EPT[D] How important is Strategy in lower leagues? - Page 12
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SEA KarMa
Australia452 Posts
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Tobberoth
Sweden6375 Posts
However, I wasn't satisfied with that. It was obviously extremely all in and I'm not going to expect low league players to be able to deal with allins too well, especially when it's something they probably haven't seen before. So I made a new bad strategy: 3base ling in ZvZ. I decided that my goal would be to get to at least 3 base, and only build lings, using gas and tech to improve upgrades. The game took about 14 minutes, I ended up with 6 bases, never touching my opponent until I got 2/2... where I ran in and demolished him. He had roaches and mutalisks, but it obviously didn't matter at all since I was almost maxed on lings and had 3/3 on the way. Even if he had attacked me with mutas earlier, it wouldn't have mattered since I was macroing somewhat competently and could just use one of my many other bases. I'm going to play around with it a lot more, but I feel it's very easy to make reliable examples that crappy strategies easily win in lower leagues if coupled with decent mechanics and macro. | ||
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Umpteen
United Kingdom1570 Posts
On April 16 2012 20:32 Tobberoth wrote: Turned out to become something like a 5 warpgate +1 zealot attack, which crushed a gold zerg easily. However, I wasn't satisfied with that. It was obviously extremely all in and I'm not going to expect low league players to be able to deal with allins too well, especially when it's something they probably haven't seen before. Bolded the part where you acknowledge the role of scouting and understanding in facilitating an appropriate and well-macroed response  So I made a new bad strategy: 3base ling in ZvZ. I decided that my goal would be to get to at least 3 base, and only build lings, using gas and tech to improve upgrades. The game took about 14 minutes, I ended up with 6 bases, never touching my opponent until I got 2/2... where I ran in and demolished him. He had roaches and mutalisks, but it obviously didn't matter at all since I was almost maxed on lings and had 3/3 on the way. Even if he had attacked me with mutas earlier, it wouldn't have mattered since I was macroing somewhat competently and could just use one of my many other bases. Again, how can this poor guy hope to 'improve his macro' when he is clearly at a complete loss as to what he should even be trying to do? What I mean is: you're implying "Well-macroed roach/muta should have beaten my stupid strategy. Therefore his problem was his macro." Right? First question: Does well-macroed roach/muta easily beat 6-base 2/2 ling, assuming all other decisions (like him not attacking or attempting to deny bases or making banelings) stay the same? I'm happy to go with 'yes' here for the sake of argument. Next question: For the answer to the above to be yes, would he need to have known you were going to wait until you were maxed with 2-2 before attacking? Could he have macroed up game-winning roach/muta, happily letting you take bases and get upgrades uncontested, and never been in danger of losing along the way? Or would he have had to build units to be safe, and make use of those units in order to mitigate their opportunity cost? In other words, to what extent is his bad macro - or rather his difficulty in improving that macro from game to game - attributable to a lack of clear goals? He sounds a lot like me from a few weeks ago, if I'm honest: sitting in my base fretting about whether I'm safe or not, making no use of the precautionary units I've built, just hoping to be allowed to get maxed. It's impossible to pursue 'competent macro' when you're in that kind of mental state. | ||
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HeeroFX
United States2704 Posts
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Servius_Fulvius
United States947 Posts
On April 16 2012 20:32 Tobberoth wrote: I've been playing around on a smurf account to test stuff like this out in lower leagues, planning to maybe make a big blog post to focus some of the issues. Basically, even if you say strategy makes a difference in lower leagues, it's still not true. To test it, I decided to make up a strategy/build myself which I know wouldn't be all that good, and just rely on my mechanics to do it well enough to win regardless. The idea was that I would show that even a bad player can make up their own strategy using knowledge of macro to optimize it and it will be good enough, even if it's bad. So I decided to only build zealots. Since I want warp tech, I need a gas, but building a gas just for 50 gas sounds dumb, so I decided to use some more gas... enter +1 attack. So using basic knowledge of macro, I decided to build between 16 and 20 probes (I only need 150 gas and then minerals, so no need for any more), go for a completely standard opening (9 pylon, 12 gate, 13 gas etc). Other than that, I just relied on checking my resources, no build planned farther than that. Turned out to become something like a 5 warpgate +1 zealot attack, which crushed a gold zerg easily. However, I wasn't satisfied with