Playing to win: Starcraft II, part 2

This is part two of a continuing series detailing the casual player’s attempt to traverse the steep barrier to entry of competitive multiplayer real-time strategy in Starcraft II.  Previous posts here: 1

So I’m back again for an update on my progress.  I bet you thought I’d quit like last time, huh?  Anyway, on Friday, I snagged my 25th win and a promotion to Silver league (not to mention my neat new Roach portrait)!  I got up to rank 2 in my Bronze division before being moved out.  My record is now 25-24, my rank hovering somewhere around the mid-30′s in my new Silver division.  I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t excited.

As for my games, I’m having a lot of trouble with two things as Zerg: early air rushes (i.e. Void Rays or cloaking Banshees), and early cloaking cheese (i.e. Dark Templars or, surprise surprise, cloaking Banshees).  Both of those things exploit early-game Zerg deficiencies – namely lack of anti-air and lack of detection.  I’ve actually made it more of a habit to get at least one Overseer as quickly as possible, and I’ve been finding them to be a very good investment – not only for cheese-prevention, but for that crucial ability to scout an opponent’s walled-off base (via their faster travel speed and/or Changelings).

Speaking of cheese, the last game I played was extremely satisfying, as I played against a Protoss that went with an all-in proxy cannon cheese build, where he slowly built cannons closer and closer to my hatchery (and mineral line).  His cannons got to the point where they could snipe half of my mining drones.  Luckily, I kept my cool, delayed his push with mass roaches, and eventually transported a good chunk of them into his almost entirely undefended base and forced him to surrender.

Aside from that, I’ve had a number of enjoyable matches that went to mid- or late-game.  Most of my games tend to involve me outmacro’ing and containing the opponent on one base until they’re mineral starved, at which point I commence my all-out assault.  Those games aren’t all that exciting because I usually know that I’ve won long before they actually surrender.  However, I have had a couple of very good, extremely close back-and-forth games.  If my goal was to get into the “meat” of competitive multiplayer RTS, those games would indicate to me that I’m well on my way.

Surprisingly, I’ve found that I’m having the most trouble fighting off other Zerg.  I’m still not very comfortable with the matchup because I get far fewer opportunities to play against other Zerg players since everyone else is playing the easier Protoss and Terran races.  I don’t generally enjoy playing ZvZ because it typically involves both of us racing to Mutalisks and seeing who can control the air first.  But I did have one pretty enjoyable game recently, where my opponent made clever use of burrowed Roaches to hit my mineral line.  I’ll probably give that strategy a try during some future ZvZ match.

Now, onto the reason for this post: how have I gotten this far?  Scoff if you will, Gold/Platinum/Diamond readers.  Getting to where I’m at really is no small feat for the casual RTS’er.  I have a cousin who loved the original Starcraft’s single-player experience and was extremely excited for Starcraft 2.  He’s one of those average joes of RTS, much like I was before attempting this entire multiplayer thing.  Judging from his record, he’s been getting creamed in Bronze league, going something like 5-10 in 1v1 so far, after which it appears he got discouraged and stopped trying 1v1 entirely.  So it’s not like you can eke out free wins just for playing a lot of RTS.  Single-player and multiplayer are completely different beasts.  The multiplayer arena is actually rather brutal.  Don’t ever let anyone tell you differently.

For the most part, I’ve been following my own advice.  The biggest help for me so far has been my efforts to view as many streams, videocasts, and tutorials as I can.  I already pointed out Husky and HDgamer in my last post, whose YouTube channels are already on my RSS aggregator, but I’d like to give a shoutout to Glen from the comments section of my last post, who directed me to the fantastic (and apparently extremely famous) commentator Sean Plott, aka Day[9].  I’ll admit that I found him a bit annoying at first, but his whimsical style of commentary grew on me.  That, and his gameplay analysis is impeccable.  I’ve been watching his daily streams, and I’m constantly learning new ways to look at a game and dissect player decisions.  Even if I couldn’t point out a single concrete lesson from his videos that directly affected my game, his analysis has, if anything, made me more confident in my knowledge of the game and in my strategic decisions.

But fortunately, I can point out at least one thing I learned from Day[9]‘s videos.  Again, my thanks go out to Glen for linking Day[9]‘s “Back to the Basics” video for Starcraft 2.  In it, Day[9] goes over what really comprises the fundamentals of competitive RTS play: macromanagement.  If there’s one thing you need to do well in an RTS, it’s that you need to have good macro.  The micro is secondary.  Your micro will rarely win you a battle if you don’t have a competent army and the economy to support it.  However, you can still win battles with poor micro if you have solid macro fundamentals and can simply overpower your opponent through sheer numbers.  Day[9] went into various things like learning hotkeys and other control fundamentals, but the primary focus of the video was in learning to establish a “mental checklist” of things you need to remember to do at all times:

1. Make supply (i.e. Supply Depots, Pylons, or Overlords)
2. Make workers
3. Make units
4. Use racial macro mechanic (i.e. Call Mule, Chrono Boost, or Spawn Larva)
5. Spend resources
6. (Zerg) Spread creep

Day[9] also points out that it’s important, amidst all of this, to have a plan.  You have to work toward something.  Otherwise, you’re just spinning wheels.  Both of those things – establishing the mental checklist and having a plan – have been things I’ve consciously tried to work into my games.  And for the most part, it’s worked well for me.  My macro abilities have improved significantly because I’m just remembering to do things more often, and I haven’t really had to rely on remembering specific build orders because, as I’m working toward my plan, my build just falls out of it.

