On April 07 2012 00:56 BoxingKangaroo wrote: Ok I think I get your point, but I think the discussion here is off track. I agree that macro is important and that anyone say under masters will get better simply by improving that aspect of their game. I'll also agree with your premise that lower league players underestimate how much better better macro will make them.
So lets talk about:
- Why do lower level players undervalue macro?
I think this is obvious (but there may be other opinions). It's hard to blame macro when you lose to two port banshee. Hard to blame macro when a terran sieges your natural on TDA. Hard to blame macro when a Protoss deathball with FF's rolls over you. The fact is that whenever you lose, you're going to lose to some strategy or to some combination of units. Now although the ability to defeat these units and strategies is based on having good macro, it's simply more obvious to blame the strats and units because those things are what's killing your shit.
I agree with your reasoning why low level players don't believe it's their macro that's killing them but I feel that their conclusions should be easily countered. 2-port banshee is easily countered through macro by just streaming mass units at their base. You will win the base-race without even trying to counter their tech. Mass roach/marauder spam even with void rays will decimate any attempted protoss death ball at lower levels. Mass ling will absolutely crush any sort of attempt to siege your natural on TDA.
The OP never states you will win every game, but you should win most games and improve by just macroing harder with relatively little thought to unit comp, micro, tricky build orders, mind games, whatever.
Why don't bronzies play with this 'macro only' mentality. Forget about scouting, forget about unit composition, just focus on macro. If you can't multitask, don't multitask, don't do anything that might impede your macro. If you just focus on macro, and ignore anything else, you're gonna win sooooo easily. Bronze players don't move out until 9 minutes and if you have 100 supply by this point, you will have double their army. Its that easy.
You can't ignore scouting entirely in silver, and you need to beat silvers to get out of bronze. I go 3 rax>expand>gas>upgrades+mass marine in every TvZ, basically Halby's Mineral Drill with marine upgrades. The only times it hasn't worked were -a guy who double expanded and made nothing but drones for 8-9 minutes -a guy who stayed on 1 hatch and 14 drones and made pure lingbling till like 7 minutes and rolled in and killed me
And the "A-move and win" approach totally falls apart in TvT, where unit comp and positioning are vital, and bunkers+sieged tanks on highground will destroy much larger armies.
On April 07 2012 00:56 BoxingKangaroo wrote: Ok I think I get your point, but I think the discussion here is off track. I agree that macro is important and that anyone say under masters will get better simply by improving that aspect of their game. I'll also agree with your premise that lower league players underestimate how much better better macro will make them.
So lets talk about:
- Why do lower level players undervalue macro?
I think this is obvious (but there may be other opinions). It's hard to blame macro when you lose to two port banshee. Hard to blame macro when a terran sieges your natural on TDA. Hard to blame macro when a Protoss deathball with FF's rolls over you. The fact is that whenever you lose, you're going to lose to some strategy or to some combination of units. Now although the ability to defeat these units and strategies is based on having good macro, it's simply more obvious to blame the strats and units because those things are what's killing your shit.
I agree with your reasoning why low level players don't believe it's their macro that's killing them but I feel that their conclusions should be easily countered. 2-port banshee is easily countered through macro by just streaming mass units at their base. You will win the base-race without even trying to counter their tech. Mass roach/marauder spam even with void rays will decimate any attempted protoss death ball at lower levels. Mass ling will absolutely crush any sort of attempt to siege your natural on TDA.
The OP never states you will win every game, but you should win most games and improve by just macroing harder with relatively little thought to unit comp, micro, tricky build orders, mind games, whatever.
Those things may well be true. But speaking from the perspective of a lower level player, they're simply hard to believe. Specifically I'm a lower Zerg, and beating that siege play with mass ling just seems ridiculous to me. Countering a lower level player's conclusions may be easy - I mean you did it in one sentence (mass ling - macro better). Getting them to believe it is the hard part. In fact you made it worse by saying it can be beaten by mass ling. Here I am, building lings, banelings and muta and losing, and you're saying I can beat it with just ling? That makes it more unbelievable. You're going up against human psychology here, and that ain't easy.
