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I am a SEA bronze zerg player which sucks obviously, but i am trying to improve slowly.
I played a couple of games and i would like to get some help from the TL community on how to improve my macro and gameplay overall.
Replay
I spawn as zerg at the 10 o clock position and the protoss spawns at the 8 o clock position.I go for a 14 pool 17 hatch and drones up while the protoss dt rushes. At 7 min he has 3 dts and he uses them to attack me. I lose 27 drones and his zealot and 3 stalkers kill my nat. I choose to double expand one at my natural and the other at the 1 o clock position. He tries for an attack with ~13 stalkers but retreats after losing a stalker and killing an overseer. I decide to go for infestors so i drop the infestation pit and get pathogen glands and a couple of infestors. As a result of him not capitalizing on his early game lead, i soon have double the amount of harvesters. He also gets a ninja which i did not see. I get a ton of infestors and get a roach ling army with hive on the way. I upgrade my melee ranged and carapace and plan to get ultras. The protoss goes stalker immortal archon colossus. I attack him with 200/200 but with terrible investor micro, i lose my entire army and he goes on the destroy my natural. I tried spawning 11 ultras and ~30 lings but the lings got incinerated and half my ultras died in the cocoon. I try attacking with the remaining ultras but they got destroyed easily and i attacked him again, hoping to kill him but failing and putting me severely behind. I then get back my natural for the gas and build up my army of lings and roaches. I put up a spire too while he builds a mothership and builds up his army. I scout his ninja and then kills it with my lings. With the destruction of his ninja, he has no more mineral income. He pushes out with his army and moves his remaining probes to the 1 o clock position where my base is and loses 1 probe before retreating. He attacks my army with his army and i get destroyed easily. I built ultras but due to the mothership and air forces, my ultras are deemed useless. As a result, i lose my main, nat, 3rd and gold but my base at the 1 o clock position still lives and he moves his ground army home. Back at my remaining 2 bases, i start massing up hydras to get ready for the impending attack and manages to grab a large army before the engagement. I clean up his air forces easily and moves towards his base. I kill his remaining forces and wipe his base out. He had an expansion and used it to build a mother ship before his fleet beacon was destroyed. In the end, he lost to me.
I found that after my nat was lost the second time, i did not build more workers and my 3rd was not mining at all. I could
-Better larva injects
-More workers
-Dont throw away my army
-Gotten macro hatches
-Expanded more
Even though i won, i want some tips to improve my game and how i could have won earlier and more convincingly.
Thanks
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Macro comes down to practice, getting used to building a crap load of stuff. If macro is what you want to focus on, you want to focus on playing more games. This improves a lot of other stuff and it's not until higher levels that you really need to focus on your mechanics and micro and multitasking, at this stage it comes naturally with games played.
This includes things as subtle as game sense which would help you evaluate this replay much better on your own. An awareness of what's going on and why.
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.I go for a 14 pool 17 hatch Actually you went 15 pool 20 hatch, if you look at the food counts at the moment those buildings got started.
You didn't actually scout your opponent's front. If so, you could have seen that he had no sentry. Sentry cost a lot of gas, so that tells you the gas is going to something unorthodox, either fast stargate or dts. In both cases, you want to throw down your evo chamber asap and maybe even make a precautionary spore at each of your bases.
That's the general case. In this game, your opponent put all his tech at his front, so if you simply moved a drone or zergling there you would have seen both the twilight council and the dt shrine. 
Now about macro:
You must hotkey your hatcheries. Just place all your hatcheries on the same hotkey, say, 4 (you use 5 for queens), and spam 4-s constantly. 4-s shall become your motto. You often have a lot of larve sitting idle but if you get in the habit of hotkeying your hatcheries and constantly selecting your available larvae, that won't be an issue.
Also I suggest hotkeying your queens individually rather than on the same hotkey. Say, 5, 6, 7. Then for a round of injects, you go 5-5-v-click, 6-6-v-click, 7-7-v-click.
Zerg macro is pretty simple: hotkey your queens and hatcheries and just cycle through them constantly. It doesn't matter if you're attacking, defending, just tap these hotkeys constantly.
