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On April 06 2012 13:50 TheNessman wrote:Show nested quote +On April 06 2012 13:47 CecilSunkure wrote:On April 06 2012 13:45 TheNessman wrote:On April 06 2012 12:10 CecilSunkure wrote:On April 06 2012 12:01 UmiNotsuki wrote:
I find myself disagreeing with the totality of your statement. There are other important factors. I've peaked as mid-master as Zerg and recently started playing Random on EU, at around a platinum level.
For an example, I reference a TvT I played today. I macro'd the entire game like a boss and had a significantly larger army for much of the game. I had an economic lead, and my upgrades were on par. I lost because I made a stupid decision and lost a ton of units to tank splash! He attacked and because I wasn't holding my watchtower he got into a really good position and I proceded to stim into his army. That's a stupid call, obviously. So stupid, in fact, that it overwhelms "probes and pylons" even without a poor composition or strategy.
You might as well put "watch the minimap, hold watchtowers" as important as well because they, too, can win or lose games. I don't believe I was saying you'd win every match. The point was that the most important things are overlooked. I would argue YOU"RE The one overlooking things. if you build 200/200 of probes and pylons, i would beat you every time. sorry if i come off as mean i am just in a really bad mood right now and gmarshal keeps warning me and it pisses me off everything that i have ever posted has been 100% my opinion only and i'm sorry if i'm offending anyone with what i'm saying. I'm sure you would beat me every time. Luckily I didn't tell anyone to only make probes and pylons till 200 supply. yeah so you are obviously right in everything you say, because you included the phrase "oh and just don't be dumb btw" you realize you are talking to people who don't build orbitals
...his general point remains the same...MACRO BETTER because macro is important making orbitals is under the realm of macro better thus his point still stands, he merely said it from the protoss point of view (since he plays P)
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it is true that maintaining a constant worker production forms the basis of sc2, but i tend to find the people who learn the fastest in combination of constant worker production are the aggressive players.
seriously, the ones that are trying to maintain worker production and dont just turtle up will climb leagues faster
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On April 06 2012 13:57 Zariel wrote:
it is true that maintaining a constant worker production forms the basis of sc2, but i tend to find the people who learn the fastest in combination of constant worker production are the aggressive players.
seriously, the ones that are trying to maintain worker production and dont just turtle up will climb leagues faster
Yeah I tend to notice the same thing. Whenever a student of mine asks "Is it a good time to attack <insert time>", I always tell them to go figure it out. The idea is that if you ever are unsure of whether or not it's a good time to attack, you should just go attack them and figure out what happens. If you won or gained a lead, watch the replay and attempt to figure out why. If you are put behind or end up losing then and there figure out why as well.
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even if you just have say 8 stalkers 8 zealots and in immortal you can gauge your enemy. There are 3 possible outcomes:
a) you crush your enemy. good job
b) you get crushed.
- too many units (macro problem for you)
- countered (scouting or unit composition problem)
c) draw or minor victory/loss (rinse n repeat).
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In general I agree, however I think its wrong to say that the player with better macro will always win. When I very first started playing as a lowly Zerg player, I was constantly frustrated by missing tech because of poor scouting. No matter how many roaches and lings and drones you have, if you don't notice your opponent making 5 voidrays and they roll into your base, you lose. It's the same with Banshees and Mutalisks. And other low league players know this, so they go voidray/banshee/mutalisk basically every game. In the end I started blindly going Hydralisk and winning a lot of games, but it only lasted until my opponents had halfway decent macro themselves.
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On April 06 2012 13:45 TheNessman wrote:Show nested quote +On April 06 2012 12:10 CecilSunkure wrote:On April 06 2012 12:01 UmiNotsuki wrote:
I find myself disagreeing with the totality of your statement. There are other important factors. I've peaked as mid-master as Zerg and recently started playing Random on EU, at around a platinum level.
For an example, I reference a TvT I played today. I macro'd the entire game like a boss and had a significantly larger army for much of the game. I had an economic lead, and my upgrades were on par. I lost because I made a stupid decision and lost a ton of units to tank splash! He attacked and because I wasn't holding my watchtower he got into a really good position and I proceded to stim into his army. That's a stupid call, obviously. So stupid, in fact, that it overwhelms "probes and pylons" even without a poor composition or strategy.
