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[Audio]Building Triggers by Day[9]
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Day[9]
United States7366 Posts
http://www.goear.com/listen.php?v=22f73c5 admin can figure out how to embed because i have no clue how to CHEERS! ^_^ [edit] embed is 5 posts down | ||
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emperorchampion
Canada9496 Posts
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Bosu
United States3247 Posts
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emperorchampion
Canada9496 Posts
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qrs
United States3637 Posts
OK, left off at 8:40. If anyone feels like picking it up, feel free, otherwise maybe I'll get back to it sometime later. Edit: Thanks to tribal_warfare for transcribing the second (larger) part. Hey everyone, this is Day[9], and I want to talk about a pretty advanced concept called Building Triggers and the Imaginary Player. So I created the Gimme questions thread a while ago, asking about questions people had, just for me to rant on about, and a huge number of them were about builds, like, If he does this, how do I respond with this? or, When's a good timing push, what's a good build, on this matchup, on this map? And so, rather than going into specific advice and trying to answer those questions, I figure it would be really nice to give some general advice that you guys can apply in a wide variety of situations. And I mentioned two at the start: the first is what's called "Building Triggers" and the second is what's called "The Imaginary Player". So let's begin with Building Triggers The notion of a trigger is pretty straightforward in itself: that if A happens, you do B. And even though this is really a sort of simple idea, it has powerful, powerful applications for improving you play. So let's begin with some really simple examples that I know everyone is familiar with: As Protoss, when your shuttle is halfway done, you start building a Robotics Support Bay. That way, when your shuttle finishes, you'll be able to start the reaver right on time. Or, in another example, when your Spire is at 300 hitpoints, you stop making things at all of your hatcheries: that way, when the Spire finishes, you have three larvae ready to roll at each hatchery, and you can pump out a whole bunch of mutalisks. Virtually everyone has experienced the two triggers that I just mentioned, because they crop up in almost every single game. Any time Zerg is going for a Spire, he's going to be obeying this sort of Law of Larva-Timing. But, in terms of other triggers, people seem to treat them as though they're this mystical knowledge, that there's this oracle that appears every hundred years and dishes out some sorts of timings or whatever. But the fact remains that any player can build his own triggers if he does so in a simple incremental fashion, which is exactly what I'm going to talk about, with a personal example of my own: Let's talk about Zerg vs. Terran on Gaia, one of my absolute favorite matchups ever. Now, assuming that I'm not in vertical positions with my opponent, I love going hydralisk/lurker, because of the way that the middle of the map is kind of wide open but also kind of looks like a large path. Now, the problem that I have when I go hydralisk/lurk--or really that any hydralisk/lurk player has--is that if the Terran gets too many tanks, it becomes increasingly difficult to stop Terran pushes. If you have some number of medic/marine and 15 well-placed tanks, it's virtually impossible to break that with any number of hydralisk/lurkers. So, in the logic of constructing my build on this map, I knew there was a point where I needed to get Guardians, and the question is: when do I get Guardians. At this point, a critical mistake that so, so, so many players make is to think that when late-game rolls around they can just feel it out: they'll be able somehow to "feel" when Terran has too many tanks and then they'll get the Hive. That logic does not work and you should avoid this at all costs. I mean, consider early-game: suppose I'm Protoss and I want to 2-gate rush a Zerg player: I never "feel it out". I never just say, "Well I can just wing this 2-gate rush." Instead what I do is get a precise, exact, optimized build, and follow that every single time I want to 2-gate rush a Zerg player and I make subtle adjustments based upon what the Zerg player is doing. There is no reason why you can't do this late-game. And that is exactly what I'm saying: that you want to have a precise plan of what to do late-game by creating your trigger and then you make subtle adjustments based upon what's going on. With that in mind, let's discuss how I came to answer the question, "When do I get Guardians in Zerg vs. Terran on Gaia?" Step 1, and by far the most important step in building your own trigger: I chose a timing completely arbitrarily. I said to myself, "Let's get a Hive at 125 food: that's when I'm going to get my Queen's Nest and start teching up to Guardians." And I told myself I would play at least 10 games using this exact timing to see how it felt. In the actual games, I got crushed by tank pushes every single time: the Guardians were way late. So, great: now, all of a sudden, rather than trying to "feel my way" through the late-game, I instead established a hard decision with a very clear adjustment, which was: "Get the hive earlier." At this point, I backed off a little bit, and said, "Well, let