that. It was obviously extremely all in and I'm not going to expect low league players to be able to deal with allins too well, especially when it's something they probably haven't seen before. So I made a new bad strategy: 3base ling in ZvZ. I decided that my goal would be to get to at least 3 base, and only build lings, using gas and tech to improve upgrades. The game took about 14 minutes, I ended up with 6 bases, never touching my opponent until I got 2/2... where I ran in and demolished him. He had roaches and mutalisks, but it obviously didn't matter at all since I was almost maxed on lings and had 3/3 on the way. Even if he had attacked me with mutas earlier, it wouldn't have mattered since I was macroing somewhat competently and could just use one of my many other bases. I'm going to play around with it a lot more, but I feel it's very easy to make reliable examples that crappy strategies easily win in lower leagues if coupled with decent mechanics and macro. You're not the first and certainly not the last to try something like this. I'm sure everyone is familiar with Destiny going mass queens and the reddit post from over a year ago where some guy went mass stalkers straight into diamond. It's already been well discussed. Common sentiments seem to be "Yes, you can do stupid things and get away with it in lower league with good macro" and "Lower league players don't have higher league macro senses so the tests are incomparable". Anyone can run a test like this by bombing all your team game placements and doing ridiculous strategies. As Gheed pointed out in his latest lower league troll blog, bronze leaguers especially just lack overall game knowledge instead of just macro mechanics. I was playing 2v2 with my bronze level girlfriend last night. She plays protoss and doesn't have the God-aweful macro you'd expect. She'll max a bit late, but upgrades, expansions, workers, and reinforcements are all where they're supposed to be. However, she liked attacking straight into our opponent's army by herself instead of denying expansions, harassing, and attacking in good positions. We eventually won the game, but I told her to hold off attacking and move to different locations so much that she was quite annoyed that I wasn't letting her "play the game", winning or losing. Experience with different strategies counts for a lot, as well. I'm a plat zerg and last night I played a protoss who went 1 base, 2 stargate mass void ray into zealot, sentry, stalker. I lost the game, but my macro was not the reason. I started extra queens too late and I needed more than 2 spores. The damage wasn't terrible and in the end I had almost 3 times the worker count. I went for hydra/corruptor/roach and found out the hard way that I didn't have enough resources to sustain this on two bases. Matters weren't helped when my army was caught in the middle of the map on move command when I was injecting. Even though my army had a lot "more stuff", it was still stomped because the composition wasn't right. This was the first time I encountered such a strategy and I have several ideas on what could have made it better. Problems like the game I described above are common with lower level zergs in particular. Each matchup requires reactions to a large number of strategies. Utilizing a practice partner is really the only way you can practice the same exact set of actions against ONE strategy over and over to perfect the macro needed. This won't help when you see something new, so our reaction should be to stick with what we know. This doesn't always work and then we're back to the drawing board and undoubtedly more sessions with practice partners. Those without partners learn the long and hard way through trial and error on ladder. | ||
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Monkeyballs25
531 Posts
On April 16 2012 20:32 Tobberoth wrote: I'm going to play around with it a lot more, but I feel it's very easy to make reliable examples that crappy strategies easily win in lower leagues if coupled with decent mechanics and macro. It won't be anything new, though. We've had the mass ling guy, the mass stalker guy, and the mass queen guy already mentioned before. What they've succeeded in is proving is that using a suboptimal strat leads to playing at one or more leagues below your true potential based on your mechanics and macro. | ||
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Skroach
United States85 Posts
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Skroach
United States85 Posts
