EPT![[image loading]](http://i354.photobucket.com/albums/r416/antoinewotlk/day9groove.gif)
Obligatory Day9 Groove
To commemorate my three year anniversary since I first came to the forums, I decided to write up an article for those who are struggling with the term “strategy”, and just what needs to be focused on too at the very least make you more aware of the thought process involved with the types of decisions which should come naturally. Because once you start getting to the point where you’re playing better players – you can no longer rely solely on your macro. You also need to outsmart the person you’re playing against with a thought out plan that lasts longer then openings. Granted not always will your plan work, but you should always have some normal play in which to base any unrecognizable strategy that can be incorporated which follows not only your core idea, but the basic rules of war. Hopefully this article will offer some guidelines in how to framework your core strategy(s).
This article is devoted to one man – Sun Tzu.
For those who don’t know him, he was a very influential Chinese general during the ancient times when China was still a contingent of multiple provinces all vying for power. He himself was a philosopher and later, turned into one of the most (if not the) successful generals of all time and later went on to write the Art of War, which would of eventually be handed down from many high ranking individuals in China, until it made its way to a French translator, who gave a copy to Napoleon himself for study, and finally translated to English around the 1850’s. So Sun Tzu’s book has lasted well over 2 millenniums and yet even now its comprises of knowledge still of value now and can even be applied to more than just war – Such as business, political, and other such fields.
That said, we shall seek to observe Sun Tzu’s book (If you haven’t read it yet, I HIGHLY recommend you acquire a copy), It opens with;
“The Art of War is governed by five constant factors, all of which need to be taken into account. They are Moral Law, Heaven, Earth, The Commander, and finally method and Discipline.” –Sun Tzu
Moral Law – The uniformed law in which all subordinates follow your every word, regardless of consequence to their lives.
(Micro)
Heaven – Night and day, cold and heat, times and seasons
(Time)
Earth – Terrain, distances.
(self explanatory)
The Commander – Symbol for virtues of wisdom, sincerity, benevolence, courage, and strictness
(Balance of Micro, Macro, and strategy)
Method and Discipline – Marshaling of the army in its proper subdivisions, graduation of rank, the maintenance of roads by which supplies may reach the army, and the control of military expenditure.
(Macro)
Everyone needs to acknowledge these five factors, as they are the most basic form of army management. And in turn branch into countless strategies and tactics based on your personal knowledge on each of these subjects (A subject we’ll approach later). Once you feel you can win games just by your knowledge of those 5 subjects omitting strategy, then you can focus on tactics and strategy to win games. Until then, all the help in the world to assist you in understanding this subject is meaningless (as Chill puts it, get your macro up!).
Following this, we shall continue onwards to a much stressed subject by Sun Tzu and is quite ironically looked unfavorably by many as it falls under the term "metagame." What I am referring to is deception.
Deception is--and forever will be--essential to all forms of competition. Deception introduces what is referred as the "variable" that the opponent must account for when considering possible actions you can take, and thus he/she must take actions to prevent that possibility from occurring or else risk damage in one form or another (IE containment, economic harassment, etc..). This is greatly enhanced should we deny information that would otherwise be detrimental should our opponent be fully aware.
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As you can see, the very fact tasteless denied prolonged information, allowed a very deceptive maneuver to secure a fast victory over Day9. This is not to say simply delete a tech structure once your opponent no longer has scouting of the region. This is to say instead to acknowledge the power of deception and the impact it has which can gain a win, as Day9's failure to maintain scouting it allowed a false sense of security as he failed to account for variable change. Likewise, building just a spire as Zerg will instantly make the opposing race acquire anti-air to account for the possibility which immediately damage's the opponent without committing (IE Terran over-producing missile turrets)
Following Deception and the Five constant factors, we must now account for the length of battle. It is a rule by many alike that you cannot win by simply defending, likewise you cannot win if your sole strategic influence is to contain. As containment entices length of battle, which can directly correlate to one's own demise by the ignorance in capability to finish before the opponent has time to devise strategic maneuvers.
To put in simpler terms, the longer an engagement lasts, the more your supplies will dwindle and the longer you fail to secure victory brings possibility of defeat by simply allowing the opponent to passively acquire strength.
