[G] Improving as A low-level Macro Zerg

When I first bought Starcraft 2, I started installing it on my computer and started looking online for strategies so I could start crushing faces from the beginning. I discovered this wonderful site called TeamLiquid, and then I learned that there was a huge pro-scene around Starcraft: Brood War, and a fledgling scene. I learned about legends like XDS Grrr...,Boxer, iloveoov, Savior, NaDa, Flash, Jaedong, Bisu, JulyZerg, Fantasy, Stork, etc. Then I started learning about the American scene; players like NonY, IdrA, iNcontroL, Ret, and more, and these were the same players now playing Starcraft 2! I then learned about Day9, then about things like MLG Starcraft and GSL, and that's when I realized I had stumbled into a whole other world.

I started devouring VODs and didn't even play for days. I learned about all the races, and I wanted to be special, I wanted to play the race that was hard to play; I was going to play Zerg That was either the stupidest or the best decision I've made thus far in Starcraft2. Maybe a combination of the both. I learned all the stuff I'd thought about RTS's didn't apply in Starcraft It wasn't about the fight, it was about the economy. The goal of Zerg was to make a swath of drones and bury the other players face in economy. Me, being the suave baller I obviously was at the time, played my placement matches, and I was going to make allot of drones, and I was going to be in diamond. I knew it. I proceeded to lose 4/5 matches. I was crestfallen. I chalked it up to Zerg being underpowered, started playing Terran, and quickly laddered to platinum, winning about 85% of my games. I got to a point and said "You know what? This is bullshit, I'm better than almost any of these players, I'm going back to Zerg!". So I did, and I got smacked back down to bronze with a ton of drones in every game and almost no units. Once again, I said, "I guess Zerg is just underpowered, Protoss here I come!". I proceeded to ladder to platinum again, winning a little less than I did with Terran, but still the majority of my games (75%+) and once again, I said that I wasn't doing it anymore, I'm a good player, I can play Zerg, dammit!

So I sat down and played a ton of games, got knocked right back down to bronze, and instead of blaming it on imbalance, I said that I was going to figure out why I was losing. And I did. This guide is a result of that learning.

Why do you want to improve? It's important to know your goals before you begin. If your goal is to advance in the ladder as fast as possible, 6 pools and roach/ling all-ins will get you there much faster and in much less time. However, if you want to become the best player possible, doing these sort of rushes from the start doesn't make a whole lot of sense. At best it will lead to a small skill set of micro mechanics tooled to one very specific situation, and a very small subset of the game at large.

I aim to present an improvement method that will instead build your core skill sets so that you can carry those skills to the rest of your play. These skill sets result in players who are comfortable in all stages of the game; a player that is far more consistent. As the game develops more and more, these will be the players to dominate the field. Players that will do consistently well because they understand the game in a way that a player who hasn't developed these skills never could. Players like EGIdrA, IMMVP, IMNesTea, and more are consistently doing well throughout multiple seasons of the GSL using these same concepts.

What do I mean by mechanics? By mechanics, I mean the different ways in which you control the game. This encompasses everything from using your keyboard and mouse, camera movement, and more. It makes no sense to go into playing the game without a good idea of how to control the game itself.

I'll start with your hands, the beginning of your interaction with the game. One will be on the keyboard, one on the mouse. I would like you to face your dominant hand in front of you , palm facing you. If you are right handed, place your other hand on the left side of your right forearm and if you are left handed place your other hand on the right side of your left forearm. Now move your hand upward and you'll feel a bone that sticks outward slightly on your wrist. That is the bone that I generally will use as my pivot point for both my mouse and my keyboard. Place that bone on the table and pivot your hand. Notice how easy it is to make precise movement. Now move your arm up so that your forearm is your pivot and try to move around. Notice how much more movement is going on. By using this small bone on your wrist as your pivot point you can get the maximum effect with the minimal effort.


