Can someone please explain the logic of this game to me?

[mondaymoonlight]

Ok, so it has become pretty apparent to me that I lose a lot of games I should win. I harass, I do drops, I even have an overwhelming economy over my opponent and I lose...a lot. This game is an example of me not knowing how to win at this game... at all. There is no logic to it. If I don't know how to win with all the odds in my favor than I can't play. This game has utterly defeated my enthusiasm for this game and learning it because the significant amount of replays I watch or the 1000 games I've played have led to no coherent way of how to win at this game. Oh, and the title for this game is Saddam beats America, because apparently having an inferior eco and units can win you the game.

[ColonelSheppard]

- your enemy got the whole mid reclaim
reasons for that:
- drunken commander at min 3
- play UEF (bomber)
- in my opinion hydro is a must-rush on that map
- also your commander should be with your arties not behind it

later mistakes:
- no arties
- no massextractors build on captured positions
- low reclaim
- unitflood instead of unitgroups
- percies against t1
- complete lack of scouting in later game
- T1 tank spam in lategame (massive fail& massdonation) no reason to EVER do that
- no/nearly no air, no T3 air when you saw his (you didnt because you didnt scout...)
- completely useless PDs in the middle of the map

also i think UEF is unessesarily hard to play and underpowered but thats personal impression and doesnt match the official winrate stats (but still you should try to play aeon or cybran)

just a hell of a lot of important mistakes

[mondaymoonlight]

I did have t3arty and they were pounding on his base. Remember when you told me to make far less arty? Well I did What gets me is if I would have played exactly like him I would have lost. It's a matter of what works for them doesn't work for me. He defended my attacks without any radar either. Isn't that supposed to be important. I guess when I play it's irrelevant if my opponents doesn't have it. I am going to discount the swarms thing has irrelevant because I see that all the time even when the pros play. Half of the game is them hurdling two t1 swarms at each other and going back and forth across the map . Who goes t3 land first almost always wins and the t3 units are always backed with swarms. I didn't... See my point? I predicted the spider hence the t3 pd.I didn't think he would be able to pull off t3 air, I was surprised by air I countered it quickly. The only thing that got me with the air is my mouse wasn't tracking properly so I couldn't cover my air properly.

[ColonelSheppard]

far less arty yes, but not no arty at all

and i dont see your points

fact start
no t1 tanks against mass t2 PD and T2 stuff
fact end

[Retnut]

Your play wasn't bad, Monday, but you really did make a few mistakes that cost you a lot. Your opponent expanded much faster than you early game. Practice meta in sandbox and try to be at the same point of expansion as the pros at time x:xx. Experiment -- that's what sandbox is for . Also, why the T2 arty? It's expensive, eats up energy, and really didn't do anything for you. For that 1890 mass you could have built 33 strikers, 52 lobos, or 9 pillars.

Your push around minute 18 didn't have ANY T1 arty. You had a numerical advantage but no way to destroy buildings. I think you probably could have won it there if you had a better unit comp. Lobos would have crippled his production and he didn't have the numbers to fend you off. Good micro on the Mongoose, though.

The jump to percies shortly thereafter didn't make sense. Percies don't do well at all against T1 spam. Titans would have gotten you a much better bang for your buck. Your focus on percy micro also meant your opponent was able to rebuild his right expansion even though you had enough forces nearby to deny. Don't disregard Sheppard's comments about spam. That's probably the main reason why you lost.

Also, don't be so hard on yourself. Your opponent was higher ranked and you played decently well considering. Also, try to be careful any not fall into the trap of thinking "I didn't make any mistakes, I just can't play and win." If you think that, you will not be able to see your mistakes in the replays, and you really will not be able to win...

[Plasma_Wolf]

Regardless of how your opponent defended without radar, your chain of attacks failed because you didn't have anything. No matter where you're going to put the radar tower, you do need it. Especially if he's got engineers at different places on the map. Forget one and he'll rebuild his base somewhere in no time.

At (about) the 15 minute mark, you moved a series of tanks straight past two point defence guns. The tanks didn't kill them but a lot got killed and as a result you didn't destroy the base in the far south. A couple of engineers and a factory survived. This was used to rebuild everything in the south. So he got his Mass extractors back.

Before the 19 minute mark, the attack from the north west side was going perfectly. Two big mistakes:
1. You didn't push on with your engineers. If you did, you had 5 extra mass extractors: 10 additional mass per second, and also a perfect place, the plateau (you had the opposite plateau) to build a firebase and (more importantly) a radar tower (which should then be upgraded to T2 at least). Also, if you push with your engineers, they'll be at the front line, where they can reclaim: This will give you the resources, and he won't get them. After the biggest battle in his base was done, he could reclaim everything, giving him an economy as big as yours. A failed attack is not so bad because it failed, but is bad because you gets the spoils of war.
2. That radar tower would have allowed you to see everything going on in his base, but even without you should have planned the attack better. The good thing about the hordes of T1 tanks you made, is that you can seemingly push them in without thinking, but there is a problem. Tanks aren't the best base killers for two reasons: factories have a lot of hit points and your tanks will hit the factories if they stand in between them and enemy units but enemy units will shoot straight through them.

Some pointers for such an attack. Firstly, you must know what the enemy has in his base. A lot of factories and half the units you had is probably already enough to face you and win (this is what happened). A couple of high tech factories with few T2 units can be dealt with with the force you had. Secondly: you had mongoose bots with range, he didn't have radar. Mongoose bots and Hoplites have a higher range than the enemy T2 Point defence can see. Use this range. Put your mongoose in your army of tanks, keep them still and let the mongoose kill some factories first. Then he has less units and he has to come to you. This is a slower but probably more destructive way to attack.