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Nazgul, while he was playing a very intensive game, failed to secure victory and sadly instead held back while he established map domination with expansions. Now, I am not saying that is a poor decision. Far from it. But the issue is that he held back when there were situations he could of decimated TLO and ended the game before it gotten to the point where Battlecruisers and mass nukes got into effect. Because as soon as those weapons were established on the field, Nazgul was attempting to play even in a effort to balance out the unit combinations TLO switched endlessly. Again, if you have the chance to end the game early, then do it. Otherwise the game your playing could very well result in more unconditional and desperate tactics from your opponent and become a loss.
Although… It does make for sweet games.
We now approach tactics.
"The good fighters of the old first put themselves beyond the possibility of defeat, and then waited for an opportunity of defeating the enemy...To secure ourselves against defeat lies in our own hands, but the opportunity of defeating the enemy is provided by the enemy himself. Hence the saying; 'One may know how to conquer without being able to do it.'"
Nothing could have been truer than this paragraph, "Defeat lies in the enemy's hands." Thus we have the notion of making no mistakes leads to victory. Obvious, right? I mean, if we don't F-up, we should all be awesome, eh? Well it is a difficult thing to master. Even for Flash, who is presently THE best SC player of the world (yeh, I know I'm going to get letters from the Dong fans). But even he himself has his mistakes that should easily overcome, but he doesn't. Which could very well lead to his downfall (as noted that he fails to secure a 100 win percentage).
http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/6253505
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Incontrol, who was in a BEAUTIFUL position all game long against TLO, very well could of claimed victory as his constant aggression against TLO gave Incontrol map control, allowed him to acquire a large force, and forced TLO to make large sacrifices towards static defenses. Yet he still lost by one simple mistake. By simply putting his army out of position with the assumption that TLO had an expansion in the top right and sought to quickly decimate the area. But when he found there was nothing, he soon found himself ambushed as his army was separate from his colossus which lead to his defeat from a very clearly winning position.
"There are not more than 5 musical notes, yet of these 5 give rise to more melodies than can ever be heard[...] In battle however, there are not more than two methods of attack--The direct and indirect; yet these two in combination give rise to an endless series of maneuvers" -Sun Tzu
From this extraction we can safely conclude tactics and strategy are intertwined and limitless, in addition with the numerous situations. Thus we have unlimited array of possibilities and limiting them by choice and not limited by situation is a crude arrogant action. Easiest way to not succumb to such decisions is to simply ask, "Why not?"
http://day9tv.blip.tv/file/3590047/
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Nony revolutionized how many look at phoenix which were before seen as nothing more than a poor anti-air option for Protoss. It's now their reaper answer as it is very quick, cheap, and its tech path is not too far out stretch, and it opens up future options for additional builds such as fast Mothership. Nony's build established what will forever be feared as a quick tactic that can very well decimate someone's ability to secure a strong economic advantage. All started with simply asking how to gain early aggression while maintaining a strong ground force.
We now finally arrive at the most vital component in any strategy which is not so much tactics and strength, but mobility. For the sacrifice of mobility allows the possibility of defeat as the larger the area you must cover just entices an attack in the most vulnerable location, thus forcing you to stretch your front to protect all areas.
I cannot stress the importance of this subject. But it must be at least stated as mobility creates advantage where once it was a disadvantage. It leads you to become aggressive without ever attacking, and establishes domination over an entrenched opponent.
http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/6257098
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Nony proved to us all how lethal abusing mobility can be. As he was not only able to do extreme economic duress, but also split LzGamer's forces as he had a large amount of fronts he had to overcome due to the blinking ability of stalkers which Nony abused perfectly with the high ground. Had however both armies met a straight up 1v1, LzGamer could very well of come out on top, but instead Nony did the smart thing and simply stayed out of its way while doing the most amount of damage possible.
As we can see, aggression lies with mobility and lack of mobility establishes defensive attitudes. And as stated once before, 'defensivism' equals defeat as you encourage a lengthy engagement which allows time for your opponent to acquire strength.
Regardless how you establish dominance in your games, you will be required to maintain a very high level of detection. Not only for army movement to prepare yours for a flank but to analyze the situation, and then attack where your opponent is unprepared, and to keep a sense of the status your opponent is in to provoke the weak points he so desperately seeks to hide (IE unguarded expansion, low supply of forces during harassment, etc..).
