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Hello again,
You may remember me from such newbie threads as [H] Pick apart my bronze play! and [D] Cannon contain PvZ! Or not. Either way, I'd love to get some feedback from my now-Silver play (though I feel a graduation coming along soon -- lots of wins against Gold players recently) regarding the balance in one ZvP between macro and micro.
I do a LOT of shoot n scoot against the Protoss's stalker/sentry heavy army, and delay a few injects because of it (I believe I missed one completely). My focus fire picked off several more Stalkers than I ought've, however, and certainly kept ground when I would have lost it. I would absolutely adore some higher-ranked players taking a look at the replay and gauge my micro. Switch it over to the Rowen-Cam(tm) and watch my camera and clicks, see when I pop back to macro, eyeroll at my supply block not once, not twice, but five times (I believe. If I can kick that bad habit I'd be platinum within a week).
The replay can be found here, or if clicking a long unwieldy URL is more to your taste, then it could also be found: http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/99581-1v1-protoss-zerg-shakuras-plateau
Clearly becoming supply blocked is a Bad Bad Thing, so gloss over that for the time being -- that's something I'll need to work on on my own -- but I'd love some thoughts about time spent micro vs macro during the game. Thoughts?
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Getting supply blocked is an obvious indicator that you're not paying enough attention to macro.
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I can't watch the replay at the moment, but for the question about time spent on macro vs micro, the answer should always be more macro at your level.
At gold level, simply having "more stuff" (to quote Day[9]), you will most likely win. So prioritize keeping your macro solid and use the remaining time to perform micro-moves. This means that you'll regularly move away from the actual battle to do something in your base. But your units are typically effective enough when left alone so they will still lay on the hurting while you're looking elsewhere.
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everyone has their own preferences and their own balance between micro/macro. Keep playing and you'll naturally improve in both categories.
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Zurich15327 Posts
If you want to get better at the game it is very simple: Always always always favor macro over micro. Any time you are microing and because of that you forget inject or supply or making workers you are doing something wrong. Only ever spend time on micro if you can not 100% do anything macro wise that second.
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Up until maybe high platinum, work on macro. Don't worry about micro.
As day9 would say, just build probes and pylons. Constantly producing probes and not getting supply blocked sounds simple, but even the best players jack it up every once in a while. And the consequences are catastrophic.
If your money gets too high, expand or throw down more unit producing structures.
At bronze through high plat you can win every game by simply building more stuff than your opponent.
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I've also been having the problem of "too much micro"... I've noticed that I'm spending too much time trying to save my 4 Roaches from the pack of Marines... where it gets to the point where I get late on my larvae injections. Or I spend too much effort scouting with my 9th drone, where I miss my 14 pool, 13 gas timings, which makes my everything late, and leaves me with minerals in the bank (in a negative way).
Basically, I've stopped really focusing on following units. Instead, I hotkey my scouting drone to 1... then follow it until I make my 14th drone. While it's building, I just queue up a ton of waypoints for the scout (avoiding bunkers/barracks)... then I build my pool/gas, then back to scouting, then do my stuff accordingly.
Essentially, I just mean I'm not paying as much attention to little battles, and focusing on keeping my injections on time, spreading creep, and building macro. (Adding all hatches to 5 and queens to 6 does this, AND allows the "higher-up" number keys to be used for upgrading structures, such as Evo chambers and Spires)
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The points above are 100% true.
If your APM is low, make sure you're macroing (spending your money, making an army at your base, building probes/pylons, extra gateways if you have extra money ect ect)
With time your APM will increase, if your sure you've got your macro taken care of, pop back and micro a bit more.
Too many players see pros microing in battle and thing that's what they need to do, but honestly they are macroing efficiently (APM) that they can micro too. At a gold level neither player should be capable of this, just make sure you're making more stuff, then sending it to reinforce, then micro a bit, and repeat.
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Hey Rowen I just skimmed through the replay. Mostly through your first person camera. I make a quick list of things that I would look on:
1. You look at the right places most of the time. That means your army. You where allways aware of whats going on in the battle which is a good thing.
2. As far as micro goes, you have solid basics like dancing with your roaches. your decision making was ok. Most of the time you knew when to attack and when to retreat which is the biggest factor in battles. But on the first attack you defended against that zealot sentry army you lost too much because of several reasons. First of all you decided to fight near your natural which was a positional mistake. Shakuras plateau provides wide areas in the center where you have advantage over sentrys so he cannot cut you off that easy. you should also work on baiting forcefields. Your lings got cut off quite a few times. you dont have to commit to an attack if your forces are cut off. especialy lings are very fast so you can dodge an attack and wait for better times.
