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On April 07 2012 04:17 KalWarkov wrote:Show nested quote +On April 07 2012 04:03 WolfintheSheep wrote:On April 07 2012 03:52 CecilSunkure wrote:On April 07 2012 03:50 spancho wrote: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.
Got a link of a gm game where one of them maxes out without any army trades/worker losses so I could benchmark?
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Ok so lets see:
I did a "kind of Stephano 12 min 200 Supply style".
! pulled off a drone to simulate scouting.
I didnt expand wildly all over the map (3 bases, 1 Macro hatch) to simulate a "normal environment"
I got Evo Chamber and Roachwarren around the 7 Minute mark (6:30 I think should be a good time)
I did nothing else except macroing (and watching IPL)
My Benchmark at 12 minutes (first try):
3 Bases (1 Makro Hatch)
3 Queens
64 Drones (12 in Gas)
48 Roaches (16 more 3 sec from finishing)
Zerglingspeed
Roachspeed
Burrow
1+ Attack
What could I have done differently:
1) more Queens, just 3 isnt "realistic", would have had the Minerals
2) Underestimated Roch Supply once, leading to a supply block at around 9:00
3) Im not sure if Stephano gets burrow, I think he opts for +2
4) could have taken/used the gasses a bit earlier
5) my Inject timing could be better (still - no queen over 40 energy at 12:00)
Yes.
If I can incorporate this in a "normal ladder game", Im quite sure I could make it to higher levels (as in Diamond, maybe even low Masters).
BUT
There was no scouting, no creepspread, no poking the front, no pylon block, not a tiny bit of aggression, no thing i ever had to react to.
Also note, that this was the first try (gold level), 10 - 20 more tries in this "sterile environment" will most probably yield better results - but guess what will happen in a "real game": not even 120 supply by the 12 minute mark. Why?
Because I have to scout.
Because i havt to look at the minimap.
Because I have to spread creep
Because I have to micro Drones/Queens
Because I get pylonblocked or even cannonrushed
Because I will lose Overlords at unexpected times
At alone took me (Source: SC2Gears) 83 (!) EAPM (87 APM, 4% Redundancy) which is about the same EAPM i have in normal games, where I have to distribute my 80 APM to other things too.
Edit: Should add replay
http://www.sc2replayed.com/replay-videos/18559
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On April 07 2012 04:03 WolfintheSheep wrote:Show nested quote +On April 07 2012 03:52 CecilSunkure wrote:On April 07 2012 03:50 spancho wrote: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. ... and posts like this try to sound sagely by saying nothing of real value.
It's of value if you don't know what your problem is. How to solve that problem in deep detail is however out of the scope of the the discussion. We're discussing about how people don't understand or acknowledge what's most important for them to fix first. You're trying to discuss something else.
However if you're interested in learning those things in deep detail and you find Day9 is helpful, go watch him. If not I have a lot of free content here on TL and on youtube. I also work for HotKeyit.com which also has a lot of great content.
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I think alot of people are getting way to particular about "if i only make probes and pylons what about my army?"
If you constantly make workers and pylons you have all the tools to get huge armies in the game, while yes you still need to have the multitask to control your army and not walk into tanks (duh!) if you have the workers shitty strategic play is less important.
Dying to stupid shit is less dependent on scouting than you would think. Having a good build can help for BO losses (ex cloak banshees) but for most timings having good macro is sufficient in lower leagues.
if you have a 20 worker lead and suicide an army into tanks it doesnt matter as long as you kept your production going
If you are even on workers/have a defecit you cant make strategic mistakes or you lose.
probes and pylons (scv's and depots) i think is a great method to get people at least to diamond and obviously as it becomes second nature you start to focus on strategy/micro
Literally every time i offrace my #1 concern is not missing workers. Having a rape economy makes micro mistakes, bad engagements, and poor decision making acceptable. I could try to play super tight builds but im simply not good enough with my offrace to do that but if i just focus on my economy and production i can just herp derp my way to victory though attrition no matter how inefficient.
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I often end up with too many workers, and too small an army. And not enough bases.
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Getting kinda sick of the macro better people. Do you know how many times a game I press V and hear not enough energy? I almost never have money to spare. Rarely get supply blocked. I am still pretty far from masters.
I can hardly remember a score screen where I had less workers and less resources harvested than opponents. However it's very common for me to have alot fewer units killed even though I made alot more.
I _ALWAYS_ lose because of micro, multitasking, build order & scouting issues. However few people talk about that because it's alot easier to use the goto mantra "macro better" and sound smart without having to put any thought into it.
SC2 is a complex game and being great is maybe 50% macro at most. If macro was as important as alot of people on TL say. GSL players wouldn't scout so early, wouldn't sacrafice mules, overlords & workers just to maybe get a glance of what opponents are doing. Proxy stuff, bank money, micro the shit out of one banshee and allin so much. They would like you know macro better ^^
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United States8476 Posts
On April 07 2012 08:28 oZe wrote:
Getting kinda sick of the macro better people. Do you know how many times a game I press V and hear not enough energy? I almost never have money to spare. Rarely get supply blocked. I am still pretty far from masters.
