When I played on Araban's guest account on the US server I had 90% of the time with no noticeable lag and then occasionally (as MountainGo can confirm) it would be unplayable for a bit. The sample size isn't so big though, I may have just got unlucky (or lucky). My internet connection isn't anything special but I've never had a problem on the EU server.

With so much long-established wisdom enshrined in stacks of literature on Go, it can be frustrating not to have the same sort of resources for Starcraft. I stumbled on an interesting thread on Team Liquid about that topic, in which someone linked to a real gem (pdf) for anyone looking for guidance. Incidentally, it was nice to see therein validation of my advice to everyone but the top 10% or so of the ladder:

I'm liking that PDF you linked I've always been a sucker for "theory" books I guess, whether on go or whatever game I'm playing/studying.

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1k KGS

I question this, not because it's bad advice, Macro wins me a lot of games, but because, well, my micro sucks.

I generally try to compensate by refining my build order/macro as much as possible. I still screw up, especially when excited or surprised, but I have a better macro than most of bronze, and that has led me to having a fairly positive win percentage.

On the other hand, Abydos not only beat me on macro, he out microed me as well, forcefielding me into my own base, blocking my counter attacks, generally making my life very difficult because I forgot that walling up against protoss is a bad plan. Granted, he out macroed me as well, outbuilding and out producing me at every turn, but he didn't need half his forces to make my life hurt.

The statement that among high level players, macro and build orders are all good/indistinguishable is like saying that all go pros use good joseki, and whole board strategy, so all you should study is the joseki, and whole board strategy. It's important, don't get me wrong. I love to study joseki, because the more you know, the more proper responses you can come up with for the whole board, but it isn't the end of the game if I screw up a joseki, and there are things to try if you're behind in the whole board. Granted, Go!=SC2, but I think the analogy stands.

I've seen pros bork a build order, I have seen them recover from screwing up a build order. I screw up my macro all the time, and have to rely on my pitiful micro to try to beat the poor bronzie I'm matched with. sometimes it even works.

My point is, while macro is important, build order is important, but it isn't the only skill you need to worry about. You need to focus on it, sure, but what good is having twice as many zealots as your opponent has marauders if you let the terran kite them into their 2 banshees?

I'm just a silly bronze. And I win a lot of games on macro. But I don't think it's the only thing you should ever worry about. But I'm probably wrong

No one is saying it's good to send your units into a situation where they're going to die without doing any damage whatsoever. The point is that no matter what crazy combat scenario you're given, it takes a lot of skill and attention to get results better than attack-moving, and even then it's not worth it if it means letting your production buildings go idle.

As for build order, if what you mean is choosing a good one, then that should just be a once and done thing. That pdf (written by a Korean pro) recommends choosing one and only one build and practicing it to (near-) perfection--against both humans and AI. In virtually every game I see from low-league players, I notice that the loser could have easily won with better macro mechanics alone.

The point about all pros being equally good at macro is, I think, just to illustrate that it is a necessary first step. That alone doesn't prove that it is the easiest way to improve initially. But it is. Really. And I've never heard an expert player say otherwise.

Maybe your chief goal isn't to improve as much as possible. Maybe you find it boring to focus only on macro mechanics. That's completely valid (just ask shygost, who refuses to do any complex reading simply because he doesn't like to), in which case none of this applies to you.

I've been trying to think of an accurate go analogy, and I just can't. It must be because there is no dexterity involved in go. But imagine if there were! If you had to toss the stones onto the board from a foot away and let them lie where they fell, then there would be no point in focusing on strategy until you reached a very high accuracy with your tosses!

EDIT: I could probably blab on and on all day about this, and I'm pretty sure I basically have already throughout this thread. I'm not sure why it gets me so riled up. But at this point, if anyone still wants to disagree, then there's not much I can say. I would definitely recommend, though, reading that entire piece by Ver (regardless of your skill level). I found it inspiring and invigorating.

Counter example two: If I encounter a group of marauders and marines (good old M&Ms) with my zealots and my stalkers. It's always better for me to focus fire my stalkers on the marauders, and let my zealots run wild than it is for me to let the stalkers auto aim at whatever the Pinky Algo feels like hitting today, Brain. (appologies to those who don't get the reference. Pinky is an idiot. So are my stalkers.)
Yes, the ideal situation is to have so many marauders and zealots that it doesn't matter if I pay attention, but micro still beats things.


