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On May 08 2014 04:38 TheZov wrote:Show nested quote +On May 08 2014 04:30 Lobotomist wrote:
Love the point about dedicated hotkeys for scout and for creep queen(s). I've used a hotkey that was shared for both, and its probably part of my lack of midgame scouting.
Also I have a question about rallying. Say you're on 3 bases, and your nat is getting pushed slowly (ie a terran is sieging up between your third and your nat, preparing to push). How do you rally your reinforcements so that they don't suicide into the attacking units? See last point under Zerg Macro Mechanic: Learn how to macro-bind your units to their respective control groups. This is done by CNTRL+clicking the eggs (de-selects the larva, leaving only the eggs selected), and hitting Shift+# where # is the hotkey of the appropriate control group. [blockquote]Example: When spawning zerglings to be grouped to Cntrl group 2, you select larva, hold down Z, the cntrl+click the eggs to de-select larvae, then hit Shift+2. This pre-assigns un-spawned units to join the specified control group before they even hatch, greatly speeding up production, regrouping, and eliminating almost all need for rallies.[/blockquote] Alternatively, if Terran has already split your bases, you will have to re-set rallies on your hatcheries to keep reinforcements from running past the Terran army. IE - main to ramp, natural to mineral line, third to third, etc. This is pretty APM intensive. You'll have to select all the units and engage along with your main army. For this reason, I prefer macro-binding so any unit made is automatically included in a control group before it hatches.
This is exactly what I wanted to know and was about to ask somewhere on these forums. Have been pondering how people put the eggs directly into contro, groups once you start banking larvae. Thanks TheZov, this post really helped me out. =D
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On May 08 2014 17:13 Shuffleblade wrote:Show nested quote +On May 08 2014 04:38 TheZov wrote:On May 08 2014 04:30 Lobotomist wrote:
Love the point about dedicated hotkeys for scout and for creep queen(s). I've used a hotkey that was shared for both, and its probably part of my lack of midgame scouting.
Also I have a question about rallying. Say you're on 3 bases, and your nat is getting pushed slowly (ie a terran is sieging up between your third and your nat, preparing to push). How do you rally your reinforcements so that they don't suicide into the attacking units? See last point under Zerg Macro Mechanic: Learn how to macro-bind your units to their respective control groups. This is done by CNTRL+clicking the eggs (de-selects the larva, leaving only the eggs selected), and hitting Shift+# where # is the hotkey of the appropriate control group. [blockquote]Example: When spawning zerglings to be grouped to Cntrl group 2, you select larva, hold down Z, the cntrl+click the eggs to de-select larvae, then hit Shift+2. This pre-assigns un-spawned units to join the specified control group before they even hatch, greatly speeding up production, regrouping, and eliminating almost all need for rallies.[/blockquote] Alternatively, if Terran has already split your bases, you will have to re-set rallies on your hatcheries to keep reinforcements from running past the Terran army. IE - main to ramp, natural to mineral line, third to third, etc. This is pretty APM intensive. You'll have to select all the units and engage along with your main army. For this reason, I prefer macro-binding so any unit made is automatically included in a control group before it hatches. This is exactly what I wanted to know and was about to ask somewhere on these forums. Have been pondering how people put the eggs directly into contro, groups once you start banking larvae. Thanks TheZov, this post really helped me out. =D have you seen TheCore custom hotkey layout thread? It's never too far from the top in the strat forum. One of the things that layout does is change ctrl from "create control group" to "add to control group", which makes adding morphing eggs to control groups only take 2 simultaneous buttons rather than 3. Just something to consider.
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Russian Federation34 Posts
Sure thing buddy, it's even good in the beginning of the game, too. Once the muscle memory's there, it only takes a half second. I don't think I've built a single unit that I haven't bound in two years. Cheers
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This is an awesome post. It inspires me to get infested :D
I am a struggling low level player, since starcraft 2 got released. Highest league being gold.
My questions are:
1. How much does APM count towards being a good zerg player?
2. How much APM do think is sufficient per league? (if there is such a thing.) Or
3. How much APM do think is ok to play plat for example.
4. What is your suggestion on improving APM?
The reason i say this is that you mention in your production cycle a few things that according to you if done well takes 10 seconds... I think t takes me about double that if not more.(will have to go watch replays to determine though.
Here is the reason I ask. My APM on average now in gold league is about 75.
(source on limited data but all i have atm: http://ggtracker.com/players/981766/ZedraC#?race=zerg&page=1) Edit 1:, after posting i tested the link and it does not seem to work properly, but believe me it was accurate stats, in fact it was an ave of 76.8 APM)
A friend of mine averages about 45 (also as zerg) and cannot get out of silver.
