EPT[D] Underused Tactic in Lower Leagues - Page 19
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nojok
France15845 Posts
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CecilSunkure
United States2829 Posts
On May 07 2012 05:30 Servius_Fulvius wrote: I appreciate the first paragraph quoted above. This definitely speaks to the negative mindset a lot of players adopt that stops them from improving. That being said, the protoss games of your vod are a bit misleading. At the end of the paragraph you said that "you won't need to focus on minute details until other larger more important things are taken care of". If I was a beginning protoss I would look at the first game and see how you harassed the drone at the expansion and try to copy it myself. With both major battles against the roach army you used a ton of forcefields. As a beginning protoss I would focus so much on the forcefields and ideal attack arc that I'd forget to warp in reinforcements. Even the point in the second game where you worried about a nydus to the main and threw down a bunch of canons can throw my upstart protoss self into confusion. I'll put down a bunch of canons and after 30 seconds to a minute realize I haven't been making probes. Sure, but you can always ask for help on what to focus on. I answer a lot of PMs all the time, so truly the onus is on the improving player to go and figure out what all he should be focusing on. It's out of the scope of my job in the thread to actually go into deep detail on what these things are. Either one needs to figure these things out with free resources available or purchase some form of coaching. My job in this thread is mostly to raise awareness and provide an interesting and fun to read article that spurs a lot of healthy discussion. | ||
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Qxz
Canada189 Posts
I propose that: Down in any league that is not Masters, you can win most of your games by ensuring that there are no flaws in the process of getting your income and spending your income. This statement is always made by Master players who try to play in lower leagues using "just good macro" and find out that they win easily. I would be more inclined to believe it if it came from actual lower league players focusing on "just good macro" and finding out that they indeed win easily most of the time when they do so, although I don't think it would be the case.The thing is that as a Master player, even when focusing on "just good macro", you still do everything else way better than anyone in the lower leagues. You scout better, you know better how to interpret scouting information, even if you don't scout, your educated guesses are way more educated, you have a more solid and detailed game plan, you know exactly where to lay down your buildings, on every map, your focus on macro doesn't prevent you from keeping tabs on everything else because you have good multitasking, because you are comfortable using multiple different hotkeys, you know why, when and how to attack, what works and what doesn't, etc. Therefore, your observation that you win easily doesn't allow you to conclude that it is simply because you have better macro, even though that may be the only thing you consciously focus on in those games. | ||
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CecilSunkure
United States2829 Posts
On May 08 2012 06:58 Qxz wrote: ... The thing is that as a Master player, even when focusing on "just good macro", you still do everything else way better than anyone in the lower leagues. You scout better, you know better how to interpret scouting information, even if you don't scout, your educated guesses are way more educated, you have a more solid and detailed game plan ... Therefore, your observation that you win easily doesn't allow you to conclude that it is simply because you have better macro... I understand I'm better and I do other things better, but the main thing I was focusing on wasn't winning those games, more of the resource disparity. Other things are out-of-scope. | ||
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UmiNotsuki
United States633 Posts
On May 08 2012 07:56 CecilSunkure wrote: I understand I'm better and I do other things better, but the main thing I was focusing on wasn't winning those games, more of the resource disparity. Other things are out-of-scope. Yet he's right, isn't he? Everything you do is better anyway. Imagine two players, one in master league and one in diamond league, and let's assume that they both have absolutely perfect macro. The player in master league has a deeper understanding of the game. He spends his money on the right units at the right time, he reads his opponent better, and he responds in a more timely fashion. But the diamond player, with identical income and spending ability, makes the wrong units on occasion, maybe misplaces buildings or makes poor decisions in any aspect of the game. The diamond player may still be diamond, but not because of his macro. He might have other problems to work on. It's just not so simple. Disclaimer: I am bad. Disclaimer 2: This isn't to say that macro isn't a common problem. Macroing better can in fact mean the difference between bronze and master league. I was simply pointing out that it's not the only issue 100% of the time. | ||
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GloPikkle
United States197 Posts
