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On May 02 2012 04:51 Heh_ wrote:Show nested quote +On May 02 2012 01:58 CecilSunkure wrote:On May 02 2012 00:18 Umpteen wrote:
@Cecilsunkure:
I'd really appreciate it if you could help me figure something out. This is a discussion I've had several times here on TL and having followed your threads avidly in the past I would value your thoughts tremendously.
To state the problem as concisely as possible: playing for over a year as Zerg, reading TL, watching Day[9], 12 weeks with the pros etc etc, I failed to meaningfully improve either my macro or my ladder ranking until I watched some VoDs that helped me improve my understanding and decision-making.
This flies in the face of everything far better players than I keep telling me. I know I shouldn't argue with pros and blue posters. At the same time, I know I didn't get anywhere just trying to focus on macro.
It's important that I'm clear: I'm not saying that I improved my macro and it didn't help, or that I focused on something else, let my macro stay the same, and shot up the ladder.
No: the point is that, in an actual game, 'macro better' felt like a meaningless abstraction after the first couple of minutes. I couldn't remind myself "I need to macro better" and act. I had idle larvae, my resources were piling up, I'd get myself supply blocked - and most of the time it was because I didn't have a clue what to do next.
The advice in the OP of this thread (and elsewhere) has always implied that "What you do is far less important than doing it well." In my ignorance of what it's like to play Protoss or Terran, I could imagine that being true for them. But it has never felt true playing Zerg. What felt true was:
1. There is no 'safe' or 'standard'.
2. My only chances to win or gain advantage come after failed aggression on his part. If I make units and attack, I lose 100% of the time.
That was the extent of my game-sense. I never articulated it to myself at the time, but how was I supposed to 'do that' better? It meant nothing. I couldn't get past the feeling that if I picked a way to spend my money, it was probably going to turn out to be wrong.
Then I watched the Stoic ZvX vods, and I realised that everything I thought I knew was either wrong, or right but in a misleadingly incomplete way. And this was after twelve months plus of playing, watching dailies, following the pro scene etc etc. Within days I had risen a league and was starting to feel my macro holding me back, rather than just feeling stupid and lost. Since when I've found it far easier to concentrate on injects, concentrate on avoiding supply blocks or overspending on overlords, concentrate on taking and saturating expansions. I'm still shit at these things, but I'm not as shit, and it's because my mind is naturally drawn to them as a means to a definite end.
In some respects I feel like a pretentious actor demanding "But what's my motivation?" I wonder if I'm too distracted by 'why' to just get on with stuff. What do you think? Am I just really stupid in a very specific way? Are high level players assuming too much gamesense because they just can't imagine how anyone could lack it? Is zerg as much of a special case as it seems to me?
Thanks. I think I understand what you're trying to say. What it seems to be coming down to is that with Protoss and Terran it's very easy to have an understanding for the separation of your worker production, and other types of production. With Zerg however it's kind of muddled together, and so a new player would have to learn a proper pacing of worker production, since it's a more open ended task. How about this: to macro well, inject well and don't get supply blocked. Get up to 2 bases quickly (unless there's some cheese you scouted). Obviously making only drones is suicide, just build 16 drones per base +3 for every gas taken. When making a building, build 1 drone to replace the one lost. After saturating each base, build 3 inject waves of units then put down a new hatch. When the hatch comes online, saturate it. Then build 3 inject waves of units again. Rinse and repeat. If your minerals float about 800, put down a macro hatch.
Does that actually work? And what am I building?
@Cecil:
Thanks so much for replying 
It's partly what you said, but partly other stuff too.
