One battle syndrome of beginners

[May90]

Starting my learning curve in Starcraft II 1v1 ladder, I've encountered a problem which, I believe, pretty much all newcomers encounter. I would call it a "one battle syndrome".

In typical 1v1 games with both me and my opponent being newcomers almost every game goes like this: we micro/macro/harass each other to some point, then my opponent just picks his entire army and attacks me: either I win this battle and then go straight to his main base and game over, or I lose the battle and the game with it. No matter what counter units I have, what defenses build up and so on, it often comes to this ultimate assault, sometimes during first 10 minutes. And, regardless of my macro, sometimes I lose this assault.
I just wanted to know basically how to repel such naive tactics. From professional players replays I know that they spend much time to positioning units, small group attacks and so on, and the ultimate battle either not happens at all or happens once both players have like 200/200 army and 3-4 expansions. But my games almost never come to even 100 supply as by that time the ultimate battle has already happened.
I tried to use ramp to compensate opponent's rage with my position advantage, but it doesn't help much if I already have my 2nd expansion - no matter how I try to defend it, the battle is sometimes lost.
I play as a Terran, but I think players playing any race encounter this problem once or more often.

Basically, why don't professional players just randomly take their entire armies to go assault their opponents? If they are of pretty even skills, they should have pretty even armies as well. Do they just want to exclude risks, or do they know some effective defense strategies I'm not aware of?

 

[MGCǂSpectre]

Because anyone who's played RTS such as war3 or BW, knows one has to use their brain and that one does not have to be a pro. You cannot just go straight in a battle, especially someone turtling and sieging behind and expect to win when losing your units only to break the wall on the ramp.

What pro players do, is to lower the power of their opponent either by constantly harassing and multi attacking the expands of the opponent, until at one point, the Zerg or Protoss can't produce enough to counter when all meet in the center.

That is, it's not a one battle, game over for someone, but you lose your units, say because he beats you, however you have the economy to produce a whole new army. If you weakened him, when you kill his army, he won't have time to produce fast some large army, even if he beats you again, his army gets smaller and smaller and with less expands and minerals, won't produce much, while you rebuild again and again, at this point he starts losing.

In low games they cheese a lot, 1 base games, maybe you don't have to play fast expands at low levels for that reason but a lof of scouting and countering his cheese and you may get lots of wins from their fail lame 1 base cheese.

 

[NearbyHermit]

Starting my learning curve in Starcraft II 1v1 ladder, I've encountered a problem which, I believe, pretty much all newcomers encounter. I would call it a "one battle syndrome".

In typical 1v1 games with both me and my opponent being newcomers almost every game goes like this: we micro/macro/harass each other to some point, then my opponent just picks his entire army and attacks me: either I win this battle and then go straight to his main base and game over, or I lose the battle and the game with it. No matter what counter units I have, what defenses build up and so on, it often comes to this ultimate assault, sometimes during first 10 minutes. And, regardless of my macro, sometimes I lose this assault.
I just wanted to know basically how to repel such naive tactics. From professional players replays I know that they spend much time to positioning units, small group attacks and so on, and the ultimate battle either not happens at all or happens once both players have like 200/200 army and 3-4 expansions. But my games almost never come to even 100 supply as by that time the ultimate battle has already happened.
I tried to use ramp to compensate opponent's rage with my position advantage, but it doesn't help much if I already have my 2nd expansion - no matter how I try to defend it, the battle is sometimes lost.
I play as a Terran, but I think players playing any race encounter this problem once or more often.

Basically, why don't professional players just randomly take their entire armies to go assault their opponents? If they are of pretty even skills, they should have pretty even armies as well. Do they just want to exclude risks, or do they know some effective defense strategies I'm not aware of?

Check out some Master matches and observe their tactics, it's all about strategy and micro-ing !

 

[May90]

Well, this all sounds great, but in practice for me, due to lack of experience, it doesn't work that simple.

I was a good chess player once, even earned the master's rank unofficially (pretty high level - say, it took me over 5 years of constant reading and practicing to achieve that). And, I remember, when I was a beginner, all the books I used to read said this: "Play strategically. Don't worry about heavy assault by your opponent right away because, if you play right, your position will give you a serious advantage, this assault will come to a dead end and you will strike back and easily win". Yes, logical. But how many games I lost to that! I built up my position, opponent started a random assault on my king's position, I was like, "Oh, alright, he really has no idea how to play" - and, suddenly, my king got beaten! It took me years to learn how to properly abuse players for acting like that.

