Need Advice with General Combat

I haven't been doing so well recently on 1v1. My general strategy is field control, which leads to an economic advantage. Economic advantage means I get more units, more units leads to winning.

I play this strategy more or less no matter what race I'm playing. I also harass their base throughout the game.

This doesn't seem to work. I think I found my problem though: whenever I play, I always lose more units (in both numbers, and the amount of resources spent on them) than my opponent does. It's always a significant amount 50% to 100% more. I can pull it off sometimes if I can just make more units than them. I feel I am missing some general strategies for when forces face off.

Here's my question: What strategies or tactics do you use when you engage your opponents forces?

I'm talking about unit choice (how do you choose what to build), how do you choose what to attack, how do you attack, strategies for your army as a whole (do you send them as one mass, or in waves) and tactics for individual units, such as dancing stalkers.

If you could post your own answers to my above question(s) and comment on others on this thread, I'd be very appreciative.

 

Mkay, open starcraft hit go to the help tab and start reading. There is a list of all the units of all the races, their strengths against opposing units and their weaknesses. The other thing you need to understand is micro of your units during a fight. If you aren't bottlenecked up a ramp and are in an open playing field and one of your units is at 40% and the rest are at 100%. Run it back behind your forces. Also don't allow static defenses (aka photon cannons etc.) to consistently attack you. Cheers. Just some very basic advice.

 

Another question I have is what are some basic macro techniques?

I've watched some videos on some higher-ladder matches and it seems that the players are spending a lot of time focusing on the field, and their units. Meanwhile, their bases are being maintained. How is this possible? I have enough trouble keeping my base working without attacking.

 

Hotkeys. And practice.

 

Really if you are losing as much as you say, it's probably not because of unit control. This game is no where near that unforgiving on poor micro, as usually attack-moving and using a few key abilities (stimpack, etc) is enough. It could instead be one of two things:

1) You aren't upgrading your units, while your opponent is. 30 stalkers vs 30 stalkers is an even fight, but against 25 +2/+2 weapon/armor stalkers, 30 non-upgraded stalkers would get completely destroyed.

2) Unit counters. Sure you can get lots of economy and pump out 30 stalkers, but if the enemy countered with 12 immortals, you have no chance. You should scout out your opponent and counter him, but also keep your army varied a little so you can't be as easily countered when you get scouted.

As for effective macro, you should group all your production buildings into one control group (ctrl-4 or something) so one number button on your keyboard brings up your entire production facility and you can reinforce your army in a matter of seconds, even when you are paying attention elsewhere.

 

I know this has been said, but micro micro micro. Roaches > Zealots, but they wont be if you leave them sitting there while the zealots swarm over the roaches. You have to be smart, pull ranged units out of reach of melee units while firing off shots. Macro means nothing if you cant manage the units in the micro.

 

I've heard should I kite by running away and a-attacking, then running away, repeat. I've also heard I should kite by running away, then hitting h, then running away again, repeat. Which is right?

 

Microing against zealots with charge and stalkers behind them kind of sucks with roaches

 

I disagree... micro is something people can do without in scII... macro and map control are WAY more important. That being said, micro is much more difficult to learn, so if 2 people have relatively the same macro level... then it does become a game of micro - but please.... anyone who is going to try microing, only do it if you can maintain your macro. I've won too many games because I forced the enemy into "microing" and wasting his time. Sure he can beat my zealots with his roaches, but if he doesn't tech to AA in time - he's fcked. no micro will make roaches > VR

There is no "right" way. Both of those are effective in their own way. But why run away the entire army? this wastes time. instead spread out your ranged units and run away only the ones being chased by melee - maximize your attacking time, minimize his. in TFT the basic hit and run strat was OKAY... but abusing the range advantage was much more effective. Remember to focus fire, try to spread the damage (what little damage you take) across your units as evenly as possible.
________
Honda CL77

 

i'm sure if you uploaded a replay ( hopefully of most recent patch ) better advise could be given as you cant tell us what your doing wrong, if you knew that then you would fix it . and then maybe we/they can help

 

Hey I need some advice.

I've been playing as the Protoss for about a week, and doing pretty decent. After getting destroyed the first few matches, I did some research and developed some new strategies that have generally been working. Here is the problem:

In the early game, I get Zealots as fast as possible, and tech up quickly to get first immortal about 6:30 into the game. I've found that having just one immortal is extremely useful against enemy stalkers/marauders/roaches. I beef up a little more, attack, either win right then or have to fall back, and then keep building up my forces, going for multiple warp gates and more immortals. I also usually try a strategy which involves using the warp prism to get dark templars behind the enemy probes. Sometimes this works, sometimes not. Anyway, once the game gets past the early and middle stages I rarely win, for one simple reason: I cant find any way to effectively defeat mass Voids or mass BCs. I've done the mass Voids strat before, and usually win, but I dont want to have to use the same strategy in every game. Yet whenever I dont mass Voids, I either have to win very fast, or I lose. Is there no way to counter mass Voids or mass BCs besides getting mass Voids myself??