You might as well put "watch the minimap, hold watchtowers" as important as well because they, too, can win or lose games. I don't believe I was saying you'd win every match. The point was that the most important things are overlooked. I would argue YOU"RE The one overlooking things. if you build 200/200 of probes and pylons, i would beat you every time. sorry if i come off as mean i am just in a really bad mood right now and gmarshal keeps warning me and it pisses me off everything that i have ever posted has been 100% my opinion only and i'm sorry if i'm offending anyone with what i'm saying. i really really just don't like it when people look at low level players and go "oh just do this 1 thing and everything will be fine" NOTHING IS EVER THAT SIMPLE BTW . again, i'm sorry for yelling, i'm sorry for swearing, i'll leave. but for the record i like playing against lower level people because it is more fun sometimes. edit: I cannot BELIEVE you are highlighted in blue --_-- i'm sorry but this thread is dumb.
You are 100%, completely missing the point of the OP. Try reading it more carefully.
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Speaking as someone who's ground my way through the lower leagues without much formal training or practice...Cecil hits this dead on. I slopped my way into mid-gold by just kinda getting better by playing. Halfway through this season, I decided I was going to focus on wearing out my 'E' key. The result? I'm 100 points clear of #2 in my league and facing plats almost exclusively, although my multitasking is still holding me back vs Zerg in particular.
I've placed such importance on spending and eco this season that I find myself spending more time at my proxy pylon than I do watching the battle. I do almost 0 micro (like I said, my multitasking sucks), and yet I'm still shooting up my league.
Basically what I'm saying is, view from the trenches, this stuff works. Big time. And it's not that hard to implement. What is harder is where I'm at now (Day9's "have a plan" stage). But the basic equation for non-plat-at-least is still "Probes & Pylons == MOAR SHIT == Wins 
Edit: And the thread title made me LOL. Well played.
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Eh from my experience, especially vZ in diamond/ higher, is that straight up macro isnt good enough. Army positioning and map awareness are just as important, or at least thats what ive found through all of my games. I can out macro the guy by quite a bit and lose due to inefficient fighting. You can kill a zergs 3rd while macroing, but if you miss the FF on the counter attack, or youre late with some FFs in your deathball, or your army is at the tower and you get runby you lose, just straight up lose. It works just as well in PvT, if you let him kite your zealots all day without any FFs then no almost no matter how good you macro youre still going to lose. If your army is moving out and a drop lands in your main, youre boned. And this sort of advice in PvP seems kinda useless ( not useless, just not as important given game length. you shouldnt get supply blocked, and you should make probes) as 90% of my games dont get base 2 base.
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Show nested quote +Guy on Skype said:
[4:08:14 PM] Guy: Sigh.
[4:08:14 PM] Guy: People say that [I should just make probes and pylons].
[4:08:16 PM] Guy: But then I just die to shit
[4:08:21 PM] Guy: like really stupid shit Well if you focus on the priorities and play a very safe and standard game, how can you die to stupid shit? You'll have so much shit you can't possibly die to stupid shit.
In your game as Terran, you had trouble holding off a push from a platinum league Protoss. Imagine how much trouble a player would have if they are not as good as you. A player might not know when to pull SCVs and how many to pull, or they might pull them too late. Then they would die. Maybe you can see why these lower level players ask questions about strategy - because you can die to stupid shit in lower leagues, even if you have good macro.
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On April 06 2012 15:50 JustinL wrote:Show nested quote +Guy on Skype said:
[4:08:14 PM] Guy: Sigh.
[4:08:14 PM] Guy: People say that [I should just make probes and pylons].
[4:08:16 PM] Guy: But then I just die to shit
[4:08:21 PM] Guy: like really stupid shit Well if you focus on the priorities and play a very safe and standard game, how can you die to stupid shit? You'll have so much shit you can't possibly die to stupid shit. In your game as Terran, you had trouble holding off a push from a platinum league Protoss. Imagine how much trouble a player would have if they are not as good as you. A player might not know when to pull SCVs and how many to pull, or they might pull them too late. Then they would die. Maybe you can see why these lower level players ask questions about strategy - because you can die to stupid shit in lower leagues, even if you have good macro.
I had really really bad macro. I had tons of extra money, multiple supply blocks, and forgot my vespene for multiple minutes which delayed my stim by a long time. I think I played pretty bad but one because I made more SCVs and Supply Depots than my opponent.
Edit: You can still lose to different things, you won't win every game. You will however play a whole lot better than if you had insufficient macro.
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On April 06 2012 09:46 TheNessman wrote:
whatever , i Would say that in lower leagues, the most important thing is "to have a plan" as long as you have a plan you are going to be OK for now. if your plan is Ultras, go ultras. you might die 50% of the time to the first 5 marines your opponent sends at you, but you might also beat the other 50% that turtled off 2 bases to 3/3 reapers. If your plan is DT, go DTs. maybe in bronze league your opponent forgot to get an orbital so they don't have any way of scanning you. If your plan is bunker rush with 4 marines and all of your scvs, it just might work. 4gate for days if that's how you want to get better, i don't care. in lower leagues, everything goes.