Now I'll move on to the keyboard. One of the major goals you should have is to eliminate wasteful actions. To that end, I'd like you to press control-1 then a. What fingers did you use? Many people when using hot keys for the first time will press control with their thumb and the 1 key with their middle fingers, and the A with their pointer. Try doing this through 4 A. Notice how uncomfortable and awkward this becomes. You start bending your hand around sideways to hit your hot keys Rather, you should have your hand in the middle of the keyboard, so you can hit that control key with your pinky and the one with your ring or middle finger, moving up to using your pointer or thumb on the higher keys. Also, don't be afraid to move your hand around the keyboard. Notice how hard it is to press left control 0. Don't be afraid to move your hand to the right side of the keyboard and press that right control and 0, 9, or even 8 if that's more comfortable for you. The goal here is to eliminate wasteful actions and move in the most concise way possible.

A big component of the keyboard is hot keys I'm going to present you with a rule you should NEVER break. Never click on something that you could build or do by pressing a key on the keyboard. If you don't know the hot key, mouse over the button to see what the hot key is, then press that key. In this way you begin training your mind what buttons go with what. I don't care if you're only pressing the button once in the entire game. When you upgrade ling speed, you better be pressing M to do so. By clicking on things that can be done with hot keys, you're removing your eyes from productive things on the screen, you're using up mouse movement that can be used for something productive. It's still all about removing wasteful actions.

Let's talk about F keys for a second. I want you to open up Starcraft for a second, log in and do the following: Open up Menu, go to hot keys, click the global tab, and expand the Camera tab. Bind the Create Location 1 hot key to SHIFT F2, 2 to SHIFT F3, and so on. Now, what the F keys do is selects a certain location with your camera. If there's a location you need to move your camera to often, bind it to your F keys. For instance, I have my main as F2 every game. If I need to move back to that screen to place a building, then go back to whatever I was doing. The F keys are essential into helping you play more efficiently. Say you're looking at your mini-map and you notice a drop about to hit your third. It's very easy to select those drones, F2, click on a mineral patch. By doing this, all your drones are moving as fast as possible and you're minimizing casualties. Another great application are rally points. I always have my rallies as F5. In this way, you can find that screen, select your hatchery, and right click on the ground. By having a clear rally point system like this, you will lose far fewer units, as one button press will show you all the units that just popped out of their eggs. I can't tell you how many games I've lost because I had the units to defend but they were in some obscure location and I didn't remember or couldn't get to them in time.

Now that we've over viewed hot keys and the F keys, I'd like to present some of the basics of creating a hot key setup. It's very important to have your own setup so that you can know exactly where everything is on your keyboard at all sets in time. Watch a particular pro player and I assure you that he will have the same general look every game (or at least every match up). I'll give you my hot key setup real fast.

1- Zerglings in ZvT and ZvZ, Roaches in ZvP
2- Banelings in ZvT, Roaches in ZvZ, Hydralisks in ZvP
3- Mutalisks in ZvT, Hydras or infestors in ZvZ, Corrupters in ZvP.
4- All my hatcheries in every match up
5 through 8 will generally be my queens, 5 being my main's queen, 6 my naturals, 7 my third, etc. My Creep queen is generally 8, but might be 9 if I build 4 hatchery queens if I feel I need them.
9- Important structure. Nydus worms, a building I'm producing an important upgrade from, etc.
0- Evolution chamber(s)

The important thing here is this...Play around with hot keys until you find something you like and stick with it, and I mean religiously. Always hot key every unit and find out what works for you. In my mind, my army hot keys are like this

1-Front line unit
2-Front line Power unit
3-Power/Harassment unit

The real power of a good hot key setup is you don't even need to think when you've figured it out. Every time I check at my rallies, I hot key every unit there, so whenever I'm in a stressful situation, I know exactly where everything is. I need to get all my lings back to my base? F2, 1, right click. I need my mutas back home quickly while macroing? 3 right click.