me try doing it at 90 food." And when I did it at 90 food, the results were better--I was able to hold off the pushes a little bit more effectively in the late-game, but then, all of a sudden, I was losing in the middle-game: when the Terran's first push came out, I just didn't have enough hydra/lurk to kill it off. So immediately, I know that the trigger I'm looking for, the timing I'm looking for, is somewhere between 90 and 125 food, and I ended up settling at around 100 food as a decent time to start making the Queen's Nest and teching towards those Guardians. An important note is that I didn't need to use food as a basis for establishing these triggers. I could have used any number of wacky things. I could have said, "I'll start making my Queen's Nest when my +1 attack upgrade is 75% done." Or I could have said, "Gee, let me start making my Queen's Nest when I get my gas done at my fourth base." I mean, anything you want to use as your trigger, totally go for it. Again, the most important concept in building your own trigger is first choosing a starting point and then incrementally adjusting that based upon your experiences in play. And the most important word there is "incrementally". By far the biggest mistake that you can make when establishing these sorts of triggers is to be too hasty in making your adjustments. That's why I said that I devoted 10 games to getting my Hive at 125 food. I devoted 10 games to getting my Hive at 90 food. Because I wanted to make sure that I wasn't making some sort of fluke in those games that would incorrectly make me adjust my play in a wrong direction. There are two key aspects of this example I briefly want to touch on. The first is that this is a late-game situation. Many players feel really daunted by late-game scenarios, because it feels like there are so many variables and deviations, and there's a million ways you could have gotten there, and it seems like an intractable problem, trying to close down on a solid solution. But, as we saw in this example, I had a very simple question and there was a very simple process I followed. And, remember, if you just break it down into small enough chunks, there is no problem that is too hard for any player at any level to solve. The second key point--and this is so, so, so important: if there is one thing you remember from this entire recording, let it be this--I never stopped to question whether my play was right or wrong. That is, I never said, "Should I be going Guardians?" I never stopped to do that; I never stopped to question whether I should be going hydralisk/lurker or anything like that. Rather, I said, "I am going hydralisk/lurker on this map, it feels like I need to go Guardians, when do I get those Guardians?" and I tried only to answer the question when. That is it. That is so important in the improvement of your play: to focus on a question and work on that. There are countless players in Starcraft who think the goal is to find "the right build". You see these players all the time: they're 2-gate rushing, you know, one week and then the next week they're going early-expand, Bisu-style, and then the next week they're just doing whatever the current trend in Proleague is. They keep changing and changing and changing. That is not your goal. Your goal in Starcraft is not to try to find "the right build"; rather, it is to find a build that you like that is based on solid logic, and then to adjust that build, and to work on it, and to incorporate newer, better triggers that make that build work. _________________________________________________________________________ finished by tribal_warfare _________________________________________________________________________ For example, one day I woke up and said "You know what, I'm tired of going mutalisk/zerling in zerg vs zerg. I want to go hydralisk." and I spent one season on PG tour just working on that build, making adjustments, trying to form new sets of logics, doing different openings until finally I had a solid build down. The following season I went 56-1 against zerg, I was playing an A+ level; and I say that not to brag but to point out that there was absolutely nothing special about my play. I simply started with some logic and then adjusted and adjusted and adjusted. I mean the one loss I had, was not to a phenomenal player at all. It was one of the first games I played that season. But he showed me that when I was doing my opening I needed to get twelve zerglings instead of ten. I had been relying on getting ten but it was just too little for his aggressive nine pool opening. And after that adjustment I could face nine pools in the future and hold that off. Again it was just these subtle adjustments. I'd like to take the time now to answer a question I saw in the questions thread I created as well as to dicuss a conversation I had with Xeris about this very topic of building triggers, so I apologise in advance for potentially butchering your name but Oystein from Norway asked, "When you have taken expansions outside your natural in zerg vs terran do you ever make units from the expansions or do you stick strictly to drone?" I love this question because it has a clear motivation, it has an answer with some foundational logic and it can be turned into a question that can help develop a trigger to improve your play. So first of all, let me begin with the motivation. This totally was a question that came up in my experience as a Zerg player. You know, say the map is python