Very hard game against a turtle

[Flynn]

This is probably a good replay of how not to handle a fire base?
Good replay for heaven maybe?

You seem to have good ideas, but you do them too late.

• Like you know you need mml vs pd, but first you get some mongoose that do nothing. (don't build mongoose if you can't micro them 24/7)
• You know how tmd works, but don't rush tmd after getting all your t2 mex sniped or better after scouting his tml?
• You get a nice percy drop after having t3 for a long time, when you should drop the first percy that you build. (since 1 percy can't do anything in front of a fire base, but if you drop it, it can have a big impact)

Also remember to use the range of both mml and arty properly. You had both too forward so they died. (btw most t3 arty doesn't fire while moving, so don't micro them too much)

Don't get impatient, just put mml/t3 arty at max range and focus down the pd/shields 1 by 1. Simply put some units in front of them to block incoming units trying to snipe them. (use a (mobile) shield to protect against suicide bombers)


Those are some of the things i thought of while seeing your game. I surely didn't explain all your mistakes, but i'll let other/better players explain it.

Last tip: Think about how he killed your base with t2 air. Why don't you do that yourself? You can do t2 airsnipe before minute 15, instead of minute 40 like he did. So next game when you see t2 pd up again, just get t2 air and kill his power/base. (ignore the pd, since t2 pd can't kill air, so no need to kill it initially)


Hope this has any value, and next time you'll able to beat him.

I've just watched this replay retrospectively after 3 1/2 years-you raise some very good points. I noticed what you mention, too. I will list my main observations below, in chronological order:

1. First mistake early on in the game, I could have countered his Triad cannon rush with just mass t1 arty spam+guncom, but I kept a mixed army consisting mainly of tanks.

2. I waited too long before upgrading to T2 tech, which was a mistake, as evidenced by his TML snipe of my first batch of t2 mexes. I should have realised that t2 forward com could equal tml sniping.

3. When I got T2 tech, I built 2 T2 engineers but just let them sit in the corner for about 8 minutes, until I finally built TMDs at minute 20, almost dead on.

4. I should have countered his T2 PD creep with T2 PDs of my own, but didn't do that until I was cornered in my base.

5. I build a decent number of T3 Demolisher mobile artillery, but I don't focus them on anything. At a couple of points, about half of their number start firing at a t1 factory and a couple of t1 mexes build in the expansion adjacent to my base. I am also a bit too careful with them and give him too much time to prepare for the upcoming bombardment. At some point which I missed, they have all been destroyed by enemy fire. But when they are working they were getting the job done well.

6. I should have had air supremacy and T2 radar at the point where he sniped my mexes, also my four core base mexes should have been covered by shields, but weren't.

This was one of those games where I had a feeling I was going to lose just by seeing this guy's name. And when he drags it out, it feels like my thoughts are moving in treacle and I am really sluggish with getting things seen to.

Turtle = giving up map control as you said

Generally the way to beat an ecowhore with less map control is to ecowhore with more map control, you will have a far greater eco than your opponent in the same amount of gametime.

You should also go for t3 air asap as ASFs will basically grant you free air control and you can use strat bombers to snipe targets

Yeah, ecoing is definitely a weak point of mine. In team games I am normally last even to players half my rating!

Well it's kinda hard to explain, but the general idea is that you can get everything he has and faster

You should not stop ecoing just because you have map control, that actually gives him a chance to catch up and start raiding you again once he has units

I think I've made that mistake of stopping ecoing even though I've had map control before. Now I know better, kudos and thank you.

[Flynn]

Problems:

1: You try to push 3-4 t2 pd, a small army and a t2 acu with t1 tanks and your gun acu not once but thrice, failing each time and giving reclaim
2: You see he has t2, and don't go t2 yourself until he has tml 6+ t2 mex.
3: Continuing to spam t1 out of 6+ factories at minute 17, after the third attempt to break a couple of t2 pds.
Most important : You made mongeese. This is only allowed against aurora, or if trolling.

There's more, but these are important to focus on.

Solutions:

Don't try to push such a strong fort with t1 tanks and gun acu. When you see t2, you go t2 yourself, quickly. Build tmd asap around your hq and core mex.
When you see you can't push him, scout and see if he's got mobile forces. If not, you can stop making your t1 tanks. If you like, just leave some factories around so if you absolutely need to you can spam some more t1.

Upgrade some of those factories to t2 and make mml. A group of 10 will break his defence in about a minute.

You had such a stupid mass advantage by the aforementioned minute 17 that if you hadn't been wasting some, you could have 3-4 t3 mex as core. Or a t3 hq with percies ready. Percies > t2 pd, and his later t2 army.


Also, try drops.

Something else is that if you have a fight, if you start it, plan how you're going to benefit from that fight. I.e if you start a fight somewhere, it is usually to take expansions, raid, etc. If you start a fight like that, you should expect to win, or why would you start it ! It's bad to lose those fights, as the reclaim field remains. So, go for wins in fights if you can, get engies going there beforehand. Reclaim reclaim.

Good wisdom Gorton, thank you. Especially that last bit about thinking about the cost/benefit of where to fight your battles. Recently I think I've been playing slightly better since I've come back, because I've been thinking about where the reclaim field is going to "land" after the battle and thinking about the viability of getting to it compared to my opponent, etc.

