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Very often when n00bs request advice, they are flippantly told to "focus on their macro," and that this platitude is somehow enough to vault them into the high end of the platinum league. Usually, gameplay skill is broken up into two aspects: "Macro," and "Micro." I, however, break the game up into "Mechanics," "Macro," "Strategy", "Micro," and "Metagame." I ordered that list in the order that I think a newish player should master the concepts. Below is a quick definition: Mechanics Mechanics are the A-B-C actions of controlling units, production facilities, and the game as a whole. Until a player has mastered mechanics, there is no point in focusing on Macro, Micro, or any other aspect of the game. After the rest of the definitions, mechanics will be the only thing covered in this post, and I will only cover the most basic mechanics in this introduction -- the remaining mechanics will be covered in subsequent posts. Macro Macro is the ability to multitask and keep all of your production facilities producing, your workers working, your expansions expanding, and your warriors warrior-ing at the same time. Macro is the ability to incrementally grow your economy, production facilities, and army at a good pace such that you ultimately "out-produce" your opponent. With a proper mastery of the mechanics and macro, you can comfortably progress to the low platinum level. Strategy While Starcraft is ostensibly a strategy game, solid strategy is a distant third in importance compared to Mechanics and Macro. Strategy is understanding the different race-specific matchups, knowing the pros and cons of the different maps and their corresponding strategies, and understanding the rock-paper-scissor nature of the unit compositions. Micro Micro is the ability to manually control your warrior units such that they win battles they would have lost were the AI automatically controlling the units. While micro is extremely important at the higher levels of play (high Platinum and up), a player can reach high platinum with poor micro skills. Metagame Metagame is keeping an eye on all of the Youtube material that everybody is viewing, reading patch notes, and otherwise knowing what to expect from the player base. New strategies emerge rapidly that are devastating if you aren't familiar with them, but trivial to stop if you are prepared for them. Mechanics Keyboard Control Before you do anything else you need to learn all of the keyboard shortcuts. All of the reading, youtube videos, "macro skill", and other crap is meaningless if you're still slowly fumbling around with the mouse. You have to use the keyboard extensively to play Starcraft. If you are playing properly, your right hand will remain on your mouse, and your left hand will remain essentially in typing "home position" at the left side of the keyboard (with your index finger on the "F" key) The easiest starting point to learn the keyboard shortcuts is to only focus on your workers. All workers, regardless of race, have the two basic keyboard shortcuts "B" (Build Basic Structure), and "V" (Build AdVanced Structure). From there, the assorted buildings are race-specific. The second most important command is "A" for attack. It is common for n00b players to right click halfway across the map when they want to move their army. This is bad, as if the army encounters enemies, they will just trot happily by while the enemy pwns their assneck. The proper way to move an army any distance is to press "A", and then left click a spot on the ground where you want them to move. This way, if they encounter resistance, they'll attempt to engage. The only time you should right click to move is if they are moving short distances, or if you absolutely do not want the unit to engage the enemy (generally you won't want your workers to engage.) After you have mastered these two keyboard controls, you should expand your knowledge of the shortcuts to include building workers, building troops, upgrades, and all other orders. Permalink to this post. |
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Before discussing mapping of control groups, it is important to master shift-select (the selecting of groups). To select a unit, you simply left click on it. After you have one unit selected, to then select additional units without de-selecting the original unit, hold down the shift key with your left pinky and then left click another unit. You now have two units selected. As long as you hold down the shift key when selecting a unit, you will not deselect the original unit(s) selected. You can also select multiple units by left clicking on the ground and dragging a box around the group of units. Note that this operation can also be used with the shift-select, so if you have several units already selected, you can shift-left-click-drag a whole new group of units into your group. These operations may seem obvious and trivial to those of you familiar with windows and/or Starcraft, but many n00bs are not familiar with these basic operations, and a lack of understanding of these basics leads to dramatically poorer performance. To assign a unit or units to a control group, press the control key and the number you wish to assign to the control group. When you do it correctly, you will notice that the number of the control group will appear at the bottom of the screen alongside the number of units that are assigned to that control group. The most commonly used control group is "1" assigned to your main army. Once you have your control group assigned, pressing the "1" key once will select that group. Pressing it twice quickly will select the group and move the camera centered on this group. I use control group "0" for my main base. Once the game gets going, I frequently click "11" and then "00" to switch my view between my main army and my home base. As the game progresses I generally assign more control groups, and I frequently use these control groups to bring the camera to the different important areas of the game. For example, if you are playing Protoss and have a proxy pylon, it can be a good idea to assign a control group to the pylon so you can quickly move there and warp in more units. So, for example, let's suppose that my Protoss army was control group 1, and my proxy pylon was control group 2. So I'm in a battle and need some