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On April 10 2012 21:42 Shivvy wrote:
I'm in gold and can still use the same build versus all 3 races and win. Strategy really has no importance; ...
You know that you actually do have a strategy there that you use against all 3 races, don't you? You just call it different by saying "build". Do you know why you can win with it against all 3 races? You can execute the build/strategy well, because you use it so often. This frees up your mind to macro more properly which leads to you having a bigger army than your opponent and eventually winning.
So this is my whole point. In lower leagues it just matters that you have A strategy/build or let's say a rough gameplan to macro better. In higher leagues you need to know a variety of strategies and choose one depending on what your opponent does, because people can macro very well already. Strategy is less important in lower leagues than in higher, but it's not unimportant.
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Strategy is unimportant bronze to plat.
What is more important is a knowledge of the game and how the relationship of economy to army to tech works. Once you understand this then you are better able to gauge if you are behind or ahead, and what appropriate actions to take in general terms.
Then once you know how to macro decently, you are gold/plat and then you can work on unit comps and tactics.
A build is not a strategy. It can be indicative of one, but a build is really just a premade, preplanned set of actions. It does not (necessarily) have any strategic value in itself.
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strategy is vital in every league, no big surprises in a real time strategy game. FYI macro is strategy, the strategy of building workers, building s etc at certain times
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On April 11 2012 03:16 dogabutila wrote:
Strategy is unimportant bronze to plat.
What is more important is a knowledge of the game and how the relationship of economy to army to tech works. Once you understand this then you are better able to gauge if you are behind or ahead, and what appropriate actions to take in general terms.
Then once you know how to macro decently, you are gold/plat and then you can work on unit comps and tactics.
A build is not a strategy. It can be indicative of one, but a build is really just a premade, preplanned set of actions. It does not (necessarily) have any strategic value in itself.
See my post above on redefining strategy to suit your own views, then claiming low leagues have no strategy.
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It really is of greatly reduced importance in the lower leagues. When I can't sleep at night I like to get on SC2 and play customs 1v1 on Shattered, and do silly stuff. You get a lot of bronze to platinum players jumping into your games between the Masters players.
I pretty much go mass ground Vikings every game, with 95% winrate against sub-Diamond players. If they're Diamond/Masters Zerg it still works sometimes (overlords). I don't bother against Diamond/Masters Terran and Protoss.
1 Base Mass Assault Mode Viking is about the worst strategy imaginable. The health/damage of ground vikings makes them roughly as effective as 2 marines, if marines cost 75 minerals and 37 gas, had no stim, overly expensive upgrades, and were made from Barracks that cost 100 gas each. Mass Sentry is about the only worse composition.
But if you have good mechanics, you can do idiotic stuff like that and beat people up to Platinum easily. That's why people just repeat ad nauseum JUST MACRO JUST MACRO JUST MACRO (however non-descriptive that may be).
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Replay of mass viking game? Sounds like fun 
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In lower leagues, strategy is pretty set. Since you play terran... You decide to go bio ball, mech, or marine/tank. Because transitioning from bio->mech or mech->bio has a lot of disadvantages, you sort of have to commit to one build, and that ends up pushing your strategy in one general direction.
For instance, you play bio, so you will have to make use of a mobile force via drops or catching your opponent out of position. Play mech or bio/mech, you are less mobile and therefore push slowly and methodically. This is all strategy, and your unit composition guides your play style.
As you go up to higher leagues, you have to start taking into account what your opponent is doing. What buildings does he have and on how many bases? How large is his army and where is it right now? etc. Once you have that information, you take a look at your own base and units and decide whether now is a good time to attack and where to attack first. Because this is all done in real time, it requires alertness and reasonable multitasking skills (and sufficient mechanics).
As you get better at the scouting aspect, you can then work on unit control. Figure out what each unit should be doing during the engagement, and how you can manipulate units to either take less damage, or do more damage. Practice this, and then you can move on to the 'finer' things... like special builds that hit at specific times, and are meant to deal a certain type of blow to your opponent.
The way i see it, the learning curve sort of goes this way:
macro -> scouting -> unit control
you could learn any of these out of order and still win games, but i think the natural progression goes like the above, and the 'strategy' aspect is embedded in each step. your unit composition is determined while you macro, and your scouting will determine how you engage. your unit control will be icing on the cake (your strategy).