3. Macro wise it didnt look that bad actually. ofc you made mistakes but I saw how you constantly produced stuff infight. You had decent control of your minerals (around 1k at most as far as I remember) but lackluster control of your gas. You should allways keep both resources low. You can either simply not mine that much gas and free up minerals or you could change your composition and mix in a gas heavy unit. Hydras would be the obvious choice in this particular game. Another way to sink gas is to research upgrades which you had none. Upgrades are especialy effective on zerg units because they cost no larvae!
4. The weakest link wasnt either micro or macro. It was scouting. You did not have any Idea what the P was doing in his main, which is ok if you keep track of his army size and composition which you did well. But you didnt know for a far too long time if he expanded or not. Ok you controlled the watchtowers but if you dont know how the P plays economy wise then you can only guess when to make units. One major skill good Zergs have to have is to decide when to make army units and this is only possible if you scout.
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Micro means nothing if you can't macro. In lower leagues, it is all about the macro. Just macro better and you can a-move your army and still win the majority of the time. At lower levels, and even at higher levels, micro can't make for a decent supply deficit so if you can just focus on getting a strong economy and then making shit tons of stuff, you'll do fine. The only possible problem would be throwing stuff into like 20 tanks or HT or Collossus or Banelings, but in that case, it is fairly easy to find a counter
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On November 04 2010 00:01 dave333 wrote:
Micro means nothing if you can't macro. In lower leagues, it is all about the macro. Just macro better and you can a-move your army and still win the majority of the time. At lower levels, and even at higher levels, micro can't make for a decent supply deficit so if you can just focus on getting a strong economy and then making shit tons of stuff, you'll do fine. The only possible problem would be throwing stuff into like 20 tanks or HT or Collossus or Banelings, but in that case, it is fairly easy to find a counter
I dont find this very general advice usefull at all. for example roaches are considered to be a counter to zealots. But if you do not micro them they are not even costeffective in small/medium numbers. same goes with zealots vs lings, stalkers vs marines. And sentrys, HT, siege tanks, phoenixes, banelings, mutas (and more) in general are not usefull if you 1a them into death. another example is terran bio vs a midgame protoss army.
micro, positioning and basic tactical decisions are very crucial even at lower levels because you can make up for alot of supply in alot of cases. What does a 5-10s faster warpgate round help if you a-move a sentry zealot army into decently controlled roaches? yes, nothing.
the replay OP uploaded shows alot of this. this is why I gave him some specific advice. I'am really not a fan of the general "macro is more important in every way"-assumption.
edit: especially considering the sheer dominance of 1base builds at bronze-low diamond micro comes heavily into play. what if you screw a forcefield against X-rax pressure while your heading for tech? gg!
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day[9] helped me really well on this matter with his daily where he coached DjWheat! You should clearly watch that episode because there he tells you where your camera should be and how your macro should be controlled via keyboard. As I said ... That episode helped me reeeeaally much 
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It seems when I upload a replay, I get nine posters talking about general concepts (macro is better than micro at lower leagues, don't worry about losing two roaches if it means delaying making ten more, keep money low, etc) and one or two posters who actually watched the replay and comments on the specific game I asked about. @Clickrush: THANK YOU! For those that can't watch the replay, I'm not the newest zergling in the control group, I know that macro > micro, and I know that getting supply blocked is a bad thing (please read such in my OP. That wasn't caused by microing too much, it was caused by completely ignoring my supply because I'm a silver-league dumbass sometimes ;-D). I appreciate your comments but I really do know this information from reading any number of threads on basic play and watching day[9]. My question was about the balance of micro vs macro in this PARTICULAR game.
Zatic's post that forgetting an inject means too much micro is a good barometer for my play, and I'll keep that in mind. Clickrush gave me some GREAT thoughts (though I disagree with the scouting point since I knew when he expanded immediately from scouting the front and knew his army comp at all times. I suppose a tech switch would have screwed me) as well. Keeping gas low is usually not a problem, heh, and I think I even made a hydra den to transition into roach/hydra from roach/ling and capitalize on my excess gas, but the game ended too soon to do so. I might be mistaken about that, tbh, the last two games I played were ZvP on Shakuras, and I may be confounding them. I definitely thought about it though, after looking up and seeing TWO THOUSAND GAS and knowing I needed to dump it.
Thanks all for the analysis. If anyone has something to add, please do!
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Macro>Micro
Proof:
iloveoov
NaDa
Flash
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There is zero need to watch silver level replay to say that you problem is macro. NONE zip nada. Untill mid diamond you can easily win with pure macro and A move to oponents base without ever looking a your army ever (aka zero micro).
never look outside your base besides scouting, then hotkey your army and use mini map to attack. So what was said before that micro means nothing is 100% correct.
