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I don't have the possibility to watch your replays, but as low diamond zerg, I recognize many of your problems, and I have managed to overcome some of them, at least to some extent. 
- Yes, as you say, and as every thread on TL says, if you are in silver, your focus should be on mechanics and macro. No matter how many times you read it, it is hard to realise how much stronger you can be with proper macro until you actually manage to do it yourself. But just continue training focusing on macro, a game of warmup vs AI and then go to the ladder. Eventually you will manage to completely overpower attacks that you struggle with now, and it will feel great.  But you already know all that it seems.
- Gas timing. This is something I struggled a lot with. I am still nowhere perfect, but I feel a lot more comfortable now. I think the "answer" I found was that you should take the gas a bit before you will spend the gas. It sounds trivial, but it actually helped me a lot.
For example, assume I want to first build a lot of drones, maybe do some upgrades, and at a certain point (to defend an attack for example) start building a lot of roaches. I will first need a little gas for the upgrades, so I should take 1 gas (or 2 if you want to upgrade a lot) decently early. I will start spending gas once the roach warren is up, so I need to start mining gas from most of my geysers a bit before the warren pops. Starting mining gas when the warren is done means that I will miss my first round of roaches, I want to start mining early enough so that I can build the first wave when the warren pops. Which means that I have to build the gases about the same time or a bit before I put down the roach warren (a gas builds faster than a warren). In other words, what limits when I can start massing roaches is not when I put down the warren, but when I put down the extra gasses.
I think the main lesson I learned was that from mining essentially only minerals (droning, lings), it is a loooong way to having any substantial number of gas units on the map. So having a ling outside his base, and seeing him leave with a lot of marines and medivacs is only useful if you actually can build defence. If you still have not put your gasses down, you are in general screwed. So you will have to guess a few minutes ahead when he will attack, and start preparing with gasses in time. You can still drone while building gasses, though, and you often need to, as 4 (one building the gas) drones will go in each gas. The fact that you can use larva to build a lot of fighting units at the last second doesn't mean that you don't have to think about defence up to that point. You still need to collect the needed gas in time to burst the units out. You need to prepare for that final burst of units well in time.
- Scouting. As someone else said above: in silver it is probably enough to scout how many bases they are on. No point in spending time on learning exact timings, as people in general do not perform perfect builds. Whatever attack you get will come much earlier once you are in master. So better to do "relative" timings, compared to your own build. So if he stays on one base (Send first OL to his natural, suicide ling to figure out what he builds), you can get an expo, but don't drone up too much, and you may not be able to get to lair tech before he attacks, so prepare to defend a one base timing with hatchery tech at first. As soon as you hold of the first attack (if it doesn't come, slowly start droning and teching again, while suiciding lings to keep track) build a wave of drones (and expand/tech as you feel like). Try to fit in an evo chamber so you can build spores vs air/cloaked.
Possibly you can separate 1 base rush and 1 base timing. Send a drone out to scout for proxies, 2 rax, 9 pool etc.
If you see him take his nat. That means that you can safely drone for another minute or two minutes before taking gas, and maybe even taking a third, specially vs toss. Send OL/ling to his third, and prepare for a 2 base timing as long as he doesn't take it. Again, from the point where you put down the gasses to the point where you will start using larva for gas units, it is quite some time, so you will have time to add a lot of drones in between. So you just add the gasses in time, and then fill up with the drones while they build.
I hope all that made some sense. 
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On August 08 2012 06:16 Streygo wrote:Hello yet again. I followed the advice, watched Filter's movie and practiced on a medium AI. The focus whas entirely on macro. + Show Spoiler +In a nutshell:
14pool
15 hatch
6 minute 4x gas
7 minute Roach warren and double evo.
At 6 minutes I have 36 drones and 2 producing
At 8 minutes I have 49 drones and 6 producing
At 13:50 minutes I max out on 1/1 roaches (2/2 done by the time I get to the AI's base)
Against an AI everything goes smoothly. I have no problems at all. Against a player it doesnt go well really. I have to take into account he is in Diamond league starting to face Master league players. But I had hoped that I would at leaste have a decent shot of winning taking all your advice in to account. I would like to have your toughts of this replay. http://www.sc2replays.eu/show-replay-26351-0-deskana_z_-vs-streygo_z.htmlAgain, thank you so much for taking the time analyzing my games.