You have decent injects (I'm in Diamond and I do maybe 30% better on inject only), but you get a ton of drones on two bases and you start floating a ton of money with no way to spend it. If you see it getting that high, get at least a macro hatch.
Overall though your macro wasn't the main problem in this game. Yes you could have produced about 3 times as much with good macro, but your opponent was equally bad in that respect.Your problem was having no idea what your opponent was doing.
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if u want to improve macro practice is best there is even a map called macro or die which really helped me improve my macro basically u hav to keep ur money low never get supply blocked while dealing wit an enemy or u could try the multi tasking trainer which is different but also ver good for traing your macro
also if u hav a training partner or friend u could always ask to practice long macro games wit them
Also learn ur hotkeys for everything from transfusion to morphing the hatcherie to a lair hotkeys will improve ur game very much
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I read through your replies and tried to follow as much as i could (thanks Qxz) and i played another ZvP and this was the replay.
Replay
I get a expansion, drones up and gets lings while he gets a stalker immortal army which i scouted. After that, he gets 2 stargates and mass void rays. Upon scouting, i get hydralisks and go for a ling roach hydra army which wins me the game easily despite losing my nat and 3rd. In the game, i get 4 macro hatcheries but fail to keep my resources low but i was able to max out at 16 minutes compared to his ~120 supply army. I had enough scouting i feel which allowed me to react to voids more quickly so i think i am fine in that aspect but is there more ways to lower the floating resource level? i really need help thanks.
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Something that helps me a lot with my macro is just to go 1v1 against the AI. With the AI you don't have to worry too much about strategy since it kinda does the same thing each time, plus for me at least it's less stressful. I know that if I lose it's not because of cheese or trickery, it's just because my macro sucked, so I can just focus on beating it with lots of units. Especially at Bronze level, you should be able to increase the difficulty as you get better.
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On September 08 2011 14:27 Spocria wrote:I read through your replies and tried to follow as much as i could (thanks Qxz) and i played another ZvP and this was the replay. ReplayI get a expansion, drones up and gets lings while he gets a stalker immortal army which i scouted. After that, he gets 2 stargates and mass void rays. Upon scouting, i get hydralisks and go for a ling roach hydra army which wins me the game easily despite losing my nat and 3rd. In the game, i get 4 macro hatcheries but fail to keep my resources low but i was able to max out at 16 minutes compared to his ~120 supply army. I had enough scouting i feel which allowed me to react to voids more quickly so i think i am fine in that aspect but is there more ways to lower the floating resource level? i really need help thanks.
Lol, you macro is so much better than bronze. Upgrades cost a lot of gas/min. Also, if you have tons of drones and minerals, and for whatever reason dont feel like expoing. Throw down million spines.
Earlier double evo upgrades. Thats my main point 
Also keep taking bases. You didnt have your macro hatch hotkeyed for a while so you banked like 15 larva.
I like how you have a decent build and you opp goes for a 4 aget forge cannon expand XD A classic.
edit: also dont forget to put guys on gas at your expos. If youdve expod more, you could have had a 5th when you maxed. And youdve seen his ninja expo. Have a ling at every expo burrowed. Good habit to have.
Also you see him massing VR? You have so much money u cant spend. Throw down 10 spores at each base.
Another edit: Pro tip, fungal rapes mass voids. Get some infestors.
TBH main thing, you were gas blocked. Because you didnt take enough bases and even when u did like at the end where you macrod like a champ and took 3, you didnt take the gases. Youll be out of bronze in a week tops.
Sorry for the edits, i posted as i watched
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Play against the computer to concentrate on macro and injects.
At least for me, I haven't had a zvz in 2 days where I wasn't 6 or 10 pooled and the game was over before anyone got any tech but a pool.
Similarly, almost every protoss at least tries to cannon rush, and almost every terran does early offensive bunker pressure out of some number of rax.
This is especially true for lower leagues.
So either learn first to get suffcient micro to survive the first 5 minutes and then learn to macro, or play against the computer to get some basic macro that probably won't help you much initially after you start laddering then.