A lot of the time during a game I realize : "what i should be doing" but it always seems like i am to slow to get to it.... then everything starts grumbling apart.
Edit 2: I tried to extract this info (ave APM per league) from ggtracker, but there does not seem to be an easy way.
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Lovely reading, will only take a few days to get thru :D Thanks for the guide, really well done and much appreciated!
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United States4883 Posts
On May 20 2014 00:00 ZedraC wrote:This is an awesome post. It inspires me to get infested :D I am a struggling low level player, since starcraft 2 got released. Highest league being gold. My questions are: 1. How much does APM count towards being a good zerg player? 2. How much APM do think is sufficient per league? (if there is such a thing.) Or 3. How much APM do think is ok to play plat for example. 4. What is your suggestion on improving APM? The reason i say this is that you mention in your production cycle a few things that according to you if done well takes 10 seconds... I think t takes me about double that if not more.(will have to go watch replays to determine though. Here is the reason I ask. My APM on average now in gold league is about 75. (source on limited data but all i have atm: http://ggtracker.com/players/981766/ZedraC#?race=zerg&page=1) Edit 1:, after posting i tested the link and it does not seem to work properly, but believe me it was accurate stats, in fact it was an ave of 76.8 APM) A friend of mine averages about 45 (also as zerg) and cannot get out of silver. A lot of the time during a game I realize : "what i should be doing" but it always seems like i am to slow to get to it.... then everything starts grumbling apart. Edit 2: I tried to extract this info (ave APM per league) from ggtracker, but there does not seem to be an easy way.
The truth about APM, honestly, is that it doesn't REALLY matter. My APM floats around 200 most of the time. I have friends who average ~120, 160, 230, even one friend who plays at about 70-80 APM. But we're all around the same top diamond/masters level. You can easily attain 200+ simply buy getting used to spamming and having a lot of useless actions; it's surprisingly not that hard.
The secret to speed and efficiency is just making sure you're doing everything you need to be doing at the right times. If your individual actions are too slow to attain this goal, your overall speed takes a dramatic dip. That said, for Zerg, just practice "the macro cycle" until you can comfortably constantly inject, spend larva, and spread creep without any hiccups. I highly suggest practicing on the "Inject/creep spread" custom map every day before laddering. Beyond this basic macro, everything boils down to game plan and decision making; that is, knowing what you want to do going into the game and reacting immediately to your opponent without having to think. Once you get to know more about the game, what you're planning on doing, and how to deal with certain pressures and responses, your speed is going to increase. I personally place more emphasis on the mechanics portion because mechanics are rather easy to practice and think through and will automatically help you achieve everything else you need to achieve.
EDIT: If you're still getting used to the macro cycle, I highly recommend breaking it down and doing only two things at a time (i.e. start with ONLY injecting and spending larva, don't even worry about creep spread).
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Thank you SC2John.
I usually don't spam and feel the only advantage of spamming as warming up your hand. I do however hold down my create ovie or drone button though.
I am going to practice the macro cycle more and see how it goes. Maybe my problem is game sense. Like the OP said, maybe i am engaging wrong or at the wrong times. Maybe i should just work on my scouting...
Anyways. Thanks for the answer.
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Nice work, its a good write-up. Will definitely put some of that in my play. I am top diamond, but I never ever thought of the fact that it could be handy to produce overlords directly after injects..
Thanks for this. I'm sure to regularly come back here and see if I am forgetting anything! 
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Russian Federation34 Posts
I agree with SC2John's assessment that it's all about execution of decisions. It is, however, also about the elimination of certain decisions. Another way to say this is that APM is actually a reflection of your thinking more than the mechanical button-mashing itself. As you learn to think several actions ahead, those actions will come with less delay. Obviously, practice makes a big difference here (apm spamming is largely pointless IMHO). Over time, certain actions will self-organize into groupings accessible almost entirely through muscle memory.
Example: Inject, make overlords, spawn-rally overlord eggs, tend to creep tumors, scout, spawn. Depending on the stage of the game this grouping (let's say on 3 base) this could be 50-100+ individual keystrokes, or actions. However, because you're performing them largely intuitively and without thinking, they can be executed very quickly. The difference between a player who practiced it over a course of several thousand games and a beginner is that a beginner has to narrate to himself: "Ok, gotta remember to inject. Gotta remember to make overlords. What's next? Oh, I should rally them. I need to creep spread. What am I forgetting?.." This is like reading by pronouncing each letter; doable, but ineffective.
