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Hello TL,
i want to start a discussion on how important strategy is in lower leagues.
Strategy for me is the overall gameplan like what unit composition do you want to get in the lategame, which expandtionds do you want to take and which expandtions do you allow your opponent to take.
Sure the best thing to improve your rank is to learn how to Macro better. Everyone says that and this might also be true, but doing this without a clear goal doesn´t help player to understand the game.
I take myself as an example. I´m a high Diamond Terran player on EU and i took the advise to just Macro better and i improved my Macro quite a bit, but i often find myself clueless about when i should attack my opponent. Then i do just the standard timing attacks like the 3 Tank 10 Minute push in TvZ or the 2 Medivacs push in TvP. But after that i´m clueless, i don´t have a specific goal how do i want to win the game. I´m either turteling if i got 1 bad engagement or i´m just attacking my opponent everywhere, but i´m really afraid of the lategame situation in every matchup except for TvT.
Now that i saw the last Day9 episode, where i just talked randomly about the TvP matchup, he starts to point out, that a common overalll goal for antiga is to just keep your opponent on 3 Bases and take your on 4th. So i currently think about my strategy more to progess and i feel that thinking about strategy in lower leagues isn´t that hard to do. I mean everyone can say, i don´t want him to take this bases, while i want to take these bases and that´s my lategame unit composition. With the strategy you have clear indicators, when you do attack and where do you move your units arround. You can avoid lot´s of stupid engagements with just a little thinking ahead.
What do you guys think?
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In bronze to platinum, I would say it's completely unimportant. PvZ, expand, get some sentries and immortals or blink or stargate, put pressure against 3 base play and take a third or defend 2 base play and then take a third. TvZ, 2 base hellion expand, deny creep and try to exercise the fundamentals of map control and being active with the helllions without losing them, into rine/tank or stim/drop or banshee, then third into bigass rine/tank and fourth. In ZvP, take third before lair or hold 1 base all-in, hold pressure, get map control after 9:00 and keep toss in his base with mass roach/muta/mass spine to delay for hive. Et cetera, et cetera.
There's basic strategy to it, sure - take a third vs FFE, go reactor hellion expand. A basic plan. But composition, trying to be fancy, harass, it's for fun, but not important. You just want to play a basic game (i mean, to improve, you can have fun doing whatever of course, it's a game!), and improving your macro, and really analyzing your macro, is super important.
From bronze to mid-masters, you really need to be watching every replay, and understanding how to improve your macro. Late on injects? 2 overlords at once whenyou only needed 1? Overlord too early, too late? Worker saturation is weird? Banking gas from taking gas too early? Banking minerals from taking gas too late? You can't afford your tech of choice because you went tech too quickly? What was the result of the mistakes you made here?
"Macro better" is not nearly as easy as it sounds. But it should be your number one priority. I think what happens though, is that you have no idea what macro better is, until you get higher and higher up in level. So you only become more aware of how shitty your macro is the better you get. Which is the catch 22, because you aren't aware of your shitty macro at a low level so you don't improve it.
Just play more.
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Yeah i agree with you that Macro is super important and that you have to be aware of that. But i want to direct this discussion more into that way:
When a low level player ask for help, the common answer is just macro better. It´s not a real goal that you can aim for. Wouldn´t it be a good idea to ask about his strategy and give him tips on that? I mean the way you build you production/upgrades etc has a lot to do with your strategy. When you allow your opponent to get to 3 Bases up, the order in which you Upgrade/ add aditional tech etc. changes because of another goal. Wouldn´t it be more helpfull instead of just saying Macro better?
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^ I don't think the 'common answer' nowadays is just 'macro better bye'. It's "I'm watching your replay, and your macro is atrocious at X, Y, Z points, and the results of these supply blocks is losing to X push, unable to take map control at Y point, allowing opponent to get away with Z when he shouldn't or should have just died instead of stayed alive". I'm pretty sure if you say "macro better" you will get a warn.
In about 99% of the replay analyses on this thread, the results from people who put time to watch the replays were that the player macro'd like shit. The other 1% is still macro related usually, as in they didn't transition to higher tech or expand or made too much tech/econ and not enough army or too much army not enough tech/econ, but not as plain as "your supply blocks just ruin you".
Usually the strategy is pretty straightforward and fine. No one here is saying 'macro better'. It's "macro is important" and when they provide replays, it's "your macro failed at X, Y, Z points, resulting in the disaster that occurred". What's going on right now, is a bunch of low level players having theoretically discussions that make no sense. Yea, sure, strategy is important. But I'm pretty sure macro is your problem. Provide replays where you lost, and I can guarantee 99.9% of the time, you lost because of very simply, straightforward macro issues, not strategy.
I've yet to see a diamond or below replay where macro wasn't the primary cause of the loss, really. Most masters replays are macro issues too. Only time I submitted a replay where macro wasn't the problem, I think, was a ZvP on entombed where I went 3/3 pure muta in an hour long game because I genuinely was unaware that you were supposed to go broodlords eventually - I just thought Toss would eventually base trade, so I was completely confused when Toss never base traded and I kept sniping bases but he always kept his army parked at a new base so he was always on 1 mining base and never losing units because my mutas couldn't engage and eventually he had 3/3/3 200/200 archon/HT/mothership army and I mined out over 10 bases and I simply was starved out and a lucky vortex clinched the win when I was starved anyways.