and I take my main and my natural and then I take another main because I'm going for the standard sort of hive tech defiler play and what not. And I remember early on in my life time I would wonder when I had that expansion, should I just keep making drones? It seemed to make sense because I wanted to have my economy slowly getting better and better and the more drones the merrier right? Moreover, I could have a nydas canal linking my main and this expansion so I could have units in both places at once, and also when I take the natural as my forth base I can just transfer drones from that expansion on down. It seemed like I could keep making drones. At the same time I saw all sorts of benefits to making units from that expansion. If I'm making a lot of units at that expansion then I'll have a small little army that I can just move right down the ramp and I can use that to defend my newly building forth expansion. Also, if I'm occasionally making a defiler and some lurkers at that third base I can use those units to counter attack and a good example of this is GGplay vs Iris in the everstar league finals game five. So I saw benefits to both. That said, to answer your question Oystein, yes, there is a time you want to stop making drones from that expansion and begin making units and the logic to this is that you have all your hatcheries make the number of drones that you want to get to the level of economy you want and then that hatchery can join in unit production and that ends up being much more efficient then just slowly adding drones one at a time at that expansion. But what is so key about Oystein's question is that now we can ask ourselves, when do we stop making drones? What is the appropriate level of economy? And now we are just starting an exercise in building a new trigger that will help us improve our play. And again, what I love so much about Oystein's question is that it has a natural motivation, it can be stated as a simple problem and all we have to do is use some simple logic to reword that that as a trigger building exercise. In another example I was talking to my friend Xeris on the phone about one base dragoon/reaver on Requiem. Because Requiem has really close starting positions, one base and its aggressive play is really great against Zerg because the zerg has to stay low econ in the early game. So if you can get a really good timing push in there with dragoon/reaver it's surprisingly difficult to stop. As I was discussing this build with Xeris he asked me, when do I get Dragoon range? I know I want to have range when I make my push but I'm not sure if I need to get it earlier, you know, to hold off some sort of hydra/ling bust at my front. And I think that is a perfectly worded question for a trigger building exercise. So lets just outline the process that we would use in that situation. It's now time to pretend that I am a budding, young protoss super star. That I have taken it upon myself to figure out precisely when to get dragoon range on Requiem. Step one. I need to choose an arbitrary time to start getting dragoon range so I have some place to work with, so I have some benchmark for comparision. When I say arbitrary, it's important to note that I do not mean stupid. You should always use some sort of logic to make sure you have a reasonable starting point. So, in my eyes a reasonable starting point is to get dragoon range to finish right before I make that dragoon/reaver push. So I'll say to myself that I want dragoon range to finish right as my reaver finishes. All of a sudden I have a complete army with shuttle, reaver and a bunch of dragoons with range, so now is a good time to attack. So my arbitrary timing might be, start dragoon range right when my reaver starts. What I might discover after a game or two is that the reaver finishes much more quickly then range. At this point I might say to myself, "Ok, I need to back range up. I'm going to start getting range when my shuttle begins as opposed to when my reaver begins." and lets say that timing works perfectly. So now, right as my reaver pops out, my dragoon range finishes and I'm ready to roll out. Then suppose at this time I find that my push gets crushed over and over again. I think to myself, "Hmm, I need to get that second reaver before my attack." As a result, I no longer need to get dragoon range so early. Let me start getting dragoon range when my first reaver begins, as opposed to when my shuttle begins. And then lets say that timing lines up well, and right as my second reaver pops out dragoon range finishes and I'm ready to roll out once more. I've made a minor adjustment based upon the success of this push and again, kept the focus in my mind on when that dragoon range upgrade was beginning. Further suppose that at this point I play made ten, fifteen, games and against every hydralisk/ling player, this push crushes them. I'm steamrolling zerg after zerg and I'm feeling much more confident in my play until I get to a player who is going two-base mutalisk instead of doing this zergling/hydralisk on opening. Against this sort of player I might find myself helpless against his mutalisks early on because I don't get dragoon range until right when these reavers finish so I might be having a huge difficulty dealing with mutalisk harass. It's important then to say, "Well, gee, maybe I should get dragoon range earlier." And then you plan it and try to get the timing aligned for when his mutalisks pop out. Having adjusted the dragoon range