For instance, while playing tonight I hit a whole bunch of Protoss, and lost to all but two of them. In my head I have two plans: if I see FFE I practice the 12 minute roach max. If I see gates I deviate into two spines and both queens at the natural with a roach warren to follow, with which I've been able to stop 4-gates (and have the economy to follow through and win) for the first time in, well, ever. So far, so good. The games tonight went like this:
1. Looked like a 4-gate, turned out to be DTs. I thought I'd just put him off attacking by denying his attempted forward pylon with patrolling lings, and was feeling pretty good. I took my lair about 30 seconds too late; he killed both it and my spawning pool before my overseer morphed. I had plenty of stuff to stop him with and twice the economy, but it didn't matter. What mattered is that I didn't get a lair or spores because I was too scared/distracted by the prospect of a stronger, delayed attack.
2. Looked like a 4-gate, turned out to be 3 gate stargate. I was lucky enough to sneak in a ling and see the stargate, but I wasn't sure what to do about it. I made two extra queens straight away but I had no idea what kind of support ground army I'd need, when to stop making queens and go lair, when or if to get hydra, when to try to push back - in the end he sent hardly any ground army and made a second stargate instead. He lifted and killed all my queens and took down my natural for the win.
3. Looked like a 4-gate, turned out to be 3 gate robo. I hadn't enough stuff to stop the later, more powerful push because I cut drones too early.
4. Same as 3.
5. DTs again. Saw the building warping in this time, but bad spore and spine placement made clearing out the DTs a pain and cost me two queens. Had no real idea how to follow up or what he'd do next or when so I made a random number of drones and roaches and died when he turned up with a bunch of stalkers and zealots.
And on it goes. There were a couple of ZvTs too. One was hellions into cloaked banshees (I never win those), the other was hellions into being completely unprepared for my roach-ling counterattack.
The two I won were versus FFE. I knew what I was doing and overwhelmed my opponent with macro. I remembered injects, looked away from the battles - it was great.
It's pretty humiliating to talk about all this, but it's important to be honest. Outside of a few very specific scenarios, I'm completely at sea, unable to macro worth a damn. Only by actually coming up with rehearsed responses am I able to do anything beyond delaying the inevitable.
This is why I wonder if higher-level players are overlooking something more fundamental even than macro. I'm sure many will be reading this with a kind of horrified disgust - how could anyone not know what his goal is after holding off X, Y or Z?
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Zerg: So, destiny got out of bronze with pure queens.
Protoss: That one guy on reddit got of bronze up to playing diamonds making pure stalkers.
Terran: guy named Taerix posted a macro build based on making nothing but marines and marauders and expanding every 6 minutes.
So why do people still deny it? It's like Gheed said, some people are stubbornly unaware of how bad they are.
If you practice a macro build, you will build muscle memory in a way that you never stop producing harvesters and supply, so that AFTERWARDS you can vary and try different strats, so long as these strats dont stop you from making supply non-stop. A lot of you guys are trying to learn bicycle stunts while refusing to learn how to pedal.
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On April 06 2012 11:19 Oboeman wrote:Show nested quote +Telling players to focus on "Probes and Pylons" only exasperates the problem, because you're telling them to focus, rather than improving their ability to spread out actions. disagree. Multitasking comes when you've got the basic skills and actions down to such a science that you perform them automatically without thought, and between those actions you can multitask and do other things. You can't multitask until you can singletask.
This is 180 degrees off of reality. There is no such basic task as "good macro;" and it's beyond belief that people can watch replays of pros, or just high league players in general, watch the crazy amount of actions taken, and yet stillcome away with the notion that "the fundamental thing that makes this guy good is macro, and this is what you as a lower skilled player need to do."
The fact of the matter is that what allows the pros to have such amazing macro is that they have such amazing control - they are able to fly through hotkeys in fractions of a second, they can make the split-second decisions about what to do in a particular situation, they know the strategies they want to push like the back of their hand, and with all this *then* they have the ability to weave flawless production cycles into their army management. Those are the fundamentals; a thing cannot be fundamental if it requires so many supporting steps.