Finally a thread that ACTUALLY HELPS the lower leagues...
if they are willing to listen, that is.
People with their fancy BO's and pushes n stuff, first learn to utilise your keyboard and master the basics instead of keyboardturning and complaining afterwards.
Not to turn this into a SC2 vs BW discussion, but SC2 makes macro more important. Maps are smaller, resources come faster, so its necessary to have a big army faster-- losing an engagement is much closer to losing the game in SC2 than BW, because if you can't match your opponent's production he can very easily bludgeon you to death.
It's a product of Blizzard design, which some guy discussed in some thread. They made SC2 for the casual player sort of-- macro up a big army, smash it, win or lose. Yay deathball!
Fantastic OP-couldn't agree more. I started playing Terran and magically hit gold league after a few placement matches because I was fairly decent @ SCVs/Supply. I often found myself delving into advanced tactics and stuff way above my head, but always came back to the realization that my macro (scv/sd/production) was in some way off and I resumed concentrating on that aspect of my play, I started winning again. I'm now high diamond after 3 months of playing and can say without a doubt that every time I got better, it was due to better macro, and every time I got worse, it was because I got in over my head with something and forgot the basics.
Though many seem skeptical so far, I hope more people see this thread and swallow their pride long enough to realize that this strategy is better than anything else you can/should do. Skipping this step of learning is like trying to play basketball without first learning how to dribble, pass, or take free-throws.
Hi hi. I'm a silver league Terran player who has recently started regularly beating top golds (promotion coming soon I hope >.<) and I have to agree with OP that most lower league problems are with macro. Only in the past few months have I started consistently making greater than 70 workers and expanding when needed. However, I feel that in the lower leagues it's hard to pinpoint exactly where people go wrong with their macro (for me it was supply depots) and I knew that problem so I fixed that problem (with a bit of help from dApollo's Terran tutorial) and by consistently PRACTICING! It is normal for me to spend 2-3 hours per week refining my downtrodden mechanics in custom games or by smashing the AI and that way I can be a bit more reactionary vs a real opponent. Any way I thought I'd give my 2 cents on this thread. Real input from a low league player that wants to get better. ^^
On April 07 2012 00:56 BoxingKangaroo wrote: Ok I think I get your point, but I think the discussion here is off track. I agree that macro is important and that anyone say under masters will get better simply by improving that aspect of their game. I'll also agree with your premise that lower league players underestimate how much better better macro will make them.
So lets talk about:
- Why do lower level players undervalue macro?
I think this is obvious (but there may be other opinions). It's hard to blame macro when you lose to two port banshee. Hard to blame macro when a terran sieges your natural on TDA. Hard to blame macro when a Protoss deathball with FF's rolls over you. The fact is that whenever you lose, you're going to lose to some strategy or to some combination of units. Now although the ability to defeat these units and strategies is based on having good macro, it's simply more obvious to blame the strats and units because those things are what's killing your shit.
I agree with your reasoning why low level players don't believe it's their macro that's killing them but I feel that their conclusions should be easily countered. 2-port banshee is easily countered through macro by just streaming mass units at their base. You will win the base-race without even trying to counter their tech. Mass roach/marauder spam even with void rays will decimate any attempted protoss death ball at lower levels. Mass ling will absolutely crush any sort of attempt to siege your natural on TDA.
The OP never states you will win every game, but you should win most games and improve by just macroing harder with relatively little thought to unit comp, micro, tricky build orders, mind games, whatever.
Those things may well be true. But speaking from the perspective of a lower level player, they're simply hard to believe. Specifically I'm a lower Zerg, and beating that siege play with mass ling just seems ridiculous to me. Countering a lower level player's conclusions may be easy - I mean you did it in one sentence (mass ling - macro better). Getting them to believe it is the hard part. In fact you made it worse by saying it can be beaten by mass ling. Here I am, building lings, banelings and muta and losing, and you're saying I can beat it with just ling? That makes it more unbelievable. You're going up against human psychology here, and that ain't easy.
