[YaSu]

I have read numerous threads, articles, watched many replays and videos about strategies etc. I have set my priorities of improvement on macro above anything else.
Therefore, I am playing macro style these days. However, I often have problems expanding beyond three bases in fear of air harassment. Being protoss, I find myself vulnerable to mutas and banshees.
Also, through analyzing my replays, my effective APM ~70 is usually higher than that of my opponents', meaning I must be doing something wrong to be losing all the time. Using sc2gear, I found out that the macro portion of my apm was a measly 19apm. How do I make that number higher, but not with spamming?
I just always seem to be empty handed and not be able to find things to do other than building probes and warping units (which is a speedy ordeal).
Can you guys point me in the right direction. Show me some threads, give me some advice. That would be greatly appreciated.
(kimi) YaSu. #288

[pikk0n]

In terms of macro APM, your focus would be on keeping up with the supply. Never get supply blocked and you'll find that you'll be warping units in constantly. Always keep up your probe production, upgrades count towards macro apm, using your chronoboost, making MORE buildings so you can have more gateways warping units in. All these are the basics of macroing which applies to high level players too. These are areas which I myself am constantly trying to improve. (plat random here)

I'll stop here since these are the basics for macro which I assume is what you're asking. The micro of your units will be discussed separately if you really wish to find out more. Hope this helps.

[Daboo]

Welcome to sc2sea! Well, Post a replay, it's worth a thousand words ! we have a lot of people here who could analyze the replay and tell you whats wrong! that would be a nice start. If you can get to three bases and lose..maybe your not being aggressive enough? But thats a wild guess, do post a replay, someone will analyze it.

And another cool way to improve is to join a clan or find a practice partner, we have a lot of bsg clans here, where people are willing to help and practice together.

[YaSu]

thanks for the quick replies. One question though: How do I post replays publicly?

[Nemo]

Originally Posted by YaSu

thanks for the quick replies. One question though: How do I post replays publicly?

There : http://www.sc2sea.com/downloads.php?do=add&cat=2

In Bronze, forget APM, it has no importance for you as you did guess.

Don't try to rush expands either. You must be active and build units, tech and expanding in due time. Expanding is not equal to macroing. Macro is the balance between doing all the necessary "base" actions as opposed to managing your army.

The hard part is being active with your units, producing and upgrading army and facilities and increasing your eco in the same time.

Post a replay.

[Daboo]

You could use a site like drop.sc and post the link here, or use the replay section here upload it and paste the link, in fact you might want to put it in this thread here http://www.sc2sea.com/showthread.php?t=202 .

It's a regular replay feedback thread that a lot of people use.

[MazEi]

What I did at one point to train macro was just to get to 2 bases then get maxed as fast as possible, attacking when I was at around 180/x-ish food. Just have some sort of fixed strategy against each race for every game, like perhaps going for colossi in each matchup or something like that. With good macro...actually just unit production(like not having any period of time where the warpgates are not warping anything while not in cooldown) you could very well be going up a few leagues.

And post a replay if you want a more accurate advice =)

[YaSu]

this is a bit of an early expand.



in this one, got all my buildings wiped out by mutas and lost. those bastards are my weak spot. My late game macro is almost non-existent. I don't know what to do with a near maxed out army.

[zeffrin]

YaSu bro, add Zeffrin.150 to your friends... happy to play some custom game with you and have a chat.

The guys above are right though... focus on constantly training probes and not getting supply blocked, ever.... beyond that build your gateways and warp units as much as possible.

To get out of bronze, all you need to do is focus your macro, wait for them to attack... take the defenders advantage and then go kill them.


PS don't expand unitl you're confident you control a position on the map which the enemy has to go through to get to all of your bases... 2base protoss vs 3 base zerg is fine, dont panic about that

For mutas, as soon as you see a handful you get blink for your stalkers... if they keep making mutas get HT with storm... storm vs muta is thoroughly satisfying

Oh also, guardian shield makes a HUGE difference against muta... it severly reduces the damage of the second bounce and makes the third completely ineffective I think. if not, brings it to like 1 damage

[Daboo]

okay yasu, I watched the game against blakray.Even though you won , there were a lot of things you could work on.

1)That wall off was a bit awkward, why did you wall yourself in completely? Later think you were trying to use a zealot to block an empty spot between the gate and the core, but you were actually walled off completely. The placement of the first pylon was highly vulnerable to attacks early on, and if your gate-core gets unpowered, it basically delays everything else.