reinforcements. I would do the following assuming I had 4 gates ready to warp units in: Click "22" to go to my pylon. Type "WS" (warp stalker) left click the ground to place the stalker, and repeat this three more times to produce three more stalkers. I would then type "1" to select my army (but not move the camera), hold shift, then click drag to select the new stalkers. Now that I have my army plus the new stalkers selected I would hold control and press "1" to assign all of these to my control group 1. I would then type "11" to return the camera to my battle, and then issue an attack ground command near the enemy. This will result in the newly created stalkers coming to join the main battle. This sounds like a lot, but it generally takes me about 4 seconds to do all of this. Rather than memorize this, or anything like it, it is important to fully understand control groups, unit selection, etc. in order to be efficient enough at the game to play at a high level. Race-Specific Control Group Mechanics Terran With all races I typically assign control group 0 to my main base. As I grab expansions, I typically add the additional bases (Hatchery, Nexus, or command center), to this control group. In the case of Terran, this allows me to rapidly click "0E" then left click a mineral patch to place mules. Since all of my command centers are part of the group, I can do this repeatedly until they all run out of energy. In addition, if I need a scanner sweep I can just click "0" and type "S" and left click. If any of the command centers have energy, that one will perform the sweep. I generally assign all of my production facilities (barracks, starports, and factories) to control group 5. This way I can simply type "5" to get to the list of my production facilities. Once there, you can hit the "tab" key to cycle between the different types of facilities. Using this trick, you can easily keep up production while you're in the middle of a fight. This brings us to waypoints. Because of warping, waypoints are not nearly as important for Protoss as for Terran and Zerg. Waypoints allow you to tell your production facility where to send troops after they are produced. To set a waypoint, simply select the building and then right click on the ground where you want to troops to rally after production. If you have all of your production facilities assigned to the same control group, you can quickly set all of their waypoints to any point on the map almost instantly. This is how a Terran player can ensure that his reinforcements rally to a useful spot on the map during battles. Zerg The Zerg hatchery is its sole production facility, and I keep all hatcheries on "0". I make sure that all of my hatcheries have a common waypoint. One trick that helps the Zerg expand to a third expo quickly is to build up a bunch of larvae at your two initial facilities, and when the hatchery is complete, add it to the control group, and queue up all of them to build drones and set their waypoint to a mineral patch outside of the new hatchery. Most strong players use hotkeys extensively to control their queens. Many players have all of their queens on one control group, and use the minimap to use the spawn larvae ability. I have had a lot of trouble with this, and instead use numbers 4-9 for each of my queens. Every 45 seconds or so, I cycle through my queens using the hotkeys and spawn larvae on all of my hatcheries. Protoss I already mentioned my main control group trick with Protoss. The only additional trick is similar to Terran: I have all of my Nexus buildings on "0", and always chrono boost by typing "0C". Different Unit Types It is pretty common to have one control group for your entire army, and then an additional control group for just certain units in this army. Using Protoss as an example, it is common to have the entire army set to "1", and just the sentries set to "2", so you can quickly type "2F" to cast a forcefield. This is highly style-specific, but it is generally common to have a distinct control group for your "heavy hitters" like Colossus, casters like Templars, or fragile units like Medivacs. Permalink to this post. |
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Attack Ground First and foremost, attack ground should be one of the most common combat operations you perform. To attack ground, simply select your unit(s), type "A", and then left click a spot on the ground. When in doubt, attack ground. Attacking ground will cause your units to move toward that location, and if they encounter any enemies on the way, they will attack the enemy. The AI is fairly smart, so your troops are pretty good about attacking evenly, and now in Starcraft 2 the ranged units automatically form a concave around enemy positions, maximizing damage. Generally you should not right click the ground to move your combat troops -- even if there are no enemies in sight. 90% of the time when you want to move your troops, you want to attack ground to their destination. This ensures that your troops won't get ambushed while you're not looking. Focus Fire Focus firing is basically the inverse of attack ground. When you attack ground, your troops move toward that location and only attack if they encounter enemies. Focus fire, however, causes your troops to attack a specific unit. To focus fire, first you select your unit, and then either right click on an enemy unit, or type "A" and left click a specific unit. Your selected units will then attempt to attack this specific unit ignoring all other units. This last point is very important. If your units are unable to reach the targeted unit, they will stupidly ignore everything else while they try to kill that unit. Focus fire should almost never be used with melee (non-ranged) units in large battles. Focus fire is generally best used by ranged units when you are trying to target specific enemies in a large battle. For example, it is common to focus fire against heavy-hitting units like Colossus or Battlecruisers. Focus fire is also common when you are chasing down a lone probe, overlord, or other scout. Shift-Command Any unit in the game can be given a series of orders. To chain multiple commands, simply hold the shift key while giving a unit commands. A very common technique is to chain many commands for your initial scout so you don't have to spend time micromanaging the scout. Simply