If you're playing someone of relatively equal skill, they're likely making the same macro mistakes you are: floating minerals, really late expos, not enough production, no upgrades, too few workers, massive supply blocks. This means that if you do every one of these things correctly while they don't, you'll have more units faster with better upgrades off of more bases. There would literally be no way for you to lose the game at that point.
This and another post I saw last week have really help me win alot of games. I was a mid level Silver playing other mid level silvers on SEA as a terran. Read a post somewhere on here where a guy did a VOD describing some test he did which was. * Que 3 SCV's at a time * Que 2 marines at each barracks * Que 2 supply depots * Extra Coin Buld Barracks * And expand at this time
Yep, that's Halby's mineral drill. Its a good training exercise, and not half bad in TvZ.
This thread became a shitfest far too fast, but I've decided that I wanna put my input into it.
Often players come onto the strategy forum, and post to the effect of "I lost this game, this strat is imba". Let's take a totally standard example: A TvP occurs in bronze league. The terran player opts for a 1/1/1 build, the protoss player plays a standard 1g FE -> whatever. The Protoss player comes on TL and says "my control was perfect, 1/1/1 is imba". Now naturally, this is a pretty questionable statement in itself, but let's look at some possible implications of this.
a) Protoss macro'd perfectly, but to hold a bronze league 1/1/1 requires to micro perfectly, and our P didn't micro perfectly. b) Protoss macro'd poorly, he didn't the number of units he could have at this point, and regardless of micro was unable to hold the 1/1/1 because of a macro flaw. c) Protoss played perfectly, bronze league 1/1/1 is imba.
Now say we put a Grandmaster Protoss in this position against the same bronze league terran. Again, we have 3 possible outcomes, considering the difference in level of play. a) Protoss macro'd perfectly, he can a-move/dance his units and probably still beat the terran composition, as it will be late/poorly executed etc. b) Protoss macros perfectly but greedily, not having the optimal number of units for this point, uses his superior micromanagement to hold off the attack somehow and win anyway. c) Protossplays perfectly and loses; bronze league 1/1/1 is imba.
Now to take this apart. When bronze league P watches these games of GM P, he often wrongly makes the following assumptions (in respect to the above points) a) GM decision making was better, his unit comp was better, he was less nervous. Naturally, all those things are probably true. The small nuances the GM has in his play will shine through, but none of them caused him to win the game, he won purely because of probe and pylon building (and warpin cycle) was perfect throughout, and would have won regardless of his unit comp, or his decision making (within reason).
b) GM micro was far better than bronze, bronze lost because of micro issues The first issue is true, sure the GM has better micro than the bronze; in this case, however, the latter is not true. The GMs good micro masks the fact that he won because his macro is far, far superior. Having played against players who most likely will hit with more units at an earlier time, and playing against it, this bronze league 1/1/1 is a piece of cake.
c) Pretty unlikely to be frank.
The above is why I can't listen to anybody (often at high master level, even) who figures they lose because of means related to anything other than macro. Sure there are exceptions to this; can perfect probe/pylon production stop a cannon rush? absolutely not. Can it build an observer against unscouted cloaked banshees? no. But those are simple matters which can be resolved through other training. I regularly play with high master/GM players, who often find the root of their issue with holding builds is macro related. Whether that be getting supply blocked at a critical moment, not making workers when they should be, or simply not making full use of production cycles and adding additional production to early, it still illustrates the fact that bronze - whatever league players who think their macro is perfect are wrong in EVERY sense of the word. They can argue and flame in this thread, but it just further shows their lack of understanding for the deeper issues of Starcraft. It's not an idrA "macro or die" approach to Starcraft, it's simply that macro is so deep in the core of the game that it cannot EVER be ignored.
