Replay Analysis Thread

[Explosive]

Extremely nice summery Rougeleader

:/ what should i do to upload this replay?
at my pc this works

[Rogueleader89]

Extremely nice summery Rougeleader

Thanks

:/ what should i do to upload this replay?
at my pc this works

Sorry was off the forums yesterday, that last one you uploaded works, watching it now, will post an analysis a bit later today.

[Rogueleader89]

Alright chrisx1957, watched through the game, took a lot of notes, but I think your main problem is actually really easily summed up.

You don't seem to know what to do when you are in an advantageous position (at least I assume its specific to that, can't really see how you react to a losing situation from this one replay). Essentially you need to pick one thing and do it well. It could be pushing land from your proxy base, it could be getting nukes and experimentals going, it could be making ASF and other air units to gain and take advantage of air control on your side, etc. The important thing is that you pick one thing to focus on and do that, don't try to do everything, and don't just sit idle in your base. Once your opposing player is gone on setons your job is to help someone else on your team, either take action against the enemy air player or start supporting north navy/center (less center in this game of course since the enemy center died very early). You make some attempts to help but you aren't focused on this task, you start spreading your econ out between navy, air, com upgrades, mex upgrades, and your proxy all at once, so you don't really succeed at any of these goals. If you are going to support north navy with air then focus your efforts on making those torp bombers and getting the ASF you need to protect them, maybe get some navy of your own in the northern water; if you are going to push from your proxy base stop the low tech air and naval production and start putting up support factories to pump high tier units out of.

Outside of that...
Your economy is very good, best I've seen from a 600 rated player in quite awhile (better than mine most days :P). I have some minor nitpicks about idle engineers (never stop reclaiming, though you might have overbuilt engineers a bit), some upgrade timings (t3 mexes could have come a bit earlier if you weren't going to start getting a bunch of units out) and a rather hard mass stall very late into the game (trying to do too many things at once), but you seem to have econ down for the most part and these are easily solved over time.


Otherwise, a few things to address.

Don't fight battles you can't win
You sacrifice a lot of t1 ships to t2 barracudas and a torp com throughout the game, even after you've nearly destroyed red. Don't do this, build proper counters to what he has and let your t1 ships join a later more planned out push where they will be more useful and not just feed your opponent mass.

React to scouted information
You could certainly scout more but as it stands you aren't acting on what you already know. If you scout that your opponent has rushed t2 navy and is building barracudas with torp com support, you need to be making coopers. UEF destroyers are terrible against submersibles and t1 navy just isn't going to cut it. You also get t2 navy really late; you basically wipe red out of the water until he gets the torp com in play, but the second you see that torp com you should be getting t2 navy, there is nothing he could do with his econ to deal with a good t2 naval push from you and he is easily going to wipe out any t1 ships you send at him with the torp com + whatever else he decides to build.

If your engi drop had not been successful/tatsu hadn't pushed through center this failure to react to your opponent plus your sacrificial t1 ships would have lost you navy as a handful of barracudas could have crippled your naval production.

While we're on the subject of scouting, keep track of what your econ is compared to your opponent, you were far ahead and really just needed to devote some econ to units for awhile to wipe him out. When you scout that you have time to eco, you should eco, but when you scout that you are far ahead on econ you should go wipe out your enemy.

Keep track of your production
You build a lot of units you don't need, when you have complete naval control you don't need to be making t1 subs; you don't need frigates if you don't see hover spam being produced to push back against you, and if you are going to build some t2 ships for safety UEF cruisers are preferable to destroyers since they can protect you from air and deny any attempts to re-establish bases within missile range. Similarly there is a point after which you should stop building interceptors and put those resources into other things, you aren't building them in sufficient number to make a real difference in an air engagement and the enemy has large amounts of ASF out.

Proxy
I feel I should address this, though its very specific to this match; you set up a very strong proxy but you never make use of it. You really need to immediately get a bunch of support factories up here. You make an attempt to pd creep to the air player but this can't work, you are giving them too much time to counter; mobile units are almost always better than stationary defenses. Upgrade your HQ back at your main base to t3 and pump out t2/t3 land units from support factories at your proxy, you probably would have won the game outright if you had done this, but at the very least you will force the enemy air player to devote resources to fending you off and away from air.

[JaggedAppliance]

Hi, I'm looking for any feedback I can get on my play. The attached game is a ladder match that I probably should have won. Thanks in advance for any replies.

[Rogueleader89]

Hi, I'm looking for any feedback I can get on my play. The attached game is a ladder match that I probably should have won. Thanks in advance for any replies.