An ideal wall off would be one that lets you move in and out without destroying anything.
http://imageshack.us/f/833/zealotowningzerglings.png

Like that, the pylons perimenter should just about go over the ramp., your gateway and core will block most of the space, and the first zealot will be used to complete the wall off.

Next you need to spend your money/stuff! Forget about late game macro, we're talking early game here. You were frequently floating 400 minerals during the first 5 minutes, and then 700 for the next 5 minutes. The energy on the nexus needs to be close to zero during the atleast the first 10 minutes, but you almost always had 1 or two cbs available at all times.

You could've gotten those 2 gates up a little bit earlier. And I'm not too sure double forge is the right way to go ...especially off 1 base.

Goto liquipedia and take a look at a few basic toss builds against zerg, the ones that most tosses use is the 3 gate expand, it's very flexible and allows you to pick any route, and is safe against a lot of openings.Try to hit the timings, for example try to tell yourself, at 7:00 I should have 6 sentries a zealot, and an expo up..and learn to forcefield .

Oh and when you expand, you could place one more wall off there, probably with a gateway and a forge, and a cannon, that reduce some of the damage from ling runbyes, and give you time to react. Check out a preo replays to see how the wall off is done.

From that point you could try to poke around the base see what tech zerg is goig for, and then choose your tech path based off that, colossi/templars or whatever.

Edit:Something else I noticed, you got your gas at 13, but only started mining at 17 food(or so), and you put 4 guys on gas, and had them there for the whole game., that actually hurts a lot, especially the late harvesting, because toss depend a lot on gas.
Thats some of the things that you could work on.

Quick Comments

Nemo:

[YaSu]

BTW, I do notice that my minerals are sitting quite high there. Was it because I wasn't making probes for a while? How do I keep it low?

[ToRPandarine]

Originally Posted by YaSu

BTW, I do notice that my minerals are sitting quite high there. Was it because I wasn't making probes for a while? How do I keep it low?

Making workers help keep it low yeah. Macro is essentially building units, production facilities and such. So technically, Macro = Low Resources.

As a , I see that I can't keep low my resources from all the possible macro I'm doing, I would slap down another Barracks, Factory or Starport (depending what I'm doing) or two :P

Three things I think I can emphasise here in a particular order are:

1) Constant worker production unless you plan to go for a massive attack and want maximum number of units. Its a fine balance between the two otherwise.

2) Practice a particular build order. I follow loosely the 1/1/1 build order (shit broke lol) and improvise along the way. You need to at least have a guide to help you along.

3) ACTIVELY scout. Information is power. Don't want your opponent surprising you with a large army do you? :P

Other than that, you can PM me ingame for a game or two. Even though I'm a lowly , I'll try my best to help

GLHF
not OP

[YaSu]

Thanks alot Daboo. Btw, I lost against blakray and that's why I posted it. I would never ever post a victory.

[YaSu]

That brings up another question. Since one base can only support 4 building structures.
Here's the scenario:
You have 2 bases and 8 warpgates. However, due to your crap macro, you have horded 1000 minerals. Do I make warpgates even though I know that I can't support it? What do I do?

I also tend to have the problem of the imbalance of minerals and gas. Sometimes I would have too much minerals and no gas and sometimes vice-versa.

[Daboo]

Originally Posted by YaSu

That brings up another question. Since one base can only support 4 building structures.
Here's the scenario:
You have 2 bases and 8 warpgates. However, due to your crap macro, you have horded 1000 minerals. Do I make warpgates even though I know that I can't support it? What do I do?

I also tend to have the problem of the imbalance of minerals and gas. Sometimes I would have too much minerals and no gas and sometimes vice-versa.

Technically, you shouldnt be there. If your on two bases, and at thousand minerals, you were doing something very very wrong. Your mineral count should never go above 500 as a general rule.

If you follow a build perfectly, you will ideally not have any money remaining. Pick a build from liquipedia, get a replay of a pro doing it, and see if you can match his timings atleast for the first 10 minutes, if you can do that perfectly you've solved the problem of floating too many minerals early in the game, and instantly give you a nice boost initially.

Timing is very very important, as you saw in the game against the zerg, the late gas mining messed up a lot. Late gas mining->no stalkers/sentries->late warp gates->delays expo/tech. And not to mention, Any standard roach aggression would've ended the game right there.

And dont go 8 gate on two base...that just leaves you vulneralble to anything above tier 1, or anything that can cloak, you need to tech more.

[ToRPandarine]

in my opinion (since i dont play ), I say put down 2 gates, warp in 10 units (I say 10 assuming you eco is doing fine so 1000-300+X=enough for 10 units) or just warp in 8 units.