Also, because you have your hot key setup, in those early stages of the game, you can cut down on the small little things you do every game. For instance, my scout drone is always 3, my scout overlord is always 2, my scout ling is always 1. This way I know I can always press a key and get to someplace I need my camera to be faster. Your have that ling outside his base and you hear the units under attack voice que? 11. You are now looking at the army that's shipping out to your base. Microing your scout drone and macroing back home? 55Sv, 66Sv, 33, micro, 4sdddddddd. That's all of one and a half seconds you were away from your scouting drone, but you're still getting your macro done and you're still efficiently scouting his base. I have my spawning pool as 9 so the second I have 100 gas, I can still be in his base microing that drone. 9M.

Now lets talk about your mouse. It's important to be comfortable. Remember that pivot bone we were talking about earlier? We should be using that same bone for your mouse hand. I would suggest holding your mouse close to the end of the table. Another thing I'd suggest is turning off mouse acceleration. Mouse acceleration is horrible for play because it creates inconsistency with your mouse movements. Some OS's label this as “enhanced pointer precision”. Just Google turn off mouse acceleration Windows 7 (or whatever you use) and it will tell you how to turn it off. I recommend messing with sensitivities until you find something you're comfortable with and sticking with it and remember that number.


I recommend you watch the following VOD from Day9:
http://day9tv.blip.tv/file/4712303/

Aside from mechanics themselves, macro is the most important skill you can posses in Starcraft. It is also one of the simplest skills to acquire. Good Macro means...

1) Keeping your minerals and gas low at all points in time unless saving it for something specific.
2) Not getting supply blocked
3) Spending larvae as soon as you can. Idle larvae above 2 is wasting larvae.
4) Spawning larvae the SECOND larvae pop

Simple, huh? It's allot harder than 4 bullet points might suggest. For instance, 1 encompasses a wide verity of things. There is a HUGE difference between placing down your spawning pool at 200 minerals and 300 minerals. Think about it, if you're placing your spawning pool 100 minerals later, that’s about 30 seconds less that you have a queen (that could be 8 or so larvae, or 2 creep tumors!), that's 30 seconds you don't have lings scouting. 100 minerals might sound small, but it's not. Try to keep your money as close to 0 as possible unless you're saving for a building, or a round of larvae (a good example is pooling gas/minerals when your spire is close to finishing).

One thing you'll see ALL THE TIME in the strategy forums is a player posting a replay, saying “What could I have done here?”, and having 2000 minerals or more when he lost. Think about that. 2000 minerals. If he's a Zerg player, that's what, 26 roaches? 20 mutalisks? How much better would that fight have went if you had those extra units? I don't care if you're a tactical genius, if you can't macro effectively, you will lose to player who has good macro almost every time. Until you can do this subconsciously, worrying about things like micro, gosu unit compositions, etc are COMPLETE wastes of time. I'm not say do something stupid, like making mass ling vs a colossus death ball, but worrying about getting having X percentage of roaches X percentage of hydras, etc is unimportant. It's much more important to just have as much shit as possible.


I recommend you watch the following VODs that demonstrate good macro mechanics:

http://day9tv.blip.tv/file/4782428/

http://day9tv.blip.tv/file/3732340/

At the most basic level, multitasking is the ability to macro and do something else. Macro is more important, so obviously it gets the priority. If you cannot macro while doing something else, just 1 A your army. You will be much better off. However, when practicing, push your comfort zone, so when you're starting to feel comfortable macroing, spend more and more time looking at the mini map Watch a good player respond to drops. Most of the time before that first marine hits the ground the drones are already half way out of the base. Mini map awareness is one of the most key components of multitasking. It will soon become a subconscious reflex to look at the mini map, even if there's nothing at all going on. Then spend more and more time with the camera outside of your base. This is particularly important for Zerg players. You'll spend allot of your time watching that scouting overlord, or that scouting zergling. Eventually you'll be in your base for a very small amount of time each game.

One mistake I see allot of players make is looking at battles, even if they can't do shit about it. Watch a player like IdrA play from a first person perspective and see how much he's actually watching battles. Not very often. If he's paying attention to the battle at all, it's going to be to make sure the banelings are going to hit the right things, or that the corruptors are going to target those void rays first, etc, then he's somewhere else. He's back in his base vomiting larvae, he's looking at that scout overlord to see what reinforcements are coming, etc.