Telling lower-league guys to do this is a recipe for disaster; I'm probably the poster child for what happens when someone gets into their heads to focus on macro when they simply don't have the micromanagement skills to back it up. I was once a mid-level Platinum leaguer who was running into a wall - all of my builds were heavy harassment, focused on keeping my opponent's economy down, but players that could stave off the early harass would usually find a way to win - if I didn't have an overwhelming advantage, I was hosed. Since everyone says the problem is macro, I just shrugged my shoulders and worked on making sure I wasn't queueing units, never missed production cycles...and plummetted all the way down to silver. I'm sure if I had more time to play, I'd have been demoted to Bronze. I've only recently clawed my way back into Gold, and who knows when the next massive losing streak is going to wreck me.
Because, you see, my problem is that I can't multitask. My army? One hotkey, baby. If I need to unsiege tanks, move, then resiege, then stim my army, that's a whole mess of tab selection. By focusing in on macro, I had to neglect my micro, and what was already a rather poor part of my game - large army management - became absolutely atrocious. I'd get massive numbers of units by keeping my attention on what is going on in my base ("can't queue an SCV gotta build him right as the previous one is done!")...and that get slaughtered because I didn't see the incoming army. And these poor habits are so ingrained now that even me sitting there during the game telling myself not to do that, to use all my hotkeys, I just can't break it. I can't help but 1A and check back on my base to make sure my production's up, and either I luck out or I don't.
Outside of the non-existant case of a player so bad it's basically "AMG WHY CAN'T I MAEK MANS!" sitting on supply block for minutes at a time, the realty is that macro is not a fundamental, it is a refinement; after you are comfortable controlling your army and not throwing it away, it will necessarily follow that you can macro because you've already got the apm and decision making to spare. You simply can't go the other way; scrubs like me who keep the camera in base are only gonna beat the other guys doing the same thing.
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For me, this is very eye opening, Cecil! I tuned in to your stream when you were playing random and still winning games, and I just realized that I actually stop making probes just as I saturate 2 bases...
For most people, it feels like they are constantly producing workers, but if you go back and watch your replays, you can see really long and painful periods of times where you don't make any workers.
This helped me so much that I beat the last zerg I played when I normally would have lost, so thanks again!
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I wanted to thank guys for advice on pylon count few pages earlier.
Helped me out alot.
I've managed to play 5 games yesterday, paying attention on how many pylons i'm building, and got supply-blocked just couple of times for a few seconds.
Thanks again.
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On May 02 2012 13:54 nyccine wrote:
The fact of the matter is that what allows the pros to have such amazing macro is that they have such amazing control - they are able to fly through hotkeys in fractions of a second, they can make the split-second decisions about what to do in a particular situation, they know the strategies they want to push like the back of their hand, and with all this *then* they have the ability to weave flawless production cycles into their army management. Those are the fundamentals; a thing cannot be fundamental if it requires so many supporting steps.
No; as much as I think there can be things getting in the way of good macro, you're way off base here (pun intended).
Players have demonstrated time and again that good macro + a-move is sufficient for good ladder placement, and I'm not going to disagree with the evidence. My issue is that, to my knowledge nobody has done it with Zerg, because Zerg is more like Judo: you have to counter what your opponent is doing in such a way as to throw them off balance, which means you need to pay a lot more attention to what your opponent is up to.
I remember reading a 'blue' Terran guide here on TL where he said he never bothered to scan the zerg before the 10:00 mark; it just doesn't matter what the Zerg is doing because all he can do is lose or prolong the game on an even footing.
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On May 02 2012 11:16 Umpteen wrote:Show nested quote +On May 02 2012 04:51 Heh_ wrote:On May 02 2012 01:58 CecilSunkure wrote:On May 02 2012 00:18 Umpteen wrote:
@Cecilsunkure:
I'd really appreciate it if you could help me figure something out. This is a discussion I've had several times here on TL and having followed your threads avidly in the past I would value your thoughts tremendously.