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I think another point here is that a lot of the things u want to put as strategy arent really.
Gas Timings, Adding Production/Tech, Upgrade Timings etc. in its basic form is just macro, to execute a good build with all those things considered isnt really strategy, its just makro, strategy is of course when you change that up based on information u got or sth. but that just absolutely isnt needed in lower leagues, you dont have to change your composition as long as you have at least aa in it (except with zerg i guess), but if u go a marine or stalker based composition and makro good, there is no need to do anything else to win a game in lower leagues.
Its hard to say how important strategy in lower leagues really is, cause i actually started in bronze going up to mid to high masters and i think the basic strategic baselines of a game u just get by watching pro games or day9 dailies etc.
Then you mix that ( a build with a pretty simple goal ) with just concentration on makro and executing that build and you will improve if u just play alot, and if u get to masters with that youre gonna have developed a pretty good set of strategy in the way that you kind of know what you wanna do in situations, thats just what a good rts player is about besides mechanics, to develop that strategic mind that knows what to do and react in a given situation, but i guess if thats new there is something else missing than strategy.
Thats i think if u wanna improve as a whole through just playing, ofc there is other ways, there are some eguides her on tl about builds to just improve makro and mechanics, there was a 3rax thread for example, i dont think thats gonna teach you anything about general strategy except for the build specifics.
my 2 cents
Broesl
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In my quest to get back to gold league I have some success with focussing less on strategy. Strategy decisions come with the time through experience. Macro only comes through practice. When I have three bases running, I can produce a stream of units. Defending up to this point is my new strategy. Of course I try to scout if the protoss is going to build colossi so that I have a spire in time, but it is even more important to have a load of roaches until that point, and the workers to maintain constant reinforcements.
Over any 10 games or so I manage to even out the worker count on all bases a bit better, or to defend the third better and saturate it faster so I can sustain unit production for when it's showtime.
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On April 08 2012 19:06 Sianos wrote:
When a low level player ask for help, the common answer is just macro better. It´s not a real goal that you can aim for. Wouldn´t it be a good idea to ask about his strategy and give him tips on that? I mean the way you build you production/upgrades etc has a lot to do with your strategy.
Strategy can't be applied in lower leagues, since people there can't execute them anyway. You can't tell a silver player "do a 3 tank push into taking a third" etc, cause he doesn't have the mechanics to do that. It's better to tell the silver player "get some barracks and a factory and attack when you have a bunch of units".
The only "strategy" that is necessary in lower leagues is to have a brief knowledge about hard counters, like not mass hydras vs 7 colossus.
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I think strategy is required to a certain intuitive degree. I think the reason for 'Macro better' movement is not that Macro will gain you the most wins in the least time, but that it'll make a foundation which can be used in higher leagues.
Instead of dictating what one should build, I think it is better to encourage lower league players to experiment and compare experiences of what works and what not. Look at replays to extract knowledge, instead of for copying. Players who rely on getting help to increase their own skill level will plateau really quickly. (However, getting someone to whip you on probe/pylon production etc. is okey.)
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The big problem is some strats assume a high multitasking ability, esp. anything where you have to micro harass units while still macroing. Basic timing pushes are still fine. Even if they are late, the defender will also have less stuff.
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Destiny showed on stream that he went pure mass queen and won against diamond players. So strategy until high diamond-low/mid masters is maybe 2% of what you should be doing in a game.
There is also a HUGE difference between strategy and gameplan.
Strategy is your ingame decision making what would be the best next course of action. Gameplan is your out of game decision on what you want to be doing 5, 10, 15 minutes into the game and what you want to win with.
Best way to get from bronze to diamond is have 1 gameplan per matchup, and then just focus on maxing out as fast as possible.
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A lot. Considering that you have about the same macro skill level which equals overall skill up to high masters. So in a low level game with both players producing units at the same low rate a hellion army beats a zergling army .
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On April 08 2012 20:44 TechSc2 wrote:
Destiny showed on stream that he went pure mass queen and won against diamond players. So strategy until high diamond-low/mid masters is maybe 2% of what you should be doing in a game.
There is also a HUGE difference between strategy and gameplan.
Strategy is your ingame decision making what would be the best next course of action. Gameplan is your out of game decision on what you want to be doing 5, 10, 15 minutes into the game and what you want to win with.
Best way to get from bronze to diamond is have 1 gameplan per matchup, and then just focus on maxing out as fast as possible.
I watched all the Destiny games. He had to get extremely inventive by the time he started meeting Plats, at one point flat out cheating with NP infestors. He succeeding in proving that a player with GM mechanics is badly crippled by using the wrong strat.
And your definition of strategy is actually the opposite of the RL meaning.
