I know you only specifically asked for micro tips, but I would like to point out some major build order flaws here and there. A lot of the terran micro vs P is spread your units to try to nullify as much AOE as possible (including army splitting and positing your army to gain as large of an arc as possible.
1. You should get a bunker after you start your 2nd marine, to be safe. If you're feeling risky, or confident in your micro, place your marines at the top of the small ramp leading to your natural, which will allow you to micro vs the zealot/stalker. However, if he were to come from your 3rd than you will have the same problem was you did in this game (having to pull SCVs). Your bunker is also too far forward. If you were too get hit by a sudden attack, your bunker would fall before you SCVs could even get there to repair. Place it a bit closer to your CC, not only can you get repairs quicker, it forces the protoss to enter the (rather large) choke at the entrance of your natural so he cannot get as large as a concave.
2. Again with bunker placement for your 2nd bunker.
-- Your SCV production and build order is a bit far behind, so I wont comment on any BO mistakes after this, only micro. But with your timings being behind, any competent protoss that gets his tech at the right time will always have his T3 tech (storm/colossi) when he should, and you wont have an answer to it (as you mentioned). If you tighten up your build order and SCV/Army production, you could have the things you need, when you need them.
3. At 13:30-ish you have your first real engagement. Here are some things you should have been doing during that fight.
- Have combat shield. You don't have it here, and there is no reason why you shouldn't.
- Stutter stepping your army BACKWARDS, away from the zealots. There is no need to stand there and take their hits.
- Always have an eye out for what his tech is. In this case, High Templar. As soon as you see HT in a fight you need to start splitting your army ASAP. Select about half your army and send them in a direction that the other half of your army isn't at. Then grab half of each of those 2 groups and split them apart, and so on, so your units are as spread out as much as possible while still contributing to the fight. DO NOT just stand in a storm if you can help it. Even if he lands a storm on the main part of your army, MOVE OUT OF IT. Going HT before colossi is generally riskier for the protoss than going colossi before HT because the protoss is relying on landing great storms, and the terran opponent having poor enough micro to not dodge the storms.
4. At 16:00 when he pushes your natural, same thing. You stim your army but don't move them in to attack. You don't stutter step away from the zealots, and you sit in the storms.
5. When you make a ghost academy, research the energy upgrade immediately. You want to be able to EMP as soon as the ghost is produced.
6. At 19:00, you literally ran your entire army into constant storms. Never, ever, ever, ever do that. If you see a pack of HTs with the army (as you did see) select your ghosts, cloak them if you have it, and send them ahead without the rest of your army. Try to get an EMP on them if they are clumped up. If they are spread out just try to use snipe on them.
7. When you countered that attack you did at least get some EMPs off, but you still ate a few storms. And you focus fired the nexus. Almost always you will want to prioritize killing his probes over the nexus. Just select a section of your army and send them to the mineral line to take care of probes while you dance with his army.
8. At about 23:30, you should never push up that small ramp like that when his army is sitting up there. You lost way more than you should have and it is only by the mistakes of your opponent that you aren't getting slaughtered.
9. At about 28:00, you eat more storms trying to push down his ramp. You saw that he had colossus at about 19 minutes, yet 10 minutes later you haven't even built 1 Viking. You upgraded ship plating (always get +attack first) but you make 0 Vikings. You sacrifice your whole army to try to focus fire down his colossus. Just split and spread your army and stutter yourself AWAY from the colossi.
You won the game, but not because you played well. Only because your protoss opponent played worse than you. You made the same basic mistakes in every engagement, and with a little practice they can be fixed. If you produce more SCVs, and get better at your overall unit production and base management, it will become a lot easier for you to beat protoss. I hope this helped, good luck!
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Sup, I also was just going to comment on micro tips, but 9 minutes into your replay I've already noticed a few flaws I'd like to point out.
First off, your first depot, for the last year and a half at least it's generally preferred to go for 10 depot instead of 9, not a huge difference but it can help you be ever so slightly more efficient.
As hymm said, start your bunker after your second marine, or if you ever decide to go command center first, immediately as your barracks finishes and you start your first marine. This helps you be safer against a chrono'd zealot, or chrono'd stalker aggro. When you're scouting, try to keep your scv alive and hide it out on the map where the stalker won't find it as he goes to poke your natural, the stalker usually pops around 4:15, and usually leaves their base by 4:30, between 4:30-4:45 ish, send your scv back into his base during that window to scout again, so you don't have to blindly make that second bunker if you don't have to.
Also, your engineering bay is late, depending on your variation, usually it's preferred to get it before the factory, as you get your reactors on your barracks, or after the factory if you're going for faster medevacs. Also, don't forget to take your third gas as your factory is finishing up, and you start your starport. All these little timings really do make a difference in your build. Your fourth barracks is a little bit un-necessary that early, and you were really late getting combat shield. Having stim, combat shield, and +1 with just the 3 barracks is just generally more efficient with getting your infrastructure completed, and your medevac push more potent the earlier you can hit it. The fourth/fifth rax usually is timed right after you start your third, or before it depending if the protoss is going for a high gate-way all-in.