Unfortunately for this section, I am unable to produce an adequate game that displays a textbook example of maintaining watch of their opponent. So in lite of this, I opt to forward all readers to the Weapon of Choice E01 by DjWheat and Chill as they both discuss scouting and best implementation of it as a guideline located here at the 1:09:00 mark http://www.djwheat.tv/2010/04/26/weapon-of-choice-e01-04252010/
When we find ourselves in a position of uncontested strength by our mobility, economic advantage, and sheer numeric power, we must not hasten or force the enemy into a dire position.
"It is of the rule in warfare that should our numerical advantage be 10 to the enemy's 1, surround him. If 5 to 1, attack him, if 2 to 1, divide the army in two and attack once in the rear and frontal. If equally matched, to offer battle, if slightly inferior, to avoid the enemy, and if unequal in every way, to flee."
It should be mentioned that if you press an opponent to hard, they will seek to desperate tactics and diversions. At which point you should be cautious as someone who is pressed beyond belief is said to be a dangerous enemy. Always allow the illusion someone is safe by establishing the thought they can recover with less than risky approaches. It is when they have that false sense of security can we attack and decimate the army, as once an army is taken whole, the state has crumbled and victory can be claimed.
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Oh boy, the TLO fanboys are going to love this thread, but this is exactly what I am referring to. White_Ra, who had pushed TLO beyond belief, and very well could of destroyed him had TLO not of resorted to do or die tactics which resulted in a devastating defeat for White_Ra. Remember, be weary when you have pushed your opponent to the brink of breaking, as that is someone who will do anything in a effort to stay alive. And rightfully so as they begin to ask questions like, "What do I have left to lose?"
"Who needs a hatchery when you can be awesome?"
Of course you might feel compelled to ask; if you don’t press your opponent, how can you win? Well it’s not so much of attacking your opponent, but how you go about doing it. In the example above TLO was compelled to go all in, whereas White_Ra was in a comfortable, stable position. Don’t allude yourself that attacking is wrong--Heavens no that’s how you’re suppose to win the game! But you must be very cautious in how you go about doing it. So long as you leave an option for the opponent only to end in a single crunch style attack in a short amount of time, then you won’t be faced with such desperate tactics (IE Allowing a Terran mech player to expand somewhere distant while you gain a very mobile army to attack in the main).
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In one of the biggest upsets, KiWiKaKi came out with a win even with his nexus being torn down and thus forced to counter. Now to fully understand this in terms of strategy, we must look at what iNcontrol did that was both right and wrong.
For starters, iNcontrol did a very smart play by counter-attacking when he was first attacked with stalkers. Thats good, then once he finally got in the base is when I started shaking my head. iNcontrol was heavily down on probes so he couldn't rely on a macro game without some devastating punch, he knew this which is why he started heading towards the back of the base and ravaged the nexus and probes. Ok good, he came out ontop in turns of economy.... But KiWiKaKi still had an uncontested army which ended up being the pitfall for iNcontrol.
Again let me be clear, killing a nexus is good. No one will ever tell you "Whatever you do, dont kill off the main building", and if they do, they are retarded. But again just like the White_Ra and TLO game, it's how you go about doing it. Had iNcontrol instead focused on KiWiKaKi’s remaining stalkers he would have won. Remember: You cannot be attacked if the person you’re playing against doesn’t have an army. Economic harass is good and all, but it means nothing if you sacrifice your entire army to do it. Or worse yet, force your opponent into an all-in move.
In summary, what has been brought attention to this thread?
-Description of the 5 Constant Factors (the basic laws of war)
-Deception and its practical uses
-Length of the game
-No mistakes leads to decisive victory
-Tactics and the implementation of various types of strategy associated from them
-Mobility and aggression
-Scouting
-Rules of a pressed opponent
So from here alone, we must account from 7 different aspects when associating the term "strategy" (I opt out the 5 constant factors as they are merely laws, not a aspect towards strategy itself). Therefore to have a successful chance in winning any game you must be deceptive, keep the game short without making blunders, using tactics to their full extent while you maintain a very high level of mobility (which entices aggression). All along while you continue to constantly scout and ensuring you haven't pressed your opponent to a state of desperation.
And this is just the basics. Each one of these subjects can go into much, much further detail.
With that, I bid adieu.
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![[image loading]](http://palmgoon.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/the_more_you_know2.jpg)
and now we got the SC2 version ! nice read![[image loading]](http://www.everywherewitheveryone.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/Big_Wheel_Pic-DRV2-PCZ.jpg.jpeg)
