So I got demoted to Gold. I think I raked in two separate 10-loss streaks playing as Zerg. I was probably making it hard on myself because I was fast-expanding every game. That's what IdrA does, so I figured I'd follow his lead. It turns out that in order to play like one of the best Zergs in the world, you have to be sort of... umm... good. I would just get overrun every game. I made very little besides drones in the beginning, because I felt a need to get at least 32 drones on minerals (two per patch) rather quickly to take advantage of having two bases. Then, if I survived, I would start seeing enormous amounts of money pour in and be unable to spend it for lack of larvae.
The most frustrating thing was that I felt like my army would just melt before any sort of resistance from the opponent. It turns out that can happen when all you have is Zerglings and Hydralisks! I had figured Hydras were a good unit to rely on since they hit both ground and air. I remember getting crap-tons of them to beat the campaign in SC1. The problem in SC2 is that they are very fragile--only 80 HP, which is probably the lowest of any tier-two unit in the game. (In fact, even though Hydras cost 25/50 more than Roaches [25/25 more, actually --ed.], they have the same rating for what I call the total damage output, or TDO, which you get by multiplying the damage per second by the HP, giving a rough comparative indication of how much damage they will deal in a fight.) I was used to Terran, where you can just get a big Marine-Marauder ball and successfully attack-move into any army of roughly equal area on screen. (No, I don't think Terran is OP [overpowered], but I do think it's the easiest to play at a low level.) I should have saved some of those replays. Just imagine a giant horde of Lings and Hydras running into a wall of Zealot/Stalker/Colossus or Marine/Marauder/Thor and crumbling apart like so many thrown clumps of dry dirt.
At some point my humor with the situation started to subside, and I wanted to find some way of doing better. So I downloaded some replays of Diamond Zerg players just to see what they did. And I noticed that they all seemed to be using a little thing called Roaches. And then they did something peculiar with them: they attacked. How novel! And by attacking, they forced the opponent to produce units to defend. That's the big lesson I drew. Instead of being worried about being attacked by air, just make your own early attack by ground, and then the opponent won't have the luxury of being able to build up a large air force. Attacking is also a great way to get your opponent to lay his cards on the table by revealing his defenses. (I might make a post later about the way my psychological fear of the unknown poisons my decision making and what I'm doing to overcome it.) So now I am happily making a Roach army from one base (at least to start), and I'm winning regularly again. I still have a tough time with Zerg macro, especially keeping up with larva injections (inarguably the most unforgiving macro mechanic of the three races). But I'm working on it. Once I get back up to Platinum and start winning again too much, I'll switch to Protoss.
Monday, August 30, 2010
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
What is Starcraft?
Starcraft is like playing a game of Stratego using only your toes while you attempt to juggle a set of flaming clubs and gargle ginger ale to the tune of "Oh, Susanna". Every time you sing a note out of tune, you lose a turn, and if you drop a club, it lands on the board and burns up several of your pieces. After several minutes, if the game is still going, someone starts throwing water balloons at you, and someone else starts yelling random numbers into your ear. The only thing comforting you is the knowledge that the exact same thing is happening to your opponent, wherever he may be.
Seriously, though. Playing Starcraft reminds me of all those wacky multi-tasking flash games like this one. It can be stressful, but if you're in the right mindset, it's a blast. And when you manage to really pull things off, you feel like a god.
There is one key difference between Starcraft and those flash games, though--the strategy of Starcraft is deep. I am new to the game, so I can only peek down the rabbit hole, but it's a loooong way down and I can't see the bottom if there is one. When should you expand? When should you go for higher tech? When and how should you scout? What is the best counter for your opponent's strategy, provided you've scouted it? When are upgrades worth the cost? How valuable is time as a resource? When should you harass, and how can you evaluate how much damage the harassment needs to do to be worth it? When, if ever, does cheese become your best chance of winning? Which race is the best? How should you arrange your hotkeys? How should you arrange your buildings? Is APM important? How aggressive or defensive should you be? And on and on and on and on...