If you just refine your build order a bit, your army you had at 12:30 at your tower, would have had combat shields and +1 completed by 11:00-11:30ish, and with constant production, probably would have had more army supply with it as well. Generally you want to try to push their natural at 10:30 with stim, +1 attack, and 2 medevacs, as that's the best timing window to deal damage and delay their tech, unless they rushed straight to colossi.
As far as your actual push is concerned, it was good that you didn't attack up the ramp and chose the pathway to the third, allowing a slightly better concave and less ability for forcefields to trap you, but you didn't split much at all, and just stood in his storms. Typically when going for such an engagement, you want to try to pre-split before you attack into him, (or better yet, bait him into attacking into your concave) try to keep your marauders in front, and keep your spread marines behind them, try to bait storms/forcefields with ~4 marauders, by poking back and forth with them picking off a unit or two.
While you're pushing, land your third and start mining, you were way oversaturated in your main/natural. Also by 15 minutes you should have had both 1/1 upgrades completed, with your armory and second engineering bay done. Typically the standard timing for your ghost academy is after you're mining your third, and right after your armory is completed and you start 2/2, then throw it down.
At 20 minutes, you a-moved your army to try to defend your third, right into those storms, and terran simply cannot a-move or, you just die. The only real reason you won that engagement was because he only had 1 colossus, and he still hasn't gotten any upgrades himself.
6. At 19:00, you literally ran your entire army into constant storms. Never, ever, ever, ever do that. If you see a pack of HTs with the army (as you did see) select your ghosts, cloak them if you have it, and send them ahead without the rest of your army. Try to get an EMP on them if they are clumped up. If they are spread out just try to use snipe on them.
7. When you countered that attack you did at least get some EMPs off, but you still ate a few storms. And you focus fired the nexus. Almost always you will want to prioritize killing his probes over the nexus. Just select a section of your army and send them to the mineral line to take care of probes while you dance with his army.
This.^ Also, be careful not to over-stim your army, that really hurts you especially against zealots, and even more-so when they have charge. You over-stimmed your entire army almost every engagement from what I saw.
As the game progresses into late-game, (which it shouldn't have, 30 minutes and the protoss is still 0/0) try to queue less, and add additional barracks, you used 1500+ resources queueing units, when you could have had more rax to produce out of quite a bit earlier.
Now, as far as actual micro tips, I noticed that you were starting to send your ghosts out ahead later on in the game which is good, but if there's colossus on the field, you want to try to send vikings, and your ghosts out at the same time, so you can scan and kill the observer with them if you don't have a raven, or poke at colossus, giving you free reign with your ghosts to emp clumped templar, and sniping them if they're split, or individual ones. And then it all comes down to baiting your engagements, you have to dance with their army to get into position, instead of just clashing head to head. Here's some basic ideas of what your army's should have looked like when you engaged, but over-all, I think you just need to practice pre-splitting and organizing your units both offensively and defensively. Here's 2 examples of what I mean, minus of course army size, because naturally you would have lost some units in previous battles, but the same idea.
Defending your third, you had your factory scout the attack, and if it was just in a slightly better position, you would have had plenty of time to set up your army more like this, give or take half the supply from previous engagements.
+ Show Spoiler +
Even though you were a little late, just pre-spreading before engaging and pulling your marauders/ghosts to the front would have helped you out so much. (Although I must say, awesome use of a defensive nuke, would have liked to see more of that in the replay.)
And then counter-attacking, give or take half the supply, or late-game when you're maxed and ready to attack. Your push should look somewhat like this:
Baiting the fight with your marauders, while positionally shutting down the ramp from the colossus with the vikings (which you should have had) and any units/templar clumping on the ramp is efficiently emp'd, or sniped.
+ Show Spoiler +
Dance a little bit baiting more storms until you snipe/emp as many templar as you can, or if he's set up defensively pre-spread, and is force fielding you out, fully prepared for your attack, don't commit, try a drop at his natural to make him pull some of his army back and distract him, and then keep dancing with him trying to pull his army out of position, and targeting as much of his aoe units as you can with your bait pokes and vikings. The trick to tvp when trying to force an engagement, is to bait him into your concave, with all of your units already prepared, because attacking into a protoss is incredibly dangerous because as you felt, a single templar in the back that you can't quite snipe, can decimate a lot of your marines if they're clumped, combine that with a colossus, and a couple forcefields, and there goes a bunch of your army supply.
You can also try running a handful of units to flank along that modern day tastosis secret pathway near the third to target colossi/templar, or to just run into the probe line forcing him to target you two different ways.
Anyways, sorry for the wall of text, and I don't mean to "tell you how to play" or anything, but there's my point of view on how to properly engage with your army, with a little bit of suggestions on how to refine your build order. For specifically micro oriented tips, the main thing to highlight is just, pre-spread, and bait, while keeping your ghosts/vikings on a second hotkey for easy access. I apologize if it's a little hard to read, just got off night shift and am not thinking all that clearly.
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EPT![[image loading]](http://i48.tinypic.com/ngzg4g.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://img854.imageshack.us/img854/826/screenshot2012121909340.jpg)