I would highly appreciate some pro players replays where they repel such naive and random attacks, because, I believe, even they sometimes meet opponents who acts like that from time to time. And, though I play mainly as Terran, I would really like to see other races preventing such attack as well: as a Terran I have siege mode for tanks, bunkers, planet fortresses and so on, so it is easier for me to repel random attacks, but, say, for zerg it should be much harder.
Maybe some of you, guys, could show me such replays where you repelled random assaults using your strategical advantage?

 

[NearbyHermit]

Well, this all sounds great, but in practice for me, due to lack of experience, it doesn't work that simple.

I was a good chess player once, even earned the master's rank unofficially (pretty high level - say, it took me over 5 years of constant reading and practicing to achieve that). And, I remember, when I was a beginner, all the books I used to read said this: "Play strategically. Don't worry about heavy assault by your opponent right away because, if you play right, your position will give you a serious advantage, this assault will come to a dead end and you will strike back and easily win". Yes, logical. But how many games I lost to that! I built up my position, opponent started a random assault on my king's position, I was like, "Oh, alright, he really has no idea how to play" - and, suddenly, my king got beaten! It took me years to learn how to properly abuse players for acting like that.

I would highly appreciate some pro players replays where they repel such naive and random attacks, because, I believe, even they sometimes meet opponents who acts like that from time to time. And, though I play mainly as Terran, I would really like to see other races preventing such attack as well: as a Terran I have siege mode for tanks, bunkers, planet fortresses and so on, so it is easier for me to repel random attacks, but, say, for zerg it should be much harder.
Maybe some of you, guys, could show me such replays where you repelled random assaults using your strategical advantage?

Congratulations on the chess level !

Well, everything you said sounds like AI/bronze/silver league gameplay. There's a reason why the same people are always in proleagues.

Sure, they might get cheesed during some matches, but somehow they repel incoming attacks !

If you really want to get good at it, use the same principle as you did when you aimed at becoming a good chess player. Watch live streams, read strategy guides, follow a certain player ( Idra, Stephano, White-ra )

To this point, all I can say is that awareness is key in Starcraft !

 

[May90]

Congratulations on the chess level !

Well, everything you said sounds like AI/bronze/silver league gameplay. There's a reason why the same people are always in proleagues.

Sure, they might get cheesed during some matches, but somehow they repel incoming attacks !

If you really want to get good at it, use the same principle as you did when you aimed at becoming a good chess player. Watch live streams, read strategy guides, follow a certain player ( Idra, Stephano, White-ra )

To this point, all I can say is that awareness is key in Starcraft !

Well, maybe that chess level somehow bounces to SC2 too. I think I'm starting learning how to easily deal with low-level players who, however, can have a good APM sometimes.
Yesterday, for example, I played TvT against a gold terran player (not a league game, just for fun). I spotted his 4 rax build very quickly and just built a bunker walling of my ramp, continuing to tech fast. When he showed up with many marines, my bunker with repairing SCV hold them off. Meanwhile I built 3 siege tanks with siege mode researched. He had no chance with marines after that.

Also what I noticed is that the same rule as in chess works here: always watch your own replays, regardless of the game's outcome. In chess if I lost due to counterattack, I had to carefully study how it happened and not only find out what I did wrong, but also what my opponent did right, so that I could repeat his actions in the same situation. In SC2 replays have already helped me to improve my game significantly, I no longer dare to engage hordes of stalkers with my tanks at least.

I'll try to put here an example of my matches tomorrow, if I happen to play some strategic game.

 

[NearbyHermit]

Well, maybe that chess level somehow bounces to SC2 too. I think I'm starting learning how to easily deal with low-level players who, however, can have a good APM sometimes.
Yesterday, for example, I played TvT against a gold terran player (not a league game, just for fun). I spotted his 4 rax build very quickly and just built a bunker walling of my ramp, continuing to tech fast. When he showed up with many marines, my bunker with repairing SCV hold them off. Meanwhile I built 3 siege tanks with siege mode researched. He had no chance with marines after that.