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As a random player who just got promoted into plat, I can assure you that even builds are not really needed until you get into high gold. Until that point the only numbers I knew were 15 hatch, 13 gate, and 12 barracks. After that I pretty much just made as much of whatever felt right to beat the opponent with. Once I got to high gold I decided I wanted to start playing better and adopted some standard builds, but I have no doubt that I could easily have gotten to where I am now with just macro and building things semi-intelligently.
I suppose you could call building the right units strategy to an extent...but that's pretty simple. As long as you just build units and expand getting into at least gold is very easy. After that I don't doubt that upon perfecting the builds I have begun to use I will get into diamond no problem.
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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.
Lets be fair he was using mass queens, those things take FOREVER to get to the enemy base. Had he gone something like pure lings he probably would of been fine till like high diamond
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I think its good practice to know what openings are standard in all matchups and just do them blindly without any knowledge as to why they are good. More importantly don't question why the opening is good, just do it because if it is standard play it should be capable of handling all situations in the matchup. It will make you more comfortable with those standard styles of play once you do have the macro to play well. The focus should be on macro and not questioning the BO though.
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On April 11 2012 05:59 DreamChaser wrote:Show nested quote +On April 08 2012 21:02 Monkeyballs25 wrote: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. Lets be fair he was using mass queens, those things take FOREVER to get to the enemy base. Had he gone something like pure lings he probably would of been fine till like high diamond
If he'd used a better strategy he'd have gotten to a higher league? You don't say
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Strategy doesnt have to be what the pro players do.
I was playing in bronze because I was bored, and my strategy, no matter what race I play against, I am going to contain them inside of their base, sneak in with a probe and a warp prism, and fill their base with cannons until they leave the game. My stratgey worked every game
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The people that tell you to focus on macro in lower leagues are not saying that it's the only way to progress. Those people believe that macro is a FUNDAMENTAL part of the game, and without it, you cannot build correctly. If you don't have solid fundamentals, you will alter the other parts of your game to compensate, which isn't ideal. Yes, you can strategize your way to higher leagues, and many other ways, but if the fundamentals of your game are not solid, you will eventually reach a point where they are holding you back.
If you look at how children are taught things (how to play instruments, or sports, etc), they will start with fundamentals first, then move on to the rest for exactly this reason.
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STrategy is a lot more important then what people are saying in this thread. It's more important for several reasons.
1. A strategy works as a guide, which make it a lot easier to keep up you macro.
2. A strategy gives you a goal, something to work for (like doubledrop to take out spawningpool)
3. Making a strategy work will give you pride in your play, and make you want to push forward and learn new strategies.
I'm sure there are more, but these, i think, are the most important.
So to answer the op, strategy is essential in lower leagues as well as higher. It seems everyone say strategy is not important for every league under the one they are in. But as someone who's worked his way from bronze and up, i know strategy is everything!
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strategy is extremely important in all leagues
if you have the wrong comp and you macro/micro the same you'll lose
if you macro better you'll get into higher leagues but if you can't understand the strategy behind the game you'll be in a lower league (eg. "i macro at a masters level but i always use wrong comp so i'm in plat) for instance
some people have great game sense (we'll use naniwa) but they aren't the best at micro or macro (naniwa).
he still won many tourneys, i'm not saying by any stretch he is bad in either category but the ability to read your opponent especially in ladder games helps a lot.
for instance last game i saw a terran try to wall me off (ie i scouted him first on tal'darim), so my probe was dead but i scouted a long time. I saw one barracks (up to about 25ish supply on my side) and no expansion (1 gas as well, probably @ 13 or 14). Heres the game sense drill, what do you do? I cancelled my nexus and four gated. he had one tank and a handful of marines and i just rolled him. (he was 1 1 1ing i saw the starport with a techlab building something when i attacked). If i just expanded sure i could have held off his attack (long rush) but strategy and game sense allows me to pick up victories i might not normally have been able to) (i'm poor against the 1 1 1 all in build). Macro is arguably better in a setting where people play overly safe (NA) but game sense will help more in a more aggressive setting (korea?). making correct decisions off of scouting is key because otherwise theres no reason to scout: sharpening game sense will help like macro will
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Strategy exists in lower level play, it's just very different. For instance, I remember being proud of myself one game back when I was in Gold league when I realized I could kill a drone harassing my pylon by simply creating the "our drones are under attack!" message via probe harassment in the Zerg main and then attacking the harassing drone with two probes.