I can hardly remember a score screen where I had less workers and less resources harvested than opponents. However it's very common for me to have alot fewer units killed even though I made alot more.
I _ALWAYS_ lose because of micro, multitasking, build order & scouting issues. However few people talk about that because it's alot easier to use the goto mantra "macro better" and sound smart without having to put any thought into it.
SC2 is a complex game and being great is maybe 50% macro at most. If macro was as important as alot of people on TL say. GSL players wouldn't scout so early, wouldn't sacrafice mules, overlords & workers just to maybe get a glance of what opponents are doing. Proxy stuff, bank money, micro the shit out of one banshee and allin so much. They would like you know macro better ^^
At the highest level, everyone can macro close to equally, so that doesn't matter as much. This isn't the case at not top masters and below. You may lose a lot because of other issues, but I still bet you overestimate your macro.
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All you need to do to misspell the myth that strategy matters in low leagues is have a reasonably decent masters player smurf offrace. Many times they will do dozens of things completely horribly, but they win anyway due to just having way more than their opponent all game long no matter what. It's funny to watch, because everyone realizes how sloppy the offrace is for that player, yet the army and worker advantages and the rate of taking bases is just so much greater that it becomes really apparent how important macro really is in this game.
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Teach new players a non-cheese one-base all-in build. It's easy to learn for a new player, it has clear expectations of them, it teaches them how to balance army control and macromanagement to an acceptable degree, and once they learn to execute an all-in build, they can start working on macro builds more easily. It's an important first step for a new player that lets them understand the game AND rack up some wins (which makes them want to keep playing). When they start having a clear idea of what a good game looks and feels like, they can start applying that to other builds. Free-form play is TERRIBLE. You don't want to EVER tell a new player to think about the game. There's not enough attention that they can afford to come up with bright gameplay decisions on their own. It's tough enough for a new player to just remember hotkeys. They have to just play, and the best way to just play is to use an all-in.
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I disagree a bit with that classic "just macro" advice. Even in lower leagues, believe or not, the decision making matters a lot. This is most prominent in TvT, in which it is common occurence that people with a lot weaker macro abilities are winning games just because they play more smart game. Also even if your mechanics are good, but your build does not make sense at all, you are gonna lose games.
If you have not a single piece of sense what you should do or doing stupid engagements, you are gonna lose games no matter what your macro is.
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That is because they are right.
You lose most games because of macro. Macro IS as important as they say.
But they often overdo it. If a 2Port bashee all-in is coming my way, there is no way mass drones and Zerglings are going to save me.
I have to know the timing, I have to see the signs and I have to react accordingly. I have to incorporate this in my macro and try to defend WHILE I macro up. And here is a problem for many low league players.
In most replays you will see a low league zerg, spending his money, droning up, getting his overlords... suddenly 4 hellions appear and his money skyrockets, he get supplyblocked because a lone marine is hunting missrallied overlords while his drones are getting rosted.
Its easy to tell him "your macro slipped badly, fix it!" (and it is actually a true statement) but this wont help him. He already knows that his macro splips in these situation, but he has just a limited ressource. So he can either:
a) overlord and drones
b) micro drones and Queens
c) take precaution bevore the hellions arrive and avoid the entire situation
low league players will mostly resort to b. Why? Because they dont see what could have been done and what they should do the next 30 sec. They only see whats happening NOW. And whats happening NOW is Hellions roasting a shitton of Drones.
All you need to do to misspell the myth that strategy matters in low leagues is have a reasonably decent masters player smurf offrace. Many times they will do dozens of things completely horribly, but they win anyway due to just having way more than their opponent all game long no matter what. It's funny to watch, because everyone realizes how sloppy the offrace is for that player, yet the army and worker advantages and the rate of taking bases is just so much greater that it becomes really apparent how important macro really is in this game.
Done many times, but it doent help to misspell the "myth" because you just cant strip the decent masters players "decent masters micro"
Destiny as prime example: he managed to get to Platinum with just using Queens. While that in itself is a nice achivement and macro actually plays a big part in it, I think we can agree that a bronze level player (letting destiny do all the macro stuff) would have failed badly by just microing the queens. Transfuses, engagements, target firing,...
Or let say... Dimaga play a hatch first against me going for a sixpool. I bet he will defend. Is that a valid proof that his macro is superior (which obviously is)?
How often did I have games where I lost against a Terran with half army supply and not even half worker supply just because I wasted key units in a critical moment? How often did I lose my muta flock by accidently flying over a bunch of marines.
Macro has its limits. If the cost of my additional losses is below the number of additional income/reproduction, then this is the situation where the better macro clearly achieves to win over a player with worde macro.
But if your losses exeed your additional income, macro fails to compensate.
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On April 07 2012 09:00 oOOoOphidian wrote:
All you need to do to misspell the myth that strategy matters in low leagues is have a reasonably decent masters player smurf offrace. Many times they will do dozens of things completely horribly, but they win anyway due to just having way more than their opponent all game long no matter what. It's funny to watch, because everyone realizes how sloppy the offrace is for that player, yet the army and worker advantages and the rate of taking bases is just so much greater that it becomes really apparent how important macro really is in this game.
