Help my brother get his build order sorted out so I can acturly see gold this year>.<

Ok I play zerg myself, but I share a account with my brother who taken a liking to protosss.

Unfortently I often come in and find 9 or more losses in a row.. in the bronze league.

So I've reached the conclustion that something is going very very wrong somewere. The thing is while I can drop general hints and such, my mindset is very much zerg and the level of advice I can give is fairly limited.

However I've seen him get his arsed kicked (and sometimes win! >.<) so many times that I got his basic early game in my head.

First he normaly build about ten probes. From there he typicaly builds 2 pylons next to each gas vein a forge and 2 cannon at the front of the pylons. He then build a front with 2 pylons plus 2 - 6 odd cannos.

After this he finaly starts building gateways, normaly 4 or so at once, and build a fair few zelots.

Anyway I've saved 3 recent games of his and attached them to this post. Please Protoss players who I normaly set my zerglings on, could you help my poor newbie brother out and let me get out of the high bronze for ages, good silver, then thrown back into bronze cycle becuse my bro getting his arsed kicked too much, before I kill my sibling !

 

I have not seen the replays, will do so when I have time (g2g in a bit).
When I was younger, my build order was this (in sc1): 7 pylon, 9gate
From there, i went to wreak havoc on my opponent.

Unfortunate I got no skillz anymore.
SO I try this basic build order.

9 pylon
13 gate
15 gas

Build cyber core whenever ur gateway is done.
Then pump out a zealot. When cyber core is done, research warp gate and chrono boost.
Make stalker, then another gate.

The key is a match is to constantly make workers. You need them.

Also, once I get 3 gateways, I make robotics facility (i usually get 3rd gate soon after 2nd).
Try practicing against AI to help make macro and apm better. gl

--
ok yo wtf. 2 pylons? wth u dont need that man , and why next to gas? u cant build much there. WHERE IS THE LOGIC IN THAT! And why 4 gates at once. if someone comes in with 3 marines YOUR SCREWED. NO LOGIC AT ALL! jeez. PEOPLE THESE DAYS. >.>

 

My ex-roommate has a laptop that can't run sc2 so we share my account till he gets a better one(hopefully at christmas).

I've restricted him to play group matches and ffa only and kept 1vs1s for myself.
He's improving a lot(basicly he's played more matches total than myself), but he's a little unwilling to learn the basics, and I believe because he's stubborn and considers the basics more "noob material", but I could be wrong.

He keeps doing stuff like queing up 5 units because he wants the illusion of "keeping your money low" and queing 2 refinaries with the same scv instead of grabbing 2 off the line and make one with each, takes 1 scv and queues like 20 buildings in a row(depots,turrents,bunkers etc) and stuff like that and then looks at me and says something like "don't say anything!"
Funnily enough he was placed in platinum 4vs4 after his 5 matches, gold in 3vs3 and silver in 2vs2(whereas I was placed bronze in 1vs1 even though I'm quite a bit better at the game )

Just tell your bro to stick to ffa and 2vs2 till he learns the race well enough and then play 1vs1s instead. That should help.

As for build orders and stuff, I think it's unimportant in these levels of play. Tell him to try and keep his money low, keep making probes and avoid getting supply blocked. All others will come in time if his basics improve.

 

watch some of these.

Take them with a grain of salt, I am only platinum, Ill post another replya for more.

 

here some others.

Note how in most games I get blink and charge asap, very important.

 

Try watching the Day9 Daily.

Without actually watching the replays (I'm a Terran player anyway, and not a very good one), I would say that the three big things are:

1: Always make probes and pylons. If you're saturated with probes, still make more because the extra probes can go out to new expansions. Don't make "extra" pylons, but never fail to make troops because you lack supply.

2: Never have extra anything. No extra minerals or gas, no production facilities that aren't making troops, except if you're saving up for a specific thing that costs a lot (like a nexus). If you have too much gas, make sentries. Too many minerals, make zealots. If all your warp gates are cooling down and you have 300 extra minerals, you should have another warp gate.

3: Keep pressure on the other guy so he can't get any tech or try to expand without you seeing it and crushing it. On the flip side of that, expand while pressuring him so you get more powerful while keeping him weak.

These are really general, basic things, but if he's a bronze player who goes on huge losing streaks, this is definitely enough information. What I just described is actually insanely hard to do perfectly unless you're a professional player, so if he just tries to improve at it, he'll get way better.

 

I think it's unimportant in these levels of play.

Naah..
I've played gold silver and now Bronze. I've played much better players in bronze then in silver and gold. So donnot be mislead by Bronze players, there's a lot of them out there that are really good but are struggling against the masses of other evenmatched players in that league.

 

By levels of play I don't mean the bracket mate, but what the player needs to learn. He has a problem with the basics right now(keeping money low, staying supply unblocked without too many supplies leftover, keep making workers and generally keeping the macro up)

Trying to practice these togeather with practice learning a build order will mess his mind up more than make him better in one thing.

I think that learning should be done one step at a time. This week, practice to keep making workers, next week while continuing to do what you practiced the previous week, try to keep your money low without queuing more than 1 unit etc... Just set a goal for yourself and try to achieve it, but don't make it over-complicated (Like I have to learn to keep making probes AND keep my money low AND not get supply capped AND not queue units a lot, AND follow a good and tight build order AND micro correctly etc) When one piece of knowledge becomese trivial then you can use your whole focus on other pieces and keep doing the trivial part mechanically.