timing, I need to make sure my push hasn't been delayed too much because if I'm really good at holding off mutalisks players now I need to make sure that I don't equally suck against the hydraling players. What may be the case is that I find that I can get away with upgrading dragoon range early to hold off mutalisk players and my push has not been delayed so much that my push can't crush the hydraling players. Although this was an entirely theoretical exercise I think it is a completely reasonable exercise of how you would be adjusting play game after game. Note, I never stopped to say, "Is dragoon range good on Requiem?" I just began with the assumption that it was and tried to adjust the timing until I found one that worked just right for me. As I mentioned earlier, what you'll sometimes find is that there are situations when you can delay dragoon range sometimes and will have to get it earlier some other times. All your logic will eventually condense down into a theorem that will allow you to precisely get dragoon range at just the right time every single game. I've spent a long time talking about building triggers so now I want to talk about an abstract and very related concept called the imaginary player. This is the notion that, because you cannot see what your opposing player is doing through the fog of war you have to account for all possibilities of his play until you know exactly what he is doing. For instance, if I'm playing against a terran player and he went one-base fast gas and I can't get up his ramp to see what he's doing he could be going for a fast two-factory push, he could be going for a fast two-port wraith, he could be going for fast dropship, he could be going factory vulture harass to an expansion. I just don't know what he's doing yet. So I must assume that I'm playing against all of those possibilities, all of those imaginary players until I know precisely which one my opponent is. To many of you, I'm sure this sounds like I'm saying, "Be sure to account for these possibilites." but the notion of the imaginary player is in fact much, much deeper than that and it's critical for you to work out all sorts of timings and triggers to truely become a great player. Once I have a build that I really like, that I think is solid, what I do is I get about five replays of that build against all the possible types of players I could play against. So, for example, lets go back to my zerg vs terran on gaia. Lets say I really like my lurker\hydralisk build. I'm going to make sure I've played this build style against fast expand, two barracks fast factory, fast gas and all the variations I mentioned earlier, against two rax fast expand, and against weird sorts of all ins and bunker rushes. I make sure I have replays against all of these variations. And that is when I figure out the timings for imaginary players. For example, I'll watch five replays of a terran who goes two rax into medic marine fast expand and I'll mentally line up all his timings with mine. I'll say something like, "Ok, I'll see his command center when my lair finishes." and I'll line up other things like say my evolution chamber generally finishes when his engineering bay starts or he makes his academy when my hatchery has this many hitpoints from being finished. All these sorts of little things. I can even doing things like "He makes this building when my food is at this much." I mean, every player is used to saying things like, "I make my overlord at eighteen." and I'm telling you that you should think things like "When I make my overlord at eighteen, that's when he makes his academy." and then I'll extend this further. I'll watch five replays against a player who went two port wraith and I'll get all those timings worked out: when his starports start and finish in relation to my lair. Against a two factory player I know exactly when that push leaves his base based upon what my food is. After hours of studying these replays I now have a complete mental picture of what all possible Terrans are doing based upon my play and the numbers I get from my build. When every game begins I'm always aware of all the things my imaginary terran opponents are doing and throughout the early parts of the game I'm constantly thinking to myself, "Which imaginary players can I cross off?". Which brings me to an absolutely critical idea that all high level players abuse relentlessly, and that is what I call the non-trigger. The basic idea of a non-trigger is that if you know your opponents timings well enough, you know that if you see nothing at certain points in time you can cross imaginary players off your list. For example, suppose my terran opponent goes two rax and that's all I get to see. He could be going for a fast tank push, medic marine and early expand, or some sort of aggressive one base play. Those are the three imaginary players I have in my mind, and three imaginary players whose timings I know intimately. For example, if my player is early expanding I know exactly when I first see that command center and I can go "three, two, one," and if I see nothing I know immediately that he isn't fast expanding and I can begin preparing myself for a fast tank push and preparing myself to play against a one basing terran player. This seemingly counter-intuitive idea is unbelievably powerful. That you always know exactly what your opponent is doing. That you can cross off all imaginary players until you have pin pointed exactly who your opponent is purely through