To state the problem as concisely as possible: playing for over a year as Zerg, reading TL, watching Day[9], 12 weeks with the pros etc etc, I failed to meaningfully improve either my macro or my ladder ranking until I watched some VoDs that helped me improve my understanding and decision-making.
This flies in the face of everything far better players than I keep telling me. I know I shouldn't argue with pros and blue posters. At the same time, I know I didn't get anywhere just trying to focus on macro.
It's important that I'm clear: I'm not saying that I improved my macro and it didn't help, or that I focused on something else, let my macro stay the same, and shot up the ladder.
No: the point is that, in an actual game, 'macro better' felt like a meaningless abstraction after the first couple of minutes. I couldn't remind myself "I need to macro better" and act. I had idle larvae, my resources were piling up, I'd get myself supply blocked - and most of the time it was because I didn't have a clue what to do next.
The advice in the OP of this thread (and elsewhere) has always implied that "What you do is far less important than doing it well." In my ignorance of what it's like to play Protoss or Terran, I could imagine that being true for them. But it has never felt true playing Zerg. What felt true was:
1. There is no 'safe' or 'standard'.
2. My only chances to win or gain advantage come after failed aggression on his part. If I make units and attack, I lose 100% of the time.
That was the extent of my game-sense. I never articulated it to myself at the time, but how was I supposed to 'do that' better? It meant nothing. I couldn't get past the feeling that if I picked a way to spend my money, it was probably going to turn out to be wrong.
Then I watched the Stoic ZvX vods, and I realised that everything I thought I knew was either wrong, or right but in a misleadingly incomplete way. And this was after twelve months plus of playing, watching dailies, following the pro scene etc etc. Within days I had risen a league and was starting to feel my macro holding me back, rather than just feeling stupid and lost. Since when I've found it far easier to concentrate on injects, concentrate on avoiding supply blocks or overspending on overlords, concentrate on taking and saturating expansions. I'm still shit at these things, but I'm not as shit, and it's because my mind is naturally drawn to them as a means to a definite end.
In some respects I feel like a pretentious actor demanding "But what's my motivation?" I wonder if I'm too distracted by 'why' to just get on with stuff. What do you think? Am I just really stupid in a very specific way? Are high level players assuming too much gamesense because they just can't imagine how anyone could lack it? Is zerg as much of a special case as it seems to me?
Thanks. I think I understand what you're trying to say. What it seems to be coming down to is that with Protoss and Terran it's very easy to have an understanding for the separation of your worker production, and other types of production. With Zerg however it's kind of muddled together, and so a new player would have to learn a proper pacing of worker production, since it's a more open ended task. How about this: to macro well, inject well and don't get supply blocked. Get up to 2 bases quickly (unless there's some cheese you scouted). Obviously making only drones is suicide, just build 16 drones per base +3 for every gas taken. When making a building, build 1 drone to replace the one lost. After saturating each base, build 3 inject waves of units then put down a new hatch. When the hatch comes online, saturate it. Then build 3 inject waves of units again. Rinse and repeat. If your minerals float about 800, put down a macro hatch. Does that actually work? And what am I building?
If you want a simple cookie cutter build for all 3 matchups, just spam roaches. Build 1 set of lings, then as much roaches as you can manage. When you get 200 supply, a-move and win. It's not particularly efficient vs terran, but if you have more roaches than he has marines, you still win.
If you want to play more efficiently vs terran, then just go ling bling ultra. Get a baneling nest when you're getting lair tech, then get baneling speed, SPREAD CREEP!. When you see him coming, just morph a ton of blings and kill his army. No fancy micro tricks required.