On May 08 2012 08:08 UmiNotsuki wrote: Yet he's right, isn't he? Everything you do is better anyway. Imagine two players, one in master league and one in diamond league, and let's assume that they both have absolutely perfect macro. The player in master league has a deeper understanding of the game. He spends his money on the right units at the right time, he reads his opponent better, and he responds in a more timely fashion. But the diamond player, with identical income and spending ability, makes the wrong units on occasion, maybe misplaces buildings or makes poor decisions in any aspect of the game. The diamond player may still be diamond, but not because of his macro. He might have other problems to work on. It's just not so simple. Disclaimer: I am bad. Disclaimer 2: This isn't to say that macro isn't a common problem. Macroing better can in fact mean the difference between bronze and master league. I was simply pointing out that it's not the only issue 100% of the time. I would agree with this. I'm top Diamond playing Masters players and some games I've out macroed the Masters player after watching the reps. More workers, more bases, more army, better infrastructure, etc but I made a few poor attacking decisions and with poorer micro and lost in the end. But I think that's outside the scope of the OP. He's talking about like Bronze through Gold mostly, although Plat and Diamond is applicable as well for sure. Just to a lesser degree. | ||
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Qxz
Canada189 Posts
On May 08 2012 07:56 CecilSunkure wrote: In other words, you are proposing that any player who is not in Masters, would be in Masters if he played like one, which is not saying much. The only way you can learn how to reliably and constantly increase your income, put every tech and production structure at appropriate times, and constantly spend all your income, is through playing hundreds of games, analyzing replays and developing solid mechanics, i.e. becoming a Master player. I propose that: Down in any league that is not Masters, you can win most of your games by ensuring that there are no flaws in the process of getting your income and spending your income. You must not lay a building down late. You must not lay extra pylons down when you don't need them. You must lay tech structures at appropriate times. You must maintain solid worker production. Your resources must be constantly spent. You must have a basic grasp of what unit composition to acquire. I understand the point of taking focus away from the tactical aspects of the game to the economic, but they go hand-in-hand. The appropriate number of gateways is the number you need to have enough troops, and the appropriate number of troops is the number you need to defend vs what your opponent might have now, which involves both tactical and strategic mastery of the game. Or to take another example, if you can't place forcefields, then you need twice as many units and you'll never have a good economy. | ||
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CecilSunkure
United States2829 Posts
On May 08 2012 08:57 Qxz wrote: In other words, you are proposing that any player who is not in Masters, would be in Masters if he played like one, which is not saying much... I understand the point of taking focus away from the tactical aspects of the game to the economic, but they go hand-in-hand. No, I'm not saying that. It's pretty clear as to what I was saying in the OP. As for the second sentence, I disagree. I don't think you need to know much at all to have very solid macro. | ||
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Chutoro
New Zealand95 Posts
On May 08 2012 08:08 UmiNotsuki wrote: Yet he's right, isn't he? Everything you do is better anyway. Imagine two players, one in master league and one in diamond league, and let's assume that they both have absolutely perfect macro. The player in master league has a deeper understanding of the game. He spends his money on the right units at the right time, he reads his opponent better, and he responds in a more timely fashion. But the diamond player, with identical income and spending ability, makes the wrong units on occasion, maybe misplaces buildings or makes poor decisions in any aspect of the game. The diamond player may still be diamond, but not because of his macro. He might have other problems to work on. It's just not so simple. Disclaimer: I am bad. Disclaimer 2: This isn't to say that macro isn't a common problem. Macroing better can in fact mean the difference between bronze and master league. I was simply pointing out that it's not the only issue 100% of the time. Well put. I would go beyond this and say that sometimes higher level players giving advice actually miss some key things, because they unconsciously assume a lot of things that just aren't done by low level players (especially Bronze). To be fair, I rarely see this from the blue posters here (and I don't think the OP suffers from this problem) but it often crops up in the followup discussion. For example, consider the following two early game strategies for ZvP: STRATEGY A 1. Send a drone scout 2. Confirm no cannon rush, proxy gate or in-base pylon [details on how to react if each of these occurs] 3. Prevent possible pylon block of ramp [details on how to do this] 4. Deal with pylon/probe block at natural, if necessary [details on how to do this] 5. Expand 6. Confirm no 4 gate [details on how to scout and recognize this and how to react if confirmed, e.g. when to cut drones] 7. Make 4 lings, take watchtowers, place one outside ramp, drone up 8. Confirm expansion from Protoss, or prepare for one base tech attack if no expo [details on types and how to respond] 9. Take a third and drone up STRATEGY B 1. Expand and take a quick third (no scouting) 2. Drone up to 70 3. Get roaches and roach upgrades 4. At 200/200, A-move all roaches to opponent's natural while remaxing on roaches 5. Go to 4 For a low level player, strategy A actually involves quite a lot of things that aren't simply drones and overlords - there is scouting at the decision points, game knowledge and understanding to make the correct decisions and know how to execute them correctly. For a low level player this is all quite difficult and it's quite hard