Watching this replay now. I'm Platinum Zerg in case it matters.
Gasless expand in ZvZ is quite dangerous as early aggression is often a feature, so you need to have a clear idea of how you would defend. I would actually not suggest 15 hatch ZvZ for Silver level players as you really need to be on the ball to counter early aggression. If you want to then go for it (it will be good for you in the long run) but be prepared for a lot of cheap losses until you understand how to defend. Speedling aggression in the early part of this game would have had you in all kinds of trouble.
Definitely a lot of macro issues (drone not in position to drop hatch at 300 minerals, supply blocks, floating 600-700 minerals by 6:00) but you said you were aware of those so I won't harp on them too much. They are very important though - you are up to 1000 mineral float by 7:00, for example. This is the kind of thing that's keeping you in Silver. Your macro appears better than it actually is because you were playing so greedy (no lings or even spines yet).
7:35, 6 speedling poke from your opponent - I think this is for scouting rather than damage (he could have hit you much harder and earlier if he wanted) but you have no units or spines so I suspect it will cause some trouble.
8:20, yep, I was right.
Your opening is a big problem - it seems to be modified ZvP 3 hatch gasless without the 3rd hatch, which is not working well. I suggest doing a few searches on ZvZ guides (Chaosvuistje's speedling expand is a good one and quite forgiving for lower leagues, although a bit dated) pick one and work on understanding the concepts and getting the timings crisp. Opinions differ on whether macro alone is enough to get you to Diamond - my opinion is that it can, IF you play standard, and learning to play standard is more difficult for lower level players than a lot of people think. In other words, if you think that "macro better" means make nothing but drones and queens up to saturation on 3 bases in all matchups before making a spine or attacking unit then no, better macro alone is not enough to get you to Diamond.
Back to the game. Note that you're now down by 8-9 drones after that attack, partly from the damage but mostly because you were forced to make lots of lings and he droned behind it. You are seriously in need of a 3rd base - with the amount of minerals you are floating, you could have had one at 5:00 without any impact on your build whatsoever.
At 10:00 you are floating 2.6k minerals and around 8k gas. This could have been 30 roaches with better macro. What could you have done with 30 roaches at this point? Your opponent has 8, plus a handful of speedlings.
Injects are actually pretty good for Silver - I don't think this is your biggest issue, although you will need to learn to do it on more than 2 hatcheries. You are maxed 200/200 at 14:30 off 2 bases(!) which is pretty impressive, but with 3 bases and double your production (4 hatches to your 2) I'd still give the advantage to your opponent despite being 20 supply down.
Don't attack into all those spines if you can help it - break the rocks and attack the 3rd. Hatch snipes were nice but it was way too late for you by that point.
In summary, find a proper build for each matchup and learn it. Work on not getting supply blocked - remember that later in the game you will be making more rounds of units at once and need more supply room. Learn proper expansion timings, or if you have trouble with that just try expanding quicker. Try to stay one base ahead in ZvP/ZvT, and a few drones ahead on equal bases in ZvZ. If you find yourself floating as many resources as you did in this game, drop a macro hatch. You MUST learn how to play effectively on >2 bases if you want to be a macro Zerg.
Things you did well: injects, making drones, keeping up production during battles, overlord scouting early game and spotting expansions. Try to keep those going while working on the points above.
You might like to take a look at Arisen's post "improving as a low level macro Zerg" under recommended threads - I found it very useful when I was in your position.
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Thanks to everyone for responding. It helps a lot!
I had a discussion with Deskana, (the friend I play against in the last replay I submitted) and he also agrees with all the feedback everyone here is giving me. The thing is though, from his observation, I crumple under pressure too easy.
- My macro is mediocre at best if i'm left alone. Injects are reasonable on 2 bases, but i get supply blocked every now and then. This however is something that can be fixed with practice.
- The build I'm using is not standard, or it is but not a good idea at my level of macro. Learning a standard build like speedling-expand for ZvZ can be learned and practiced too.
- Learning to macro under pressure, or while harassing/scouting is too APM intensive. I'm not really fast. witch leads me to the question, how passive can I afford to be? I will have to learn to macro under pressure, that is a fact. A-moving into an opponent his army/base is not APM intensive too. But macro + micro is more then I can handle. Is that something I will automatically overcome when macro gets second nature? Or am I missing some key elements in the way I should be playing?