EDIT: just an afterthought.
THE ONLY TIME STARCRAFT IS NOT A GAME OF MACRO IS WHEN THE MAP IS MINED OUT AND BOTH PLAYERS HAVE THE EXACT SAME COMPOSITION OF UNITS.
The reason players can 6pool/cannon rush their way to GM is because their strategies do not rely on micro; they rely on decision making and micro.
The problem is this only works for zerg and protoss. Try to "just macro perfectly" as terran in platinum and above. I bet you're going to have a very fun time getting smashed over and over again. (atleast on eu, I don't know if the AM-server really is as terrible as they say)
On April 06 2012 16:49 Belial88 wrote: 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.
As a lower league player I 100% agree. Macro is the most important thing (as in constant production, no supply blocks and keeping money low).
BUT and this is the point ML/GML players seem to consider as "easy"
ppl lack also in Multitasking. And i dont mean Multitasking in a sense as in "dropping 3 places at one while microing the shit out of my tank/marine army while expanding and Planting 3 additional barracks"
Most lower league players I know actually have decent makro IF (and thats the big IF) left alone to "Probes & Pylons & Army" 12 minutes roach max out? Give a Gold player 10 - 20 tries to figure out Gas and Roachwarren timings and sooner or later he WILL hit the max out around 12 minutes. Now put the same player against another player. You will see his money rise, you will see him miss injects, you will see him getting supply blocked, you will see him with mass idle larvae. Why? Did he suddenly unlearn everything he learned for the last 30 games? Did he suddenly forget how to macro?
Let me take this to an area im better in: Martial Arts
Tell your Students how important are basics. Train basics every day, after they learned their basics quite well (as in starcraft there is no "perfect") let them train with a Shinai (wooden sword). After they learned their basics there and they are quite competent with their weapon, give them REAL weapons. All of a sudden everything is different, they dont remember the basics, they dont remember the techniques. All they see is the sharp edge of the other students sword. How is it any different of what we trained? Its not. Does it FEEL different? Hell yes! It feels a LOT different.
So back to starcraft: In a "macro only situation" there is no need for scouting, no need to react to changing situations, no need to deal with early aggression, no need to remember the opponents timings, no need for even basic army micro. Its just probes + pylons + army. You NEED multitasking, you NEED to get away from the "If i dont look at my army, it will die!" feeling (altough it happens from time to time), you NEED to do may things and priorize these things. That is the hardest thing to do if you have just a small amount of actions available. Even if you KNOW what to do, ppl tend to make mistakes in stressful situations. Another point ML/GML seem to just ignore. Playing competitive against complete strangers IS stressful for the most low league players. Its even stressful to me. Stress is different for different ppl. I could tell you that it isnt a stressful situation if 2 ppl want to get you in a bar brawl. To me it isnt, to you it possibly might be.
So multitasking, handspeed/precision, mindset ist the MOST important part to me, because without these 3 Pillars everything else WILL suffer.
I think thats the reason why 1 or 2 base all-ins are so powerful in lower leagues. First you focus on probes and pylons and after you reached "the end" of probes and pylons you focus on army (+ warpins for example). You just have to focus on one thing instead of two or more.
just my toughts
Why don't bronzies play with this 'macro only' mentality. Forget about scouting, forget about unit composition, just focus on macro. If you can't multitask, don't multitask, don't do anything that might impede your macro. If you just focus on macro, and ignore anything else, you're gonna win sooooo easily. Bronze players don't move out until 9 minutes and if you have 100 supply by this point, you will have double their army. Its that easy.
When I was Bronze I was trying to improve by following three seperate build orders for every race and playing like the pros. it didn't work. I was too slow in micro-ing my scout, trying to figure out what the scouting means, and reacting and building counters. "Oh, he's got a bunch of void rays? I guess I should make vikings, it totally won't take 5 minutes." I finally got out of bronze by just making marines and marauders every game, expanding every 6 minutes, and maxing out somewhere between 14-16 minutes and just A-moving huge bioballs.
