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Rule One: Never Get Supply Blocked This is the most important rule. The term "Supply Blocked" is used to describe the situation where a player finds himself wanting to build units, but his current available supply is equal or less than the currently used supply. For example, if you currently have 30 available supply, and 30 supply worth of units, you are supply blocked. You cannot build any additional units until you build a Supply Depot/Pylon/Overlord. Being in this situation is pretty much the worst thing you can do in the game. Being supply blocked effectively freezes you for the time it takes you to build another supply structure. For this time, none of your production buildings are actually producing anything. You always want to be ahead of your supply by about 10 or so (at least). Early in the game you can afford to be just a little ahead, but later in the game -- as your ability to rapidly create troops increases -- you will want to be 20, 30, or more ahead of the supply curve. For Terran, it is a good rule of thumb to always have an SCV building a supply depot at all times once your economy gets rolling. If you find yourself suddenly sending 5 SCVs to build depots all at once, more than likely you let your macro slip and you weren't properly planning ahead with your supply construction. After my economy gets rolling, I will always have one or two dedicated depot builders when I am playing Terran. For Protoss, it is helpful to think about things in Warp Cycles. Every time your Warp Gates cool down and you warp in another round of troops, you should also be warping in one or more pylons. Pylon building should be part of your "Rhythm". i.e. Check probe count, check warp cooldown, build pylon(s), check army, check robo etc., check scout repeat. For Zerg it is also helpful to think about things in larvae spawn cycles. I have a rhythm similar to Protoss when I play Zerg. Rotate through Queens and spawn larvae, check supply and build overlords, build troops if needed, check army, check scout, check drones, repeat. Before you worry about any other Macro concerns (expanding particularly), you should focus on ensuring that you are not becoming supply blocked. Rule Two: Always spend your resources This is highly related to the previous rule. It stands to reason that if you are supply blocked, it will be impossible to properly spend your resources on your troops. Troops don't build while you are supply blocked, therefore your resources build up. Let's suppose that you are not supply blocked, and that you are at full capacity building troops at every one of your production facilities, but your resources keep piling up. What are you doing wrong? The answer is that you don't have enough production facilities. If you are a Terran player and have two Barracks, and are doing nothing but building marines, it will be completely impossible for you to spend the money you are bringing in (assuming a worker-saturated mineral line). It is simply not possible to build 50-mineral marines at a rate faster than your workers are bringing in minerals. You need to build additional barracks, and/or factories and stargates. As stated above, you should have a "rhythm" to your play. You should cycle through all considerations every 30 seconds or so. One of the questions you should ask yourself every 30 seconds (or so) is "am I able to spend my resources at the exact rate that I am bringing them in? If the answer is yes, then you don't need (from a purely financial perspective) additional production facilities. If the answer is no, then you need to build more. Remember that part of your spending is constant building of supply structures. This is part of your "budget," and should be considered when asking this question. If you are on one base, and have reached a point where you are able to effectively spend exactly 100% of your resources on a constant outflow of units, it is probably time to expand. (Certainly there are other considerations regarding expanding, but I am simply referring to a purely economic rationale) Rule Three: Don't queue a zillion units/upgrades This rule is closely related to the previous rule. Total n00b players let 5,000 minerals and gas pile up. Once a n00b becomes a sort-of-n00b, he learns that it is bad to have resources pile up. So the next big macro mistake in a player's progression is usually to have spending spurts where they unload tons of resources in-between lengthy periods of no spending. Remember what I said above about having a rhythm. Building units and structures should be part of your rhythm. You should have all of your production structures hotkeyed, and you should check them ALL every 30 seconds or so. If they are sitting idle, they should be producing units. Every production structure should be producing units at all times -- and not have more than 1 or two queued. Why is it so bad to queue up tons of units? The primary reason is that while queued up unit that is fifth in line may not actually be produced for over five minutes, the resources are deducted immediately. This has extreme