On May 02 2012 13:54 nyccine wrote:Show nested quote +On April 06 2012 11:19 Oboeman wrote:Telling players to focus on "Probes and Pylons" only exasperates the problem, because you're telling them to focus, rather than improving their ability to spread out actions. disagree. Multitasking comes when you've got the basic skills and actions down to such a science that you perform them automatically without thought, and between those actions you can multitask and do other things. You can't multitask until you can singletask. This is 180 degrees off of reality. There is no such basic task as "good macro;" and it's beyond belief that people can watch replays of pros, or just high league players in general, watch the crazy amount of actions taken, and yet stillcome away with the notion that "the fundamental thing that makes this guy good is macro, and this is what you as a lower skilled player need to do." The fact of the matter is that what allows the pros to have such amazing macro is that they have such amazing control - they are able to fly through hotkeys in fractions of a second, they can make the split-second decisions about what to do in a particular situation, they know the strategies they want to push like the back of their hand, and with all this *then* they have the ability to weave flawless production cycles into their army management. Those are the fundamentals; a thing cannot be fundamental if it requires so many supporting steps.
As Umpteen said, you CAN get out of gold with pure macro. If you think your macro is good enough, post a replay here and we can see if it's really good. If you have limited apm, use it for macroing. Don't try to be fancy with intricate army compositions which require a ton of micro and babysitting. Just get an MMM army. See enemy units, just press t and a-move. You'll get wrecked occasionally by running into a ton of banelings, but you'll win more games simply because your army is much larger than the opponent.
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On May 02 2012 22:08 Heh_ wrote:
If you want a simple cookie cutter build for all 3 matchups, just spam roaches. Build 1 set of lings, then as much roaches as you can manage. When you get 200 supply, a-move and win. It's not particularly efficient vs terran, but if you have more roaches than he has marines, you still win.
Interesting. I know that works vs FFE because of the speed with which it's possible to max when unmolested, but I'm dubious about its broader usefulness. Any terran at my level is going to be hitting me with something random and scary long before the 12 minute mark, and if I make roaches sooner I'll have to take gas sooner and now the whole build is pushed back a few more minutes.
Tell you what, though: I'll give it a try and report back.
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On May 03 2012 00:14 Umpteen wrote:Show nested quote +On May 02 2012 22:08 Heh_ wrote:
If you want a simple cookie cutter build for all 3 matchups, just spam roaches. Build 1 set of lings, then as much roaches as you can manage. When you get 200 supply, a-move and win. It's not particularly efficient vs terran, but if you have more roaches than he has marines, you still win.
Interesting. I know that works vs FFE because of the speed with which it's possible to max when unmolested, but I'm dubious about its broader usefulness. Any terran at my level is going to be hitting me with something random and scary long before the 12 minute mark, and if I make roaches sooner I'll have to take gas sooner and now the whole build is pushed back a few more minutes. Tell you what, though: I'll give it a try and report back.
You don't need to grab 3 bases before pumping out roaches. You can do the same on 2 bases. The reason why I didn't mention lings is because you need twice the larva, meaning that your larva management has to be even better. Also, a-moving lings are situationally less effective than roaches due to the simple fact that they're melee.
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On May 03 2012 00:14 Umpteen wrote:Show nested quote +On May 02 2012 22:08 Heh_ wrote:
If you want a simple cookie cutter build for all 3 matchups, just spam roaches. Build 1 set of lings, then as much roaches as you can manage. When you get 200 supply, a-move and win. It's not particularly efficient vs terran, but if you have more roaches than he has marines, you still win.
Interesting. I know that works vs FFE because of the speed with which it's possible to max when unmolested, but I'm dubious about its broader usefulness. Any terran at my level is going to be hitting me with something random and scary long before the 12 minute mark, and if I make roaches sooner I'll have to take gas sooner and now the whole build is pushed back a few more minutes. Tell you what, though: I'll give it a try and report back.
Chances are though, his random scary push will be later than optimal (most optimal Terran attacks hit from 9 - 10.30).
Given that Stephano can max at 1140, I would be nearly certain he could fend these off with roach only. In fact, roaches do really well against any Terran openers. The reason they aren't build is for their lack of efficiency going into the lategame/latemidgame.
If you can't build stuff and attack well enough yet, don't even worry about the lategame yet.