If you're terran and you max out at 14-16 minutes you should be in high masters/GM.
Hardly. Maxing out at 14 minutes isn't the difficult part, its a basic benchmark of Halby's Mineral Drill which I linked to above.
The hard bit is not dying or getting heavily set back on the way there
, or actually achieving anything with a pure bioball against massed colossi or siegetanks. http://drop.sc/154895 (190 or so supply at 14 minutes) http://drop.sc/154897 (long game! pure bio vs tank stuff happens near the end)
On April 06 2012 23:07 Sakray wrote: I disagree when people say "just make probes, pylons and stuff, you just need that to kill them", it's not true. You have to know a lot more things to win a game. Yes, you need to "build probes/pylons", but you need alot more. That's how I see this.
Well yeah you need to know more. Most of my post is saying you need to know more. I'm also saying however that's there's a priority schema that needs not be neglected. You have to crawl before you can walk, or so to speak.
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
So pretty much what your saying that that if you play well you should win!? If people in lower leagues can do all the things you just described then they sure as hell aren't in the lower leagues anymore!
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
So pretty much what your saying that that if you play well you should win!? If people in lower leagues can do all the things you just described then they sure as hell aren't in the lower leagues anymore!
Yes, yes. If you play well by accomplishing those specific tasks, you should not be in the lower leagues
* Little to no supply blocks * Little to no cuts in probe production * Placing appropriate structures/tech at appropriate times * Constantly spending money Good positioning of army Not taking unnecessary risks (investing in extra cannons, a scout observer)
Wouldn't this priority list be more accurate? Supply blocks halt ALL production, not just probes. And being able to constantly spend money is largely a function of building extra hatcheries/gateways/barracks at the right time.
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
So pretty much what your saying that that if you play well you should win!? If people in lower leagues can do all the things you just described then they sure as hell aren't in the lower leagues anymore!
Yes, yes. If you play well by accomplishing those specific tasks, you should not be in the lower leagues
Problem is, you don't say how to do that.
Anyone can play against an Easy computer and auto-pilot to max in about 15 minutes. A Bronze league player just doesn't know/care about build orders, but a high Silver or Gold can do it well enough. The problem is always when there's more to focus on than your own base.
The difference between something like Day9's newbie tutorials, and random generic posts like this, is that Day9 will show you techniques and skills to focus on your macro while you're doing other stuff, and posts like this try to sound sagely by saying nothing of real value.
i watched many replays of lowlvl players because they wanted to know what they couldve done better.
i ask them before if they cut probes or supplyblock, they say "no, thats my biggest strengh i never cut workers". Then i watch the replay and the player constantly stopps buildings workers. at the 10 minute mark with an ffe, he has 20 less workers than i have at that time - obviously with less tech / units as well.
i will never understand how ppl in lower leagues can watch their own replays and still be convinced they do everything right when they compare their replay to a gm replay. They can see the numbers, cant they?
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
So pretty much what your saying that that if you play well you should win!? If people in lower leagues can do all the things you just described then they sure as hell aren't in the lower leagues anymore!
Yes, yes. If you play well by accomplishing those specific tasks, you should not be in the lower leagues
Problem is, you don't say how to do that.
Anyone can play against an Easy computer and auto-pilot to max in about 15 minutes. A Bronze league player just doesn't know/care about build orders, but a high Silver or Gold can do it well enough. The problem is always when there's more to focus on than your own base.
The difference between something like Day9's newbie tutorials, and random generic posts like this, is that Day9 will show you techniques and skills to focus on your macro while you're doing other stuff, and posts like this try to sound sagely by saying nothing of real value.
you are wrong. a gold level player will have about 120 supply when the gm player is maxed - even when nothing ever happened. he will most likely have half of the upgrades and a lower tech as well. i can guarantee you that.
EPT