In summary, I will download a whole bunch of replays starring different pro Zerg players and deduce what they do. I understand that the best way to learn is to "steal the build" from then and replicate it. I have to be realistic though, and know that I can't replicate what they are doing.
- Solid macro is key.
- No supply blocks are key.
- Keep the money low (macro hatch when you can afford it)
Those 3 points will most likely keep me busy for a while.
I would love to receive a lot more feedback, but you all are correct. Macro needs to improve. It will automatically fix the spending and the supply blocks. Until I can do that without hick-ups, I shouldn't worry about anything else.
Again, thank you all for pointing this all out. The advice I received will carry me a long way!
@ the mods: Next time I'll ask my questions tn the appropriate help me threads
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Supply blocks are really, REALLY important to work out of your games. They are even more important than hitting your injects nicely. Every time you want to make units but you notice you are supply blocked, those units are delayed for about half a minute. That's probably half a minute of lost larvae, lost extra mining time from possible drones and so on.
I would recommend starting to use SC2Gears for checking how nice your injects are. It doesn't work yet for the current patch, but once they patch that, you should definitely check out the spawn larvae chart. As a benchmark, I would list having an average delay of 10 seconds between your injects before 15 minutes is decent injecting. Having any number higher than that is just bad injecting and any number lower than that means your injections were better than average.
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Scouting is totally irrelevant below mid platinum.
Before that, as you mentioned, everybody does whatever the hell they feel like. I can't count the number of games I lost in lower leagues because I "scouted" what the opponent was doing.
Example:
In gold, I played a terran who took two early gas. Conclusion: serious tech incoming (super fast siege, or more likely banshees). So I prepared for that accordingly, without overreacting.
What really happened was, he rolled me with 10 redflame hellions. And lost, of course. So I asked him:
"wtf did you need all that gas for?!" - "I just like having gas" - " ... how much you have?" - "about 1000"
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On August 08 2012 22:05 Mahtasooma wrote:
Scouting is totally irrelevant below mid platinum.
Before that, as you mentioned, everybody does whatever the hell they feel like. I can't count the number of games I lost in lower leagues because I "scouted" what the opponent was doing.
Example:
In gold, I played a terran who took two early gas. Conclusion: serious tech incoming (super fast siege, or more likely banshees). So I prepared for that accordingly, without overreacting.
What really happened was, he rolled me with 10 redflame hellions. And lost, of course. So I asked him:
"wtf did you need all that gas for?!" - "I just like having gas" - " ... how much you have?" - "about 1000"
Just add 2 factory hellion to your list of things a Terran might be doing with early double gas. You didn't lose because you scouted. You lost because you were not aware of all the possibilities from the scouting information. Now you know, and in the future you wont be caught by that as easily.
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No, that's one gas. Not two gas. You don't need two gasses for two factories. At least I NEVER got hit with pure hellions (not even blue flame) off of two very (!) early gas in higher leagues. And he DID have 1000 gas when his attack hit.
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I made spines spores and all drones and queens and won in bronze/ silver in NA 
Macro right and you will win cause lower league macro is horrible.
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I'm getting in the habit of always having one empty base up more than usual, because first, your third can get sniped (where the toss usually walks home content, whereas you just transfer all your saved drones to the hidden fourth) and even if it's spotted, T and P usually goes for the most remote base, giving you a helluvalot of time to prepare once he really hits your third AND giving you a chance to have a good look at his unit comp.
In addition, the second you feel safe, you can instantly saturate the additional expo by producing 22 drones at once.
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I got through silver league recently (haven't played in a year, got screwed on placement matches lol) and damn the cheese is insane, but it forces you to scout and react properly.
Get this idea of "play standard" out of your head. I saw a day9 with the stephano build, tried it about 5 times to practice macro, was never able to pull it off once due to my opponents not playing standard. Freakin silver league can be a nightmare lol, cause you can't play on auto mode with all the cheese.
I'll give you examples of the games off the top of my head:
-I scout a P with 2 early lings, see a standard wall off so I assume fast expo, I respond with stephano triple hatch opening. I don't stop scouting though, I float an overlord into his base notice 3 gates + the one at his fake wall which is way too fast for a fast expo build, immediately cancel my 3rd hatch, drop 4 spines at my natural and try to intercept the proxy pylon that is sure to drop at my base. I'm too late to stop the proxy pylon, but hold the 4 gate pressure and eventually over power him since he's stuck on 1 base with no transition out. I won that just because of I responded to what I scouted.