A master performs these actions subconsciously. Keep in mind that players of the highest caliber "express" their race's dynamic perfectly without ever having to think about specific actions. The same with musicians - they don't think in terms of notes or chords, only in terms of progressively longer and more complex sequences. (Actually, even lower level players can learn this. By the time you're splitting your armies and macroing/injecting during engagements + microing your fighting units al at the same time, your APM will have gone up substantially). The biggest difference between, say 80 APM and 150 APM is mostly about "reading" ahead into your game plan and thereby eliminating the thinking pauses about what's next. Playing at 150APM is surprisingly attainable even to lower level players once game sense is sufficiently developed.
Another useful analogy may be to think about it in terms of "lag", that is, the lag behind the game being played in your BRAIN vs the game being played on your SCREEN. The higher the APM, the less lag there is. The lower the APM, the more delay between thought and execution. Therefore, one interested in self-improvement should focus primarily on in-game pattern recognition, correct decision making, and following the developmental trajectory.
Once you see your play in terms of a series of such groupings, your execution of the individual commands will necessarily accelerate. That's because actions take less time to execute in groups than they do by themselves.
Think about issuing a separate command for spawning an overlord on three separate occasions at random times in the game. IF you have to a) remember about supply, b) check your supply, c) spawn overlord each time, you're going to be both slow and probably supply-blocked. Alternatively, if you make them all at once (4 s vvv) after you inject 3 hatcheries, and you do it automatically, you've not only eliminated the decision-making that goes into having to decide to make overlords each time, but you've also PRE-spawned the supply limit for your future round of larva, allowing you to mass-produce. And anytime you can hold down the production button as opposed to trickle-building individual units, your APM average goes up substantially.
In any case, don't worry too much about how fast you play because speed will always build incrementally as the overall skill ceiling rises. Try to play as much as you can and have fun doing it, analyze your losses and rehearse certain counters and timings. Then getting faster will just be a positive side effect of play.
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Thanks for the feedback. I appreciate it.
Everything you say makes sense to me. I think for now I am only going concentrate on the sequence of actions to be taken for a week or so (the production cycle), just going through those motions time and time again until I have the muscle memory down going to a-move my armies and not concentrate on the battles at all. Then look at my APM again in a week or two.
I am going to make a mental note to report back in a week or two to let you know whether there has been any improvements. Hopefully there is and maybe it will motivate more peeps to just go and do it.
Go well kind Sir
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Hi TheZov,
I'm a new zerg player and this has been the most helpful thing I've read/practiced so far
Do you have checking the minimap and minerals etc tied to any part of the cycle to do it subconsciously?
Cheers
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United States4883 Posts
On May 24 2014 08:12 p3llikan wrote:Hi TheZov, I'm a new zerg player and this has been the most helpful thing I've read/practiced so far Do you have checking the minimap and minerals etc tied to any part of the cycle to do it subconsciously? Cheers
I know you asked TheZov, but I'd thought I'd throw in my thoughts, for what they're worth.
In the past, I have bound together making units/building buildings -> checking the minimap and minerals/supply. If you get into the habit of injecting -> looking at the minimap, spending larva -> spreading creep, etc., you tend to keep on top of things. In addition, it also relates to other races as well since you're constantly making pylons, supply depots, and other buildings all the time.
Then again, my ACTUAL minimap awareness is shit, so maybe I shouldn't be answering hahahaha.
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Russian Federation34 Posts
On May 24 2014 22:31 SC2John wrote:Show nested quote +On May 24 2014 08:12 p3llikan wrote:Hi TheZov, I'm a new zerg player and this has been the most helpful thing I've read/practiced so far Do you have checking the minimap and minerals etc tied to any part of the cycle to do it subconsciously? Cheers I know you asked TheZov, but I'd thought I'd throw in my thoughts, for what they're worth. In the past, I have bound together making units/building buildings -> checking the minimap and minerals/supply. If you get into the habit of injecting -> looking at the minimap, spending larva -> spreading creep, etc., you tend to keep on top of things. In addition, it also relates to other races as well since you're constantly making pylons, supply depots, and other buildings all the time. Then again, my ACTUAL minimap awareness is shit, so maybe I shouldn't be answering hahahaha.
Haha! Mine could be a lot better too... I agree, I think it's just a matter of mastering the creep spread mechanic and then you'll pretty much be watching it all the time
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This is great Thank you for posting it. I haven't been paying much attention as of late, but I feel that zerg doesn't get much love for massive guides (aside from Blade555) in the TL strat.
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this is excellent.