That said there are a FEW cases where micro is very important and that is mostly early game as 3-4 roaches vs 5-7 zelots. But other then that trust me 15 unmicroed roaches walk over 7 zelots alot better then 5 microed ones.
Best thing you can do right now is this. Take any pro zerg replay, pretty much any that has no some sort of all in. Write down his food at points in time 2,4,6,10 min w/e and then watch your replay and see WHY your food is half that. You will be blown away by how much more stuff they have.
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On November 04 2010 05:02 Deathfairy wrote:
There is zero need to watch silver level replay to say that you problem is macro.
Not to be snarky, but what problem..? I never listed a problem. In fact I won my match fairly convincingly. I was asking about a balance of macro versus micro, not "WHY DIDN'T MY FOUR PERFECTLY MICROED ROACHES NOT BEAT THEIR ENTIRE ZEALOT ARMY!?!?"
I will go ahead and check those pro replays for comparative purposes, but no one could be so bull-headed as to believe that 1a2a3a is an acceptable teaching method for high silver or gold leaguers whose macro did not suffer terrifically. I noted the problems I had (supply block, missing one inject) and even mentioned that I supply block myself ALL THE TIME because I'm a horrible player. Missing the inject is a good metric for microing too much, as already pointed out by zatic, so although I appreciate your input I don't think you're really addressing the point at hand (which is specific to this replay, which it seems you never watched)
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Sorry but it is you who is missing the point that people are trying to bring to you, and that is your micro is IRRELEVANT. But go ahead and think otherwise. it looks like you are fairly determined and will get pretty high at some point at which point you will look back and tell bronze-gold leagers this: MACRO!
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On November 04 2010 05:17 Deathfairy wrote:
Sorry but it is you who is missing the point that people are trying to bring to you, and that is your micro is IRRELEVANT. But go ahead and think otherwise. it looks like you are fairly determined and will get pretty high at some point at which point you will look back and tell bronze-gold leagers this: MACRO!
Well I'm not arguing that macro is MORE important than micro. I'm not even arguing that macro alone will win 90% of gold-and-under games, if only because that's what I've been told so many times and when my macro started improving, my win rate SHOT up. What I'm arguing is that learning to micro IS important when your macro improves. Pros don't just "make more stuff" to win, they have to outmaneuver their opponent. How do you expect anyone to learn the beginnings of micro when they're just told to 1a2a3a?
If you'll watch the replay, my macro doesn't suffer terribly. A small ding to my macro is worth the learning exercise, imo, especially when that 10 second delayed injection meant that I saved 10 roaches from dying. My gas goes astronomical, which is a problem. My supply gets blocked, which is an (unrelated) problem. Do I micro too much? I understand your reasoning that microing AT ALL is too much, but I feel it's a logical fallacy. Saying that someone in silver cannot have the game state awareness and hand speed to macro and micro effectively is kind of selling the league short, is it not?
For the record, my food was:
2min: 15
4min: 21
6min: 34
10min: 68
And in IdrA v SelecT (Xel'Naga Caverns played oct 14th) IdrA has:
2min: 14
4min: 23
6min: 31
10min:58
Certainly I'm not comparing myself to IdrA, but if you tell me to do an exercise I'm gonna do it. IdrA opened 15 hatch into muta/ling against Select's fast hellion harass, which explains the low food count, but even after he starts his muta harass and gains map control he skyrockets into 800+ gas as he micros.
Perfect macro wins games, but good micro helps -- surely there's no argument there?
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I actually watched the replay, and even if he is in silver league, he play damm well to be there (Im 1900 diamond so mid diamond only talking). Im zerg too and i just need to say, macroing harder will give you more benefits than microing roaches so much time. You are good at it, kiting zealots and stuff, but every time he retreats, try to not micro your units too shoot more or something, just a-move chassing while injecting-doing-stuff, and then get back to your units.
As you said, supply blocking your self is very bad, and you know so its ok, just keep training (i get supply block so much too, its harder than it may seems).
Also when you are microing units, get used to spam hatch-hotkey+units/drones a lot. It may seem a waste of apm, but it dont require a lot of attention to pull it off (its more of a mindless spamming), so you will keep your money low and keep producing units/drones. That also helps too remember you that you need to inject, if you are spamming producing units commands, and you see no larva/money to high, then its you usually need to inject again.
Thats all i can say dont trust me blindly, im new to RTS too so my advice could not be the best, so pick up what you think is good and leave the rest 
P.S: as someone above said, watch the day9+dj wheat coaching sesion, it give a very good picture of how you are supposed to play
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EPT