-Next game, another P, I fast expo, this time drone scout earlier, notice he has nothing in his base and there's no proxy cannons in my natural. It has to be proxy gateways, and I knwo I can't hold them with a 15 hatch before pool. Instantly cancel expo, grab gas, make a roach warren and drop a sunken in my mineral line. I hold off the initial zealots with smart drone micro + that sunken until roaches finally come out around the 22 supply mark and easily win with a counter attack. Again, my stephano double expo had to be thrown out the window immediately due to what I scouted.
- game vs a T this time, drone scout, notice standard wall off with rax + depot, no addon on rax. Float in a sacrificial OV (I always sac an OV to get scout info vs terran if I can't sneak a ling or drone in), no gas, no expo... it's ... dun dun dun.. another all in, he had proxy 2 rax for the super cheese triple rax rush.
I won none of those games with high apm or macro, just basic scouting and proper decision making. Forget about specific timings and builds, focus on just what your opponent is doing. If you see standard play out of him, go nuts with whatever day9 taught and try a standard build and worry about perfect larva injects, but 9 times out 10 that won't work in silver league. Play vs what you scout, play reactive, never go into a game with the mentality that I'm only going to play build order X.
I dunno if this post is that helpful, I just remember silver and gold being hilariously cheesey, to the point where I assumed cheese every game.
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On August 08 2012 20:09 Streygo wrote:
- Learning to macro under pressure, or while harassing/scouting is too APM intensive. I'm not really fast. witch leads me to the question, how passive can I afford to be? I will have to learn to macro under pressure, that is a fact. A-moving into an opponent his army/base is not APM intensive too. But macro + micro is more then I can handle. Is that something I will automatically overcome when macro gets second nature? Or am I missing some key elements in the way I should be playing?
Good question. Ideally you should do both, but I agree that most people can't handle that in Silver (I struggle with it in Platinum myself). If you have to choose, macro and A-move is usually better than microing your army and forgetting to macro. This is especially true in lower leagues.
This does not work with all compositions - using mutas vs. Terran requires attention so you don't lose them all to stimmed marines, and infestors without micro are just expensive punching bags. Usually lower level players wanting to practice macro will be advised to go for a composition that performs OK when A-moved (mass roach or roach/hydra are typical examples). In theory you will eventually reach a point where macro is close to automatic, and you'll have more attention to spare to control your army.
In summary, I will download a whole bunch of replays starring different pro Zerg players and deduce what they do. I understand that the best way to learn is to "steal the build" from then and replicate it. I have to be realistic though, and know that I can't replicate what they are doing.
I would suggest that you also look at some of the various guide threads on TL (Belial's ZvT/ZvP guides for example are very good for learning standard play). They will usually describe the general idea behind the build and talk about key decision points, which can be hard to figure out on your own from just watching replays. Many of them will also include high level replays that have been specifically chosen to illustrate their points.
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scout with sacrificial overlord at ~7:00, that's "typical" tech timing
get 4 gas at 6:00
try to get 60 drones (including in production) by 8:00 and after that make just units (difficult to do unless you are pretty on the spot with injects)
As others have said, look at the filtersc zerg videos; they are EXTREMELY helpful in helping you with mechanics and macro, and once you reach the point where his build and strategy doesn't work, you would be able to react properly anyway because you have the mechanics down to a point where you can adjust
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This is how i learned: Intimate ZvX with Stoic.
Gm level zerg doing commentary over his games. also has mechanics VOD.
gl hf! i am masters now
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These bronze/silver/gold league threads shouldn't exist so long as FilterSC exists.
I'm being hyperbolic, but seriously. His videos will get you places (read: platinum).
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Hello everyone!
I have been stuck in Silver league for 6 seasons. Because all of you have helped me out, I've been promoted in in 2 days just by following all the advice you all gave. Thanks a lot.
This community owns!
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On August 10 2012 03:21 Streygo wrote:
Hello everyone!
I have been stuck in Silver league for 6 seasons. Because all of you have helped me out, I've been promoted in in 2 days just by following all the advice you all gave. Thanks a lot.
This community owns!
Congrats on the promotion.
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EPT
