 90 probes. I discovered that I could win games with nothing but stalkers if I kept up that kind of macro simply because I was on 3 expos while my opp was on 1.
The problem is, this is bronze, and I'm thinking ahead. I don't expect my playing to win me games in gold, say. I see several basic problems with my playing:
1) Not enough supply. 90 probes = 110 supply left for combat units = not enough, is it? 2) Too many expos = easily harassed by mutas, drops, cloaked banshees etc. 3) Too hard to maintain, the bases get mined out so quickly that I spend a lot of time on just building nexii.
So overall, how many workers should I build? Did I over-macro this game? Also, do you think I am gold material?
Here's the replay. If I could replay it I would have build more gateways and robos. Any tips on macro, and other general tips are appreciated
it will work up to diamond. just keep on doing what you're doing mate. might wanna stop around 80 probes or so. and the more expos you have the harder it is to defend, yes, but that's how your multitasking improves. and the 3rd point is okay, more mining = more minerals.
so, just keep doing what you're doing and you will do absolutely great in starcraft 2, you're off to a great start!
While 90 is overdoing it, you'll notice that some pro Zergs go 90, but have no problem winning. It is fine to have such a high worker count if you have the production to make use of it, so you can continuously trade armies over and over until you starve him to death. If you have 3 mining bases going full capacity, get over a dozen Warpgates and 3 Robo, pump those upgrades with multiple Forges and then just keep trading with the other guy as soon as your Gates are up.
A good place to stop for Protoss is between 75-80 Probes, if you want to rein it in a bit.
That's actually what people keep telling lower level players over and over again. Macro, macro, macro and you get out of the lower leagues. You can literally make nothing but probes and Stalker/Zealot up to diamond.
Anyway.. 1. Don't ever stop building probes until you are about 70-80, but don't ever stop at lower leagues. As you play more you should be able to tell when you should stop producing workers. 2. Of course you want more expos. You win this game by having a bigger army right? You get a bigger army by having a bigger economy, and to have a bigger economy you need more bases. Dealing with harass such as mutas or banshee will come in time when you have enough experience to deal with them. 3. It should take about 2 sec to select a probe and build an additional Nexus somewhere. -______-;; It's okay if it's mined out, just build another base somewhere else.
Your replay link seems to be broken or at least I can't access it for some reason.
But some general macro tips is that use up all your money and keep it close to 0. If you warped in units and still have excess minerals, build additional gateways or add tech (such as Robo or Twilight Council) or expand. Also try to expand aggressively as possible, meaning when you feel safe, throw down another base somewhere. Keep doing this over and over and that's how you get to grandmaster.
A tip, if you are at a very high # of probes like 90 you should be trying to trade armies with your opponent often. This way you are not very limited by the fact your army is only 110 supply.
If you sat on 90 probes and your opponent with 55 probes also got to 200 food, your army would be 35 supply weaker. So as soon as you are 200/200 go attack!
Attacking far away from you gives you more time to re-max and doing small trades instead of 1 huge fight you might lose is usually nice because it lowers the chance your opponent just kills you with what he has leftover.
Don't worry about having more bases... you're thinking about it the wrong way. The more bases you have, the less damage harass will do. The less bases you have, the more damage harass will do. Sure, it is easier to defend harass with less bases, but then the harass would be successful in that you have less bases than you would have anyways.
You are definitely right you can just keep macro'ing up! However this doesn't mean like double expand or something, it just means focus on making probes ( better to queue up a bit rather than lose a few precious seconds here and there! ).
On 3 base you should have 90 workers max, or 76 workers. 76 is most efficient per worker, but with 90 you can mine to the fullest (well not fullest, but like 99.5% close to fullest).
Don't worry about having too much econ as long as you don't have like 100 probes. Even so if you have 100 probes, just make sure you have equally as many buildings (stop making probes past 90 though if you already saturated) so that you can reproduce your army very quickly to make up for having less supply.
1) In general aim for a probe count in the high 70's or low 80's.
2) Use cannons and have stalkers positioned to defend. If your ahead on economy you can afford it.
