armacham01 wrote:
He's being greedier than you. You actually got more units up and running faster than he did, but more of his units were engineers and then he built more mexes.

In the first game, 10038056, he made more engineers early and you made more tanks. At 3:30ish he had 8 engies you only had 5; at 4:20ish you had 17 tanks, he only had 12 mantis. You attacked him at his doorstep which means he had defender's advantage (his units basically come right out of the factory into the battlefield, so he is instantly reinforced). He didn't get much more reclaim than you but he built 6 extra mexes faster. So at about 6:30 he had collected 7.5k total mass, you had only collected 5.5k. 2k mass is roughly enough to make 40 extra tanks. He out-produced you later in the game by being greedier in the early game and not getting punished for it.

The second game, 10038294, is the same story, 5 engies vs. 8 engies. At 5 minutes he had 13 mantis to your 22. At 7 minutes he had 33 mantis to your 47 tanks. Also he still had 8 engies and you still had 5. he got more mexes up, basically twice as many as you (14 to 7) and used the extra mass to crank out units. He also did a better job of scooping. he got an engineer into the big top-right mass field to scoop it.

Thank you very much for this!

There are a few ways to counter a greedy build. One is to send tanks not to his main base (where his ACU can help fight and he has defender's advantage) but to the expansions where you expect his engies will try to build mexes. If you pick them off, you can delay his expansions.

You can also adjust your build to be more greedy yourself. For example, in desert arena, you could have made 2 extra engies, and sent them each to the nearest expansion to build 4 mexes, and then to the next expansions to build 4 more. That might have given you the income you needed to out-produce him. Of course you have to consider protecting those engies with tanks. you could have done that instead of sending them to his base.

You should consider continuing to produce engineers as the game goes on. You don't want to just stop at 5. Theoretically, as the game goes on, your economy should be growing, so you can use more build power to make stuff at home and to send out to get more mexes. And if it's a scrappy game, where both sides are wrecking stuff belonging to the other side, you need those engineers so you can send them out to rebuild stuff you lost.

Also, you could have extra engineers patrolling the expansions on desert arena to scoop mass there, to boost your income. One of the reasons to get map control is so there is more opportunity to scoop mass.

One approach to FAF is to try to be a LITTLE bit more greedy than your opponent. If you are too much more greedy, you can get punished for it (if you only have 30 tanks and your opponent has 50, if he puts them in the right places quickly enough, you're screwed). But if you're just a LITTLE more greedy, between defender's advantage, using your ACU in combat, and in general being a little more clever with your units, you can get an advantage that you can try to stack up into a bigger and bigger advantage over time. I'm not going to say this is the ONLY WAY TO PLAY, there are definitely other legitimate approaches, but it's something to keep in mind if you are falling behind on eco.