It's like a student trying to learn derivatives, integration and differential equations at the same time, it will exhaust him without producing solid knowledge.

 

Yes, Stirlitz you are absolutely correct.

I did not learn to play StarCraft (and ultimately play it very well) by learning build orders.
It was mostly self-taught (although the sheer basics were taught to me, like mine minerals! 3 worker per gas! get pylon for supply, etc.), by using logic and common sense (but who has that anymore...).
Pretty soon, I found myself playing high battle.net ladder and in a decent clan.

Mind you, I was 5 when I began.

Build orders seem to come in more handy in the middle-ranks though, when you develope a good feel for the game, and understand its mechanics.
However, I do not believe that people should rely on them too much, especially when in higher leagues.

Learn from CellaWeRRa

 

I already am! He taught me 13 gate, and I've already mastered it! Now I'm working on a cool variation: 13-proxygate! I hide them around the map!

Tbh though I generally don't like build orders the way they're usually meant. Some basic early stuff are good, like 9 pylon, 13 gate or others as early, but above that I don't think they work because of the enemy factor. If you're getting harassed a lot, it messes up your bo. If your scout gets killed you're 1 food supply too short, when will you do your bo?

I generally think that you should have a path of buildings in mind and build everything whenever you have the money to do so(in the correct order of course)

For example: 9 pylon and whenever you have minerals make a gateway, and after that whenever you have minerals make an assimilator and another pylon. This works the samy way as the actual supply-based bo but will take into consideration other factors too like harassing or even a mistake made by you(forgetting to return a worker to the mineral line could leave you with insufficient funds to build what you want on a specific supply- improvise and decide if you should cut worker production for ~10 seconds or build what you want 10 seconds later. Same goes with getting harassed/having something unexpected happen).

Build orders like which order to build buildings and how to tighten up your build to minimise lost time and get your army out faster and economy higher, yes, I'm all for that, but build-orders that say "at x/y supply make A", nah, I don't like them; a mess up by the enemy or even yourself can get you off-balance.

I'm too tired to go on with this one, lol. but I was thinking that they could help a player rank-up during the mid-ranks(after done with the basics and before getting to the point where creativeness, instinct and improvisation work for him)...
Might remember what I was thinking tomorrow, gn for now

 

I think this is a lot of good advise. Im still learning and getting better but i to dont follow a BO to the T. I do have one in mind but depending on pressure the otehr guy is giving me or what i see from scouting i try to make changes as needed, i do a few things every build like building my first pylon near the ramp so i can see any unit coming to scout, this also helps you prevent any cheese from happening too. Watching my replays and those of the pros help me too, gave me new ideas to try and ways to counter.

 

LOL at the end of "File Type: sc2replay great win vs P.SC2Replay (55.1 KB, 3 views)"!!

gg...
nerd

LOL

ps thanks for sharing STE, exactly what i needed to see!

 

Lol yea, it was funny.

He was probably raging because I kept killing his observers before he could get mine. And if you can do that dts are pretty deadly vs protoss.

I also used blink much better than he.

 

Djeez men...My son also started at about 6 years with sc1. I have a hard time winning against him, as he's much quicker with hotkeys. I mostly win because I have a better tactic. But 8 out of 10 he wins. SC is in his system, he thinks, eats, sleeps SC.:wacko:

 

LOL! Omg can I talk to him?

Cuz I actually detoxed when iCCup was down >.>

 

I agree with Stirlitz in that doing things in order is important, not necessarily doing it at a specific time (I have 15 pobes now, I MUST put down a pylon and ignore everything else that is happening). Having an order in mind and keeping an eye on your mineral count is more than enough to tell you when you can put down that gateway, or if you need another pylon etc.

As a standard opening just build the one pylon - they're for your food as well as being able to build some of your buildings. Building two straight away is unneccesary, it holds up being able to build your gateway. If you are facing zerg, it's best to build this near the ramp so you can block off zergling runbys, leaving a space for one zealots to guard, against Terran and Toss it doesn't matter too much. Next build your gateway when you have the minerals. As it's warping in, get your gas - there's no point in getting gas before the gateway. You have nothing to build, so why start getting gas? Build your next pylon when you can, then get the Core. While the core is warping in, get the second gas (if he is going for something gas heavy, like lots of stalkers, or air units - if not just keep getting minerals and get the gas later). Doing this is a good basis for the start of the game, you can expand into pretty much any build form here while having the solid economy.
So!
9-pylon
13-Gateway
Gas
Pylon
Core

Watch day9 for info on build orders and remember the important rule - always build probes, always build pylons.

Since he is in bronze, he could try what I did to get into gold - forge and three cannons to block off my ramp, then quick tech to air units and build up a big army of void rays and a few phoenixes. Unfortunately vrs were nerfed Now I actually have to do useful things in game.

 

It sounds like he is a defensive player at the beginning. My recommendation is to build gateways instead of canons. I know canons are a nice asset, but they are a static defense. Meaning they cant go around scouting, harassing or patrolling. Making gateways instead of canons will enable him to produce zealots, and adding a cybernectics core... stalkers and sentries. You can put zealots and stalkers on the front lines, even harrassing your opponents main/ expansions and allowing you to keep building and upgrading. I would make a rule with him, instead of canons, build gateways, they cost about the same anyways... and he can make first tier front line units quicker.