On April 17 2012 00:45 Servius_Fulvius wrote: ... I'm a plat zerg and last night I played a protoss who went 1 base, 2 stargate mass void ray into zealot, sentry, stalker. I lost the game, but my macro was not the reason. I started extra queens too late and I needed more than 2 spores. The damage wasn't terrible and in the end I had almost 3 times the worker count. I went for hydra/corruptor/roach and found out the hard way that I didn't have enough resources to sustain this on two bases. Matters weren't helped when my army was caught in the middle of the map on move command when I was injecting. Even though my army had a lot "more stuff", it was still stomped because the composition wasn't right. This was the first time I encountered such a strategy and I have several ideas on what could have made it better..... Having an insufficient number of bases is arguably the most important aspect of "good macro", so your example does not support your argument that things other that macro are what mainly determine the outcomes of your games. I think this post shows why the over-used line "macro better" is actually good advice; people in lower leagues lose and rarely attribute their loss to macro. I have myself as an example: Immediately after I made it into Masters league last year, I took a break from SC2 for 9 months. I recently picked up playing again, lost over 20 games in a row, and was promptly demoted to platinum. I did not forget any of the strategy involved with winning, but my reactions were so slow I could not execute the same builds I did in the past. "Macro better" is simple advice, but this doesn't mean it is simple advice to follow. | ||
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sandyph
Indonesia1640 Posts
On April 16 2012 11:17 Belial88 wrote:That won't happen unless there's a handicap on the player... Play 3k games, you'll be masters. I have 1848 league wins which mean I've played almost 4000 games still in gold  On April 10 2012 21:18 Belial88 wrote:You don't have ZvP where toss goes FFE, has to scout if zerg takes third, then toss does sentry/zealot wg pressure, which zerg must get roaches and creep for, and then zerg gets map control to deny third, then toss gets third, then zerg gets mutas while toss has stronger army, and then zerg must keep toss in his base while he gets broodlords before the push. You will *never* see a game go like that in diamond. also this kind of game do happen quiet often in gold, with all the macro mistakes on both side which make it 'even'. though I agree that if one party macro abit better, then it would not go to the very last stage (bl switch) since the game will be over way sooner this is one replay when I macro horribly, I keep having half the supply of my opponent the whole match but somehow I end up winning the match http://drop.sc/161424 | ||
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MrTortoise
1388 Posts
macro is CLEARLY a part of strategy... this is evidenced by the abstraction that claims they are different breaking so quickly. All you need to do is macro ... but you need a build order ... oh and scouting ... adn take expansions at tyhe right time ... oh and get gas at right times ... oh and wall off properly ... oh and overlord scouting patterns ... did i mention appropiate upgrade timings. All part of macro ... begs the question what isnt part of macro? Macro is pretty quickly beginning to include the entire game dont you think? Or do you think that you are some kind of strategic genius who is doing something 'strategically' special somewhere else? What do you think the point of the game is if not to produce more shit than the other guy and kill him? Thats *really* obvious. Strategy is the large scale approach, it is how you prioritise things ... it if *far* more general an idea than 'macro' which is why you are having to import so much strategy into the idea of macro for it to have any meaning. Clue: There is a reason why White-Ra is saying special tactics rather than special strategy. It has - i suspect - something to do with him understanding what words mean - namely strategy and tactics. Is that perhaps because a computer game is simply about using a UI? ... and as a result all you are saying with MACRO is execute things on the UI cleanly and efficiently. Because you are ... and that boils down to saying L2P. Macro is a part of strategy. It also has dependencies on lots of other things. How can you win a game if you do not attack? Therefor winning is not simply about macro. So stop saying it. You sound retarded because you are over simplifying a problem to the point of it becoming meaningless. ps 2000 wins or there about in silver (but ok 1500 of them are in team games) | ||
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MrTortoise
1388 Posts
On April 17 2012 14:25 Skroach wrote: Having an insufficient number of bases is arguably the most important aspect of "good macro", so your example does not support your argument that things other that macro are what mainly determine the outcomes of your games. I think this post shows why the over-used line "macro better" is actually good advice; people in lower leagues lose and rarely attribute their loss to macro. I have myself as an example: Immediately after I made it into Masters league last year, I took a break from SC2 for 9 months. I recently picked up playing again, lost over 20 games in a row, and was promptly demoted to platinum. I did not forget any of the strategy involved with winning, but my reactions were so slow I could not execute the same builds I did in the past. "Macro better" is simple advice, but this doesn't mean it is simple advice to follow. That isn't reactions. its muscle memory ... but its also a slow decision process that is clouded by doubt (or more likley just not remembering stuff with lots of 'oh yeah thats why i did that' moments) THe point is that 'macro better' offers no information value to people reading it. so its terrible way of communicating how to get better. Expansino timings are subtle things. Denying that is silly, there is a huge amount of information that needs to be processed (if you are not automatically going 15 pool 17 hatch) and weighed up (Eg pvp vs pvz). sure you can claim that is macro .. but then i claim all you are saying is 'get better at sc2' - the information content is pretty equivalent. | ||
