Need wrote:Would be great if someone could give some tips. First ranked game. Sadly 2vs2, but i just need tips for me, Need. Hope someone can help. Especially the end (midgame-endgame). Smokey and i were communicating over TeamSpeak. We didnt use Tech4 & Nukes on purpose
Alright, let me see if I can do this without too many long paragraphs...
First off, let me be clear in saying that almost everything I am refering to here is early/midgame, past the 15 minute mark doesn't really matter until you start doing this early bit well (okay, it does matter since you are playing a game you want to win
but anything I could really tell you there would be meaningless until you do well early game). I am a little curious why you think you need advice on the mid-endgame since I very much think the problems you face there largely have to do with things you've done at the start. Also minor thing, don't restrict yourself from using t4 or nukes, they are in the game for a reason; it doesn't really matter right now since, again, you need to worry about earlier in the game, but generally speaking they are important tools you need to know how to use and have in your arsenal.
In my opinion, your issues (in order of importance) are:
1) Econ/Production
2) Scouting
3) Defensive Play
Starting from the top... Your opening is actually alright, but as you get further into the game you seem to alternate between periods of overflowing mass and heavily stalling mass/power, you want to be spending all of your mass income without stalling on either mass or power ideally, you could have a ton more units at almost any point in the game if you mastered this, not to mention that you could support a lot more factories... Also upgrade your mass extractors whenever you have spare mass, and surround them with mass storage, you are well behind the other players in resources because you aren't doing this, and don't build a ton of energy storage, you need 1 for overcharge, maybe a second as a backup, spamming energy storage out just makes your base a nice explosive target for bombers without giving you much additional energy for their cost (better to put the res in more mexes or mex upgrades or more pgens generally). Oh, and reclaim wrecks, there is a ton of reclaim in the center of fields of isis, the reason people rush to those chokepoints is to reclaim all of it, reclaim adds up very quickly to make a big difference in what you can and can't build.
For improving your production I'd suggest you look at some pro level games, just watch the first 5-10 minutes and see what they build and how they balance their economy, you could have a lot more factories out producing a lot more units than you are and watching these games will show you how people accomplish that. Economy... well most of that takes practice, always pay attention to your mass/energy levels.
Then we have scouting... in short, do it, always, forever. Intel is possibly the most important resource in this game once you've learned to sustain a basic economy. Knowing what your enemy is doing tells you when you should attack or defend, what composition of units you need for defense or to exploit their weaknesses when you attack, how much economy and tech they have and how you compare to that, it lets anticipate attacks, keep an even footing in the game, and eventually get ahead. You should be scouting almost always, and paying attention and reacting to what you see, scout planes are pretty cheap. Similarly, get radar on your front lines, early warning is insanely helpful, as is seeing things that have more range than you have vision.
This is another, do it always thing, you need to be asking yourself what your opponent is doing and what you intend to do to counter it, if you aren't sure of that, then you aren't scouting enough. If you think you are sure and then you lose an important battle because you didn't know something, then you aren't scouting enough. And remember, scouting isn't just to see their units, its also to keep track of their tech level and economy too so that you know you are keeping pace and aren't surprised when their army is suddenly twice the size you are anticipating or higher tier units start showing up.
Lastly, you play extremely defensively, my guess is that part of this is from lack of scouting and perhaps some econ/unit production problems (since you definitely aren't making the number of units you could be), but other bits of it may also be not knowing what uses certain units have or not knowing unit compositions very well (well and turtling is something most beginning players tend to just instinctively do for one reason or another). For instance, you opened with building hunters, hunters are fast inexpensive raiding units, if you aren't immediately using these to attack and pick off engineers you are defeating one of their best strengths, as the game progresses these become increasingly less valuable. Similarly you are building a ton of defenses you don't need, your opponent never has a force within the first 30 minutes capable of threatening you if you just have units, nor are they pushing out, you don't need a firebase or point d, all of this is just wasted mass that could be better spent on units and these units could defend you if he pushed, or attack when he doesn't.
In reality, the game you have attached could have been over in the first 20 minutes with some proper scouting and reacting to your opponent, a couple flak in a land push would have wiped out all of their air units and scouting would tell you where pd are so you could avoid them and take out the enemy's economy. Even after 20 minutes, 50 minutes in, scouting would tell you that your ally has a massive air advantage (t3 vs t1), any offensive air units here covered by ASF would kill everything your opponent has since they have no air to counter and no ground aa either (and even if they quickly make ground aa you can pick off everything it doesn't cover, which will be most things, and cripple them economically), infact looking over at the game now as I type this, your ally has an insane number of strat bombers that could end the game at any moment he wanted to (and eventually he does, but he could have done so with just a few fairly early, or used his tech advantage at t2 to support a ground push or snipe off the opponent's economy).
Sigh... of course now I've written big paragraphs again.. anyway,
Summary:- Your opening is alright, but make sure you are making use of everything you are making, don't tech to t2 if you aren't going to use it, don't build factories that are just going to sit idle, don't rush out hunters if you aren't going to be aggressive with them, everything you build needs to have a purpose, otherwise why are you building it?
- Your Econ needs work, don't overflow mass or power, always spend it, but at the same time don't spend so much that you stall. Also reclaim, everything, constantly.
- Scout a ton more, never ever stop scouting (if you want even more on this, read my replies to almost everyone in this thread on it, scouting is a pretty big issue for lots of people)
- React to what you know about your opponent and be more aggressive, the goal is to build as little defensively as you can get away with (which scouting will tell you) and put everything else into ecoing and killing your opponent, if you paid attention to your opponent earlier and were more aggressive in hitting them where they are weak the game would have ended at least 20 minutes sooner.
In hindsight, the summary by itself might have been enough here.. but I guess it doesn't hurt to have the rest..
-- Now to go look at jagged's game..