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Blazinghand
United States25550 Posts
On May 03 2012 00:21 Heh_ wrote:Show nested quote +On May 03 2012 00:14 Umpteen wrote:On May 02 2012 22:08 Heh_ wrote:
If you want a simple cookie cutter build for all 3 matchups, just spam roaches. Build 1 set of lings, then as much roaches as you can manage. When you get 200 supply, a-move and win. It's not particularly efficient vs terran, but if you have more roaches than he has marines, you still win.
Interesting. I know that works vs FFE because of the speed with which it's possible to max when unmolested, but I'm dubious about its broader usefulness. Any terran at my level is going to be hitting me with something random and scary long before the 12 minute mark, and if I make roaches sooner I'll have to take gas sooner and now the whole build is pushed back a few more minutes. Tell you what, though: I'll give it a try and report back. You don't need to grab 3 bases before pumping out roaches. You can do the same on 2 bases. The reason why I didn't mention lings is because you need twice the larva, meaning that your larva management has to be even better. Also, a-moving lings are situationally less effective than roaches due to the simple fact that they're melee.
Another strategy if you find yourself losing to weird attacks is building an extra queen-- connecting your 2 bases with creep and having stronger early game anti-air will make you safe against weird all-ins that have starport tech.
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On May 03 2012 00:27 CluEleSs_UK wrote:
Chances are though, his random scary push will be later than optimal (most optimal Terran attacks hit from 9 - 10.30).
It's true it won't be optimal, but you might be surprised how close it can get.
In the same way that I can max at 12:00 against FFE, the people I'm playing can hit that first big timing reasonably well, because they don't really have to do anything except follow their build order. Their (and my) macro goes to pieces when the action kicks off, which is why I often find flavour-of-the-month lotsa-micro hellion openers easier to deal with than a straight up 2-base push: their harassment does them as much damage as it does me.
Now that I'm facing gold and the occasional platinum player, I've definitely noticed an upswing in the number of players who use that first aggression with deliberation, as a tool to get them to a better place, rather than as a wannabe knockout punch. Which is why I'm struggling again
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If you think your macro is good enough, post a replay here and we can see if it's really good.
Nice circular logic there - the assertion is that macro is so vital, it outweighs everything else. If this is true, then pointing out my 1, 2, 5, 10, 100 or whatever macro errors and saying "See, I told you so!" is a major error in logic at best, and outright intellectual dishonesty at worst. The claim is that whoever has the better macro, wins, so you'd have to look at mine and my opponent's.
Which you'll never do, of course. Really, it's unneccessary though; Blizzard gives you a handy-dandy graph at the end of your match that tells you what the army values were. And I can tell you exactly what they look like: I outpace my opponent, then there's a dramatic drop where my army gets wiped; repeat this trend until end of match.
Also, saying I could get out of Gold with pure Macro is obviously false because I dropped *from* Platinum by switching my focus to macro.
The problem is, you're simply ignoring the true fundamentals in favor of what you want to see; you're ignoring the solid decision-making, proper army control, good hotkey usage that allows players to then macro up without placing themselves at risk of being surprised.
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On May 04 2012 13:03 nyccine wrote:
...Really, it's unneccessary though; Blizzard gives you a handy-dandy graph at the end of your match that tells you what the army values were. And I can tell you exactly what they look like: I outpace my opponent, then there's a dramatic drop where my army gets wiped; repeat this trend until end of match.
The thing is, this doesn't say ANYTHING about your macro ability though. Bronze players' games can follow the same pattern, but it doesn't mean the guy that had higher army value had good macro (or even that the player with a larger army had better macro than his opponent). To analyse one of your games, and look for macro slip-ups, you cannot simply look at the graphs at the end of the game - they are virtually useless! They really tell you NOTHING of learning value. The very fact you've said that "you don't need to look at my replay, as I've already looked at the end of game graphs" is a very big warning sign that you lack the ability to properly analyse your own reps.