3) Make sure your workers are split between bases some what evenly accord to the mineral patches left. If you plan on playing high eco mining out bases is simply a fact of life.
Don't worry I got to low diamond by just making gate way units and having better macro then my opponents. Not to mention I didn't make colossi and relied on over whelming my opponent with waves of gateway units.
So, comments specifically on your replay you posted. First of all I did not bother to watch the entire replay. Why? Well partially because of time limitations and also partially because just from the first section of the game I could easily find issue that you could focus on.
First of all its good that you want to improve your macro, part of having good macro is being efficient. Part of being efficient is not getting supply blocked, for an example at 4:00 game time you were supply blocked. In general at early stages of the game you should be making a pylon when within 2-3 supply of being blocked then as the game goes on it is generally a good idea to start throwing down pylons two or three at a time. Scale this to what you can produce, ie. if your building a colossi one takes over half the supply of a single pylon therefore you need to start throwing down multiple pylons at a time.
Another issue was probe production, at multiple times during the start of the game you cut probes or were unable to make them (due to being supply blocked). In general you want to simply be constantly pumping probes. For a idea at 4:42 you had 19 probes, in a replay of LiquidHero at this same time he had 22 probes (and he was being quite safe), in a replay of my self I had 24 probes (playing a lot less safe). Those numbers should just give you an idea of the difference that not getting supply blocked and using chrono boost make.
On the topic of chrono boost you also wasted the amazing potential that is chrono boost. Zergs have queens, terrans have the mule and protoss we have chrono boost. Basically from 4:42 game time to roughly 6:00 you had 100 chrono boost saved on your nexus. You never want to be wasting chrono boost, sometimes its nice to save it to get out a key unit or upgrade quickly but in general just chrono boost those probes!
A smaller issue was with your gas timings. Your first gas you didn't even mine from until 10 seconds (in game time). Try to mine just as much gas as you will need don't try to stock pile it too much. Stock piling resources means that your much weaker then you should be, for an example at 10:02 you had enough minerals for another nexus and an equal amount of gas saved up.
Other things that would be control xel naga towers they give you more map vision which will help to deal with harass. Have a probe or something patrolling between your opponents possible expo's. You get supply blocked a lot just constantly make pylons until your at /200. Get more upgrades, at ~30 minutes into the game you only had +2 attack. If you have lots of minerals just throw down extra gateways to help remax faster.
Watch this, in fact more then likely any of day's videos will help you.
i think 70-90 is the magic number depending on how many expos/ bases you wanna sit on. Sometimes its good to Dl replays of your fav pro and just watch his macro only, i did the same thing and did learn alot! I play T so i dunno when or even what hotkey Chrono is but pay attention to those things too when watching the replay.
For protosses, I would recommend around 70 - 80. Also, having "too many workers" is actually not a bad problem to have. As you mentioned, you can simply win games through macro and this will carry you easily to Diamond/Master league. You can then tweak and adjust the number of workers slightly.
For zergs, I commend 80 - 90 drones.
For terrans, 60 - 70 should be sufficient because of mules.
On October 09 2011 15:32 Passionless wrote: Make 21 4 gate All day every day
User was banned for this post.
This guy got banned for his tactlessness, but he's right.
"Macro Better" is multipurpose. Macro encompasses building more workers, building more unit producing structures, continuously building units, and keeping your resources low.
I don't think a Bronze player's goal should be to go up to 70 probes and play 5-Base. I think better is to nail down 1-Base play down first so you can build more workers (up to...for example, 21), build enough unit producing structures (say...4 gate), continuously build units out of those 4 gates to keep your resources low.
On October 09 2011 15:32 Passionless wrote: Make 21 4 gate All day every day
User was banned for this post.
This guy got banned for his tactlessness, but he's right.
"Macro Better" is multipurpose. Macro encompasses building more workers, building more unit producing structures, continuously building units, and keeping your resources low.
I don't think a Bronze player's goal should be to go up to 70 probes and play 5-Base. I think better is to nail down 1-Base play down first so you can build more workers (up to...for example, 21), build enough unit producing structures (say...4 gate), continuously build units out of those 4 gates to keep your resources low.