THANK YOU
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On May 02 2014 17:27 Shuffleblade wrote:Show nested quote +On May 02 2014 15:47 TheZov wrote:
-Don’t neglect PRESSURE as a means of scouting. If you have units that are not immediately defending, they should be actively poking and prodding to elicit a response. This response from your opponent will reveal his composition and confidence level (IE - he will either run, or chase, and that will allow you to know if you should make units or drones. Chasing you? Make units. Running? Make drones. This tug of war is the appropriate way to use your units, NEVER allow un-used units to be inactive, sitting in your base.
Just want to comment that having "un-used/inactive" units sitting in your base is actually very important at times for drop defence. If you have your whole army out on the map pressuring then the threat of for example a double pronged medivac drop could actually do game changing damage. The same principle is true vs a protoss that you for example know have a warp prism on the map. Otherwise I think its a very well written guide for improving, I feel that it was a very useful read for me and I will probably use it for my own practise for a while. Really liked the 40 drone rule, never heard that before and it sounds like it really makes sense. Thank you for taking the time writting it and sharing it with us here on TL. Very good job =)
You should never have units in your base EVER (unless when he drops ofc), just by having units there you let your opponent do damage by actually doing nothing, the threat is all in your head and you being scared of a drop makes you lose valuable units that could be a deciding factor in a fight or by doing a sidepush into a *newly taking expansion. You should have overlords in all the airspaces where you can't see without a ground unit or creep (creep always best option, but i rather scatter 4 lings out on vital scouting positions then have 20 of them idling in the base) and then simply use minimap awareness to see when drops are incoming and either pull back or intercept with mutas.
When you have mutas out he can still drop you if you are on the wrong angle of his base so when you're at the wrong angle you should have you're ground army closer to home.
There is so much to go into on just this specific topic in general if you want I can explain more to you in private.
Great thread by the way, this is what I've tried to get into so many peoples heads. I couldn't have said it better myself! =)
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Great post, i enjoyed reading this despite being a terran player .
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On May 20 2014 00:00 ZedraC wrote:This is an awesome post. It inspires me to get infested :D I am a struggling low level player, since starcraft 2 got released. Highest league being gold. My questions are: 1. How much does APM count towards being a good zerg player? 2. How much APM do think is sufficient per league? (if there is such a thing.) Or 3. How much APM do think is ok to play plat for example. 4. What is your suggestion on improving APM? The reason i say this is that you mention in your production cycle a few things that according to you if done well takes 10 seconds... I think t takes me about double that if not more.(will have to go watch replays to determine though. Here is the reason I ask. My APM on average now in gold league is about 75. (source on limited data but all i have atm: http://ggtracker.com/players/981766/ZedraC#?race=zerg&page=1) Edit 1:, after posting i tested the link and it does not seem to work properly, but believe me it was accurate stats, in fact it was an ave of 76.8 APM) A friend of mine averages about 45 (also as zerg) and cannot get out of silver. A lot of the time during a game I realize : "what i should be doing" but it always seems like i am to slow to get to it.... then everything starts grumbling apart. Edit 2: I tried to extract this info (ave APM per league) from ggtracker, but there does not seem to be an easy way.
APM doesn't really matter past a certain point but if your APM is at the low end it definitely does matter. But this normally just means you aren't doing as much as you could be. For example with 30APM you will be macroing too slowly to spend money efficiently - or if you are that's all you'll be doing.
I would say that to comfortably be Diamond ~60APM is required. To be a high Masters player you will need ~80APM for Zerg/Protoss and ~100APM for Terran, as a rough minimum. The increase is more due to micro and positioning, which become a lot more important at Master's level. You don't need more than 60APM for 'perfect' macro, as long as all of your actions are useful.
The key is that if you are thinking about what you should be doing then that is slowing you down, you need to know ahead of time: already know what you will be doing and your hands will learn to keep up.
Another tip to increase your APM at low levels is to really try and incorporate more hotkey use, e.g. one ladder session learn the attack/armour upgrade hotkeys, another session learn to seige/unseige with hotkeys. (Don't try to learn all hotkeys at once). Clicking the buttons is slower as you have to move the mouse across the screen and this takes time away from other actions you could be performing.
Hope this helps.
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Russian Federation34 Posts
Isn't APM just like typing on a keyboard? You can go slow and with 100% accuracy, or you can blaze and make mistakes that cause you to stop and correct it. With time you begin to type faster but with less mistakes...
Maybe it's an oversimplification, but it sure seems like worrying about APM going up is not terribly useful. I played at an average of 150 in M, but a Plat friend of mine plays at 180. Does that illustrate it's not a very accurate representative of skill?
There's a correlation between skill and speed, sure, but I think learning to think 5 moves ahead is more important than being able to perform those 5 moves very quickly. Physical speed will follow mental speed.
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reading it all
Really inspiring for zerg players
I learned a lot
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EPT