Actually, what I mean is that Build order and macro (keeping the buildings producing) are part and parcel to me. You have to know what you should be dropping when in order to keep all your money spent, and what to produce when in order to keep your army size up. There's a whole balancing act of buildings vs army that is macro, and build order is a large part of macro.


I can understand that it's the low hanging fruit, as it were, and that it's a big area where almost all us gold and below players have huge screaming issues. It's easy to fix, and should be focused on, you won't find me arguing this point. I just don't feel that if you want to improve as much as possible that it's healthy to focus on one and only one aspect of any game.

I've felt this way about go, and I feel this way fairly strongly about SC2.

You can just improve one portion of the game, and vastly improve your rating, but I don't feel that this is the best way to improve, even if it is easiest. If build order is joseki, whole board thinking is macro, and tsumego are micro, then the best way to truly get better, to improve in a lasting way, is to study all these aspects. If you don't want to improve as much as you can, then yes, you can ignore one in favour of the others. And, yes, in go, if you ignore your tsumego, it doesn't much matter how good your whole board strategy is, since you won't be able to beat unreasonable plays. In SC2 it's reversed, if your opening and your continued macro aren't up to snuff, then you won't win because you won't have enough units for your micro to matter.

I guess I'm just into improvement as a holistic, whole game thing.

Macro is very, very important. In spite of my terrible, terrible, terrrible, terrible micro, I win games because of massive macro advantages. It does make up for my crappy micro. I mean, look at me, I still struggle with forcefield play, and I win games, because I out build, out expand, and out produce my opponent.

But this doesn't mean all I should focus on is getting even better at doing that. I am working at getting better at my macro, but I don't want to ignore the fact that I can't do decent forcefield placement in the heat of battle.



Wouldn't dexterity be more of a micro problem? I've never had my hot key usage determined by my dexterity in terms of production.


I'd love to read that piece by Ver, as soon as I get home. I'm sure I agree with a lot of what he's said.

I'm probably just being unecessarily stuborn about all this, and if the discussion comes off as an argument or as dull, feel free to tell me to drop it.

Just like how studying joseki and fuseki is important, it is far less important than reading and you can still get very far (dan level) just by improving your reading and nothing more (e.g: playing many games, solving a few tsumego here and there) without reading a shred of text of a joseki dictionary or book on fuseki theory.

Just like how improving micro is important, it is far less important than macro and you can still get very far (diamond level) just by improving your macro and nothing more (e.g: ensuring all your buildings are in production, keeping money low) without a shred of focus-firing or ensuring you stay on top of all small skirmishes in the early game.

Seems like the proper analogy is reading:

• They both are sort of boring to train
• They both almost solely determine strength at the "kyu" levels (which I'll say is maybe med-high diamond and lower for SC)
• They both are assumed as a given at higher levels of play

Obviously they're trained in very different ways, but they form the "core" of good and proper play in their respective games.

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1k KGS

I'm not disputing any of this, really. Macro is the easiest way to improve. I just would argue that it's not the only skill you should ever work on. It's importnant. Very important. It wins me games.

If you're only ever going to work on one skill, maybe macro is it.

But, let me diverge for a moment into the realm of martial arts. No martial artist will dispute that balance and movement are more important than any other aspect of their art. If you are not there to be hit, you are not in any danger. It is of paramount importance to learn how to stand, and how to move, and how to avoid being hurt.

But this is not, even for low level belts, the only thing you focus on learning, unless your instructor just wants to bore you out of class. When my sifu decided the class was too big, we'd do pushups, situps, running and then do stance form for the final hour of class. We'd do this for 2 weeks, and after that, we'd lose 5 people. Yes, there is a stance form in the Kung Fu I studied. Yes, I performed it daily. I also performed tiger 1-3 and crane, and all the other forms I used to know. I studied how to strike, how to block, and how to move. Of the three, the most important was... movement. Always. Garaunteed. But they were not the whole art, or the whole picture.

Back to SC2. YES. If you want to improve, you can improve very quickly by focusing on your macro and build order. But I do not feeel this is the only aspect of the game anyone should worry about until they're perfect at macro.