My “plan” typically involves the most common beginner Zerg strategy: mass Mutalisks (and blowing the rest of your stockpiled minerals on Zerglings).  It tends to work out pretty well unless the opponent consciously counters it.  But lately, I’ve been finding a lot of success with early Roaches against early tech or expansions.  And now that I’ve reached my 25th win milestone, I’m a lot more eager to mess around with more micro-intensive Infestor and Nydus Worm strategies.

On that note, I think it’s very important to really familiarize yourself with all of the units at your race’s disposal.  In a well-balanced game, all of a player’s options will have some important use case, whether it be all-purpose or highly situational.  This statement holds true for fighting games as well.  Learning how to use all of your special moves and when to use them is critical to playing a character well.  For instance, even though it doesn’t generally see a lot of usage, Abel’s EX Wheel Kick in Street Fighter IV is great at mid-range against projectiles.  Knowing this and having that reaction trained into muscle memory could improve one’s performance against the plethora of shotos out there.  In the same manner, I think it’s important to train with every unit in an RTS.  Sure, my mass Mutalisks might win me a good number of games, but in the long run, the better players will start anticipating and countering the strategy.  Since Mutalisks lose to something like mass Marines, what am I supposed to do then?  If my experience with Infestors was just as deep as it was with Mutalisks, I could just as easily Fungal Growth my way to victory.

Unfortunately, I still have limited experience with all of the Zerg units.  I’ve only recently used Infestors and Nydus Worms in one league match, and I feel like they have enormous strategic potential, if I can just get more practice with them.  The same goes with Ultralisks.  They’re amazing late-game units, but I’m usually too reluctant to tech to tier 3 in my games simply because tier 3 is still outside of my comfort zone.  Acquiring that all-around familiarity is crucial to getting your game out of that beginner’s rut.  Without it, you’re likely to run into a lot of situations that appear “overpowered” or “unbeatable” because you’re lacking the relevant chunk of knowledge.

I’d also like to cover another topic that was brought to my attention – cheese builds.  One thing I initially hated about playing Zerg was their lack of what I called “creative” openings (i.e. cheese).  The only Zerg cheese I can think of is the one I fell victim to in ZvZ, where the opponent went for an early pool and built a Spine Crawler next to my mineral line.  Over time, I’ve actually come to appreciate the fact that the Zerg don’t have the same cheese builds that Protoss and Terran do.  The reason is because they’re more often than not a fake display of skill.  You can get free wins with them at low levels of play, and you’ll feel good about yourself, but long-term, they lose all effectiveness, leaving you with nothing else to fall back on because you ended all of your games early with your cheese.  You never got to learn expansion timing or attack timing or good macro because you never got that far.  I was mildly agitated by a friend whose team league partner pulled off a planetary fortress rush.  My friend immediately said he had to “try that build” more.  Why??  This is the same friend that, for pretty much all of our 2v2 placement games, 6-pool rushed with Zerglings.  We won a couple games that way, but after that, the rush just was not working anymore.  The opponents were better, and after we went all-in with our lame rush strategy, we had no economy to fall back on.  I think he finally realized we’d actually have to play a solid game, but nevertheless, it annoys me that cheese builds are getting admiration from the community.  Admittedly, they’re fun to watch, but I’ve come to respect them less and less.  I can relate this to an anecdote from my Super Street Fighter IV experiences.  My company has a bunch of nubsauces.  Seriously.  One guy started playing Cammy because she was “fun”, which translated to, “I can Cannon Spike randomly, and if you block it, you can’t punish me because I’m too far away.”  That’s not actually true.  What he didn’t realize was that he could be punished, but few people knew that you had time to forward dash first before initiating a punish.  So he actually got a lot of wins with this Cammy “cheese”.  That is, until I hunkered down at home and practiced in training mode with Abel, and started punishing the guy’s Cannon Spike spam every time.  After I got into the groove of baiting his random Cannon Spikes and punishing with Tornado Throw or a huge Change of Direction FADC combo, he was basically free.  That’s the nature of cheese.  It relies on novelty and not skill.  So, whenever possible, practice solid gameplay rather than cheese.  Even though it’s harder to learn, it takes you a lot farther.

So those are my thoughts.  So far, I’m not seeing myself quitting anytime soon.  Starcraft II’s balance feels decent (though I suspect that the Zerg will be getting some very slight buffs at some point in time), and the game has definitely got the hype and player base that it needs for its competitive longevity.  It also helps that a bunch of my friends play it, which was definitely not the case for Dawn of War II.  While I’m here, allow me to establish a plan for the future of this series of posts.  My plan is to reach Gold league.  It’s not entirely insane.  Looking at the recent games in my match history, I was surprised to discover that while I was still in Bronze league, Battle.net was actually pairing me up with a large number of Silver league players (and at least one Gold).  In fact, I ended up winning against the Gold league player.  So Gold league is definitely within my grasp, and if it’s within my grasp, anyone can do it with enough effort and persistence.  I think it’s safe to say that reaching Gold league qualifies as having “penetrated” the barrier to competitive RTS.  But I wouldn’t say that that goal is set in stone.  Really, all I’m after is that thrill of well-matched competition, where games aren’t entirely lost to incompetence, but rather where games are won by true skill and strategy.  And as I’ve drawn closer to that point, I’ve been tasting that wonderful sensation, and it tastes delicious.

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