So many times I feel that lower level players don't have a sense of what to DO . they get that they should be building econ and stuff, but they never know when to attack or how to defend. In lower leagues, i feel that you just need to do something and then see what happens. and by that point players can figure it out. as long as they understand this == every time you econ instead of building units, your macro will be better later -- , combine that with a solid , if not random plan, and you can probably get out of silver.
Source: working from low to high gold, thoroughly discussing strategy with my friend every day as he moved from low silver (just got the game) to near platinum, reading the blogs by that guy who worker rushes every game , being a caster, playing 2v2 with my friends who are bronze but also platinum , that page that discussed what you needed to get better at as you got higher in leagues, the last one being micro or something , 100s of 2v2 games from low to high gold as random. watching MKP, playing every race, being bad on my own, getting better, reading TL every day, not reading /r/starcraft.
seriously everyone in all of the TL strategy forum is turning into idra - "oh if i just macro the best i'll win automatically" , "oh i just have to hit my drone number as fast as possible and then nothing can go wrong" . SORRY If i just offended you with that statement.
I completely agree with your statement. I also tell people that having a clear "plan" is important. Low league players can't be good at macro, because they don't know how to do it else they'll be masters. You can tell them you must macro better and show them the benefits of building probes and pylons however it won't help them because they don't have the tools to master the art of macro. One of the tools is the "plan", the plan not only is key to the improvement of your macro but also lead you to victory by protecting you from attacks, knowing when you should attack and knowing on what to spend your resources. My explanation on the plan might not be very clear, so I would like to illustrate it with examples:
Let's take the ultralisk example from the quoted text: My plan is to go ultralisks.
Alright, that's a good plan, when you're in game, you don't have to think "how should I spend my resources". Let me explain why it's important, so you make probes or pylons (in our case drones and overlords) and then your resources get high, you don't have a plan so you just remember general tips like for example "take an expansion" so you have 800 minerals that are unused and you use them on expansions, but then you just die to an attack, so even if that was the best macro you had, and you had effective resource spending it doesn't stop you from dying because you didn't spend your resources on the right thing. "You can't spend resources on the right thing without a plan"
Next you might think that going ultralisks is a too incomplete plan, so now you expand from your bronze-silver player to a much more higher play. Your plan isn't 3 words anymore, you'll have a much larger plan like: My plan is get a lot of drones early game, get lings and spine crawlers to defend, get 3 bases, get infestors, and only then get ultralisks.
Now you see that this plan covers all of your needs:
1. You perfectly know how you will macro, you will build mostly only drones early game and this will improve your macro, you will also practice injects by doing so this plan helps you remember to macro.
2. 3 bases also help macro, I remember one player once told me he had perfect macro on 1 base with constant scv production, but if you're on 1 base, you can't really get lots of units and win, so it's important to build bases.
3. You get lings and spinecrawlers, by this you ensure your survival, but you also know how to survive, not just making random units to survive which you would do without a plan.
4. Now you safely transition into your main plan idea which is to get ultralisks.
And further on you expand your plan as you move toward master league, you will add upgrades, anti air defense, anti cloak, anti cheese, anti macro, harasses, timing attacks and all that goody goodness to your plan.
My point is that having a plan and expanding it in order to know what to do in this game is a key to tool to improve your plan in the aspects of macro, mechanics, micro, strategy and anything else.
Edit: Fixed some sentences to make them more clear, btw I'm high master (answering to the post below me).
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The irony of this thread is the masses of people obviously lower level, claiming that they do macro properly and they actually need builds/army comps to win.
While that couldn't possibly be true because if it were, you'd be masters. Okay, if you're really bad at everything except macro, REALLY BAD, you might only be diamond. Any lower than that? Your macro sucks, no questions, no replay viewing necessary.
This thread isn't actually about a strategy, it's about stubborn people.
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On April 06 2012 16:18 Adonminus wrote:
My point is that having a plan and expanding it in order to know what to do in this game is a key to tool to improve your plan in the aspects of macro, mechanics, micro, strategy and anything else.
I definitely agree that those things are super important. But, most players don't need to work on that yet as their misses pieces required to have a plan: probes and pylons. Once you figure out the probes and pylons you can move onto game plans and the like.
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Blazinghand
United States25558 Posts
On April 06 2012 16:18 darkscream wrote:
The irony of this thread is the masses of people obviously lower level, claiming that they do macro properly and they actually need builds/army comps to win.
While that couldn't possibly be true because if it were, you'd be masters. Okay, if you're really bad at everything except macro, REALLY BAD, you might only be diamond. Any lower than that? Your macro sucks, no questions, no replay viewing necessary.