Really, I think you're painting the picture too black and white. You say "I just would argue that it's not the only skill you should ever work on. ", but this isn't something you can argue because you can't only work on macro or only micro in a game. No one's going to go play in a ladder game and tell themselves "okay, I am only going to work on macro this game; if I ever run into an early army skirmish, I will not try to manage single units at a time and instead just A-move at all times.". When they say they're going to work on macro, they instead just try to focus on keeping resources low and buildings in constant production...and that's it. Sure it'll probably mean looking at battles and handling units less, but it's not like they're neglecting it altogether.

It's a matter of emphasis on one aspect of the game over another, not a matter of exclusively tunnel-visioning on one aspect of the game and only that aspect alone.

Tunnel vision.

Never said anything about agreeing or disagreeing with Ver's paper. However, I've read his paper and I think you're taking his statement too far and literally.

I still stand with what I said earlier - SC2 isn't a game that gives you the luxury of only working on macro or only working on micro (unless you're playing a trainer UMS designed to specifically work on one or the other). Every game you play will work on both; how you mentally approach the game isn't going to change that. It's only a matter of how much you want to focus your energy on one aspect over the other; in which case the majority of us feel you should focus your energy on macro over micro.

It is possible that since I have not read Ver's stuff, I'm taking the quoted passsage in MountainGo's introduction far out of context, and blowing it out of proportion.

And again, I'm a silly bronzie, so no one should pay too much attention to anything I say anyway.

Apologies.

CSam

I love this example, because it is the perfect illustration of a case where you might assume that a certain micro technique (focus firing) is good when it actually isn't. I can tell you from experience that it is difficult--and possibly even impossible, depending on the exact situation--to get even a tiny advantage by focusing Marauders with Stalkers. The naive assumption is perhaps that Stalkers should hit armored targets since they get a damage bonus, and Marauders are dangerous since they get a damage bonus versus Stalkers; therefore, it must be good to focus the Marauders with the Stalkers. But that's not the whole picture. Let's look at some theorycraft math:

For the sake of simplicity, let's assume no upgrades have been researched. Then it takes 5 Stalker hits to kill a Marine and 10 Stalker hits to kill a Marauder. So a Stalker can choose between killing two Marines or one Marauder. The total DPS of two Marines vs Stalkers is 11.6, and for a Marauder it's 12.7, a very small increase. But consider that if you choose to hit the two Marines, then once you've gotten off the first five shots and killed the first, the DPS of that pair of Marines is now cut in half. So without calculating it exactly, you can see that those two Marines will actually dish out less damage than the Marauder in the time it takes to kill them. And I haven't even mentioned the fact that focus firing is a very damage-costly maneuver in that you have to give up some precious seconds of attacking to move into position.

I even tried this a few times in a unit tester, and I couldn't get a better result than simple attack-moving. Try it yourself and tell me if you fare better, which you very well may.

Maybe my theory is too simple, and maybe my micro sucks, but you can at least see that things are much more difficult than you may have assumed! And that's the whole point.

On another note, it's interesting that you say your macro is already good. If so, then maybe you're a unique case and that's why traditional wisdom doesn't apply to you. I just can't imagine how someone with good macro could possibly remain in Bronze, but maybe that's my ignorance about leagues showing.

EDIT: I realize that no one has really responded to your idea that you should practice everything since you will have to do so in the long run anyway. That makes complete sense, but I think there's another, more important consideration: It is more valuable to practice against better opponents. The Starcraft seen in Bronze is a strange, deformed mutant compared to the "true" Starcraft, the theoretical ideal that is more closely approximated the better the players are. Ver said something about how the best practice is when your opponent makes it a struggle for you just to stay alive. You've got to be challenged with fighting good play to get the best improvement.

6D AGA without reading! yay! o/

Haha, indeed. Take that with a grain of salt, though. I remember him doing some impressive (to me) reading during his weekly lectures, and in response to any protest he would just say "Oh, that's not reading, that's just a glance."

From playing Samurai, I suspect he's actually more like gold level, at least in terms of macro. I'm not only saying this because he beat me But he had a similarly sized army when we both pushed out in the mid game, and I'm somewhere between gold and platinum.

The system takes a while to promote or demote people, so if the number of games isn't very high, or you play a large number of unrated games, it can lag by quite a bit.