consequences to your game. Let's suppose that you really need to build a factory to tech up to siege tanks because you know your opponent is close to making a strong push. Well, if you have 3 Barracks, all of which have 5 marines/marauders queued up, you have a tremendous amount of gas and minerals tied up on stuff that won't come out for quite a while. You may be sitting on 50 minerals, but if you didn't have all of those extra queued up units you may actually have 500 or more! It is important to note that with proper macro, queuing up all of those units doesn't make them come out any faster than if you had built them one at a time. With proper macro you could build a factory and a tech lab and siege tank while maintaining the exact same rate of marine/marauder building that you would have with the queue. Tying up resources with queued up units basically erases time off of the clock. It is similar to being supply blocked. It is resource blocking you when you actually have the resources you need! Rule 4: Use your Race-Specific macro ability All three races have a special "macro ability" that helps them with their macro game. Terran orbital commands can call down mules, the Protoss nexus can chrono boost any structure, and Zerg queens can larvae inject to increase the larvae production of hatcheries. All three of these abilities are extraordinarily important. I know I keep harping on rhythm, but your macro ability should also be part of your rhythm. Zergs should have their queens hotkeyed, and the other races should have their main base hotkeyed. You should frequently visit this hotkey to see if you have enough energy to use your macro ability. The Protoss chrono boost is very powerful in the early game, but unfortunately becomes less important as the game progresses. Your first usage of the chrono boost should be targeted on your Nexus as soon as your first pylon finishes. The chrono boost helps you produce probes faster in the early game. You should only do this two or three times, saving the remainder of your early chrono boost for the warp technology at your cybernetics core. Because of the way warp technology works, it can be somewhat awkward to chrono boost warp gates, but it is still useful in a bind. A better usage of mid-late-game chrono boost is to speed up the production of advanced units and upgrades such as Colossus and +1 weapons. Terran MULEs are absurdly good. When you call down a MULE on a mineral patch, you basically get an extra SCV for around a minute. Just to get an idea of how absurdly good MULEs are, check out these numbers: Regular probes/scvs/drones mine at a rate of 5 minerals per trip. MULEs mine at a rate of 30 minerals per trip. Because of MULEs, it is possible for Terrans to acquire resources MUCH faster than the other two races off of one base. It is important to note, though, that Terran will also typically mine out their first base quicker than the other two races. Unless you need scanner sweep, you should have MULEs mining at all times. In Starcraft 1, the rate of Hatchery larvae production was strong a limiting factor on how quickly Zerg could produce units. In Starcraft 2, the Queen spawn larvae ability greatly offsets this limitation. As soon as it is feasible, all Zerg players should build a queen for each hatchery they control. The increase in larvae production is the single most important macro consideration in the Zerg game. It is simply not possible to play an effective Zerg game without utilizing the spawn larvae ability. Zerg queens have a secondary macro ability to create creep tumors. Zerg units move much faster on creep, so it is of the utmost importance that you use this macro ability as well. For this and several other reasons, Zerg is unquestionably the most macro-intensive race to play. Note that each creep tumor is capable of spawning off one additional creep tumor, so in theory you could cover the map from just one initial creep tumor from the queen. However, I typically have a Queen devoted entirely to spreading creep, along with one queen at every hatchery. Rule 5: Expand Expanding safely is actually a fairly complex topic, but for the purposes of this post I'll keep it simple. Most newish players don't expand unless they are totally out of resources. Of course this is bad. On the other hand, most lower-level games consist entirely of "one-base all-ins," meaning that people stay on one base, build a big army, and either with with that army or lose. It can actually be very difficult to expand in games like this. There are two good indicators that you need to expand soon. Once the game timer gets above about 12 or 13 minutes, most likely you need to be thinking about an expansion. Also, if your minerals are starting to get that wispy "evaporation animation," you are about to be mined out and need to expand. A very good idea is to expand behind your first big push. Just before you push with your big army, save up 400 minerals and build an expansion as you move out. I will talk about expanding in more detail later. Permalink to this post. |
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