StarCraft II

[Fordel]

Mass Reapers imo!

How many reapers does it take to one volley a command center anyways? 

[bhodi]

Way, way too many. It only takes about 20 to 2-3 volley them though.

[Strazos]

I didn't bother to bind my producers together for some reason, I didn't expand early or often enough...

What else did I screw up?

http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/83857-1v1-terran-protoss-blistering-sands#rd:dna

[K9]

You played very well defensively, but there are a bunch of things you could improve.

 - Your macro was good, but you were banking way too many resources. You couldn't actually spend the resources as fast as you were getting them. I would have dropped another 3-4 gateways around the 10-15 minute mark and just used your economic advantage to grind him down faster.
 - After your observer scouted his base you could see that his army was less than yours, you could have expanded then, or even earlier. This would have given you an extra economic edge. If you are confident that you can at least hold off, or neuter any push he might make on your expansion, expand.
 - His banshee harass sent you into cannon overkill. Depending on the mobility of your forces (and you had phoenixes which are very mobile) a single cannon inside the mineral line, and a second on the opposite side of your nexus will give you ample detection to screen those banshees. Not that you were hurting for minerals, but in a tighter game, the majority of the resources you spent on them were wasted.
 - The big one, you never even sniffed at his back door. He had a single siege tank, marine and turret there for the whole game. With just your void rays you could have taken out at least the rocks, and then he is having to defend in a lot more places, and you can fuck with him a lot easier. Or you can push through the rocks and into his main and essentially gut him. Repeatedly smashing against his heavily fortified front door was a mistake, and it was really only the fact that his macro was awful which really saved you. Any terran with decent macro would have eaten your assaults even better and then smashed you back.
 - You had map control, you had the bigger army for the whole game, you could have been a lot better on the harass and you should have denied him any expansions after the natural. Not that these cost you in this case, but they are things you could have done better, given your commanding position.

Overall though you played well. The main things I would say you could fix are you can harass and run a lot more around the edges of his base (forcing terrans to turtle harder isn't always a bad thing); in general just be a bit more aggressive. The other thing would be to pay more attention to how much resources you have and when you see them getting up into the thousands, start throwing down some more production buildings, or sinking money into upgrades. For late-game protoss 2 gateways is pretty thin, 4-5 is standard, and even up to 8-9 isn't unreasonable.

[Strazos]

Thanks, this is all helpful.

For whatever reason, it seems like I have better luck with Protoss, but I still prefer Terran. And with Terran, I default info Viking/Tanks, just because...why the heck not?

[Malakili]

I got randomed against a diamond player earlier (I'm plat), and it really drove home how different Diamond play is from plat. He made a very early rush with like 1 marine and 2 marauders, and then reinforced withmore marauders, and I JUST barely held it off, but that sort of play is extremely rare in platinum and it really threw me off.  I did manage to stay in the game and play pretty even, but his ghost use was really good and I had gotten out a few immortals to counter the mass marauder style, immortals without shields are sad pandas.  So he eventually won.  Still I was mostly pleased with myself for playing decent even in a game style that was very unlike what I'm used to, and I felt like I learned a lot more in that one game than in my last 10 or so combined.

[K9]

I managed to beat a platinum ranked terran as Zerg. That made my day.

[Malakili]

I managed to beat a platinum ranked terran as Zerg. That made my day.

Players are finally figuring out how to win as Zerg, just in time for the patch to nerf Terran tanks.  I'm predicting a large drop off in the amount of Terran soon after the patch hits.  I may be over reacting though.

[Yoru]

Well, since everyone else is doing it... could I get a critique of this game? I, a lowly bronze player, bested some gold-ranked dude. For the life of me, I cannot understand what the key turning point in the game is. Also, I could use some general play critique and points to improve on.

http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/84721-1v1-zerg-steppes-of-war

[Rasix]

Well, since everyone else is doing it... could I get a critique of this game? I, a lowly bronze player, bested some gold-ranked dude. For the life of me, I cannot understand what the key turning point in the game is. Also, I could use some general play critique and points to improve on.

http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/84721-1v1-zerg-steppes-of-war

You just completely out-macro'd him.  Your harvester count for the most part was well above his.  You had enough units to push through his static defenses with little problem.

You let your cash get ridiculously large toward the end.  Make sure you have enough hatcheries and/or remember enough to keep up with your larva spit to support that many resources. While you were hurting him, you could have easily put down another expansion or two.

[Yoru]

You let your cash get ridiculously large toward the end.  Make sure you have enough hatcheries and/or remember enough to keep up with your larva spit to support that many resources. While you were hurting him, you could have easily put down another expansion or two.

Yeah, I have this problem a lot and it's why I feel my late game is much weaker than early/mid. After some point, I just always seem awash in cash that I cannot figure out how to spend (hint: build more unit buildings, asshole). I lost a really strong game over the weekend due to that; I had an early advantage and a few smashing battle victories that... did little real damage to his production capacity and, little by little, he rolled my advantage back by continuing to expand production while I stalled out.

I also tend to just completely forget about the end game units like high templar, ultralisks and shit.