for them to also macro well while doing it. Strategy B, in contrast, requires no decision making and involves no distractions, since you are paying no attention to your opponent before 200/200, so it's very easy to work on getting your macro streamlined. It will auto-lose to any one base aggression and a lot of 2 base aggression, or to any player that scouts your greedy opening and decides to push and kill you. However it will do well against FFE tech builds, FFE into third or any greedy opening that doesn't pay much attention to what Zerg is doing. If you can get out of Bronze (a.k.a. the land of one base all-ins) with this build, you can probably win games in ZvP up to around Gold/Plat on ladder if you get your macro really tight. At the same time, you are not really learning how to play the game, there are important skills you aren't developing, and you will struggle to get much further unless you make some fundamental changes. When people post that you don't need decision making (Belial, page 17) or that any loss below Diamond could have been avoided through better macro (multiple posts in this thread and others) low level players interpret that to mean that they should not be attempting Strategy A but instead should be doing Strategy B so that they can focus 100% on macro improvement. I actually did this for a while in Bronze because I thought it was how I was being told to learn. The problem is that the deficiencies in strategy B are obvious even to a Bronze player (it's clear you can never beat a 4 gate with it, for example) so they get disillusioned, conclude that the advice is worthless, and ignore it. I would say that the priority order for low level players should be: 1. Learn to play standard. 2. Learn to macro well while playing standard. I actually think this is what most people actually mean when they say "macro better" - they just forget step #1 because it's automatic for them, when in fact step #1 may be the main thing that's making it difficult for a player to focus on macro. The relevant skill is actually macroing well in the context of a normal game, and learning how to play a normal game is the biggest task facing low level players. I certainly find it works better for me - I did get quite good at macro using strategy B, but found that it didn't help me all that much, since it fell apart again when I tried applying it to Strategy A. Disclaimer: I am Platinum. However I have quite a bit of teaching experience and know a lot of the difficulties involved in trying to explain a concept that's obvious to you, but not to the other person. | ||
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UmiNotsuki
United States633 Posts
On May 08 2012 09:53 Chutoro wrote: I actually think this is what most people actually mean when they say "macro better" - they just forget step #1 because it's automatic for them, when in fact step #1 may be the main thing that's making it difficult for a player to focus on macro. The relevant skill is actually macroing well in the context of a normal game, and learning how to play a normal game is the biggest task facing low level players. I certainly find it works better for me - I did get quite good at macro using strategy B, but found that it didn't help me all that much, since it fell apart again when I tried applying it to Strategy A. This is very true, yes! I can max out on roaches at 11:30 when I'm the only player on the map, no problem. The trouble is that when you're actually playing against someone and have to be aware of them and how to deal with it, that all goes to hell and macro becomes extremely difficult, whereas before it may have been easy. Like I said, there's so much more to it than just macroing. | ||
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celeryman
United States54 Posts
I mentioned earlier when I proposed my idea that players in lower leagues focus on [relatively] unimportant details instead of the higher priority ones. In general though you're not saying much more beyond "macro," and that's not new. There's a huge distinction between being good and being a good teacher. Perhaps you are a good teacher given your coaching, but there's a real problem on these forums of people saying "macro" better and then defining macro as everything minus one. It's a rhetorical trick, and it fails to convey useful information to most new players. The next big step in making people better is to really lay out what this means. Your post is a start. Pylons and probes is a nice slogan, but you should get into what that means in depth. When I watch lower level players I'm amazed how many workers they miss, and how little they think it matters. One of the more convincing things I read when I started was a mathematical layout of how much income early workers mattered in terms of minerals. That's a compelling point. But this community needs to get away from the pedantic "macro" line, and instead talk about what it actually means. And it can't mean everything, which is how it often gets defined when you push people on the details. We might as well tell people "work harder." Thank you for pushing this trend in the right direction, but there's a lot further to go. | ||
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cactusjack914
United States183 Posts
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celeryman
United States54 Posts
On May 08 2012 10:54 cactusjack914 wrote: What Cecil is trying to say is that people that are in lower leagues are so overwhelmed with the amount of variables that go into playing a game of Starcraft that they sometimes forget the most basic fundamental aspects. In this case, workers and supply. show me a replay pack of your games and ill show you all the times you are performing irrelevant tasks instead of accounting for basic game fundamentals. Sure, I agree. But what I'm saying is what you call "basic fundamental aspects" and "irrelevant tasks" is an amorphous concept and it doesn't do much for someone wanting to put that into action. That's why "constant worker production" is a great piece of advice. The core piece of advice imo. Spend your money's pretty good, but it's trickier because... spend it on what, how many gates/rax/hatches do you build, etc. My point is not that this "macro" oriented advice is wrong, but rather that it's inadequate. | ||