Please help, I feel like Im getting beaten by inferior players who simply rely on a broken strategy....

 

To Will.cfalcon:

I've never found a decent hard counter for Battle Cruisers or Void Rays. If you mass Vikings, Mutas, Corrupters, etc, the best you'll do is a tie. I've heard High Templar lightnings and Infestor's fungal growth (sp?) work well but I've never tried. To counter mass BC and VR I always scout their base, see what they're doing, and harass them. Never let them mass in the first place.

I have a separate question. When should I kite my units? Do they have to be faster? Do they have to have longer range?

For example, a group of Stalkers are chasing my Roaches, should I kite my Roaches?

 

Roaches can beat Stalkers and if you can't beat them burrow that's what makes roaches effective.

Counters for VR's are anything in mass numbers than attacks air which on Protoss would be stalkers, or AA units like a phoenix. Battlecruisers can also be countered by Phoenix's because they are so slow, you can micro the hell out of them

 

Okay, Stalkers and Roaches were a bad example. But when should I kite? I did it some some success with 4 roaches against 6 zealots in a game I just played. I was hoping for a general rule as to when you should or can kite.

 

You can always kite. But you should generally do it when your units are either faster than the enemy's units or your units are ranged and you're facing melee units. Or you're slightly outnumbered.

Really kiting can help you at any time because even with large armies sometimes it helps to bait and switch and kill off any units he doesn't control perfectly. It starts to whittle him down.

 

I can definitely agree with what a few people have said about micro being much less important than macro/map control, but I think the biggest thing is effective counters, and effective counters can be best timed with effective scouting. I try to scout somewhat early and every minute or so I'll try and see what they're up to again, whether it be flying a unit through, OC scan, whatever I've got, because the best way to produce a superior army is to be a step ahead of your opponent. Then after that, knowing what the good counters are is the next step, and that's the easy part. For example, if you're playing Terran and you see Protoss going Stalkers+Zealots+Sentries, then you know to go Marauders with their double damage vs. armored **** and Hellions with their bonus vs. light.

So yeah, my input is basically that effective scouting will make your game much easier and you'll find that by producing counters to what you see your opponent coming with will make micro even less important. And as far as the really good players seeming like they're everywhere at once, it's all hotkeys man. I always have my Command Center, all of my unit production buildings and a couple SCV's hotkeyed lol.

 

I guess I don't quite understand the purpose of kiting. I move and hit and move again trying to avoid getting my units hit. But if his units have longer range, wouldn't they be able to hit me anyways? Is the idea when I stop to hit, he doesn't necessarily hit back? Does anyone have some video(s) of good ranged vs ranged kiting for me to check out?

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5R4tNsuJxI&hd=1

Fast forward to the 2:00 mark and watch from there, and disable the annoying music.

 

Thank you Whodack for the quick video response, but I was hoping to find a good video of ranged vs ranged kiting. Ideally I'd like someone with a smaller army fending off a larger one.

Edit: Wait, is the idea behind kiting that your units don't miss off on any attacks (ideally you'd kite so your units attack rates wouldn't lower) while you make you opponent chase you, thus lowering how many times they can?

 

I don't know if that's even possible. If it is, it is beyond my meager abilities.

If outnumbered, I generally try to harass the larger force until my macro catches up. I attack and immediately run, hoping to have them chase me all over. If you dedicate yourself to managing this, you can either trap them at a choke/ramp where the numbers are even, or in your favor if you do it right. If they call off the pursuit, you can attack while they are retreating. Then go back and forth.

If they retreat -> attack them as they retreat.
If they give chase -> lead them to a choke or ramp.

And do it over and over. It will annoy the hell out of your opponent. If they fully retreat into their base where you can't attack at all, then you have successfully contained a larger force so you can focus on macro. The hard part about this is that you have to be able to ramp up your macro WHILE doing the kite harass. Otherwise it's a wash. If you play micro games and your opponent forcuses on micro to counter it...but he's beating you in the macro department and you don't catch up...it's still a loss.

The best players can micro their units to harass, regardless of the army sizes on either side, while *continuing* to macro up. I'm not to that level yet, but it's the goal (or should be) of every player to get to that level.