Once you can do that, then try 2 base.
I do agree, I've seen Trump lose TvP because he had ~100 SCVs
I think the consensus on Protoss and probes is around 72 or something,
3:50: Supply blocked at 18/18 - Very early to get blocked
4:40 - You've queued up 2 stalkers on one gateway, avoid queueing...also, you haven't begun Warpgate tech research.
Your Chronoboost is Maxed, and you aren't making probes.
5:20 - only building out of 1 gateway, no probes building
10:00 - Lot of supply blocking going out, you've got too much money building up
11:00 - 2 observers out, but you haven't really scouted anything.
11:20 - You're over-saturated at the 1st base, few probes at the 2nd...transfer some over to improve mining.
12:50 - Adding a 2nd Robo facility but you're not even using the 1st one.
13:40 - You're building a 2nd twilight council for some reason. Still not using the robo facilities
15:00 - Now using Robos...but you've queued up 5 Immortals, tying up a lot of resources and in the mean time all 8 of your warpgates are ready to warp in, but you're not.
20:00 - This far into the game, you've only got 1 weapons upgrade and no armour.
21:00 - Saved up 2800min, 1800gas, just now teching to a Tier 3 unit.
22:30 - Suicide your entire army for no apparent purpose
25:00 - Now over 5000 minerals, 2600gas...Add production...Make units!
26:30 - Suicide a second entire army for no apparent reason...in the exact same way.
27:00 - 3 Robos, 14 Warpgates, 0 Units being made.
29:00 - With 10,000 minerals...instead of defending Banshee Harrass...build 6 Cannons at every base. You'll still have 5,500 minerals left.
30:00 - How can you not be looking around the map...do you really think at 30 minutes in the game, he's only got that 1 base? Be curious, look around.
31:00 - Banshee Harass? Why not build like 6 StarGates? You have 12,000 minerals and 5000gas
33:00 - You Suicide a 90 supply army a 3rd time using the exact same plan of attack. When they offered their lives for Auir, they didn't expect you to so readily take them.
35:00 - His Thor army is 3-3, yours is 2-0-0, upgrades win games.
37:00 - I know you're about to lose this fight, but I have no idea how you're going to.
38:00 - Ahh, by move commanding everything instead of attack moving, then not focus firing anything. Good stuff.
43:00 - My brain hurts.
Ok, so for starters. 'Macro" does not just mean making workers and mining. Macro also includes constantly making units and adding production facilities, and keeping your money low and spent.
Your economy was big, but your Macro is absolutely terrible. You should never really have over 1000 minerals, let alone 10,000 Your production facilities went unused for long periods of time, you didn't upgrade things, you were supply blocked a lot...all of that stuff is Macro.
The Probe count question is so far down the line and irrelevant to what you're doing, its just crazy to ask at this point. Keep just constantly making probes. At no point were you harmed because your army was 10 supply less than it could have been, you kept charging it up a single ramp vs 8 tanks, it wouldn't make any difference.
Scout the map, and don't charge into tanks over and over.
In long macro games i tend to prefer getting around 70 probes, gives me a decent saturation of 3 bases while at the same time giving me 130 supply i can use for my army.
While its true that IDEALLY, you'd want to be on at least 3 bases with 75-90 workers, I feel like a lot of people forget just how vulnerable investing in non-stop worker production really makes you vs someone with a good 2 base timing attack.
While you are sitting there pulling in the resources with your 4000 minerals worth of workers and expos, an opponent with only 2500 minerals invested in his economy can just go kill you unless you are aware of the risk. Higher end players know how to scout that sort of aggression and deal with it, whether with bunkers, force fields, or counter attacks, but for new players not being aware of how constant worker production affects your army size can lead to games where you FEEL super far ahead, but in reality you were just being too greedy and get punished.
You are definitly on the correct way to improve. I have another tipp that will help you.
Make a gameplan with a goal to have 3 mining bases at atleast 15 Minutes in the game. Make you clear timings like: "I want to expand on 6 Minutes and i want to expand on 12 Minutes" Don´t worry about allins or something like this, just throw down your nexus at this time you want your expand and try to defend. Then watch your replays and notice what you could have done better "Could i build 2 extra gateways at x time" or "Could i effort my robotics bay earlier? ". Then try it out another time with your changes until you don´t get over 500-600 Minerals until you are at your 3 Bases.