What it comes down to is whether you're playing to win the current game or playing to improve. The skills of solid mechanics will continue to serve you well as you climb the ladder, whereas a specific strategy you develop may become less relevant down the line.
That said, you really don't need to play a standard build to work on mechanics. Feel free to Funday Monday it up; so long as you're focusing on macro and micro in-game and leave the silly strategizing to between games, you're not really hurting yourself at all and you get to have some extra fun too!
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Strategy is the most important part in every league, it's just what part of strategy you should be focusing on in your league that should matter.
In the pro-scene, strategy would involve mind-games, unique build orders since they have already have adequate macro/micro and army positioning knowledge and skill.
When you get to diamond/master league, it would be more about army composition/positioning, scouting/reacting and they would have sufficient macro/micro skill developed.
Then at lower leagues, players should focus on trying to get a better economy than the enemy thus have more fighting units at their disposal to overpower (ie: a-move) their enemy. Although they should take into consideration of army composition to some degree such as 'build vikings if they have colossus' and 'don't run bio army into a wall of sieged tanks', however, these things is more considered knowledge rather than skill at this point.
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On April 10 2012 21:43 Monkeyballs25 wrote:Show nested quote +On April 10 2012 21:18 Belial88 wrote:+ Show Spoiler +^ No, it's the other way around.
Macro well, strategy will follow. There isn't much strategy to really understand, the game is pretty straightforward. At the lower levels, strategy doesn't exist because of the lack of macro. 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. But you'll always see it in masters+. You may see mutas, or mass roach, or warp gate timing, but you won't see all the facets of a 'normal' PvZ in a lower league game.
Without proper macro on both sides, strategy doesn't exist. Macro is the basics of this game. So the problem, is that Diamond players aren't really considered playing the game. They don't have the basics down. So any 'strategy' ends up viable if you macro better, and the game isn't played at a 'competent' level where things really make sense. There is no strategy in the lower leagues. You may think it is, but it's not. All you have in the lower leagues is basics of how the game may flow, like stalker/colossi, but that's more unit composition, not strategy. Strategy is ALL about timings, and the lower levels don't have the macro to make such timings exist. Its easy to say strategy doesn't exist in low leagues, when you make up your own definition of strategy to specifically exclude it. As long as you have EQUAL macro on both sides, strategy exists.
Equal lower level macro doesn't mean anything though. It's impossible to quantify that into any meaningful strategy discussion. You can't ask somone how to hold off the triple supply block into late gas 3 tank timing push at 12 minutes because in another game he might only get supply blocked twice or 4 times. It's nonsensical.
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Telling a lower league player to learn strategy is somewhat dangerous. The biggest reasons that immediately come to mind are:
1. Strategy relies on execution, which means macro. If I tell you to go with a 4 rax pressure build that involves an attack once stim and combat shieds finish, then this is an example of a strategy. However, this strategy really only works because of the time at which it hits and the number of units you get for your attack. Both of these are heavily contingent upon your macro. A similar push that occurs a minute later, even if it involves more units, may be awful. The clearest example of this would be the 4 gate rush for protoss. A poorly executed 4 gate is worse than just a middle of the road, generic macro opening.
2. People tend to get too focused on details in a strategy. Overall expansion counts and composition are all well and good, but many people will try to reduce a strategy down to timings or food count. These are usually variable and need to be adjusted depending on what you scout. People will also try to find a specific push or tactic that is supposed to end the game. If it goes off, does the big damage, but the game doesn't end; then what do you do?
I think that the much more fundamental skill you should focus on is identifying your advantage and utilizing it. If you know that your advantage is macro because he delayed an expo for some aggression, then maybe you decide to try to starve your opponent out while outexpanding him. (in this context, i mean macro advantage based on events in a particular game, not relative skill at macro) If you see an opponent that invested heavily in some sort of tech unit, then maybe your advantage is mobility and you should do multipronged harass to keep him stuck in his base.
Basically, having a very refined strategy is something that is going to be most helpful at the end, when you are confident in your fundamentals and also feel that your opponents are likely to be good enough that you can't win by just executing everything better. Before that, its probably better to just have a a basic idea of what compositions you like and how fast you feel comfortable expanding depending on the map and what you scout.
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EPT