Ah finally something I don't feel the need to write a long analysis for! :P

In short, you go very heavy into air very early on but you never take advantage of it.

You have anywhere from 2-5x the air production throughout the game, but the problem is that you are making way too many interceptors and not pressing your air control. I think part of this is scouting, a couple scout planes getting into his base would have showed you this discrepancy in production. Otherwise it pretty much goes without saying that when you have air superiority you need to make bombers/gunships, do drops when appropriate, and force air engagements where you can kill his interceptors and harass everything that he has left undefended.

You are ahead in econ most of the time (minor nitpicks: you could expand a bit faster early on, you stall a couple times, but not too bad and you do reclaim early on), but your opponent is beating you on the ground because a large portion of that economy is going into those air factories and their requisite power supply, when you fail to make use of them that mass is wasted. Also when you get t2 air out you really need to watch and protect it with your superior number of interceptors, had you forced an air engagement at that point or just defended your harassing air units well you might have been able to recover a bit and swing the game back in your favor; also minor nitpick, if you are defending with air as cybran stop making fighter/bombers and just make t2 gunships, fighter/bombers are fantastic for killing stationary targets like mexes and picking off the occasional high value mobile target, but against armies the gunships will do much better against groups due to consistent fire and splash damage.

So, in summary, my advice for you is to either take more advantage of your air heavy build or do something more ground heavy.

[RoLa]

Well i wanna get a bit better again, but i am stuck. Maybe someone can give me good advice.

my analysis
bad things:
- i built a land factory (3rd) but forget to set it on loop
- i let pass a raiding group unnecesarily
- i energy stalled quite a bit so my radars didnt work
- i hadnt enough intel on his acu and his units
- at minute 10 i had more units and could have been more agressive (raiding)
i lost to many factories so he outproduced me shortly after
- i wasted mass
- i wasted some time and resources on t2 acu upgrade
- i made gun range upgrade tho i should have gone t2
- i had t2 hq and didn't use it

good things:
i think i microed a bit better my units

how do i get better?

[Rogueleader89]

Well i wanna get a bit better again, but i am stuck. Maybe someone can give me good advice.

my analysis
bad things:
- i built a land factory (3rd) but forget to set it on loop
- i let pass a raiding group unnecesarily
- i energy stalled quite a bit so my radars didnt work
- i hadnt enough intel on his acu and his units
- at minute 10 i had more units and could have been more agressive (raiding)
i lost to many factories so he outproduced me shortly after
- i wasted mass
- i wasted some time and resources on t2 acu upgrade
- i made gun range upgrade tho i should have gone t2
- i had t2 hq and didn't use it

good things:
i think i microed a bit better my units

how do i get better?

Alright, I think you have 4 main problems with your play in this game, and you've touched a bit on each of them in your own analysis, but I'll try to emphasize the important points you haven't.

Aggression
First, you are playing too passively, you are always on the defensive, in your analysis you say that you have more units at 10 minutes and should have been more aggressive then, yes this is true, but even earlier than that your opponent leaves wide gaps you could march your units through, particularly on the left side of the map, usually when they are making pushes against you. Its less about unit numbers and more about unit position, though perhaps this lack of aggression is partially due to another problem...

Scouting
Which brings us to scouting, as you say in your analysis you did not have enough intel on his units and ACU, a couple of scout planes sent occasionally (or on patrol) over forward border would have done you wonders, but also its very important to note that you aren't scouting your opponent's base. Scouting isn't just about knowing where the units and ACU are (though you definitely need to know that too), its also seeing what your opponent is building, are they matching you in factories? Are they taking time upgrading mexes? Did they go for gun? With proper scouting you'd know that they stopped upping their production and started upgrading mexes and getting gun. You'd know that you have more interceptors than them and that your production outnumbers their's 8 to 5 most of the game.

Production and Attentiveness
You have more production than your opponent early on, even after you lose your forward factories, but your econ is lower because you are not using your superior production to do damage to your enemy so they've been able to tech up mexes in relative safety while making the occasional push here and there. Yes near the very end of the game they get more production than you and make better use of their t2 tech, but you've had the advantage here most of the time leading up to this point, you just never took advantage of it.

While we're on the subject of production, you also had air superiority, you'll notice your opponent never made t1 mobile aa in any significant number, that's because when you used bombers you never protected them with your superior number of interceptors, similarly when they used bombers against you you were always slow to respond with your interceptors. Learning to respond to this and manage air control would help you a lot, the biggest difference by far that it would have made is that you could have completely stopped making t1 mobile aa, you make a lot of it, it might even be why your superior production early game doesn't feel all that superior to you, all of that mobile aa could be more auroras and pushing that air superiority even a little bit would have forced your opponent to either spend more on interceptors or start mixing mobile aa into their own unit groups.