hold shift while you right click the different starting points on the minimap. Shift command is very powerful for Protoss probes. When I build an expansion, I queue up commands to build a nexus, two assimilators, and a pylon all in about two seconds. From that point I can ignore the probe while I focus on other things. Pinging When playing multiplayer games, it is often important to "ping" the minimap to draw your partners' attention to a part of the map. To ping the minimap, press Alt-G and then left click the minimap. Unit Specific Basic Mechanics Stalkers After researching blink, stalkers can teleport a short distance using "B". I will cover stalker micro later, but simply being aware that this ability exists and is attached to the "B" key dramatically improves the usefulness of this unit. Marines/Marauders After research, both marines and marauders can use the stimpack ability to greatly increase their speed and damage. "S" is the hotkey for this ability. This ability is so strong that it is a fundamental. Stimpack should be researched as quickly as possible. Spine Crawler Spine crawlers can be uprooted, moved, and re-rooted. The key to both uproot and re-root is "R" Permalink to this post. |
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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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Build orders are typically described in terms of the supply count upon which you should build a specific thing. Remember that your current used supply count is in the top right and expressed as a fraction. "9/10" for example means that you are currently using 9 out of the available 10 supply. When describing build orders, it is the number on the left (in this case 9) that is used. Also, it is assumed that you will be continually building workers during your initial build. You should never stop building workers until you have saturated multiple bases. There are hundreds upon hundreds of build orders. People argue about them ad infinitum. This is not intended to be a comprehensive handling of all possible build orders, but rather present some basic, standard build orders. Protoss 4 Gate (Note: all orders based on Liquipedia builds) Being a Brotoss, this is my favorite build. This build is strong in all 3 matchups, but is particularly strong Protoss vs. Protoss and Protoss vs. Zerg. This build fares exceptionally well when there is a short rush distance between spawn points such as Steppes of War. It is weaker with longer rush distances such as Scrap Station or cross-position Metalopolis. Note also that since you will not have early observers with this build, you are vulnerable to a quick Dark Templar rush or cloaked Banshees. While I have several variants of this build, this one is pretty much my standard: 9 Pylon (10 chrono boost nexus) 12 Gateway 14 Assimilator 16 Pylon 18 Cybernetics Core 19 Zealot 23 Pylon 24 Stalker 26 Warpgate research (26 Chrono boost Cybernetics Core) 27 Gateway 28 Sentry 30 Two Gateways An Important Note: Warpgate research is absolutely imperative for any Protoss game. Warpgates allow you to instantly warp units into any Pylon field rather than wait for them to be built like all other units. Rather than waiting for the unit to be built, you have to wait for the warp ability to cooldown on your warpgate before warping another unit in. Because of this unique ability, Protoss are able to "Proxy Pylon," which is really the key to the Protoss game. I will discuss Protoss proxying later in a dedicated post. Another Important Note: Be sure to use the Nexus Chrono Boost ability on the nexus as soon as your first Pylon finishes. Continue re-boosting the nexus after the effect wears off until you start your Cybernetics Core. As soon as you start Warpgate Research, be sure to keep your core chrono boosted until warpgate research is complete. Protoss is at its most vulnerable while waiting for the warpgate research to complete! The 4gate is probably the most common Protoss build, and for good reason. It is very powerful once your Warp Gate tech completes. Most weaker players will simply be overrun by your production capacity, assuming you properly placed your proxy pylon. The disadvantage of this approach is that if your push fails, you have usually expended a large quantity of resources into the (now dead) army, and you do not have any tech structures. You are usually in a hole if this push fails. A good way to avoid this problem is to properly scout, and if you feel that you cannot win with your initial push, transition into robo, templar, stargate, or another tech build while planning on expanding. Another way to avoid 4 gate's weakness is to retreat intelligently. Don't sit there and trade armies if you don't think you can win the game right there. If you feel like you'll be trading armies -- but won't win -- retreat and tech up. If you keep fighting a war of attrition understand that you are probably going to have to go "all-in." Either you win with your 4 gate push, or lose the game. After that all-in push while warping with the proxy pylon, you have probably committed too much to fall back and regroup effectively. Protoss 3 Gate Robo This build is much more flexible than the 4 gate, but can be more vulnerable in the early game. This build is much stronger vs. Terran than vs. Protoss or Zerg, but it is still a very viable build in all matchups. The key strength of this build is its flexibility. You have quick access to observers, which is of the utmost importance vs. Terran, as well as Immortals. You are very likely to see Stalkers/Roaches/Marauders in an early push, and Immortals are a VERY strong counter to these units. Also, this quick robo build allows you to transition to Colossus, and as any Protoss player knows, Colossus is pretty much your most important unit headed into the mid-game. 9 Pylon 12 Gateway 14 Assimilator 15 Pylon 16 Zealot 18 Cybernetics Core 21 Zealot 23 Sentry 24 Warpgate research 24 Zealot 25 Pylon 25 Assimilator 27 Robotics Facility 28 Gateway 32 Observer 33 Pylon 35 Immortal 39 Gateway There are many many other build orders for Protoss, but these two represent the most commonly used "standard" builds: 4 gate and 3 gate robo. As Protoss, you can progress to Diamond without deviating very far from these two openings. Permalink to this post. |
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