I'll have to focus on it. Thanks.

[Strazos]

One of my many problems is that, just like with other RTS games, I like to actually watch the battles unfold. Sure, I'm still trying to micro to win that battle, but that's where my mind is - not on trying to expand, or building SCVs, or queuing up units. So I commonly get stuck with tons of resources. 

[Fordel]

That's why you macro all your barracks to a single control group! When in doubt, build marines!

6 AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA 

[K9]

Well, since everyone else is doing it... could I get a critique of this game? I, a lowly bronze player, bested some gold-ranked dude. For the life of me, I cannot understand what the key turning point in the game is. Also, I could use some general play critique and points to improve on.

http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/84721-1v1-zerg-steppes-of-war

You outplayed him, to put it simply. The only points I'd make are fairly trivial.

 - You got tunneling claws for your roaches but not burrow, so that was a bit redundant.
 - Overlord speed is a pretty critical upgrade, against a stronger opponent you'd want the mobility that offers.
 - Spreading creep in ZvZ is something I'm torn on, it helps them as much as it helps you. So if you have map control you're benefiting, but if the tide turns, he'll get the added advantage
 - You droned up well, although you can always produce more.
 - Something I see a lot of high-end zerg doing, which I also like, is producing multiple queens per hatchery; there's really no reason to stick to one, and having a second or third queen can really help push off muta harasses. They're actually pretty tough units, speed off creep is their weakness.

Otherwise you played well, he played badly. If you get a closer game there would probably be more to critique.

[Yoru]

That's why you macro all your barracks to a single control group! When in doubt, build marines!

6 AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA 

Yeah, when I'm playing Protoss or Terran, I have 4 and 5 hotkeyed to my major production groups (barracks, starports, whatever) and try to remember to slam down a bunch of INSERT UNIT HERE every 30-45 seconds or so.

What do other Zerg players hotkey aside from their hatcheries? I could see hotkeying an evolution chamber or spire to remember to pump out upgrades...

Fake Edit: Thanks for the commentary, K9. I'll try to post up a closer game the next time I have one. And yeah. I forget burrow a lot simply because it doesn't have a colorful icon. 

[K9]

I really don't hotkey anything other than hatcheries and units as zerg; it's not as simple as terran or protoss.

[bhodi]

Run through this checklist, in order, in your head/on the control group list several times a minute.

1. Am I building a worker? Build a worker.
2. Am I building units out of all my buildings? Build units.
3. How's my money look? Getting high? Build another unit building.
4. How's my supply? Getting close to the cap? Build another depot/pylon/olord
5. Check the minimap.

Doing this will easily get you into gold.

You should run your building hotkey gauntlet one after another every time you have a spare second and make sure something is queued up in all of them, every time you complete a task - like, telling a unit to build, telling your troops to go somewhere, whatever. For example, say I just started a depot, I'll hit 4 (ok worker is building) - 5 (build a marine/zealot) - 6 (ooh a tank!) - 7 (medivac), OK minerals are gone from building those new units, just built a depot, now check the minimap for anything unusual.

[K9]

A habit I had to break as zerg was the tendency to only build one type of a unit at a time from a hatchery. There are times when mass-producing a single unit type is appropriate, but breaking the urge to just spam <unit hotkey> until you are out of larvae or resources is a bad habit I think.

Now I tend to chip in at least one drone whenever I build other units, and an overlord or two every so often. Building a stable and efficient unit comp as zerg is a lot harder and requires more thought than other races, where you can just queue up a ton of the units that you want, then forget about them.

[Malakili]

1.1.0 patch notes: http://us.starcraft2.com/launcher/patch-notes.htm

[Ironwood]

 

[K9]

Exactly as promised and fairly unremarkable.

I suspect that they'll have to find some-way to un-nerf reapers, since they really are very weak past the early game, moreso than any other unit in the game.

[Malakili]

Exactly as promised and fairly unremarkable.

I think thats a good thing to be honest.  The game is really quite balanced as is.  Zerg is harder to play because of the macro mechanic, i think that is plainly obvious, but I think that is something that is going to prove significantly more difficult to balance, and Blizzard doesn't want to make huge changes.  I mean, during beta they were changing things fairly significantly every week or 2 practically.  However, you make major changes like with balance patches when the game is live, and its going to cause a lot more problems than it fixes.

[K9]

Oh I agree; I was mainly reflecting on those fake patch notes with all the overlord changes. It would have been nice to see a couple of new ladder maps though.

I think anyone with half a brain knows that Zerg are relatively weak; it doesn't mean they are hopeless, and retarded suggestions like "Add lurker" and "Make Hydras T1" would only screw up the metagame royally. Thankfully blizz knows that; what no-one seems to know is what it will take to get Zerg up to par. We'll have to see how this siege tank change pans out, that should be a small improvement. What I'm interested to see is how badly the zealot build time nerf effects protoss against 6/8/10-pools.

[Megrim]

Oh, they've added an in-game clock. That's.... fairly huge, actually.

[Malakili]

Oh, they've added an in-game clock. That's.... fairly huge, actually.