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SnowFantasy
4173 Posts
Good macro on its own will take you pretty far. :S | ||
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Servius_Fulvius
United States947 Posts
On April 17 2012 14:25 Skroach wrote: Having an insufficient number of bases is arguably the most important aspect of "good macro", so your example does not support your argument that things other that macro are what mainly determine the outcomes of your games. I think this post shows why the over-used line "macro better" is actually good advice; people in lower leagues lose and rarely attribute their loss to macro. I actually had a sufficient number of bases. The protoss was on one base. I was on two. I had a massive worker lead as well. Unspent resources were low and I had a lot of "stuff". I just didn't have the right "stuff" and died. The same thing happened to me last night. Some guy went mass raven and all I had was zergling/baneling to take down his buildings. Once again, wrong composition. Take a protoss I beat yesterday as another example. He had more blink stalkers than I had roaches. I won the battle because he only blinked once and then let his stalkers die. It didn't matter that he had more than me - his composition wasn't correct and composition is purely a strategic choice. And I never said "what MAINLY determined the outcomes of my games". A lot of my wins and losses are associated with macro. Take a zvz I played last night where I couldn't break my opponent's third because their better injects lead to a larger army. However, I won because I got four bases, better upgrades, and 9 broodlords while they were stuck on three bases and, as I saw in the replay, 3000 unspent resources with 32 larva and about 80 open supply at the end. I suppose calling the win based on "macro" or "strategy" also has to do with the way you see it. Three times since Saturday I've played against this weird 2 stargate voidray into carrier build. All three times my base gets attacked and all three times I take my 25 or so roaches, counterattack, and cripple my opponent's economy. Counterattacking is a strategy. The fact I have all those roaches is macro. Their lack of defending units at home is macro, though their choice to build carriers revolved around some strategy. Of course someone else can view this differently because the definitions of "strategy" and "macro" are so vague one could subjectively call it one or the other and make an argument. P.S. - Did some pro (or day9 daily) popularize the 2 base carrier build recently? That's usually what happens when I see different plays like this.... | ||
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antz0r
Australia168 Posts
edit: I might add that macro is important and needs to be focused on, but it's not that fun doing it religiously so to break it up, have a go at microing your units excessively, or just concentrating on getting the tap-hotkey-macro thing going, or get used to using the minimap religiously, or try and rush all in off 1 base, or two bases, or do something cheesy. Anything to keep it interesting because the idea of macroing better is easy to say, but hard to do. Changing your focus around a bit helps break up the monotony of it and keeps the game fresh and interesting. | ||
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taitanik
Latvia231 Posts
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Monkeyballs25
531 Posts
A macrobot. An AI that's designed to do nothing but build pylons and probes and a random unit composition of its choice. Let it loose on a selection of players of different leagues and see how it performs. If it gets a 50% winrate against diamond, the "nothing but macro" advocates win. If it doesn't the "strategy is important too" crowd wins. | ||
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celeryman
United States54 Posts
On April 18 2012 01:49 Monkeyballs25 wrote: I just thought of a way that these tiresome debates could be ended or atleast cut down on a lot. A macrobot. An AI that's designed to do nothing but build pylons and probes and a random unit composition of its choice. Let it loose on a selection of players of different leagues and see how it performs. If it gets a 50% winrate against diamond, the "nothing but macro" advocates win. If it doesn't the "strategy is important too" crowd wins. I like this idea. Maybe 10 years from now when SC3 is in production, they'll open up a bot API and Stanford can have a graduate project to design a bot, much as they did for BW (yes i realize there's bots now, but they're not legitimate; imagine what they could turn into if they were legal and endorsed). But ya these threads are tiresome. Most people just post the same tired bullshit without reading anything above them. It's easy to say "macro more" when a couple replies into it