Econ
You have some power stalls (pause your mex upgrade and turn off radar that you can't see anything on anyway while you get more pgens up) and some mass overflows but it sounds like you are already thinking about this so I'm not going to touch any more on that. Lets talk about reclaim instead. I don't think I've seen you do it at all this game. You control a sizable field of wrecks on the right side of the map from all of your opponent's attempts at pushing, reclaiming this could have helped a lot in catching you up on econ (you were behind most of the game). Another thing I want to note and emphasize here is that yes you most definitely were behind on econ most of the game, you could have matched mex upgrades and stayed competitive if you had wanted (scouting would help with this), but honestly you have set yourself up this game to be aggressive, you have superior production, the best thing that could have helped you stay level in econ with your opponent for most of this game is just attacking them, harass the mexes they leave undefended and apply pressure so that they can't push as much against you and you would probably be fine.

Minor Nitpick
I only have one thing to put in this section since you covered most of my really minor nitpicks in your analysis (keep them in mind and try to improve but don't focus too much on them to the exclusion of the broader issues above, also I think your choice of gun over t2 is fine, I'm guessing you are thinking t2 for defenses? If anything I might have picked the other gun upgrade in your situation given how late you are getting it and your more passive play, the range upgrade is better when you are going to poke and prod generally, darn I guess this makes two things now :P), its very specific to this game, I add it only because you should have won.

The enemy ACU is attacking you alone, your ACU plus your larger army should be able to just walk up and kill them despite their gun upgrade well before they can get units there to support themselves properly, especially around 11 minutes when they move way too far forward. Basically gather everything together and you win right there. If you ever see an ACU by itself far from home, look at it, figure out what its upgrades are, send some scout planes to see if reinforcing units are nearby, and if you judge you can win the fight, just go kill them.

Summary
Your analysis is not bad but its too specific, you are focusing on small details instead of the larger ones that will likely effect you more in games to come (small details are important, but not nearly as much so as the broad strokes while you are learning, I suspect the obvious mistakes you point out are things you'll fix naturally while playing).

Personally I'd suggest you work on things in this order:

• Scouting
• Attentiveness/Reaction/Multitasking
• Aggression/Raiding
• Reclaim

Scouting is by far the most important as it should inform everything you do, all of the things after it (with the exception of reclaim) depend in large part on your ability to scout well and make good use of the intel you have gathered. Attentiveness is next on the list because it is clearly doing you a lot of harm, learning to look at more things, and react faster with your units will save you a lot of trouble, and you really have to be attentive to your opponent to know what you can and can not do based on the information you have gathered while scouting. I suspect more aggression and raiding will come from better scouting, its much easier to push out when you know you are likely to succeed than charging blindly forward, but at the same time, there are times when you have to consider what you know about your opponent, how much do they likely have, where are things likely to be, and take some chances.

Reclaim is last on the list, but don't make the mistake of thinking its unimportant, you should focus on the others first but if you really want to step up your game you are going to have to get use to issuing reclaim orders and sending engineers out after battles to bring you that additional mass, it may seem small but its that little bit extra that will put you ahead of opponents who fail to do the same, or cost you an evenly matched game against opponents who reclaim better than you.

[ax0lotl]

In this game I lost to aurora range:

3460007-ax0lotl.fafreplay

(36.09 KiB) Downloaded 88 times

He pressured me, so I did not have a chance to go T2 land or gun com. What should I have done? (Apart from using more resources at the end.) Should I have spammed medusas? Or invest heavily in air?

[Aurion]

I don't think you actually lost to Aurora range to be honest. You just didn't coordinate your unit and ACU micro and at the second run you threw units away because you attacked his ACU. You also waited around too long as you had a unit advantage at the start.

Medusas are very strong in standoffs like these. Bombers help, but he had lots of air. You also built waaaay too much power.

[ax0lotl]

Microing units and acu against an aurora push/kite seems different to me than normal. Normally you keep your acu in front or at one line with the tanks, but that would mean just taking hits without doing any damage.
But you're right, I made quite some mistakes, and indeed I realized when reviewing the replay again, the overbuilding of power. The fact that I did not use all my mass was I think due to the fact that I finished building factories and power, so the mass was not going there anymore and should have gone towards more units.

Edit: I'm also just bad at microing a fight and keeping an eye on other stuff at the same time.