But: If you know how to macro decently, and actually manage to do so under all that cheese pressure, it's auto win. Then again, if you have no macro, it is auto-lose before 5 minutes.
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Would you be interested in just doing one build order in every match up? It seems like your thinking far too hard, to improve your macro you need to do one build while teching fast enough getting your gasses at the right time and things like this to start to understand the fundamentals of macro.
Oh a side note, I wouldn't ever advise going infestors to a bronze player. Try to create very 1a compositions (roach/corruptor vs colossus). Because you wont have to micro as much you can work on getting consistent larva injects and notice the flow of games more, maybe even pick up timings.
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Quick Question:
Which way of getting the first overlord is better?
1. 9 Overlord
2. 10 Overlord
3. Extractor Trick 11 Overlord
Or What?
@imbecile
Actually, I have not played many games where i get 6 or 10 pooled recently or any cheeses except one where he cannoned rush and i expanded in his base (so funny) but apparently, SEA bronze does not have much cheese i think (no bias). So i can go macro in bronze easily and win.
@OriginalBeast
Also, I do incorporate infestors in my play a lot but in some games i don't. I only have 2 build orders and that is 11 pool in ZvZ and 14 pool in ZvT and ZvP. I have micro which is not too bad for a bronze leaguer but this does cause my larva injects to go down the drain so maybe i should get 1a armies though infestors really give me an edge over other bronze players cause they don't target infestors and i can just mass fungal to own the opponents army.
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I don't play Zerg, so take this with a grain of salt, but after watching Nestea and July play in the GSL, it's not always a bad thing to have a lot of money banked. For example, July was up at 1k min, 1k gas against Ryung in some game at the 10-12 minute mark, but he also had a spire building, so as soon as that finished, he just spend all his money on mutas. For Zerg and Protoss, I feel like banking some money isn't necessarily a bad thing, since it allows you to re-max incredibly quickly. What you DO need to keep on top is your larva injects, and having enough larva to re-max quickly. But you seemed to do a pretty good job of that already, just a couple missed injects here and there. Also, creep and Overlord spread!
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On September 09 2011 00:28 Spocria wrote:
Quick Question:
Which way of getting the first overlord is better?
1. 9 Overlord
2. 10 Overlord
3. Extractor Trick 11 Overlord
Or What?
@imbecile
Actually, I have not played many games where i get 6 or 10 pooled recently or any cheeses except one where he cannoned rush and i expanded in his base (so funny) but apparently, SEA bronze does not have much cheese i think (no bias). So i can go macro in bronze easily and win.
@OriginalBeast
Also, I do incorporate infestors in my play a lot but in some games i don't. I only have 2 build orders and that is 11 pool in ZvZ and 14 pool in ZvT and ZvP. I have micro which is not too bad for a bronze leaguer but this does cause my larva injects to go down the drain so maybe i should get 1a armies though infestors really give me an edge over other bronze players cause they don't target infestors and i can just mass fungal to own the opponents army.
9 ol is most efficient.
I realize you micro your infestors and instantly see results, I think that's why lower league people still like to try to contol their army, but trust me if you just produce a lot of shit you will be able to kill armies, then go kill their base. Plus to contol any mana using unit I say it's essential to have another control group, and it takes a lot of skill to use more than one. I say you should start to re-add infestors in like high gold to plat because by that time exprimenting with unit comps will be of some benefit
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Ummm, while this thread is here I might ask another question.
How do you guys do your injects? I used the backspace method but lately I have felt its kinda messy once you have more hatcheries than Queens.
is it good to have all Queen in different Hotkeys? Like it was said above?
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On September 09 2011 01:22 windsupernova wrote:
Ummm, while this thread is here I might ask another question.