key periods of nothing. Many players incorrectly assume certain situations in starcraft are rock, paper, scissors because they don't acknowledge the power of non-triggers. They'll watch two professional players play and neither of them will scout each other very much, and when they finally confront each other the first player will have an army that absolutely crushes the second player. Many amateurs will look at that and say that "Oh well, the first player just won because of his opening build." but the fact remains that the opening player is constantly adjusting his opening because he is seeing nothing from the second player at key periods of time. Never assume that starcraft is rock, paper, scissors. There is always a solution there. If you spend time practicing keeping track of all the imaginary players, focusing on what the non-triggers tell you, you will never be surprised in starcraft. I probably get surprised by what my opponent is doing once every thousand games because I'm always keeping track of all the possibilities in my head. Well, that about wraps up my rant for today. Hopefully some of you found that useful. I really hope that you guys can incorporate the ideas of building triggers on only to generally improve your play but also to discover timings in the builds that you like. Because there is no point playing a game like starcraft if you're having someone elses fun. I also hope that you can incorporate the notion of the imaginary player into your play. Not just because it's obviously helpful and it will greatly bulster your confidence in game as you'll never be surprised but more importantly, I think that one of the most rewarding feelings I get in starcraft consistently is just knowing what my opponent is doing, and then when I rewatch the replay, I was right. That is just such a powerfully cool feeling to be able to go "I know he's making his academy here and his engineering bay here and his expansion should be finishing about now" and when you rewatch it you're just dead on the money, and that's just such a confidence booster that you're right on track. Hopefully you'll use the imaginary player logic to build your own clever non-triggers that will give you perhaps the greatest joy possible in starcraft - being accused of being a map hacker. That concludes my rant. This is Day[9], thank you very much for listening. Cheers. | ||
GTR
51436 Posts
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Crunchums
United States11143 Posts
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HeavOnEarth
United States7087 Posts
going gas before rax to look like some cut econ fast vult then blocking with 2 scvs, leaving only 3 marines on ramp while keeping the rest in the back so im like heh 2port.. etc (cross out marine builds) so i make some hydras( the build u do in zvt vs mech ) then blam 3rax+1 I like going hive when my 2nd defense upgrade is 50% done so i can get my 3rd + the "timing" i base around that the arbitary timing and one set build...great for iccup but... do you still do well in a series match? i mean, people who've done all the builds.. can pick the best one vs urs and/or switch it up. can u talk about playing offraces vs ur main to get the feel of timings? can u talk about mind games? I really like your audio commentaries. The last one on ZvT mech was eeh but this was really good keep it up! | ||
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HeavOnEarth
United States7087 Posts
LOL 56-1 BWHAAH GG reppack yo ! | ||
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Raithed
China7078 Posts
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selboN
United States2523 Posts
On January 20 2009 11:32 HeavOnEarth wrote: LOL one season hydra vs zerg LOL 56-1 BWHAAH GG reppack yo ! +1 | ||
Heyoka
Katowice25012 Posts
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RLTY
United States965 Posts
Now to go make some imaginary players. heh. | ||
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Not_Computer
Canada2277 Posts
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Tropics
United Kingdom1132 Posts
one of the best learning bw things ive ever seen/heard/read | ||
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erin[go]bragh
United States815 Posts
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alphafuzard
United States1610 Posts
i've been accused of mh'ing before but that was more luck, and less crossing out imaginary players  Phenomenal info and hopefully I will have the follow-through to put these ideas into action. One can always hope.... edit: Recommended threads gogogo? | ||
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Not_Computer
Canada2277 Posts
WOW, this was such a good listen! I knew vaguely about most of the things you covered but now I realized that all the details of these ideals and strategic theories I have are lacking so much. Too bad I don't have enough time/commitment right now to put it into practice but I'll keep it in mind for the future. Btw, every time you say "absolutely CRITICAL", it makes me sit up straight and listen intently, rofl. | ||
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Day[9]
United States7366 Posts
On January 20 2009 12:53 Not_Computer wrote: Btw, every time you say "absolutely CRITICAL", it makes me sit up straight and listen intently, rofl. aahahahahahah this makes me giggle teheheheheheheh | ||
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Divinek
Canada4045 Posts
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