Lets have a word about this:



You're not acting on what you see with your very limited scouting, this enemy has done nothing but failures at this moment (has not made a tank yet, t2 mex in the middle of nowhere) but you decided to make some random pds in mid (that you now lost to random atys when you had 20 tanks next to them????????????????) when you could have actually done something with your units and acu far earlier and probably won

TL;DR You either A: don't scout enough, B: You dont actually look for what is happening when you scout or C: dont react to it properly, which is because of A or B

Other notes:
You have a rally point that leads into his 1st pd's range, all your new units just get killed before you notice they exist
You haven't taken top yet, despite defending it from him since for ages
You lost 2 t1 pds and 2 t1 factories to 3 t1 artys, what
Still unsure why you try to turtle outside his base on empty ground
You're not spending you mass OR your power
Don't cap ANY t2 mexes with mass storage until all your other safe t1 mexes are t2, mass storage is expensive for no real early game benefit
That -24 mass to make mass storage with all those engies, around half of your income
You're not scouting at all now, and all your air is AFK in base
You need to be making radars, not just one in your base
You're losing fights because you have 1 tanks defending and then another 50 afk in random corners of the map
You got gun a Long long time after seeing he has t2, did you really think this would work?
You raided his back but were not paying attention and he reclaimed your tank, lmao
You have no unit micro and trade horribly against lesser amounts of tanks because you sit them in his LOBO range for no reason (you dont scout)
Despite having 50 tanks to "defend" top right you lost the core mass to 2 tanks, nice no radars
You haven't reacted to the TML despite him shooting you for 10 minutes, you know you have air (he hasn't made more then 5 interceptors all game) try bombers
Sending 2 t1 tanks against 4 pds wont save you
Sending your interceptors over his base wont save you either
Don't scout with your interceptors

I stopped watching after 14 minutes, it was just a failure, sorry about that

Work on your scouting.

Hiya I like your simple A, B and C anology. I have been watching the replays of some of my recent games and I have come to the same general conclusion. Scouting (and looking at what you are actually scouting) is very micro intensive, though. It means taking about 5 seconds out of microing which at critical moments in the game is nerve wrecking, if not detrimental. The reason for A, B and C points as you correctly identified is a result of having low APM which means I've got to use my APM carefully.

I feel like I am worried about running out of APM which leads me to panic slightly and not be able to "think straight" during an engagement.

Those other observations you listed below are also a combination of "APM anxiety" and the aforementioned "thinking in treacle" effect.

It's not that, you need to scout and look at what the scout shows you. Then you won't put your rally points in T1 PD's range, you will know exactly how many tanks you need and where, you will know if your enemy goes for tech, more units, ACU upgrade, or ecowhores. When you know what he is doing, you will know what you will need to do (or you will figure out a way to counter it in time).

It's all true. Sometimes I can pull it off, but sometimes there is so much going on that even if something is in plain sight I simply don't notice it. It's not been unheard of for me to be microing a battle and then notice chaos in my base from a run by or a drop!

I often find if I scout then I fall behind in other areas such as ecoing and microing my units. When the game gets past about 5 minutes I just don't have the APM to do all of them. Or I am doing something else when the scout plane flies over and I miss it.

This is when knowing travel or build times is important. The simple method is:

Send scout/units to where you need them
Set up build queue while they travel
Watch scout/micro units while it build queue completes
Repeat.

It is a lot harder to master than it sounds.

Something that I find helps me is to start all mexes upgrade then pause them all. Have a bunch of engies upgrade them one at a time but have them all queued. Save the engie group (eg 0) then you can quickly pause/unpause the group as needed and any eco overflow is quickly dumped back into your eco expansion.

Tall

I think I do the idea you mentioned about queuing buildings and orders when the scout is flying subconsciously, to a degree, anyway. But I haven't thought of using engineer groupings other than as a "mex upgrading team" before, so I need to implement that! It would be really useful for managing eco, especially late game. So thanks, for those ideas and they are areas I can definitely improve up on!

One thing that helped me a lot was too zoom out as much and as often as possible.

One other thing on bigger maps in mid - late game: make one T1 air factory just producing scouts forever. Put the waypoints patrol points so that the scouts fly over your controlled teritorry so they patrol without to get shot. Every minute you send some scouts to explore enemy base.

I know this tactic, I have seen many a player use it in the late game, but it does seem a bit cheap and wasteful. Think of the K/D ratio! I know what you mean, though. I think it's a good one in certain situations, but with all those scouts flying around, can become a nightmare finding other units. I also find I have this problem when building mass engineers, as well.

[biass]

Scouting (and looking at what you are actually scouting) is very micro intensive, though. It means taking about 5 seconds out of microing which at critical moments in the game is nerve wrecking, if not detrimental.

If you're at such a point in the game wherein taking a second away from unit micromanagement to watch your scout (something far more important) causes you to lose, then you probably lost the game a long time ago and are now stalling it out. You probably lost said game moments ago because you were too busy spending apm on micro instead of checking scouts anyway, so.

Anyone who says they have APM issues is just thowing a cover on their apm related inefficiencies such as spamming unit movement commands, trying to fight in mutiple places at once, and making complicated patrol orders for reclaim. But if you're still concerned you should upload a POV of you playing, it's the best thing you can do to help improve imo.

panic slightly and not be able to "think straight" during an engagement.

If something causes you to panic, you were lacking intel.