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There have been countless threads on players saying focus on Macro, Macro and more Macro. Macro is the single most important factor of any player's success or lack there of.
As a zerg, the players I study to no end are Idra, Ret, and Stephano. What do these players all have in common? They macro like Gods and rarely cheese or go all-in.
Now compare this to the Korean style of play. Anyone thats watched people playing on the Korean ladder, know these guys are aggressive to no end. From 2 Rax bunker play to early pools, anything goes with the Koreans.
All the best Korean zergs mixed up their builds. Leenock and July being on the extreme end but even DRG and Nestea will be aggressive at times. Whether its DRG pulling a Roach baneling bust on a terran or Nestea pullilng an 8 pool in ZvZ.
My question is if our strict focus on "Macro" could be a detriment to the top level players. I dont pretend to live in Korea, but it seems like they practice a much more aggressive style of play than foreigners. There is something to be said of being forced to being aggressive instead of always macro'ing. There have been a few players trying to preach the benefits of aggressive play, such as Tang, but these posts are usually met with anger and disgust. However, one could agrue that mechanics are learned through aggressive all-ins more so than building more SCVs.
The proof though is looking at the Korean players. Yeah, they practice to no-end and face better competition but they also play in an enviroment of attacking. Just compare when there is cheese in the GSL, the korean spectators appreciate it as an opportunity to take down a weakness. In the US ladder, people think its garbage.
I grew up hating cheese and all-ins like most American zergs. I cringe whenever I see a 8 pool or cannons. But maybe us foreigners have to take a look at why Koreans embrace this and we dont.
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I agree that foreigners may be focusing a little too much on macro and that aggression is one big thing that sets koreans apart from foreigners. However, one thing that must not be forgotten is that they are coupling this aggression with brilliant macro. Without this brilliant macro their aggression is not nearly as effective. Macro, macro, macro is often preached to learning players because they tend to neglect macro when they are putting on aggression, resulting in more harm than good. However, I don't know if this should stop people trying to be aggressive, all while trying to improve their macro and multitasking in addition.
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Having good macro doesn't mean you can't also be aggressive. At the highest level you need to be able to micro aggressively while flawlessly keeping up with your macro. You don't have to do one or the other. Any time Liquid'Hero is streaming, check him out, and you'll see. He is not only the most aggressive Protoss you will ever watch stream, he also expands the most aggressively. Hero will throw down an expansion when absolutely no other Protoss would dare to, and he will be doing some crazy 3 pronged harassment while doing so.
Aggressive play is not the same thing as going allin, going allin/cheesing is not the same thing as not macroing, and in fact no matter what style of play you do you NEED to have solid macro backing it up. And generally, the more ways you can find to attack and harass and pressure while executing macro oriented builds, the better.
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I think Snute (okay, not a top pro, but still decent), said that if he would give someone any advice when starting out, it's to be aggressive. Pick the most aggressive build (6 pool for zerg), and just learn how that works out. When considering time spent, you'd just learn more playing 10 6 pool games, than one 'turtle for 40 minutes' game.
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I'm sorry, but what about this is "American macro"? Idra is the only american mentioned.
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the mere fact you call an aggresive build "cheese" is the answer to your question. "american zergs" are all wana-be idras in the fact that if anyone does anything aggressive / non-standard they are a gimmicky scrub. that's just the mentality on NA.
I play on the korean server a lot and they have a completely different mindset on the game. Micro-ing well and being aggressive is seen as "skilled", not "gimmicky" as a generic NA zerg would call it. If I execute a well micro-d stargate all in in PvT on the NA server I get BM'd 90% of the time, but on KR they will just GG.
Macro in starcraft 2 is easy. Saying you're a good macro player is not really saying much. But if you can mix in crazy aggressive builds AND have amazing korean-level micro AND macro well behind it (Again, not hard) THAT will make you a great player, and it is a large factor as to why korean players are better than americans.
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On April 12 2012 17:32 Tobberoth wrote:
I'm sorry, but what about this is "American macro"? Idra is the only american mentioned.
He is using it to refer to the most common mindset of American players - and pointing out macro players of different nationalities that he look up to. Not claiming those players are American.
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i think macro is wrong word. turtle is more like it
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On April 12 2012 17:35 aebriol wrote:Show nested quote +On April 12 2012 17:32 Tobberoth wrote:
I'm sorry, but what about this is "American macro"? Idra is the only american mentioned. He is using it to refer to the most common mindset of American players - and pointing out macro players of different nationalities that he look up to. Not claiming those players are American.
I'm pretty sure this mindset has nothing to do with American players, it's true for all european players as well. As he said himself, Ret and Stephano are both macro beasts. Jinro got far in the GSL because he was the first Terran to play a real macro style. Makes far more sense to say "foreign macro" than "american macro".
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I only used "American" macro because Im not familiar with the EU ladder. I didnt want to speak on behalf of all EU players.
I just know what the mindset is in America. I assumed its the same for all foreigners, at least zerg players.