You had air supremacy for the majority of the game and at some points, you used it quite well (some of the drops were good), but you didn't use it at the 19 minute mark: At that point, you have an army and long supply lines. Ferry new units over. Then you can replenish your army almost as quickly as he can. It's impossible to sit such a thing out.

On the drops: you have to know where you're dropping into: again solved by radar. The most nasty part of the radar thing is that when he had a monkeylord, the units you had were mostly T1 units: at that point, sending the ML in without radar is perfectly possible. If you had a couple of T3 gunships at that point, you could've waited it out and sent them in as soon as the ML came close by.

Since you were both playing mostly with T1, I'd recommend T2 PDs at several choke points. If your first T1 rush fails against the enemy base, it can be a good idea to build T2 point defences at these choke points, abandon T1 when you've completed them and go with a different approach (loads of bombers for example - he had no air superiority at that time and only a couple of anti air towers).

As already has been said: Percivals are the worst unit to deal with T1 units (apart from fighters and engineers). The reason is that they do a shot of 1600 damage every 4 seconds. That's about 1300 damage overkill and the enemy doesn't see another shot for quite some time. Titans are the way to go as long as your enemy is at T1. These units can also kill engineers in a good fashion.

In short, you always want to know what your enemy is doing. He didn't at some point but his factories were a good shield for him, so he got quite lucky.

I've seen one particular game in which not knowing what the enemy was doing where it got really ridiculous. Two ACUs stood just out of each others radar and visual range, both working on the gun upgrade, one having less than 5000 HP, and its enemy having a loaded TML launcher. What eventually became a 30 minute (or even longer) game could've been over in 10 minutes had the TML commander built a radar tower or even sent an unfortunate engineer. It are these kind of mistakes that are mostly the cause of the game's ending.

[mondaymoonlight]

far less arty yes, but not no arty at all

and i dont see your points

fact start
no t1 tanks against mass t2 PD and T2 stuff
fact end

While this might sound nice in retrospect I am looking for advice for future games and not a simple critique of mistakes. Especially one as haughty as this. It's easy to say what went wrong after a game but that is hind sight and doesn't really help me in the future now does it? Please lose the attitude you might be a better player but if you can't teach me anything new how much more do you really know than me?

Second thank you plasma I think this helped a bit. This still doesn't help my feelings about the game though. I've seen so many times where I've considered how I lost to my opponent and try to learn from them and see what they did better. For example having more t2 units backed by t1 units instead of a much larger t1 army only to have someone beat me in the reverse role. In another game I might thrash my opponents base only to have them kill me in the end because they seemingly build their base back up from resources pulled out of thin air while I'll be so crippled I can't even remake a t2 mex. It is maddening and It seems like victories are more happenstance than a logic progression of outwitting, overwhelming, and out producing my opponents.

[Ze_PilOt]

I did not watched the replays, but seeing what you've just said, I would say that you probably don't reclaim enough and, on the contrary, you are feeding your opponent with dead units.

Wreckages is a resource more than often more important than mexes.

The easy fix is : when you have the map control advantage, tech up and go for the kill later instead of trying to cripple. Because if you don't succeed and don't tech up in the same time you attack, you are actually helping him.

[ColonelSheppard]

I did not watched the replays, but seeing what you've just said, I would say that you probably don't reclaim enough and, on the contrary, you are feeding your opponent with dead units.

Wreckages is a resource more than often more important than mexes.

infact he did reclaim quite a lot (but did not build mexes on captured parts of the map), the problem just was that he (obviously) couldnt reclaim the wrecks in Suspect's base which was maybe the biggest part and brings us back to the lack of scouting

[Plasma_Wolf]

For example having more t2 units backed by t1 units instead of a much larger t1 army only to have someone beat me in the reverse role.

There are a couple of things to consider:
- If you want to build T2 units, you will first have to invest in a T2 factory. This puts you 18 T1 tanks behind your enemy.
- Sending T2 units straight into the enemy army is nothing short of suicidal. T2 units can take some damage (though the bots can't take a lot) but if they're surrounded by a load of T1 enemy tanks, they're done for, even if you have a group of T1 tanks with it. Usually you get situations like (Couple of T2 units + a good number of T1 units)< A massive number of T1 units.
-Use the range advantage of the Mongoose and the Hoplite: let them attack a group of enemy units and when your opponent sends his entire army, you retreat. This will give your Mongoose more time to soften the enemy up and then you should be able to finish it off with the T1/T2 combi, but always keep your Mongoose at the back. You wrote "T2 units backed by T1 units" and this may just be how you wrote it, but the situation should be: "T1 units at the front, T2 units behind them", so retreat your Mongoose through your tanks when the enemy arrives.

In another game I might thrash my opponents base only to have them kill me in the end because they seemingly build their base back up from resources pulled out of thin air

This is what happened during the game you uploaded. His south base was not completely destroyed and he got a load of reclaimables.

outwitting, overwhelming, and out producing my opponents.

The thing is that you didn't really outwit your opponent during that match. You both had some clever moves, but no single move was really damaging. The overwhelming and outproducing part worked up until 19 minutes. Then you lost your army and he was able to turn it all around. It may seem that you've been playing better (it really looked that way) but you can't be the judge of that until the front line is established after a big battle.