The distractions in the Stratego metaphor represent macro (short for macro-management), which is basically all the things you know you have to do but are constantly forgetting, like making sure you're constantly producing units and keeping your money low and building supply providers (e.g. ADDITIONAL PYLONS) early enough so that you don't max out. The thing is, even if you're good enough to remember to do all those things, that leaves very little time to make strategic decisions. So as Day[9] attested in his superb Starcraft autobiography, the game strongly rewards the ability to be immediately decisive. You might not be doing the right thing, but if you waffle, then you're definitely not doing the right thing. I hope Starcraft can be a vehicle for me to teach myself to apply that philosophy to my life.
Starcraft (along with RTS's in general) teaches you not to become enamored with your own actions. I always used to be terrible at RTS's (I've had Age of Empires II for a long time, but every time I tried to get into it, I failed terribly and felt that there was just something fundamental about the game that I wasn't grasping) because I had the natural tendency to narrowly focus on each of my actions. When I made a worker go and build a building, I wanted to watch my little person walk over and watch him build my little building and watch my little progress bar fill up as the construction animation moved through the different stages of built-ness, up to the final moments as I anticipated the satisfying "bloo-doo-oop" signifying completion. I feel that this tendency must be very widespread since all casual management games that I've played prey eagerly upon it.
But no! We Starcraft players have no time to watch units move to their destination nor buildings be built, and we care not for sound effects but for their informational value. We are concerned with wonderful, glorious strategy, and it is happening right now, in real time!
Seriously, though. Playing Starcraft reminds me of all those wacky multi-tasking flash games like this one. It can be stressful, but if you're in the right mindset, it's a blast. And when you manage to really pull things off, you feel like a god.
There is one key difference between Starcraft and those flash games, though--the strategy of Starcraft is deep. I am new to the game, so I can only peek down the rabbit hole, but it's a loooong way down and I can't see the bottom if there is one. When should you expand? When should you go for higher tech? When and how should you scout? What is the best counter for your opponent's strategy, provided you've scouted it? When are upgrades worth the cost? How valuable is time as a resource? When should you harass, and how can you evaluate how much damage the harassment needs to do to be worth it? When, if ever, does cheese become your best chance of winning? Which race is the best? How should you arrange your hotkeys? How should you arrange your buildings? Is APM important? How aggressive or defensive should you be? And on and on and on and on...
The distractions in the Stratego metaphor represent macro (short for macro-management), which is basically all the things you know you have to do but are constantly forgetting, like making sure you're constantly producing units and keeping your money low and building supply providers (e.g. ADDITIONAL PYLONS) early enough so that you don't max out. The thing is, even if you're good enough to remember to do all those things, that leaves very little time to make strategic decisions. So as Day[9] attested in his superb Starcraft autobiography, the game strongly rewards the ability to be immediately decisive. You might not be doing the right thing, but if you waffle, then you're definitely not doing the right thing. I hope Starcraft can be a vehicle for me to teach myself to apply that philosophy to my life.
Starcraft (along with RTS's in general) teaches you not to become enamored with your own actions. I always used to be terrible at RTS's (I've had Age of Empires II for a long time, but every time I tried to get into it, I failed terribly and felt that there was just something fundamental about the game that I wasn't grasping) because I had the natural tendency to narrowly focus on each of my actions. When I made a worker go and build a building, I wanted to watch my little person walk over and watch him build my little building and watch my little progress bar fill up as the construction animation moved through the different stages of built-ness, up to the final moments as I anticipated the satisfying "bloo-doo-oop" signifying completion. I feel that this tendency must be very widespread since all casual management games that I've played prey eagerly upon it.
But no! We Starcraft players have no time to watch units move to their destination nor buildings be built, and we care not for sound effects but for their informational value. We are concerned with wonderful, glorious strategy, and it is happening right now, in real time!
A newbie's Go/Starcraft blog
This is going to be a blog dedicated to my progress in the games of Go and Starcraft.
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