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the main difference between foreigners and koreans regarding the all in vs marco aspect is:
there are two good reason for allinning once in a while. first reason is to be unreadable, so your opponent cant just ecocheese you and skip on units. second reason for allinning is to see a weakness in the opponents play (weak wall-off, not enough units etc.) and outright punish your opponent with a huge (allinnish) attack.
in both aspects koreans > foreigners right now.
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Aggressive play is always better than just macroing home, because it can force your opponent to make mistakes. However, as some of the previous posters have stated, good macro is required in order to do anything efficiently, be it a turtle or aggressive strategy. Therefore it's good to focus on getting good at macro before you decide to switch it up with aggressive plays. Top level players should definitely handle both kinds of strategies.
On April 12 2012 16:58 sfbaydave wrote:
However, one could agrue that mechanics are learned through aggressive all-ins more so than building more SCVs.
I would argue that your mechanics will improve only at handling a small army and a few buildings. E.g. lings and banelings from 2 hatcheries. Macroing 3 bases, upgrades and a larger army is harder, and you can't practice those mechanics with fast pushes. Of course, if all you do is 2base all-ins, you have nothing to worry about!
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As others before said: Early aggression is not cheese.
Koreans apply pressure at all stages, from early- to lategame, and their builds are tailored to being aggressive which allows them to be more greedy because the opponent can't attack if you have units attacking him all the time. Many foreigners play "Go strong eco and concentrate on surviving" because they lack the training and speed to multitask good enough for such levels of aggression.
If you watch for example Stephano, he doesn't usually go 7pool but he still applies pressure on the opponent. He's very aggressive (See for example game 2 vs Nestea in IPL4 where he's constantly in nesteas face with roaches, so nestea has to concentrate on not dying) and still backs it up with good economy. This is what makes him very korean-like, compared to for example Ret or IdrA who prefer to sit back until they have everything they need to move out. That works against other passive players but against Koreans, it just crumbles under the pressure.
EDIT:
On April 12 2012 19:22 tuukster wrote:Aggressive play is always better than just macroing home, because it can force your opponent to make mistakes. However, as some of the previous posters have stated, good macro is required in order to do anything efficiently, be it a turtle or aggressive strategy. Therefore it's good to focus on getting good at macro before you decide to switch it up with aggressive plays. Top level players should definitely handle both kinds of strategies. Show nested quote +On April 12 2012 16:58 sfbaydave wrote:
However, one could agrue that mechanics are learned through aggressive all-ins more so than building more SCVs.
I would argue that your mechanics will improve only at handling a small army and a few buildings. E.g. lings and banelings from 2 hatcheries. Macroing 3 bases, upgrades and a larger army is harder, and you can't practice those mechanics with fast pushes. Of course, if all you do is 2base all-ins, you have nothing to worry about!
Macroing while sitting on your backside is easy, even i could do that easily. Macroing while constantly attacking is hard. You won't learn good macro by not doing anything until 3 bases, however, you will learn good macro by using your army and working on still hitting all those injects or having constant production.
(That is to say "good macro at top level", low level players still need to learn to macro 3 bases without doing anything army related)
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Ummm, I dunno if the right term is Macro vs cheese.
Its more like Turtling vs Aggressive.
And I do think being aggressive and being out there in the map will teach you more than turtling on a million bases
A lot of the Korean cheese is backed by awesome macro and multitasking.
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Americans have a macro-mindset? It seems whenever I watch someone stream NA ladder it's one-base all-ins 90% of the time, lol.
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Oh wow didn't know that, CombatEX 2.0.
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Northern Ireland26567 Posts
It's a pretty interesting topic, there seems to be this mentality about the 'correct' way to play matchups on NA and EU that just makes for a poisonous laddering environment. I've long appreciated the Korean 'style' of SC2 a lot more, it seems that by straining their multitasking by doing heavy pressure and macroing behind it that Koreans just keep their mechanics in tip-top shape.
Plus on top of that Koreans seem to have better decision making/on the fly build adjustments than I see on even some of the top foreigners that stream.
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The difference is people in NA at least (no experience in EU) want to play "the right way" and if that means win or lose, that's fine with them. That's my experience on ladder. On KR, it's you either win or win, doesn't matter if you worker rush or cannon rush, or play a long macro game, as long as you win.
I've had so many people BM me on ladder simply cause I would lose a lot defending a 2 base pressure and instead of just sitting back and playing a macro game, I pull my SCVs and just go and kill the other player cause I'd be way too far behind.
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Why can't he use Tang as a source? Even if Tang uses ways to trick people to make money, he does play and teach aggressive playstyle, which suits him just fine as a source for this post. The anti-tang vendetta is way off-topic.
Ontopic: I find on europe that playing aggresive (as a zerg) (I don't cheese but do cut some eco to build a army and expand behind it if i feel the push wont finish it) does awake alot of anger towards me from my opponents. But i really do like the play style and keep on using it where i see fit.
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EPT