you realize that the guy's definition of macro is pretty much every possible choice in the game. "You were on 3 bases when he was on 4... well that's a macro issue." When you get to define what the question means, I guess any answer's plausible. But that advice is about as useful as telling your little brother to "be confident" and he'll get a date to the prom. To be useful people need to explain what that means. "build more workers" is pretty useful advice... as is "spend your money", but beyond that, you gotta be specific. It'd be nice if people'd admit that strategic choices matter, but at some skill threshold the basic problems in making things slowly eclipse any strategic choices. Or maybe, most strategic choices. That'd be refreshing. I doubt we'll see that anytime soon. EDIT: THe point is that 'macro better' offers no information value to people reading it. so its terrible way of communicating how to get better. Expansino timings are subtle things. Denying that is silly, there is a huge amount of information that needs to be processed (if you are not automatically going 15 pool 17 hatch) and weighed up (Eg pvp vs pvz). sure you can claim that is macro .. but then i claim all you are saying is 'get better at sc2' - the information content is pretty equivalent. This is one of the smartest statements i've seen in this thread. | ||
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gronnelg
Norway354 Posts
E.g. micro, macro, multitasking, decision making, knowlegde (such as builds, timings, strategies, etc.). All these skills go into making you a good or bad player. If you lack in one area, you will be worse than if you didnt have that weakness. But strengths in other areas can make up for it. With that in mind, some sort of strategy will be important in the lower leagues too. | ||
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NoBanMeAgain
United States194 Posts
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teamsolid
Canada3668 Posts
On April 16 2012 15:55 aggu wrote: I decided to put the 'macro better into masters' theory into test, since I was a bronze terran player. Haven't been able to play that much, but I am winning almost every game so far, got me into high silver rather instantly. In the last game, however, I was not winning convincingly against silver opponent, so I checked the replay. I noticed certain problems: First problem: too many SCVs. How bad is it to have extra SCVs? I had ~90. Should I try to learn to stop at ~70? Second problem: spending is difficult after 3rd base and say 6 orbitals, or after 200/200. Should I just build rax after rax, or rather try to tech up and produce thors and stuff? Is my gas going to sustain high tech units? How to sink all those minerals? or should i start banking at that point? Third: If I let the opponent to max out as well, I don't know how to make use of my better macro. If say ultras eat all my marines, reproduction is too slow never mind I have 10 bases and 10k in the bank, and I get killed even if I have more bases and other stuff. I lost once because I a-moved my MM+viking ball into zealot+templar army. It was not pretty. I had ~20-30 rax, several orbitals, and all the money but couldn't resupply fast enough and lost to 2-base protoss. i guess it's about resupply speed, if the enemy starts to kill my orbitals which are at this point everywhere, I win because I can resupply. I played protoss before and this wasn't a problem. So I guess the problem is how to take advantage of terran macro when the income becomes ridiculously high but supply is capped. Teching is slow, too. 1. 70-80 SCVs are ideal, but more is not a big mistake. It's always better to have MORE SCVs than to have too few. Also, you can easily lose SCVs to runby's, you can use them as meatshield for your marines if necessary, etc. 2. If you macro is indeed superior, just go kill him anytime. You don't have to wait til 200/200. But yes, if you do hit max, just make more raxes, more factories, more starports. Constantly keeping your upgrades going so you have near 3/3 by the time you're maxed is also part of macro. In fact, if you're only focusing on macro, you'll probably have a larger army for the majority of the game compared to your opponent if you check your replay. If not, it's not true that your macro is superior. Now, we could get into strategy and talk about when you should make thors and when not to, but it should hardly matter until you're at least diamond to be honest. 3. Ultras won't eat all of your marines if you have a large macro advantage. Unless of course you've actually hit 200/200 already and are twiddling your thumbs, patiently waiting for your opponent to catch up in supply while your resource bank ticks up. Piling up resources due to either supply block or due to supply max --> I would consider both of them poor macro. How to take advantage of terran macro when the income becomes ridiculously high but supply is capped? Why not attack before your supply is capped? And while your units are attacking, make sure you continue to spend your money, so that you're not banking. But of course, I'm sure you would have come to this realization yourself as well after more games. | ||
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