Another thing is to never queue anything even for macro purposes unless you can confidently say its safe to do so. I do it very often cause, well, it lets me macro :P

GLHF

[Next_rim]

You have 2 bases and 8 warpgates. However, due to your crap macro, you have horded 1000 minerals. Do I make warpgates even though I know that I can't support it? What do I do?

I also tend to have the problem of the imbalance of minerals and gas. Sometimes I would have too much minerals and no gas and sometimes vice-versa.

Two guys above are wrong. If you have 1000 extra minerals on 2 bases, go invest in 3rd base (400 on nexus, 200 on 2x pylons, 150 on 2x assimilators, and 300 on 2x cannons). When you expand, you build probes. When you start floating minerals, it means you stopped producing probes due to saturation, and you started accumulating minerals. That's about 12-13 mins into the game, and it's about time to get 3rd up.

If you have too much gas, I'm assuming you are in robo. Get TC up and upgrade charge, then order archives or DT shrine (-800 gas right there). 2-3 DT's in mid-late game pay off very fast, and HT is the most efficient gas sink in game. Remember, gas = high tech. A lot of gas = you can get a lot of high tech. Heck, if you are floating 1000 gas, get a mothership or carriers, they are extremely powerful.

[zeffrin]

Spending more on different things for you atm is not the answer... get 4 gates, maybe 5 since your macro is still weak however


Work on constant probe training and warping in units as soon as possible... and make sure that chrono is spent!!!

I use my first few chrono on probes, then I put one onto warp gate research... after that I use them to get +1 faster... if you find you're getting too much CB and not researching or whatever, use em on your gateways!!

Once your second base kicks in you'll be floating mins again, now it's time to go to 8 gates... and from there more of the same... keeep warping in units...


If you're warping in units as much as possible, you should find your easily broke all the time and need to start thinking about when you're going to cut a stalker or whatever so you can get that next tech structure

[MazEi]

To me at this stage, just find any way to keep that money low. If this game you have a lot of excess money, improvise for this game and keep it in mind for next game to do better at keeping it low. As for getting caught up in the situation of having extra money, throwing down additional gateways, expanding, teching or investing in upgrades, all of those I feel are fine. If that money goes into somewhere, at least its money being used and not sitting around and not doing anything beneficial.

Well that's just my opinion to improve macro at the most basic level, to get used to the fact that money should be spent into somewhere.

Quick Comments

Nemo:

Spending the money's more important. The choice of structures you spend it on depends of the situation.

[YaSu]

Here's another replay against very hard AI. It was a macro oriented game, therefore it was hard to win against the supposedly "perfect" macro skills of the computer.
I notice my money rocketed during a harassment. How do I harass and warp units at the same time? I do not want my units to die during a mere harassment as since it was a harassment, I did not build a proxy pylon near the opponent's base.
I think one of the disadvantages of protoss is that the unit making system requires you to be looking at their location of spawn, then a rally point must be set.
Someone please look over this replay and tell me how I must improve.

[pikk0n]

Originally Posted by YaSu

Here's another replay against very hard AI. It was a macro oriented game, therefore it was hard to win against the supposedly "perfect" macro skills of the computer.
I notice my money rocketed during a harassment. How do I harass and warp units at the same time? I do not want my units to die during a mere harassment as since it was a harassment, I did not build a proxy pylon near the opponent's base.
I think one of the disadvantages of protoss is that the unit making system requires you to be looking at their location of spawn, then a rally point must be set.
Someone please look over this replay and tell me how I must improve.

Yasu, this is an issue that I had last time as well when I was managing my units. Try looking at some pro sc2 players streaming on twitch.tv and you'll find that they do leave their army unattended momentarily to macro up. I used to think that you require an insane micro to do it but they did it at a rather normal pace, which gave me the confidence to do so myself. Needless to say, my gameplay improved a lot JUST from that little knowledge. First person views help a lot. I like watching TLO's stream mainly because I'm a fan of his. He plays terran but the way he moves his mouse around, his map awareness, everything in first person view is helpful to your general gameplay if you check it out.

Here's the link:

http://www.twitch.tv/liquidtlo

you can check out the old videos if he is not currently streaming.

Quick Comments

zeffrin:

Totally what I wanted to say

[Nemo]

@Yasu
Don't train against very hard AI, I think it "cheats" (what I heard). But even if he doesn't it will lead you to play a very defensive game based on counter-attacks to win against it.

Use the comp in Normal mode to learn builds you still don't make well (first 8 minutes of the game). It will make you "fear the map" which will be very damageable to your game. Having one or 2 units patrolling the map is a very important part of the game.