I think it will actually really help a relatively limited subset of players.  Normally, those with enough experience to know they should care about timings, AND without enough experience to be able to use in game queues for those timings.  These types of people (myself included, though I've been getting a lot better at it recently) are probably mainly around the platinum level.  Lower than that and timings aren't as important because players aren't usually consistent enough in their play, and higher than that and people are familiar enough to not need it.

Now, I'm sure it WILL be beneficial to more than those particular people in some sense, but I don't think its quite as huge as it seems at first glance (that was my initial reaction as well). 

[Astorax]

Oh, they've added an in-game clock. That's.... fairly huge, actually.

I think it will actually really help a relatively limited subset of players.  Normally, those with enough experience to know they should care about timings, AND without enough experience to be able to use in game queues for those timings.  These types of people (myself included, though I've been getting a lot better at it recently) are probably mainly around the platinum level.  Lower than that and timings aren't as important because players aren't usually consistent enough in their play, and higher than that and people are familiar enough to not need it.

Now, I'm sure it WILL be beneficial to more than those particular people in some sense, but I don't think its quite as huge as it seems at first glance (that was my initial reaction as well). 

I think it'll actually help lower level players get more consistent MUCH faster.

It's easier to look at things and go "oh shit, I hit 10 supply at 2 minutes this time, hit it in 3 minutes last time, wooties!"

Easier to have those distinct milestones as you play so you get a sense of what sort of pace you're setting.  Most lower level players set their time by when their enemies show up, which is a HUGE variable, and makes it harder to be consistent.

[kildorn]

Huh, the unskippable intro seems to be a focus bug:

If you start hitting keys at the firaxis/gamespy logos, you can't skip the intro (but your mouse cursor can show up!)

If you want until the dude's face appears and hit escape, it skips properly.

[Rasix]

Huh, the unskippable intro seems to be a focus bug:

If you start hitting keys at the firaxis/gamespy logos, you can't skip the intro (but your mouse cursor can show up!)

If you want until the dude's face appears and hit escape, it skips properly.

Wrong turn.

[bhodi]

Yep. Wrong thread.

By the way, the Civ 5 movie is like that because it's actually loading the game in the background. The movie is replacing the loading bar, which is why you can hit escape at slightly different points each time.

If you REALLY care, you can delete the .wmv of the intro movie, but then you'll just get a black screen for about 10 seconds while it loads the game.


In other, related news, I broke through diamond again, finally. I'm a mid to high diamond player (~1500) and I'm only ~800 because I haven't played enough games to get bumped up there. I'm playing all mid to high diamond players 1v1 now. I broke through into diamond after about 45 games played.

Zerg is still retardedly weak when they come up on random but I'm really having trouble with terran recently. I've been floating WAYY too many minerals. Also, I tend to lose to the 4 gate pretty regularly as terran, though I tend to win as protoss and (strangely enough) zerg.

[birdsguts]

Anyone happen to catch that "MondayFunday" day9 thing? It was actually very interesting. Zergs building no Queens led to some interesting openings that could later be augmented with Queens in live play. Anyone seen any stuff based on this up in plat/diamond at all? I'm really curious to see if it opens the Zerg up more over time... or if it was just a cherry picking of games he showed. (I'm sure it was to some extent but it does leave a certain impression the way he "pushes" the idea.)

It was Daily 183

[Yoru]

I did catch that one (yay VOD), but I'm not nearly strong enough of a player to make use of most of the stuff he talked about. I got a lot more out of the Newbie Tuesday daily (#184), and I find myself supply blocked a lot less now that I'm thinking about it.

I have one 2gate proxy all-in loss replay I'll post up later this weekend; I want to get some ideas on how I could've detected/countered it instead of just dying at the 7 minute mark.

[trias_e]

Zerg are too busy not dying to do anything interesting.

[Malakili]

Bah, my awareness is really poor.  I've been working really hard on trying to improve my macro, and I'm ahead on army size almost every game I play, but Terrans that have the APM to do drops against me just utterly DESTROY me, I never seem to be able to get in position properly.   Platinum level terrans don't tend to do the drops as much, but whenever I get matched up against a diamond terran, I have a hard time keeping up with everything thats going on.  I had a 20 food advantage on the guy I was just playing, but he dropped 3 tanks and a handful of marines in the back of my main and just utterly destroyed me.

I need to work on positioning my army better I guess.  A high percentage of my losses seem to be because of I'm out of position really poorly, either attacking at bad angles, or simply having my army in the wrong spot at the wrong time.  On the plus side, I guess this means I'm to the point where this sort of things matters.

[K9]

The only thought that comes straight to mind is to overproduce overlords and have them in all the places creep tumors cannot reach. It's still easy to miss somone who hugs the edge of the map, but it might give you some warning.

Also, Patch 1.1 Ultralisks 

[Malakili]

The only thought that comes straight to mind is to overproduce overlords and have them in all the places creep tumors cannot reach. It's still easy to miss somone who hugs the edge of the map, but it might give you some warning.

Also, Patch 1.1 Ultralisks 

Except that I play protoss :)