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1k KGS

I play a huge number of rated games. How I'm still in bronze is a mystery to me as well. It's worth noting that my win percentage vs bronze players tends to be pretty good when I'm not doing things like: Playing while drunk, playing immediately after waking up, playing when I should be asleep, playing when trying to chat with people on my laptop, playing while watching my friends play xbox360, or otherwise playing impaired or distracted.

I have decided, however, not to worry about whether I am stuck in bronze, deserve to be gold, silver, or bronze, or even whether I should quit the game because it's all a huge waste of time. All I worry about now is trying to play each game well, and have fun doing it.

I'd like to thank Numsgil for the defense, however I will retract the statement that I have good macro, in light of the fact that I'm not any good at this game. My macro is my strongest skill, and I won't dispute that it's the most important skill for folks to work on, particularly in the lower ranks like I occupy.

Right now, the focus I'm working on is rush timing. When I should push for maximum effect early on. I've found that a good 6 unit rush at about 8 minutes can end a lot of games, particularly if I can find a group of roamers and eliminate a good portion of the enemy army without taking a loss.

I'd love to play stronger players more often. But, being in bronze, this is often hard to do.

I open a large portion of my games with three Gateways, the first at 13 supply and the other two each when I can afford it. I continuously chrono boost my Warpgate research (although I've been experimenting with not doing that more recently), trying to time things so that my Gateways finish whatever unit they're working on as the research finishes. Then I warp in three units and push out. If it's a map with a long rush distance, I might either warp those in from a proxy Pylon or just wait for another round of production before I move out (one trick is to move out a bit early and then warp in Stalkers since they can catch up) and most likely build a Robotics Facility. A lot of people just aren't ready for that attack and suffer irrecoverable losses. I do not cut any Probe production whatsoever, but people sometimes still think it's 4-Gate (about which they do not hesitate to complain).

Realistically, I usually scout something that changes my plans pretty early on, but that's basically my mental starting point.

As for the whole macro debate, I apologize if I fell into berating you in any way. I am not at all a super genius expert just because of my ranking, and your opinions aren't worthless just because of yours. All I can really offer is what has seemed to work for me in my four and a half months playing this game. (I never played SC1 multiplayer, so I'm a Starcraft noob.)

I've only really been playing for a few months myself, I had the beta but I didn't get into it, and my forays into multiplayer waitied until well after the game launched, so my experience is limited.

To attempt to make up for it, I have played literally hundreds of games. Over 700 last time I checked.

The fact that I'm still in bronze is a source of constant frustration and amazement given that A) I feel that I usually play better than most of the bronzies I play, and B) when I /do/ get to play with silvers and golds, I usually compare favourably, if not better. I've beaten rank 15-5 golds, and rank 1-2 silvers, and still not advanced.

Every time I look at my rank, I breathe a deep sigh, and try to remember, just like go, this ranking of bronze is not an actual indicator of my skills. It is not aware of how well I play or don't play. It's a number, based on an algorythm, based on a win loss percentage, and half a million factors that I don't see and don't understand. I am not my bronze ranking. I am not my khaki pants.

I am of the opinion that Blizard's ranking system is broken, and is broken not because it hasn't promoted me, but because I cannot possibly see or examine the actual rating. My 'bronze' rank is like saying 'SDK'. It covers such a broad range of skill as to be meaningless. a 9k likely won't beat a 5k in an even match, and that 5k will struggle against a 1k. Every rank beginner is a bronze, and when I'm matched against them, it's like a platinum or diamond playing me. Autosquish. Then you get other rank 1-3 bronzies, who, like me, have 500+ games under their belt, and they provide real challenge, at least as much as the silvers and the golds I play. I've taken to guessing the number of ranked games that someone has played rather than their rank, since it's usually a better indication of a random encounter's skill level, though, obviously, Araban and highly skilled players ruin the curve on this one when they make practice or hiding accounts.

I can't really see what rank my enemy is, or what rank I am. I just have to play the best I can, and hope that some day, if I maintain a winning percentage and the skill system doesn't randomly toss me against platinums too much (which it has, sometimes for several games in a row, and it's not fun to get squished so easily) that I will some day actually get promoted out of bronze. But I am not holding my breath. If I never get out of bronze, so be it.