Some of the best examples of multitasking actually come from Terran players. Watch MVP, or Select, or qxc play. They've got multiple drops going on all the time across the map, they're macroing back home, they're expanding, they're trucking the middle. All at the same time.

Perhaps the hardest of the core skill sets to develop, micro is the way you control your units. Good Micro requires allot. You need to be in your opponents head. You need to know what his aim is and react accordingly. Watch MarineKingPrime. As soon as those banelings start rolling he's already grabbing and splitting up his marines into small separated groups so he loses as few as possible. Watch IdrA. He'll be deadly accurate with his mutas, advancing just enough to pick off that siege tank without taking too many hits.

Micro requires a lot of practice and will give you relatively small advantages. That is why it is best to focus on improving your other skills first. Good Micro will come from instinctively knowing what to do on a subconscious level. You need to be able to grab that roach who just hit red health and immediately burrow him. You can't think about it, it needs to happen the second you see it.

When trying to improve micro management, I recommend watching a bunch of pro VODs and watching how they control their units, and imitate it. Think why you're controlling the unit in this way. Eventually it will become second nature.

So many people misunderstand what strategy really is. I'm going to give you a definition I feel is accurate when talking about Starcraft Strategy.

Strategy is way you arrange spending your resources in order to accomplish a goal.

It may seem ridiculous to crunch all of strategy up into one sentence, especially one so simple. But I am very comfortable with this assessment. If you want to expand earlier as a protoss, for a simple, easy to understand example, you might consider building sentries instead of stalkers in order to free up minerals to expand earlier. The same applies to Zerg I might want to get out mutalisks fast to gain map control and double expand. So I need to arrange my money in a way such that I can get those mutalisks at the right time, allowing me to double expand.

Build Orders:

How many times have you seen a player say something like this on the strategy forums?

“Hey! I have this great build ZvP, blah, blah, blah, here it is.

15 gas
14 pool
18 Ling Speed
20 hatch
26 lair
32 Roach Warren
…”

Can you tell me the problem with this? Well, I'll tell you. This is just a list of numbers. This list of instructions is so specific, that a person who isn't intimately familiar with its goals will be lost. Why is he getting this stuff at this time? What if you get 2 gated? You might hold that push, but now you're lost in the build.

I'm going to steal a definition off from day9 here. What is a build order, really? “A build order is an optimization of an idea.” This can be an idea in the largest or smallest possible sense. Your idea could be something as simple as “Zerg is really scary late game, I wonder if I can kill him before that larvae inject mechanic really starts working for him really well.” All of a sudden we have 4 gates, 2 rax bunker rushes, ling/bane, and any other possible all-in you can think of. Your idea could be something as big as “I want to get 4 bases with a roach/hydra/corrupter army with 2/2 and deny the protoss's third so he can't support voidray/colo.

The steps in the build are just the key components of the build. An optimized build order is just how you would optimally arrange the key components. If you're playing a ZvP and your build has a relatively late lair, and all of a sudden you see your protoss opp on 1 base, 2 gas, and he's not chronoboosing his cyber, you probably need to push that lair timing up, because he's probably going to DT or Voidray rush you, in which case you'll need an overseer and hydras. What if your opp 2 gates you? Well, you'll probably want to delay your other stuff to pump out allot of lings. It's OK to push back everything to get those lings, because his economy is equally (if not more) delayed . He's still most likely going to be going for a third base and play some sort of voidray/gateway mix, if not the original void/colossus you were worried about in the first place. It's OK that you're going to be late getting this big 2/2 army to deny his third, because this early aggression is pushing back his third. A good player looks for ways to force his game down the same path, and rearranges the components of his play to make that path happen. If you get forced off your build in some way, such as banshee harassment kills some drones, you can keep your same timings by knowing when each thing happens relative to each other thing in your build, and realizing why each component is where it is at. If your build was designed around playing a standard protoss, and your opp 14 Nexus's, you can delay some of those defensive timings, because he's not going to be in any situation to push you for awhile. Power drones and maybe take a super fast third.

