Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Terran Strategy: MMM Build

This is the Marine+Maurader+Medivac build, one of the most basic Terran builds.  I know it works really well against Protoss and is the foundation of a lot of Terran builds I play against.  Here's the build Will uses  accomplish this and/or go into his other builds (from http://www.sc2guidereviews.com/starcraft-2-3-rax-build-order.html):
3 Rax Build Order
9/11: Supply Depot
12/19: Barracks (train 1 Marine as soon as it is done then attach a tech lab; research Concussive Shells as soon as it if finished)
13/19: Refinery
15/19: Orbital Command
17/19: Barracks (tech lab as soon as it is done)
17/19: Supply Depot
..continue to pump SCVs
19/27: Stimpacks
25/27: Barracks #3 (with Reactor)
..continue to pump SCVs, Supply Depots, and infantry. Grab Combat Shields on the second Barracks when you have the resources.

Saturday, July 23, 2011

Analyzing Losses and Dealing with Adrenaline

There was a particularly useful day9 video on July 16th:



There's actually not that much terran-specific content to this video, and as always day9 says it better than I could.  But in case you don't have 55 minutes to watch the video, here are the key points:

  • How to improve by watching replays of your losses.
    • The goal when watching the replay is to find the first critical mistake, then fix that.
    • This first mistake may come at minute 10 of a 30-minute game.  Don't try to catch all mistakes and fix them all at once.  And don't be distracted by late-game fireworks.  Instead, determine when you first became doomed, then understand why, then make a plan to fix that one thing.
    • In the examples in this video, day9 tends to focus on key battles (often the first battle), so apparently this is frequently when the tide can turn.  The outcome of the key battle can lead you to say anything from "I didn't scout the opponent's army and pushed at the wrong time" to "I micro'd my marines and ghosts incorrectly."
  • Dealing with adrenaline (last viewer question, starts at 52:20)
    • When you feel frustration in the game, it's usually adrenaline.  When the game ends, the leftover adrenaline in your system makes you feel crappy.
    • What to do?  Just step away from the game for 20 minutes after a tough loss.  Watch TV, do something totally unrelated to Starcraft.  Once you've cooled off, you can come back to it, and then analyze your loss unemotionally (see above).
    • When you're losing, try messaging your opponent and ask for advice.  This will also take some emotional air out of the ball.
    • Most important thing: Starcraft is supposed to be fun; there's no reason to be upset and beat yourself up.

Friday, July 22, 2011

Basic Tips


Here's a preview of a lot of the topics we'll be discussing.  It's so much information that many months and one league up later I'm still trying to incorporate this list into my play.  These items will come up and up again, so here they all are at the start as a preview.  Thanks to day[9] and ForceSC2Strategy videos for these.

Here are the two most basic ones to start with:
1) Keep building probes/SCVs/drones.  Just don't stop.
2) Keep your money low.  Have lots of money?  Spend it on something.  Make it work for you.

Macro
  • Constantly build probes/drones/SCVs to harvest minerals.  You should never stop (in non-n00b play, you actually will stop sometimes, but in n00b play, you should keep building because you will be guaranteed to forget building them).
  • Keep your money low.  Money in the bank is useless.  Your opponent's 200 mineral army will always beat your 1000 mineral bank account.
  • When your opponent is expanding, you can expand because they're not likely to attack
  • That said, a good time to start building an expansion is just after you push out with an attack force (so you can build econ while the attack is happening).
  • Try to match # of bases w/ your opponent either by expanding or killing their expos
  • Each base can feed max 4 production buildings.  So basically try to end up with 4x production buildings where x is # of bases.
  • Try to evenly harvest your minerals so you have as many active bases as possible.  So when you expand, take half your workers to the expansion.
Micro strategies
  • Target Fire: Right-click or A-click a single unit to kill it quicker.  Units deal the same amount of damage regardless of how hurt they are so it's advantageous to reduce the number of units as fast as you can rather than have a ton of half-damaged units doing full damage to you.
  • Kiting: http://www.youtube.com/user/ForceSC2strategy?blend=1&ob=5#p/a/u/2/KsSFGm-pqYE.  Right-click to move away, then when your units are ready to fire again, hit 's', they fire, then move away again.  I'd say this is probably one of the most effective micro strategies based on the number of times it's killed me :P.
Scouting
  • Always scout!!!  Yes your micro and macro will suffer but it's worth it.  Starcraft 2 is a big game of rock-papers-scissors so if you know what your opponent will play, you can select the correct units to counter with.
  • If you can't get a unit into the base to really have a look around, try briefly attacking the front of the base and see which units show up.  Be prepared to run away once the units show up (unless it looks like you will crush them)
  • Put a unit or building at vulnerable places where enemies might hop up a cliff or go up a ramp
Base building
  • Hide your higher tech units from scouts (the buildings that tell your opponent if you're playing rock, paper, or scissors).  Put them away from your main buildings so they're harder to spot (and also away from they can be easily attacked).
  • Less important for Terran, but when walling off a ramp, leave a one-grid-space wide opening and put a buff unit there on Hold to block.  I guess this is only important for Terran if you don't have the supply depot thing ready in time.

sc2 strats for n00bs!!1

Hi!  My friend, Will, and I are Starcraft 2 n00bs.  We've been sending each other tips and links to videos/web sites on basic Starcraft 2 strategy and it occurred to me that it might be helpful for other n00bs out there to watch us stumble our way slowly out of the bronze league and follow along as we learn and practice basic strategies.

In fact, just today I had a player ask me for advice for the first time on how to improve his play.  As a fellow n00b, I honestly had no idea how to help him -- but I know who did.  It would've been awesome to been able to forward him to this site chock full of gosu wisdom.

I hope you find this compilation useful and special thanks to all those whose strategies and videos we'll be linking to -- you make the Starcraft 2 world go round.