This perfectly describes my Zerg off-race. I'm diamond Terran and play my friend's ex-account as Plat Zerg and I'm pretty much just guessing as far as strategy, but I hit injects, don't get supply blocked, and have general game knowledge. I've literally played <10 games as Zerg and almost beat a Diamond Zerg this morning. In short, fundamentals are called fundamentals for a reason. They are literally stepping stones that you MUST become at least competent in before you will even have the mental time to think about anything else. I know exactly how to execute my build order without thinking and that automatic process frees up my mind to think about other things: "what is he doing, where is his army, what kind of units should I be making, should I attack now, am I ahead or behind..." The OP may oversimplify the reasoning behind improving macro, but anecdotally, it seems lower league players seem to question this philosophy while higher level players seem to be backing it up.
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On April 07 2012 09:19 Mongolbonjwa wrote:
I disagree a bit with that classic "just macro" advice. Even in lower leagues, believe or not, the decision making matters a lot. This is most prominent in TvT, in which it is common occurence that people with a lot weaker macro abilities are winning games just because they play more smart game. Also even if your mechanics are good, but your build does not make sense at all, you are gonna lose games.
If you have not a single piece of sense what you should do or doing stupid engagements, you are gonna lose games no matter what your macro is.
I'm a mediocre platinum on NA who plays maybe 10 games a week and I crush silver players as a random player when I play on my friends account to teach him basics, even in TvT. Yes, there is more to macro than "pylons and probes" but decision making really doesn't matter which was the point of the OP. I can tell a silver player "I'm only making marines and medivacs, build tanks and Vikings to win" and he'd still lose. With the exception of stealth units or ground vs air it really doesn't matter. This isn't a "focus on macro and reach top8 masters" type thing but what is the use in working on game sense and decision making when the situations you're facing are so poorly executed that a masters 4gate will hit harder than a silver/gold 6gate all in and come 4-5 minutes quicker. You'll still progress but it'll be much slower.
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The best way to make a Bronze - Platinum plater realize the importance of Probes & Pylons is to make them simply play FFA games. Nothing makes this more clear than a silver level player winning against Gold/Diamond level players in FFA by their making purely more workers/bases than the other player. Also, on FFA's it lowers the chances of Allins, so they can appreaciate the use of Probes & Pylons that much more than on ladder.
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Well in most cases the losses in the lower leagues isn't because of bad macro because your at the same relative macro level. If you were facing a better player you would loose to bad macro as macro is such an essential aspect of the game.
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On April 07 2012 11:12 archonOOid wrote:
Well in most cases the losses in the lower leagues isn't because of bad macro because your at the same relative macro level. If you were facing a better player you would loose to bad macro as macro is such an essential aspect of the game.
It's not so much about losing because you got outmacrod, but more that if you could macro better you would win anyway.
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I agree with the folks who are sayings it's more than "probes and pylons", (or SCVs and Depots in my case)
As a forever Bronze, I've learned the following about my play in order of importance:
It's SCVs and Depots
And Barracks, Factories, and Starports
And scouting
And ups
And unit compostion
And micro
I've lost plenty of games where I had more workers,
Lost games where I had more workers, and more production
Lost games where I had more workers, more production, more army and failed to scout tech changes.
Where I had all of the above and failed to engage correctly, (MMM V vs P deathball anyone?)
While I could have won many of these games if I had even better macro it's stilldisheartening to lose when your macro was better than your opponent.
I'm continuing to work on all aspects of my play and its working, slowly.
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On April 07 2012 10:05 Mufaa wrote:Show nested quote +On April 07 2012 09:19 Mongolbonjwa wrote:
I disagree a bit with that classic "just macro" advice. Even in lower leagues, believe or not, the decision making matters a lot. This is most prominent in TvT, in which it is common occurence that people with a lot weaker macro abilities are winning games just because they play more smart game. Also even if your mechanics are good, but your build does not make sense at all, you are gonna lose games.
If you have not a single piece of sense what you should do or doing stupid engagements, you are gonna lose games no matter what your macro is. I'm a mediocre platinum on NA who plays maybe 10 games a week and I crush silver players as a random player when I play on my friends account to teach him basics, even in TvT. Yes, there is more to macro than "pylons and probes" but decision making really doesn't matter which was the point of the OP. I can tell a silver player "I'm only making marines and medivacs, build tanks and Vikings to win" and he'd still lose. With the exception of stealth units or ground vs air it really doesn't matter. This isn't a "focus on macro and reach top8 masters" type thing but what is the use in working on game sense and decision making when the situations you're facing are so poorly executed that a masters 4gate will hit harder than a silver/gold 6gate all in and come 4-5 minutes quicker. You'll still progress but it'll be much slower.
You probably dont suecide your all units for nothing.
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Cecil you do great things,we thank you, Great job
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On April 07 2012 14:26 DashedHopes wrote:
Cecil you do great things,we thank you, Great job
Awweweee shucks! Thanks!
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EPT