I would recommend you check out this podcast:

http://www.teamliquid.net/staff/SonuvBob/podcasts/Day[9]0010-NewLookAtBuilds.mp3

This is a hard one to help players with, as the only thing I can tell you is to watch your replays. All of them. When you're playing, note specific things you did and why. I figured he was about to attack at this point so I started making lings. Go through that replay and be meticulous. Why did you think that attack was going to come. What tipped you off. Why was it a wrong assumption?

Do you ever watch a game from IdrA and he gets an overseer like 3 seconds before a banshee arrives at his mineral line? I remember when I was a new player I just thought that it was this magical sense he and some top level players had, that he was just playing, proclaimed “the time to get an overseer is here!” and it lined up perfectly. Well, he doesn't have some sort of magical sense, nor does anyone. It comes from a long process of review and reflection. He saw, or didn't see something from his opponent that told him that things weren't right, and deduced that most likely it was banshees. He was reviewing this timing when creating his build so that if there's a banshee rush, he can morph an overseer at that moment that lair finishes, it would be in time to save those drones, or he knew that if he scouted a banshee rush, he could squeak this little bit of extra minerals to get that evo/spore.

Do you remember fruitdealer from the GSL1? He had AMAZING game sense at the time. He always had just enough units to hold off pushes, and as a result, he had a raging economy, and buried his enemies in waves of enemies.

The goal for Zerg is to get a raging economy, start pumping units, and being very aggressive, and drown him in your production. Why? Because your 200/200 army is much less efficient than a protoss or Terran maxed army. If you let him get to 200/200, and try to simply “out control” him, you're going to lose. You need to be in his face with waves of units, banking on the fact that you reinforce faster than him, and whittling away at him until he has nothing left.

Why is this hard? You're relying on the thinnest defenses for a long time. Make no misunderstanding; you will have a LOT of stupid looking losses. I can't tell you how many games I've lost because I made 8 drones and in the next second some big army popped out toward my base. What is the solution here? Watch those replays. Be critical. Why did I think I was safe. Why wasn't I. What did/could have I seen that would have cued me off?

Eventually you'll develop that same game sense I was talking about earlier. You'll figure out that if you see this, or don't see a command center when you're doing something (say, upgrading to your lair) then he's grouping up for an attack. You'll start making units, hold that push, then go right back to making drones.

This ties directly into Rule 1. Your scouting tells you when you can and cannot make a drone. Once again, this ties directly into game knowledge as well. If you see a chronoboosted cybernetics core 3 minutes into the game, what is your first thought? It should be 4 gate. What if you see a 2 gas Terran early? I personally jump right to either banshees or blue flame hellion. If I see 2 rax 2 gas, I'm leaning toward banshees.

So what and when should you be scouting. As to when...ALL GAME LONG. Any intel is good intel. Lings are 25 minerals apiece. Is it worth 25 minerals to you to suicide a ling into your opps natural to get an idea of what he has, or where its positioned? It is to me. Is it worth it to you to suicide an overlord to see what type of tech he's going? It is to me. Zergs often complain about scouting, and I don't get it. We, as Zergs have the ability to scout across the entire map at the same time.

Overlords
Flying Farms! How cool is that? Not only do they fly, they drop creep, can drop, and can morph into overseers which can slow production, nullify cannons, delay upgrades, and scout very well. The problem is not enough people are using their overlords to their full advantage. I'll see so many Zergs send their first overlord somewhere across the map, and that’s it. I just don't get it. For the cost of 100 minerals, we get permanent vision (as long as the overlord stays alive) of an expo, and can spread creep to delay that expansion significantly, opening up a timing to do enough damage to deny that expo.

How many Zergs have you heard complain about scans and obs? I've heard a lot of people complain about the ease of protoss and Terran scouting, but for the cost of 100 minerals and 100 gas, I have like 30 fast scouts!With obs or scan, you can see your opps tech that's in 1 place, but with overlords, you're everywhere. Zergs should never get caught with their pants down by a drop.