Also, saying I could get out of Gold with pure Macro is obviously false because I dropped *from* Platinum by switching my focus to macro.
Not to sound like a dick or anything, but this is probably because your macro really isn't any good, rather than it being bad advice. By not posting a replay you are passing up the chance for more experienced players to point out areas you can improve, on a game you thought went well no less! Their motive may be to prove a point, rather than purely to help you out, but the result would be the same on your end.
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On May 04 2012 13:03 nyccine wrote:Show nested quote +If you think your macro is good enough, post a replay here and we can see if it's really good. Nice circular logic there - the assertion is that macro is so vital, it outweighs everything else. If this is true, then pointing out my 1, 2, 5, 10, 100 or whatever macro errors and saying "See, I told you so!" is a major error in logic at best, and outright intellectual dishonesty at worst. The claim is that whoever has the better macro, wins, so you'd have to look at mine and my opponent's. Which you'll never do, of course. Really, it's unneccessary though; Blizzard gives you a handy-dandy graph at the end of your match that tells you what the army values were. And I can tell you exactly what they look like: I outpace my opponent, then there's a dramatic drop where my army gets wiped; repeat this trend until end of match. Also, saying I could get out of Gold with pure Macro is obviously false because I dropped *from* Platinum by switching my focus to macro. The problem is, you're simply ignoring the true fundamentals in favor of what you want to see; you're ignoring the solid decision-making, proper army control, good hotkey usage that allows players to then macro up without placing themselves at risk of being surprised.
No... I don't think you really understand.
We aren't saying 'with GOOD macro you could have won'. We are saying with very basic macro, you could have won - don't get supply in the first 8 minutes (read: not about making depots on time, not too early or not slightly too late), constant worker production (read: not avoiding queuing up workers or having perfect chrono/mules/injects), constant unit production (read: Not about queing up units or chrono/inject/addons), and keeping your money below 500 (read: not 200.
You are in gold, and you really aren't aware of your macro deficincies. We could just ppoint out some very basic things, hey, don't get blocked at 34, hey you went 30 seconds with no worker or unit production, hey you banked 600 minerals, heym you exanded at 6 instead of 530.
I guarantee, in gold, you have such huge macro problems, that really could be fixed overnight, and that you are perfectly capable of doing.
Its not about better macro than your gold opponent - both of you are macroing bad.
Things like strategy and harass really aren't an issue. So you kill 5 workers with a drop, but how many workers did you 'lose' because you banked money and got supply blocked?
Please. Post a rep, and that would really make all of us either stfu, or help you really improve your game. I don't think you realize that most masters watch their replays (or post them here) and go 'doh, I screwed upp my macro so hard, that's why I lost).
In gold, execute a build to 70 suppply with smooth timings, just like any pro would execute them, and you'd be fine. It takes a pro to micro, or have so much at 10:00. It doesn't take a pro to execute a 3gate sentry expand, a 141421, a reactor hellion.
We aren't trying to be mean here, but if you exectued the build right, with just basic macro, you really wouldn't be in gold. Its not that gold is average, remember, the overwleming majority of bronze to gold are people who played the game for a month then moved on to halo. Skill is so not even a factor even up to masters. Up to masters, its largely about people who are vying to macro better then their oponent.
Strategy is okay, but it really doesn't take you far when you aren't making enough units behind it or at the right timing to push the game a certain way. Maybe the opponent is macroing bad and strategy seems to be a factor, but in these games, just better macro that could be fixed overnight would have won that game. Until then, strats that are largely not viable, become viable, like pvz deathballs, or mass marine, wonky allins, etc.