The best way of improving is laddering 1v1. That's the more stressful but by very, very far, where your time spent will be the more effective. Even playing with friends is not as useful.

[Daboo]

^^ I was about to pst that too. It's not a bad idea to practice build orders with the very easy ai on yabot, but dont use it for training, it's not good. I dont think it cheats on very hard, but in insane it does cheat, it gets extra minerals every trip.Same goes for external AIs like green tea etc, green tea actually map hacks.

But coming to the actual game, I had a quick run through it, I think the main reason you lost there was due to a nearly pure stalker army. Stalkers are extremely fragile. You do need them to deal damage, but the tanks in your army are zealots, and you didnt have too much of them, find a nice balance of zealots and stalker in your army composition, and a few entries for forcefield/guardian shield. Think about it this way...zealots are your license to fight..pure stalkers is okay when you have some mitigating factor like blink, or there is no concussive shells...but apart from that mmm demolish stalkers(even with blink).

Another thing I've noticed is you dont really tech up too much. Mass gateway is fine, but you really need to get the higher gateway units like archons/templars. You had a robo bay, but I think you only build an observer from it.You could've easily teched to collosi and smashed the comp.

If your going mass gateway, you'll need the get a twilight council for further upgrades+2 and +3, and more importantly charge and blink.This is a game where the double forge would've been good, seeing how you were flush with cash.

[MazEi]

I really think you just need to spend that money as well as try to warp in units right as the warpgates finish their cooldown. Definitely that's something to work on for now. Oh and if you want to get that many stalkers, do get blink I do suggest doing something like playing against easy AI then just try to get maxed as fast as possible.

There are other things which I could say which you could improve on such as scouting later on in the game and such, but I think its not as important as keeping that money low for now.

Quick Comments

zeffrin:

Yah, it's important to keep your money low... but do it in the right way from the beginning

[YaSu]

Thanks for all the tips. I think my main problems as of now are not upgrading enough and not scouting late game. On the subject of scouting late game, I am usually afraid to do so as they often have a detector lurking around and I cannot spare the APM to dodge enemies with my observer while macroing.

Also, I have also been inspired by various people to ditch micro altogether and macro only. I have noticed improvements in my effective macro apm (~26 when it used to be 19). When I finally move up the ladder, I think I'll incorporate the "cute" units such as sentries and templars.

I also find keeping the minerals low hard as a few seconds of distraction (when're you're on 3 bases) can result in a permanent mineral stack of 500. If that does happen and I am not able to expand due to pressure, what do I do?

Ladder games are indeed stressful. It's like fighting to the death to train for a war. I'll try to play them more now.

[MazEi]

Scouting doesn't have to mean getting an observer into his base and getting every single info. You could just send one zealot around to map to check for hidden expansions, or even a probe to suicide to see what army composition he has. But all this doesn't matter as much if you can't spend that money so above all else, that macro man.

[Zanderax]

In my experience the best way to get out of bronze is to cannon rush or 4 gate each and every game because quite frankly the b-net system doesn't like you to slowly improve. It promotes people that spam games and win 20 or so in a row.

If you want to "Improve" then focus on your macro and builds. If you want to be promoted then cheese the hell out of the game.

[YaSu]

I do not seek to be promoted for the moment. I would much rather get extremely good at macro then jump to Gold with skill, not cheese.

Quick Comments

	Daboo:	Good!
	MazEi:	I like this guy already
	Zanderax:	Jump on the "ToR" channel. I'll play you anytime

[zeffrin]

Yah, if you get an early observer you can scout his base... but you can gain all the info you need by just saccing a probe on his ramp too... better yet if you set your move point to just above half way up the ramp and then shift move away again you can get a glimpse of his front for free for like 10 mins into the game.

Once the game is two bases and you're thinking about expanding... so is your enemy. Just grab a probe and shift click it to all the base locations around the map, hell grab two so you scout faster and just queue two and hit the nexus with a chrono which you've undoubtably got sitting around at this point.

[zeffrin]

Here you go bro, I'm a high level silver (though I should be gold it's stupid) and opponent is 33 gold after this game. I go for a 4 gate and a quick +1, put on the pressure, deny expand, scout...

Now bear in mind, I screwed up the first I dunno 20-30 seconds of the game and this managed to pull the win... the main thing is look how Im broke all the time... if you can copy this you're set for silver at least.

Oh yeah, and over the whole game I averaged only 54 apm... and you'll see I dont spam or do anything unecessarry.. hope this helps, or inspires... sometimes you think by watching pros you have to be a total badass but gold players are not perfect