How do you guys do your injects? I used the backspace method but lately I have felt its kinda messy once you have more hatcheries than Queens.
is it good to have all Queen in different Hotkeys? Like it was said above?
i put queens on different hotkeys and i generally remember where my hatches are and just click to them on the minimap and inject like that.
on the topic, your macro is pretty good. just focus on not missing injects, keeping out of supply block, keeping a good drone count (you had DT issues, a good defense is one spore and 2 spines at each base and that will hold the dts off quite well) and finally keeping upgrades and units coming and trying to keep your money down. someone earlier (i can't remember who) said about keeping a reserve of money, pretty much that's for when your 200/200, you get a bunch of back up larva at your hatches and then attack with your 200/200 army and as your units die, you can rebuild your units pretty much instantly, and for the opponent, it's like vsing a 300/200 army, if that makes sense lol.
creep spread as zerg is another important part, so if you can get that creep spread everywhere, then your reinforcing units i was talking about above will get there alot faster which will help.
hope that helps ^_^
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I'm in a somewhat similar position myself, bronze league zerg-player (EU) and I'm trying in every game to out-macro my opponent. Sadly most matches are vs 6pool/2rax/4gate and I lose quite alot from simply droning too much early on, but even so I feel "lost" after a certain point. Some of my major problems is scouting (!!!) and expanding, aswell as creep spread.
But besides that, I'm just not quite sure what to produce, and when. I always start out by droning really hard, and thus get a good economy early on, but since I have problems knowing when to expand (after the expo at natural that is) my gasincome usually comes to a halt eventually while minerals are pouring in. I think it's important to have a gameplan, and set benchmarks for yourself such as "by 10min I will be at xx/xx food of which 60ish are drones", but I find it hard deciding on an opener that I like well enough in all 3 MUs to practise with (since I want to get ONE strat down properly first). Anyway sorry if this was hijacking, but I just recognized your situation.
(heres a replay of mine where I felt personally I played rather good (and won), but for a more trained eye I'm sure there's TONS to improve on even besides the things I find myself: http://www.mediafire.com/?oc8981rs8283jl9)
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on the topic, your macro is pretty good. just focus on not missing injects, keeping out of supply block, keeping a good drone count (you had DT issues, a good defense is one spore and 2 spines at each base and that will hold the dts off quite well) and finally keeping upgrades and units coming and trying to keep your money down. someone earlier (i can't remember who) said about keeping a reserve of money, pretty much that's for when your 200/200, you get a bunch of back up larva at your hatches and then attack with your 200/200 army and as your units die, you can rebuild your units pretty much instantly, and for the opponent, it's like vsing a 300/200 army, if that makes sense lol.
creep spread as zerg is another important part, so if you can get that creep spread everywhere, then your reinforcing units i was talking about above will get there alot faster which will help.
hope that helps ^_^
Actually i usually get about 10 larva per base minimum before i push out and as other bronze leaguers are really lame (no offense but it is really true and i am not praising myself but stating a fact (Don't flame me pls)), when i got 200 supply, they usually have about 120ish supply in a macro game (I played a guy who FFE and when i got to him with mass roach and hydra he barely had an army) I instantly remax with my terrible macro (floating minerals and gas) and destroy him utterly so i do store larva.
@Vond
I don't usually set benchmarks cause zerg is a reactionary race so i must prepare for anything and those benchmarks may become obsolete if some harass or push comes or rushes which mess up your plan. Based on what you said, don't drone too hard. I did the same many times without proper defense and knowledge about what the opponent is doing and just die easily. Now, i always scout for rushes and etc to know when to mass drone. I usually win with 2 base in bronze cause i can but i do expand and expand when you need resources or when you feel safe. GL
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On September 09 2011 01:22 windsupernova wrote:
Ummm, while this thread is here I might ask another question.
How do you guys do your injects? I used the backspace method but lately I have felt its kinda messy once you have more hatcheries than Queens.
is it good to have all Queen in different Hotkeys? Like it was said above?
If you are comfortable with backspace method just add a stop command after the end of your injection cycle. This will stop any crazy queen shenanigans
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Basically, I need help in injects. I know the backspace method but it is very difficult for me to do as the backspace key is sooooooo far away from V so i just use the mini map or move to each hatchery to inject so it is very slow and inefficient is there anyway to do the backspace method more easily?
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You can rebind it from backspace to something more easily accessible. I have mine on space now. Just go to hotkeys > global > camera > base camera and rebind that
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EPT