This thread isn't actually about a strategy, it's about stubborn people.
I wouldn't think that's actually irony. That's fittingness. I mean, it would be ironic if a bunch of high level players are arguing that macro isn't important, and a bunch of low league players were saying "no, I think my macro is holding me back"
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Russian Federation164 Posts
Whenever I concentrate on FEing and massing workers with some scouting, I win.
Whenever I try to make funny stuff (e.g. mid-late game Carriers PvP) instead of macroing and keeping him on 2-3 bases, I die.
Gold here :0)
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On April 06 2012 16:23 CecilSunkure wrote:Show nested quote +On April 06 2012 16:18 Adonminus wrote:
My point is that having a plan and expanding it in order to know what to do in this game is a key to tool to improve your plan in the aspects of macro, mechanics, micro, strategy and anything else. I definitely agree that those things are super important. But, most players don't need to work on that yet as their misses pieces required to have a plan: probes and pylons. Once you figure out the probes and pylons you can move onto game plans and the like.
I think of it in the opposite way: They need a plan to improve their missing pieces that are "probes and pylons". Plus plans can improve anything you do.
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Benchmarking is also really useful. I used to always say "toss is bullshit, they just get so many stalkers and just own you no matter what, nothing you can do, toss just makes more stalkers". But then I realized I was 20 supply down than most pros at the 8:00 mark, and that I basically went all-in, without ever attacking. I was just sac'cing my econ that much. I had lost the game irreparably by the 8:00 mark, that no matter what, there was no way for me to win. So when toss arrived with 30 stalkers at 12:00, I was always like "wtf there is no way I can have enough units to fight that, so imba", instead of "shit, I macro'd horribly in the first 8 minutes of the game and now toss can build up a huge army that I can't trade with, and eventually it way too big to deal with and I die
Have to second the guy who said this. As important as it is to understand what your priorities for improving are,
you also need objective benchmarks to measure yourself by. I think that too many players to do not objectively benchmark their play and never realize that despite their gosu build they have 30 less supply than the real gosus doing the same build at minute mark xx:xx. In order to optimally improve you need to know each time you've played whether your performance was better or worse than the last time.
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Italy12246 Posts
It's also important to note, that "good macro" and "work on mechanics" doesn't mean "never allin and turtle on 3bases every game". That can in fact be very detrimental to someone's development as an rts player (see me, 90 ish % win ratio in 4base games and 24% ish in 1base games vs diamond/master players).
Even though i think a player should always start with more simple builds (like, 4gate, then 1base immortal bust, then 2base immortal bust/6gate, then 2base colossus timing, and when you can execute these reasonably well you have a decent platform to start macroing off 3bases) before going for long macro games, pylons and probes makes those simple builds so much better and more efficient. This is why a GM's 4gate hits faster than a platinum's 4gate which in turn hits faster than a bronze 4gate.
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Generally, anytime someone is arguing with a high masters/blue, especially on something big, it's because they have no fucking clue what they are talking about (hey, I've been guilty of it many times, and every time, I was completely wrong).
I don't think these lower level people realize just how much better someone a league up is, or a high masters is, then them. You won't have a single high level player saying macro isn't the absolute most important thing in the game.
So quit arguing with a high masters blue poster here. He really knows his shit, you don't. To think that you would know more about this game, with the less than 1,000 games you've played, less than 100 hours logged on playing starcraft ever in your life, against someone with 10,000+ games played with over 1,000+ hours logged in, who's followed starcraft for about 8 years longer than you have, is just ridiculous.
Like you caught something he didn't get. It's like trying to tell Michael Jordan on the nuances of basketball. Holy shit.
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On April 06 2012 16:38 Adonminus wrote:Show nested quote +On April 06 2012 16:23 CecilSunkure wrote:On April 06 2012 16:18 Adonminus wrote:
My point is that having a plan and expanding it in order to know what to do in this game is a key to tool to improve your plan in the aspects of macro, mechanics, micro, strategy and anything else. I definitely agree that those things are super important. But, most players don't need to work on that yet as their misses pieces required to have a plan: probes and pylons. Once you figure out the probes and pylons you can move onto game plans and the like. I think of it in the opposite way: They need a plan to improve their missing pieces that are "probes and pylons". Plus plans can improve anything you do.
Well yeah I still agree. If you take the "probes and pylons" thing too far then you just lose balance and make 200 supply of probes, like what some other guy here was proposing. And also sure you do need a plan of how to execute "probes and pylons" as well. I'm just saying there's a hierarchy of what should be prioritized and when while going through the stages of learning to 1v1.
Edit: Lol @ post above me.
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EPT