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Heh_
Singapore2712 Posts
On May 08 2012 11:05 celeryman wrote: Sure, I agree. But what I'm saying is what you call "basic fundamental aspects" and "irrelevant tasks" is an amorphous concept and it doesn't do much for someone wanting to put that into action. That's why "constant worker production" is a great piece of advice. The core piece of advice imo. Spend your money's pretty good, but it's trickier because... spend it on what, how many gates/rax/hatches do you build, etc. My point is not that this "macro" oriented advice is wrong, but rather that it's inadequate. So I'll summarize it like this: 1: Constantly produce workers (not for zerg, I outlined a simple "build" a few pages back) 2: Build pylons/supply depots/overlords before being supply blocked. Before 50 supply, build them when you're 2-4 supply away from being blocked. About 50-100 supply, keep 8 supply available. Above that, keep 16 supply free. Might be a bit overkill at times, but overkill is better than getting supply blocked. If terran, stick 1 scv always building depots (stop for a bit if you have like 20-30 free supply). When you start to get supply blocked, stick 2 scvs instead. 3: Spend your money. Build units when you have money floating around. When you have 500+ minerals, build 2 raxes/gateways/macro hatch. Tech if you can. 4: Build an expansion every 5-6 minutes. In bronze-gold, you will simply have more stuff than him to repel any cheese. At higher levels, you may need to react to scouting, and have a game plan. | ||
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Servius_Fulvius
United States947 Posts
On May 08 2012 11:05 celeryman wrote: Sure, I agree. But what I'm saying is what you call "basic fundamental aspects" and "irrelevant tasks" is an amorphous concept and it doesn't do much for someone wanting to put that into action. That's why "constant worker production" is a great piece of advice. The core piece of advice imo. Spend your money's pretty good, but it's trickier because... spend it on what, how many gates/rax/hatches do you build, etc. My point is not that this "macro" oriented advice is wrong, but rather that it's inadequate. I mentioned in my lengthy reply on the last page that the "macro only" advice is inadequate and it seems like a lot of lower league players become disillusioned. I played a few practice games courtesy of the TL practice partner thread last night. It was against a guy in bronze league who had spent so much time in custom games against the computer learning how to macro that he was able to beat me easily when my macro was slipping (I'm high plat). He knew his build order well enough that he even beat me when I was macroing just as well. Cecil mentioned in his reply to me that there are a lot more little things like "how many gates/rax/hatches do you build, etc" that require other questions to be answered (the Help Me threads are pretty good about this). This is simply a good starting point. | ||
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DaemonX
545 Posts
In a game where you have banked 500 minerals you can't spend immediately, you have already flubbed your macro that game. You can't go back in time and fix it. Your macro is already imperfect and leaving that money there in the hope that you will eventually find a use for it and pretending it didn't happen isn't improving things. Just say 'oops i fucked my macro' and then SPEND THAT MONEY. Drop that damn hatch! And NEXT game try not to bank minerals. Macro mistakes are always about NEXT game. When you're in a game you just make the best of the situation you find yourself in. Next game try and keep making workers without missing till the 6 min mark. Then the 7 min mark. On April 06 2012 11:16 WolfintheSheep wrote: I hate this form of advice. In theory, it sounds good, because "Macro is the largest issue". But it's the worst form of teaching imaginable, because you're instilling the worst habits into lower league players. Lower league players do not have a problem macroing. Now, I know a ton of people are going to jump down my throat and tell me about the bronze players who can't get above 12 workers and still bank thousands of resources. But that's because they completely ignore the root of the problem, and jump straight to the "Probes and Pylons". The problem is not Macro. It's Multitasking. It's not that lower league players are bad at Macro, it's that as you increase the tasks they perform, the more actions and conscious decisions that are taken away from Macro. 