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I don´t agrre with the people saying Macro has nothing to do with strategy or your gameplan. Sure Macro is an on topic, but the way you Macro influence your strategy. For example, doing early double upgrades and getting a fast 3rd while having less production facilities, don´t allow you to do pushes aggainst players who invest in army/tech and taking their 3rd slower than you, because you won´t have enough units to do damage to them which results in direct attacks beeing pointless in the early-midgame. When your goal is to not allow your opponent to take his 4th base, then you can invest your ressources into upgrades/expandtions tech until your opponent want´s to take his 4th to get the most advantages you can have at this given point in order to achieve your goal. I think everyone agrees, that having 3/3 upgrades instead of 2/2 when your opponent want´s to take his 4th give´s you better chances in achieving your goal there. Otherwise when you want to pin your opponent on just two bases you have to invest more in production facilities, so that you have a bigger army at that point, when your opponent takes his 3rd. I´m also saying that strategy or your overall gameplan gives you triggers to attack. Everytime you want to attack you have a specific goal in mind, what you want to achieve with that attack. I often see the players in TvZ just attacking over the creep right into the opponents main army, which often results in stupid army losses. When you have the goal to deny X Y expandtion, you can make your army more efficient and you have a clear goal in mind what you want to achieve with that attack. With this your understanding of the game and of "How to Macro godd " becomes better, because like i said, the strategy influence your way to Macro.
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I'd just like to say that one of the problems with discussions about 'problem with macro at this point' etc is that very often, the replays where such mistakes can be found can actually be found on both sides, not necessarily more son on the side of the person uploading the replay, so strategy is still relevant. Destiny already had drastically better multitasking and macro-management ability than the players he was going against, but in reality, a person who is stuck at whatever league cannot generally just bump up their multitasking and macro-management ability overnight, so they will need more than just improved mechanical ability to rise up through the ranks, seeing as, when they do start going up the ladder, they will face more players with superior mechanics. If you have poor strategy/'builds'/responses, you probably will not rise up just by 'improving your macro' because you may well only be matching the mechanical abilities of your opponents, not trumping them with GM or professional level mechanics. ALL areas will likely need to improve for players to rise up the ranks, not to say that slowly improving only macro will do nothing, but if the strategy is shaky at higher play, then a slight increase in overall mechanics would probably only keep you steady at best.
I disagree with TechSc2's definition of strategy. Strategy is the more broad idea encompassing things such as your 'game plan' and ability to respond to situations intelligently and appropriately.
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A lot. Considering that you have about the same macro skill level which equals overall skill up to high masters. So in a low level game with both players producing units at the same low rate a hellion army beats a zergling army .
Don't be fucking ridiculous dude. A bronze will know enough that pure hellion beats zergling.
And on another note, it's entirely possible for pure ling to beat pure hellions. It's all about timings and macro. I'm 100% sure I could beat any bronze-gold with pure ling against their pure hellion play.
Playing the game enough will tell you things like 'dont make hydras against colossi' and 'i should go towards hive now that my opponent is getting lots of deathball stuff'. With the knowledge that's pretty basic, like hellion vs ling, a gold or platinum should really be focusing on macro.
It's just SO much more important to watch your replays, and analyze your inject/depot/chrono/gas timings, rather than 'should I have made a tech switch?" or "should I have harassed?".
I can't believe this is even an argument. 100% of masters+ players are TELLING you this. They were all bronze at one time too. But every bronze knows better, of course. It's like balance discussions...
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if u go into a game without having a plan or a clue what u want to do u always lose no matter which league
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Well they need atleast some stratetgic knowledge because sixpool is still pretty common in lower leagues I guess.
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On April 08 2012 21:02 Monkeyballs25 wrote:Show nested quote +On April 08 2012 20:44 TechSc2 wrote:
Destiny showed on stream that he went pure mass queen and won against diamond players. So strategy until high diamond-low/mid masters is maybe 2% of what you should be doing in a game.
There is also a HUGE difference between strategy and gameplan.
Strategy is your ingame decision making what would be the best next course of action. Gameplan is your out of game decision on what you want to be doing 5, 10, 15 minutes into the game and what you want to win with.
Best way to get from bronze to diamond is have 1 gameplan per matchup, and then just focus on maxing out as fast as possible. I watched all the Destiny games. He had to get extremely inventive by the time he started meeting Plats, at one point flat out cheating with NP infestors. He succeeding in proving that a player with GM mechanics is badly crippled by using the wrong strat. And your definition of strategy is actually the opposite of the RL meaning.
Enlighten me, what is the RL defination of Strategy?
+ Show Spoiler +Dictionary explanation of strategy: The ability to acomplish goals with the current available resources (Dutch english translated)
::EDIT:: you cannot agree or disagree on a word that is explained in a dictionary....
i.e. you are terran, you have your first medivac out, and you can decide if you want to drop with it, or you want to push the front with it. THAT IS the defination of strategy. How you are getting the medivac out is your gameplan.
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You don't need strategy in the lower leagues.
Just rush in bronze and silver, learn to two-base in gold, learn to macro in plat...
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On April 08 2012 21:33 madhyene wrote:
You don't need strategy in the lower leagues.
Just rush in bronze and silver, learn to two-base in gold, learn to macro in plat...
lmao
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EPT