Lings
For the cost of 50 minerals, we can occupy both xel'naga watchtowers. For an additional 25 we can have a ling right outside his base and know exactly when he leaves.

Drone scout
Just like any other race, we can drone scout, but how long can protoss or Terran keep their worker alive? Well, about until the first marine, stalker, or zergling pops out. A Zerg drone can stay alive until the Terran has about 4 marines, or the protoss has 2-3 stalkers with extractor canceling.

I want all you up and coming Zergs to realize this...Larvae are a resource just as much as gas, minerals, or control are. Tie this in with rule # 1. If we have to defend, what are we going to defend with? You should be thinking in terms of larvae as much as mineral and gas. Consider this. 1 larvae makes 1 roach. How much damage can 5 roaches do to an incoming zealot attack? Certainly more than 5 larvae of zerglings would. This is the basis of a lot of early game logic for top level players. You'll see Zerg players go for a very fast roach warren in ZvZ. Why? Because 1 larvae worth of roaches is way better than 1 larvae worth of zerglings. This frees up larvae to get those drones moving.

There's no good to be had by looking up at your money and noticing you have less than optimal macro and saying to yourself “oh well, I guess I need to macro better next game”. Throw down that hatchery! Fix your macro right now, then watch the replay and analyze WHY your money started getting high. Perhaps you were doing everything the way you wanted and using all your larvae and not missing larvae injects. That means that at the time when your money started pooling, you need to find a way to spend that money on things other than units. This is a good time to start doing things like upgrades, starting your upgrade toward hive, or expanding. Find out. This is where real strategy begins. I have extra money at this time while doing everything I need to, I will spend it by getting/doing X.

If you're at 200 supply and you don't have a damn good reason not to, go attack. If you're sitting back in your base at 200 supply, you're wasting larvae. The goal is to suicide units intelligently, taking out chunks of the opp army and using those extra larvae from larvae vomit to reinforce very quickly to overwhelm your opp. Your situation is only going to get worse the longer you stay at 200/200.

I'm not going to lie. This is still in (low) masters league my biggest barrier to success. A 4 gate is hard to stop at any level. Players like IdrA, Jinro, and some of the best players in the world lose to 4 gates, Void Ray Rushes, 2 rax bunker rushes, ling/bane, and every type of one base timing you can think of. One of the major things holding most people back is thinking about it as “cheese”. Sometimes these attacks are plain cheesy, and sometimes they're not. If he brings all the SCVs he has and marines (unfortunately, a player can bring 3-4 SCV's and transition out with dealing little to no damage), yeah that's really cheesy. If A player DT rushes is this cheese? Well, not really. Good toss players use DT's as a containment tool. If they notice you didn't prepare at all, yeah, they'll kill you, but if you have an overseer, they're going to bounce around stealing a kill here and there and keeping you in your base while he takes extra bases. Are cloaked banshees cheese? Well, no. He's using the unit to force you to build detection and be able to harass you and keep your economy in check until you get mutalisks out. It's all about trade offs. You're trading a large ground army for that early tech that will allow you to contain/harass him.


Now that we've dealt with that, how are we going to deal with one base timings? Well, you need to analyze your plays and figure out how you know it's a base timing attack. You need to realize what he could be doing, and respond. I'm not going to give you the times I use, because A) They're not perfect, and B) It's going to vary from league to league as players timing improves. A 4 gate might hit at 8:45 in bronze league, and 7:20 in masters. When you find out, start making units! I love drones, but right before a big attack is not the time to be making more.

Ver's "How to Improve (Great Guide on BW: Apply to SC2)
http://www.teamliquid.net/staff/stet_tcl/How_to_Improve_by_Ver.pdf

Day9's video archives and Podcast archives (High Level Commentary/Analysis)
http://day9tv.blip.tv/
http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft/Day(9)_Podcasts

Mr. Bitter's Archives and YouTube Channel (Lessons from Several Professionals to a Masters Zerg)
http://mrbitter.blip.tv/
http://www.youtube.com/user/MrBitterTV