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On May 01 2012 07:25 HeroMystic wrote:Hello everyone, I've read this thread and I was on the fence about this with the macro vs multitasking debate, which ended up not being a debate at all. I'd like to thank Cecil, Belial, and others who emphasized just how much the lower leagues suck so horribly at macro. I've steadily got better with my macro over time, as well as watching replays of pro players and listening to pros speak about how to play the game and how to use strategy and coming up with right composition. All I have to say to that is, until you're Master League, none of that matters. Today I focused intensely on macro and won most of my matches (except for TvP because I kept getting rolled by DTs). I trolled and went 1-rax expand 3-Port Banshee/Viking in TvZ and for the other matches I just made units until 10 minutes and pushed to see if I won (and most of the time I did). So as a Platinum Terran, let me stand on the soapbox and say Macro is hard. You really have to focus on it and make it become second nature. Then and only then should you focus on other efforts of strategy. That said, I was also hoping that someone here could analyze a recent game I played and tell me my macro mistakes so I know what to focus on: http://drop.sc/169740Things I noticed right away that I got supply blocked a few times and I forget to put SCVs on gas on my natural and 3rd expansion.
I noticed that no-one actually replied to this post, which is fair enough, as it is easy to lose stuff in here, so i thought that i would
Hmm, firstly it is pretty bm to provide a replay of you winning when asking for help, but anyway.
I thought your depot production was pretty good, well, to be honest you went over board multiple time, like build 3 depots when already 30 supply in the green, but at least that shows you are constantly thinking about them.
But i noticed that you didn't actually hotkey your fac until 10+minutes into the game, and whenever you attacked you produced nothing at all. Also, your marine production in general all game long was bad, you need to check the amount of time even in the early-mid game that your barracks were idle that is why the game seemed remotely even, you just weren't building marines. But hey! this is so easy to fix, and the reason that you had so much money was becauseyou were building SCVs and Depots!
Also, it is better to have 15 rax and 1500 minerals than 5 rax and 3000, i could be much more extreme than that, but that will do as an example. Practice ACTUALLY keeping your money low. NO excuses. You stayed above 2000 minerals for like 10 minutes of the game, which is unacceptable.
Otherwise, i thought you played not that badly. Your scv production was by no means 100%, because i watched it through at x2 speed and there were times where your 3 ccs were not producing for like 10 seconds or so (at x2 speed), which in game time is a very long time.
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This is not strategy. These are tips to improve mechanics and understanding of the game, and not a strategy per se
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On May 04 2012 16:26 Belial88 wrote:
In gold, execute a build to 70 suppply with smooth timings, just like any pro would execute them, and you'd be fine.
Cool! I play Zerg; which are the builds I can execute up to 70 supply? I've been labouring under the misapprehension that I need to know what my opponent is planning to hit me with and when so I can counter it. It will be a huge weight off my mind to have a safe 70 supply build for each matchup.
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On May 04 2012 16:26 Belial88 wrote:
I don't think you realize that most masters watch their replays (or post them here) and go 'doh, I screwed upp my macro so hard, that's why I lost).
I can agree with this wholeheartedly, as a low Diamond player.
In many games I could look at [strategy] or [micro] and say something like "I didn't scout what he was doing here properly, so my unit choice was bad"; or "I attacked at a bad angle here"; or "I would have won that battle if I had microd my banelings better" etc... but virtually EVERY lost game I can look at and simply say "I wouldn't have lost there if I had spent my money and I had 15 more roaches" etc.
Next game you lose, look at how much money you had left at the point you lost. How much money were you floating throughout the game? Then ask yourself - would the game would have gone differently if that money was army value instead of cash? Would you have stomped his army if you had 20 more marines and 10 more marauders? Most likely, the answer is a huge YES (it almost always is for me as a diamond player).
And that doesn't even take into account the fact that lower league players will frequently suffer from issues such as: not building enough workers, worker production gaps, supply blocks, late (or not enough) expansions and neglecting to use their mules/chrono; so they don't have nearly as much money as they should! Imagine how big your army would have been if you had spent all the money you had, AND you had twice as much money to begin with! The difference is truly monumental.
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EPT