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. Totally and completely wrong. Multitasking is nice, but utterly unimportant to get out of say, platinum at least. I promise you, if I eco macro perfectly then leave my base with the army I made IGNORING EVERYTHING IN THE GAME WITH MY MAP FROZEN ONTO MY BASE, I will crush every silver leaguer you throw my way when I move out. It's a matter of priority. There are many things you can devote your attention to - scouting, harassing, expanding, attacking, defending, etc but of all these macro and mechanics are just *more* important. If you can micro speedlings and pick of a few marines OR inject and make an overlord this given second, which choose? The problem the people below masters have is they don't realise that almost no matter the apparent gain, performing the mechanics and macro is the most important thing they can do with their time. It then follows logically that if they do not have the multitasking or APM to be able to do anything but macro, then they should do nothing but macro - and they will actually improve by doing this, as incredible as it seems. Another thing people don't realise at lower levels is being supply capped is the single most adverse thing you can do to your game position. Being supply capped is what gets you killed above ANY OTHER single factor, literally any. It directly affects your relative army size. It monitors the efficiency of any production structures you have made. It enables you to respond - or not to be able to respond - to new threats or aggression. It monitors your ability to increase your income. I've seen many a pro player die (esp in earlier seasons) when a few marines snipe off an overlord JUST before a push or all-in hits. I would say before doing anything and I do mean anything, advisedly, to improve your game - never, ever get supply capped. Then focus on making workers continually. Then focus on spending your money. In that order of importance. Another example: I played on a new account the other day. I was playing some guy around gold MMR after a few games and not really playing attention when he 1 base doom dropped me with MM + Tanks. I had no idea it was coming, but held it with hellions and scvs, lost most of my workers and within about 3-4 minutes my economy was better than his. I didn't do any damage to him, I just macrod. | ||
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Heh_
Singapore2712 Posts
On May 09 2012 01:20 DaemonX wrote: Another thing people don't realise at lower levels is being supply capped is the single most adverse thing you can do to your game position. Being supply capped is what gets you killed above ANY OTHER single factor, literally any. It directly affects your relative army size. It monitors the efficiency of any production structures you have made. It enables you to respond - or not to be able to respond - to new threats or aggression. It monitors your ability to increase your income. I've seen many a pro player die (esp in earlier seasons) when a few marines snipe off an overlord JUST before a push or all-in hits. This. I was watching a game on Peepmode yesterday and there was this zerg player who got supply blocked every single time. He had good saturation at each base, but after a while, he built up a ton of money due to his extremely poor macro. At 13 minutes into the game, after 1 engagement where both players traded ~20 supply, he was at ~110 supply. As I've mentioned, the players only responded to each other ONCE. There was no scouting, no harassment etc. The xel'naga towers were rarely taken. So please don't tell me you have to think about 1024 things, and this causes your macro to slip. There is literally nothing to think about. Focus on your own shit, and you'll win games. | ||
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Snoodles
401 Posts
On May 09 2012 01:42 Heh_ wrote: This. I was watching a game on Peepmode yesterday and there was this zerg player who got supply blocked every single time. He had good saturation at each base, but after a while, he built up a ton of money due to his extremely poor macro. At 13 minutes into the game, after 1 engagement where both players traded ~20 supply, he was at ~110 supply. As I've mentioned, the players only responded to each other ONCE. There was no scouting, no harassment etc. The xel'naga towers were rarely taken. So please don't tell me you have to think about 1024 things, and this causes your macro to slip. There is literally nothing to think about. Focus on your own shit, and you'll win games. I learned a lot from peepmode. If you watch a vod or tournament cast or play yourself it feels hectic like there are a million things going on, but in peepmode you realize that the game is actually relatively slow with the whole outcome decided by one or two big battles. You don't notice micro that well, but it only take a few minutes from harvester count and supply count who's going to win every time. often times, the bad macro player will trade an army evenly, or even downright win the battle, but go on to lose the game because he can't replenish his army as fast as the other guy or he falls behind because he cant afford 3/3 upgrades or whatever. You don't see this from pro games because everyone's macro is impeccable, it's like trying to pick out bad dribblers in the NBA or soccer. Your macro is your dribble, your strategy doesn't mean anything if you cant dribble. | ||
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Blazinghand
United States25558 Posts
On May 08 2012 23:31 Servius_Fulvius wrote: I mentioned in my lengthy reply on the last page that the "macro only" advice is inadequate and it seems like a lot of lower league players become disillusioned. I played a few practice games courtesy of the TL practice partner thread last night. It was against a guy in bronze league who had spent so much time in custom games against the computer learning how to macro that he was able to beat me easily when my macro was slipping (I'm high plat). He knew his build order well enough that he even beat me when I was macroing just as well. I find it interesting that you consider you to be macroing just as well as him but him winning because he knew his build order better than you knew yours. To me, ideas like "build order", "when to expand", "how much infrastructure to have" and the like are all part of macro. If your macro was even but he knew his build order crisply and you didn't, then your macro was not even; you were not macroing just as well. | ||
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GRCJH
Canada76 Posts
 good tips | ||
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