What you will learn from this is, that you will notice that you get more minerals much faster if you build your expos during this time and you have to have a plan how you spent your minerals unless they will get really high.
For the supplyblock: Just build pylons after every production cycle. F.e. if you have 3 gate and a robo producing collossus you need 6 supply for a colossus, 6 supply for your gateways and 2 supply for probes = 14 supply so you should build 2 pylons after every cycle. The more productiing buildings you have the more pylons you need to build for each cycle.
Just keep on macroing and when you are diamond you can think about timing attacks and stretagy a bit and that´s when the game really get´s interesting.
On October 09 2011 15:32 Passionless wrote: Make 21 4 gate All day every day
User was banned for this post.
This guy got banned for his tactlessness, but he's right.
"Macro Better" is multipurpose. Macro encompasses building more workers, building more unit producing structures, continuously building units, and keeping your resources low.
I don't think a Bronze player's goal should be to go up to 70 probes and play 5-Base. I think better is to nail down 1-Base play down first so you can build more workers (up to...for example, 21), build enough unit producing structures (say...4 gate), continuously build units out of those 4 gates to keep your resources low.
Once you can do that, then try 2 base.
They should start with 2 base play so they don't get too hooked on never needing to expand because the one base is working for them. As for three or more bases after that, it seems unnecessary.
Oh, and you can probably cut probes at like 80. 30 per base is the max you want, but if you ever want to get out of 'just stalkers' you'll need more gas and less minerals, around 26 per base works out well.
On October 09 2011 15:25 lordsurya08 wrote: I'm a bronze protoss. Everyone's always telling me that I should macro and that I can win games through sheer macro. I complied, and played a few games where I, as the midgame progressed, had 3 expansions up and running at once. This makes for a grand total of 90 probes. I discovered that I could win games with nothing but stalkers if I kept up that kind of macro simply because I was on 3 expos while my opp was on 1.
The problem is, this is bronze, and I'm thinking ahead. I don't expect my playing to win me games in gold, say. I see several basic problems with my playing:
1) Not enough supply. 90 probes = 110 supply left for combat units = not enough, is it? 2) Too many expos = easily harassed by mutas, drops, cloaked banshees etc. 3) Too hard to maintain, the bases get mined out so quickly that I spend a lot of time on just building nexii.
So overall, how many workers should I build? Did I over-macro this game? Also, do you think I am gold material?
Here's the replay. If I could replay it I would have build more gateways and robos. Any tips on macro, and other general tips are appreciated
3 base saturation. That is 16 mining main/natural/3rd. with 18 probes on gas. So 66 probes is optimal.
Of course if you just cut probes to get to that number you'll lose in the mid game, you should try and get 66 probes on 2 bases (or as close to 66 as possible).
90 probes is alot, most people stay around 70, i sometimes go up to 120. It depends alot on how you want to play and what your opponent is doing. You will get a feeling for that later ^^, but thats why checking worker satuartion alot is important. Your opponent goes for 70 workers and looks like they will turtle until 200 supply ? no problem to go 90 workers for some time, you just have to lose them when they rush over one of your expansion.
70ish is the balanced worker count you get enough income to remax easily and you won't get overrun if the opponent is only on 50 workers.
Its also different for each matchup etc etc. You could say its advanced macro. But 7 base toss 120 workers and 40 gateways is fun !
Don't stop making workers until you are maxed out.
If you realize you really do have too many workers, sack them, EZ PZ. You can argue that those are 'wasted moneyz', but in reality you have to remember that those workers were mining, and most people don't spend their minerals very well so those ~500 minerals do not really factor into such a big deal in the late game. I have won many games where my enemy kills like 30 workers for free but since I constantly keep building them my economy is still in a decent shape.
I don't know how players like HongUn and Genius manage to win by building nothing but 40-60 workers all game long rofl.
