1781

All high-level strats seem to go toward the Infestor. Use of that hold-in-place goop is crucial to helping Hydras deal with all kinds of threats. And the Spawn Infested Terran ability is incredibly useful for adding mass and firepower to a decisive battle of your choosing (one that the enemy cannot retreat from).

1782

I think you can learn more from losing in SC than you can in chess. Aside from knowing to watch out for complete blunders in chess that flat out give the game to the other player (errors where you basically can point to a single move as being where you lost the game), it often can be difficult to comprehend all the elements that added up to defeat, aside from a general feeling that you never were in control of the game.

I think with replays in SC you can clearly see what you and your opponent did and can see what kinds of things your opponent did that gave him the advantage over you. Even without reviewing the replays you can try different things out and sort out what works and what doesn’t by your results. So I guess I disagree with the statement that “simply playing games won’t really help you learn much.” I think that’s where you learn the most.

1783

Hey Reldan, your posts in this thread have been awesome. I just wanted to say I really appreciated all the time you’ve taken to give advice. I think you must get about as much fun out of talking about Starcraft II as you do playing it :).

1784

Oh, to be sure. Solid SC play* does depend on developing good habits and hand speed as a backbone, and mass gaming does help you develop those skills (rituals like learning how to keep your probe alive while not fucking up your build order, learning how to react instinctively to a dot on the minimap coming towards your base, etc.)

However, there were SC1 players who played sometimes thousands of games more than me, but were worse, and there were players who got better than I did in hundreds of games less.

You’re right in that Chess is far, far more theory heavy, the analogy doesn’t hold to that degree. But things like reviewing replays and studying build orders and discussing with others are pretty essential to improving.

*and any RTS, I would argue, just most are not played so competitively.

1785

I’d like to add a big thank-you to Reldan as well. His information has been awesome.

1786

This morning I lost to 3 of those “gimick” builds in a row. First was the guy put 2 gateways in my base and zealot rushed me, I looked all around my base outside my ramp, didn’t expect him in my base in the corner. Dumb me. Next 2 guys both speed void rayed me with a blocked off choke with zealots.

I regularly fail against all ins.

1787

However, there were SC1 players who played sometimes thousands of games more than me, but were worse, and there were players who got better than I did in hundreds of games less.

Same with a lot of things, innit? You can do something over and over, but if you don’t take the thought to break down certain specific or technical things and work on them, you may never improve. As a kid I drew all the livelong day, but unlike my brother I never actually bothered to examine things like anatomy and perspective. He didn’t draw more than I did, he just spent his drawing time more intelligently, and consequently improved much faster.

1788

Yeah haha you have to keep track of probes coming in your base, even a single tucked away pylon is really dangerous later on for counter-attacks. A cannon rush is such a scrub move it really sucks to lose to it just because you weren’t scouting and paying attention to the minimap properly.

1789

There are 2 resources for players to rely on IRL, time and intelligence. An abundance of one can make up for the other to a certain level. It won’t put you at the top of the ladder, those people have an abundance of both.

My friend is a fixed income trader on wall street. Not a lot of time, but a lot of intelligence. I’ve watched him move up the learning curve incredibly fast. The guy approaches his limited game time like he is examining a bond valuation.

1790

What race are you playing as?

1791

Toss but I’m thinking of switching to Zerg. It is hard to learn in diamond, but I made it as far as I was going to with Toss anyway.

I think with zerg I can better fend off all ins, plus I’ll have less mirror matches as it seems based on numbers that in diamond there are more toss than terrrans and more terrans than zerg.

1792

How do you guys feel about spending early money on the Bunker Base upgrades?

Also, when you mentioned upgrades for marine and medic, did you mean ALL of them? Even stimpacks? What kind of ratio do you like for medics to marines? 2:1?

1793

What’s the terran counter to BCs? Other than “more BCs”? Marines didn’t work so good. Neither did Vikings. Granted, I didn’t have an overwhelming amount of them, but it was only 7 BCs and a few Vikings against my Vikings and marines?

1794

ahahahahaAHAHAHAHA

That’s Day9 commentating this really fucking awful game between a guy from TL and a guy that was trash talking TL people. Money quote:

It’s good to get double observatory if you want to get the speed and sight range upgrades for observers at the same time. It’s a little bit of an advanced tactic, and by advanced I mean really fuckin’ bad.

EDIT: This is a BW game not SC2 btw.

1795

Yeah that game was pretty great. You should try to find the unedited version, there’s a lot of really good stuff that was cut out.

Also, the guy from TL, Chill, did a pretty funny commentary of highlights from The Little One’s placement matches. The intro is ok but you can skip it and jump to the 3 minute mark for the good stuff.

1796

Thanks! I appreciate the sentiment. I probably am better at theorycraft than I am at the actual game - I understand what’s going on but don’t have the time to develop my game like I once did back in the magical Land of College, where broadband and free time were plentiful.

Also, playing a lot of 1v1, 2v2, and 3v3 games as Random gives me good insight into what it’s like for every race in every matchup, and that helps me relate to your guy’s issues pretty well.

1797

The answer is “more Vikings”. You can build a lot of Vikings for the time and money it takes to build a few BCs. Vikings are highly effective against air units, and BCs are not so great against air units.

1798

Vikings are your counter to BCs. They simply outrange and outspeed them. You can kite BCs all day long and never even get hit.

5 BCs cost 2,000/1,500. For much less than that cost you can get 13 Vikings (1,950/975). 13 Vikings can kill a BC in two salvos. As you might imagine, you can pretty easily pick off any number of BCs pretty damn quickly this way without even getting hit, and for much less resources.

1799

BCs and Carriers are the worst units in the game. :/. The Ultra is so much more useful than either one of those. In fact Carriers are so bad they’re pretty much obsolete in SC2; there is virtually no reason to prefer Carriers to a swarm of fast and potent Void Rays. Right now they’re kind of a newbie team unit, something to mass and kill lesser players with after camping for 20 minutes without an expansion. Carriers need a range upgrade.

Also, i miss the Observer sight range upgrade :/.

1800

Holy #$#$. It just hit me. I’ve never seen it, but it just hit me.

Burrowed Roaches raiding the main mineral line. They should be able to waltz on through if they lack detectors…