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.

Under your definition yes, he completely bested me both games. By "macroing just as well" I meant building up workers (which I did a LOT better than him), making units without supply blocks, expanding, and teching. By "knew his build order well enough" I specifically meant that he went mech, I scouted it later than usual and by that time his infrastructure was built up. My roach drop response was therefore later than usual due to the delayed scout. Sometimes we can all get away with this if the other player is not on top of their build either, but in this case they were. I don't usually consider scouting a part of macro and I'm still struggling to find a way to get a decent 7 minute scout on cloud kingdom without sacrificing the overlord on the cliff. Regardless of outcome, the practice of tech switching to roach and building up a large army for mobile harass was totally worth it.

Blazinghand

United States25557 Posts

May 08 2012 22:21 GMT

#383

Oh, as in like a build order counter. Yeah, I mean, that really isn't macro, that's more of a game sense / decisionmaking thing. In any case, although there may be individual games like this, the large majority of games will be won by superior macro, which is what you need to climb the ladder. Basically, assuming all your skills are pretty bad, the easiest way to improve is to focus on macro mechanics and learning a standard build order, making probes and pylons and units. Learning other things like tricky compositions, scouting, tech switches, etc, is all harder than learning how to macro. If you want the best "skill gained" to "effort put in" ratio you want to focus on macro for a long time.

tarpman

Canada719 Posts

May 09 2012 01:16 GMT

#384

On May 08 2012 09:53 Chutoro wrote:
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'm a pretty low level player (mid diamond) so obviously I'm not speaking from any kind of position of authority, but I honestly think your strategy B is the better way to go. Assuming both of your hypothetical strategies are exaggerated a little bit for effect, I think your strategy A contains far too many elements for a low level player (and I am one) to be able to think about during a game. To use a personal example, I generally don't drone scout, because if I'm controlling a scouting unit I'm definitely going to have a late pool, or forget to take drones off gas, or something silly like that.

Yes, I lose to one base DTs/banshees/whatever from time to time. But a 100% winrate is wishful thinking, and the players who are doing those all-ins every game are deliberately holding themselves back, in the long term, by not working on playing for a longer game. My focus is squarely on having good eco+upgrades and minimal unspent resources going into the late game. Individual ladder wins aren't really worth worrying over.

Oh, and the other thing about those one base all ins: at low levels, they come late, and they're executed badly. Maybe at higher levels you need to scout a 4-gate in order to not lose to it, but at diamond all you have to do is not shit your pants and keep injecting.

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.

This, this, this. Figuring out when to make overlords is what I'm focusing on in my ladder practice at the moment. Delaying worker production by even a few seconds in the early or mid game has a terrible effect on army size a little bit later on.

Umpteen

United Kingdom1570 Posts

May 09 2012 16:11 GMT

#385

On May 06 2012 19:04 Belial88 wrote:
Umpteen, that post wasn't even directed towards you. Take a chill pill. There's a reason why I made a big post starting with "Umpteen", and then a separate post. I've largely ignored what you've said because I didn't really have any disagreement with you. But you take every post I've made as directed only towards you, when it was rather more general (with certain other people in mind).

I'm sorry for getting frustrated and being impolite - and I really do appreciate the effort you put in to help others.

On the other hand, you wrote this in the post directed at me:

Umpteen, I don know if I was responding directly to you. Anyways, I am repostingg this, because this is what you need. I agree macro better is ambiguous, but learning to understand how to improve your macro, is really impportant, and what isn't said as much. You can apply what I said to zerg (I said it covering all 3 races really).

Just post replays on tl if you don't get why you lost.

Reading back over it and taking what you're saying now into account, I can see you probably meant "Follow this advice, and then in future post replays if you're not sure why you still lost (and it'll still be because of macro)". However, at the time it came across as "You're telling me you don't know why you're losing; post your reps here and I'll prove to you that it's because of macro", which was face-palmingly annoying when I'd already said I knew macro was to blame a few times

Anyway, since I think we finally see eye-to-eye I'll bow out. Cheers!