[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