I'm protoss and I like to have 70 workers (but I'm often between 65 and 70, rarely over 75). The most important thing is not how many you have in the end, but how quickly you have them for protoss and zerg. So I dump all the chronoboost I can spare on probes early on when I don't have a lot of upgrades to accelerate and get a very good 2 base saturation very early. As you take your third, you can transfer some of your now oversaturated main and natural to it and be good.
Take a YABOT map or something, and try to max in the lowest possible amount of time, with good and smooth macro, upgrades and reasonable expansion and tech timings. You'll find out that 67 workers is often the number of workers you have at the end.
for each fully mining base you have, you should have either: 4 warpgates or 2 starports or 2 robotics
going at full swing.
this means that if you have 3 bases, which is the max probes you should have, you should have up to 12 warpgates going. I personally prefer 16, cause i don't keep up with my warpgate as much as I should.
On October 10 2011 03:56 Geovu wrote: Don't stop making workers until you are maxed out.
If you realize you really do have too many workers, sack them, EZ PZ. You can argue that those are 'wasted moneyz', but in reality you have to remember that those workers were mining, and most people don't spend their minerals very well so those ~500 minerals do not really factor into such a big deal in the late game. I have won many games where my enemy kills like 30 workers for free but since I constantly keep building them my economy is still in a decent shape.
I don't know how players like HongUn and Genius manage to win by building nothing but 40-60 workers all game long rofl.
if you are on two base, which is quite common, it's 22 workers per base, and 44 workers total. that's about right. each 2 extra workersyou maket aht u don't need is sa zelaot that you didn't make
Generally if you have that many, you should be able to max WAY faster than your opponent and you should go straight up attack. Whatever engagement you get will favor you because you have a huge economy with 90 probes. Usually though, in diamond-masters you want to keep it lower to around 70-80 probes. In bronze-plat it seriously does not matter.
As terran, I've made around 100 scvs in a couple of my games, and half the time I just make extra OC's and bring like 50 or so scvs in a massive push. Its a very scary push especially vs zerg, as the scvs are sweatshirts against banelings.
I think 90 is too much for toss; normally 75-85 is the optimum number for toss...
But as it was mentioned before, you need to keep on top of your production facilities, tech, and upgrades. A good rule for toss, I believe is 3-4 gateways per base, or 3 gates and a robo, or, if colossus, 2 gates and a robo per base.
And late game, when you're maxed and banking thousands of resources, you could just throw up 20 gateways and 4 robos to remax instantly after a battle.
70ish, some styles get more than that, . Know when to stop and when to continue probe production though, this you'll only learn playing the game however.
The difference between each league, bronze through grand masters is that as each league goes up the average number of workers made by players in that league goes up too, and not just by a little bit.
The thing nobody has mentioned and most people never do is replace workers from harassment or attacks, most people if they lose 10 workers don't remake them, and if they lose a base and all probes try to get a big army and go win. The really strong pro's replace workers that die to attacks.
You can't have too many workers, it's not possible to make enough workers off 2, even 3 bases to over do it unless the rest of your production is bad. So just always make workers and add production facilities to keep your cash low and you'll be in grandmaster.
An easy way to count your workers that I found is center over a nexus and ctrl+click a probe. You will have selected all workers at that base that are mining plus 2 out of 3 in each gas (1 will always be inside each gas). So an ideal # to select would be 1 full page of 24. Thats 3 rows of 8. It is really 26 workers cuz of one worker in each gas that can't be selected. So 6 on gas, 20 on minerals is a good amount for each base.
26x3=78 workers on 3 bases which is not so bad, maybe a little on the high side for death-ball protoss. Once your main is nearly mined out start your 4th base and transfer almost all of those workers from your main to the 4th. When your natural is near mined out start your 5th. Now there are circumstances like heavy 1 base play by your opponent that make you stay on 1 or 2 base for longer, but in general thats the expansion timing and # of workers I try to go by.
Also keep in mind earlier workers = better because they mine you minerals that whole time theyre alive. Try to never stop making workers, and if you have money SPEND IT. Like excess # of gateways if you have to. You want to have a few (small % of total) warpins that you cannot use because you are spending all of your money.
EPT