Also what I noticed is that the same rule as in chess works here: always watch your own replays, regardless of the game's outcome. In chess if I lost due to counterattack, I had to carefully study how it happened and not only find out what I did wrong, but also what my opponent did right, so that I could repeat his actions in the same situation. In SC2 replays have already helped me to improve my game significantly, I no longer dare to engage hordes of stalkers with my tanks at least.

I'll try to put here an example of my matches tomorrow, if I happen to play some strategic game.

That's the basic principle of the game, if you manage to outsmart and outgun your opponent, you've pretty much won the game.

That being said, I'm glad you've found an answer. This really got me pumped up to reinstall the game.

 

[May90]

I'm glad that someone was inspired by my posts so much!

What I learned today from 1v1 matches is that Terran is not my race. They are too static: siege tanks are good, yes, but they are super-slow and good in siege mode which can't be used quickly enough sometimes. I'm going to switch to Protoss for a while. Not that I think that Terran are weak (on my level of playing I just don't have right to say that), but they simply do not correspond to my style. I don't want to sit turtling and harrassing, I want to quickly run around the battlefield, and stalker is my first favourite unit.

 

[busterkomo]

Also what I noticed is that the same rule as in chess works here: always watch your own replays, regardless of the game's outcome. In chess if I lost due to counterattack, I had to carefully study how it happened and not only find out what I did wrong, but also what my opponent did right, so that I could repeat his actions in the same situation.

The difference being that you can lose in SC2 from stuff pretty much outside of your control. ie, you can't know exactly what your opponent is doing so may die to a strong all-in.

 

[May90]

The difference being that you can lose in SC2 from stuff pretty much outside of your control. ie, you can't know exactly what your opponent is doing so may die to a strong all-in.

I agree, here the luck factor is more influental than in chess. But, still, you can significantly minimize this factor, right? Scouting saves in many situations.

 

[jolelele]

Some things in the lower leauges are just not how they are supposed to be. I find that if you ignore that your opponent just attacked you and lost his whole army you learn more. If my opponent six poold me for example, I hold it of then i macro to a 200 army and kill him with macrorather then countering right away.

Even if countering would be the correct move if you want to win because you opponent just failed misserably you don learn anything from building 3 rax and then a moving his one base play without banelings and speed. Hope you see where Im going.

Also terran is by far the hardest race to play in the lower leagues. If you missmicro for just a second with marines they get smashed to pieces (banelings, storms, collossus, tanks etc.). But I believe you should play the race you find most fun and ignore your ladder ranking untill youre atleast platinum or diamond

 

[May90]

Yes, I pretty much agree with it. Of course you also need to learn how to perform rushes and cheesy tactics since these skills may come in handy later in actual macro game. But I guess the main thing is to be focused on improving your macro, scouting, countering, microing and so on as these are the things that you need to do in every single match.

Right now I don't play 1v1, but I play Day9 Monobattles On Fossil Quary map with random races / random units. This is VERY useful as you can learn everything about every single unit during your games. For example, I have never before built any hellions as I believed them to be super-weak. But today on this map 2 times I got to use hellions as they were my only unit and I had not much choice. And I found them to be very good for rushes and tier 1 melee units countering! Both games we won easily as I made regular raids on enemy mineral lines and simply destroyed their economy.
I really suggest all lower league guys to play this map. I think by now I played every single unit at least 2 times and, really, I learned much. Now when I think if I need to build a thor, I think not simply in countering terms ("Thor counters light air? OK, build it"), but I remember my Monobattles experience and realize how slow and vulnerable it is, so I will think twice if I really need such a tricky unit.

As for the hardest race for new players... In my Bronze experience I find that all 3 races are pretty equal in difficulty. Maybe micro for Terran is a bit more tricky, but generally micro for every race is essential. If you are not careful as Zerg, your mutas may die in seconds to stalkers blink or marines stimpack. As Protoss it is easy to lose a few colossi in a moment if you cannot evade vikings well. And as Terran for me the hardest unit to play is siege tank: if you don't siege them in time, they don't have time to do much damage, and if you stack them together, they quickly kill each other.