Very mediocre player trying to improve

Hello peoples, I played a little brood war, and have been playing SC2 for a week or so.

Currently, my internet connection is pretty much awful, something that I won't be able to resolve for about a month, so, for now, I am stuck with the campaign and AI.

I can beat the Insane AI pretty easily with all three races without "cheese" as I understand it, cannon rushes, setting them to Zerg and building crawlers in their minerals, etc, or exploiting the AI via chokepoints and such. So, currently, I have been playing the Insane AI at various handicaps, currently working on 70%. The first question, if anyone happens to know, is how the insane AI compares to silver / gold players in the first 10 minutes of the game assuming you are at a 70% handicap?

The main race I play is Zerg, and I find that at the handicaps I've played at so far, if I can survive to getting mutalisks, the game is over, because they don't build turrets, and their army is kind of moot, because I just take away their gas.

Although, it did show up at my base with Thors once fairly early in the game, I was not expecting that, I saw Factories and assumed tanks / hellions, I guess I need to work on scouting more.

Well, I guess I could open a map editor and just give the AI like 30 turrets or something also, to negate it's lack of air defense, but that would probably be on the other extreme from what I'd see in actual games.

 

As far as i see it, playing against AI is a very good training. But unfortunatly not comparable to playing against others....

Being able to beat insane AI at 70% Handicap is pretty impressive (at least to me - haven't tried it out myself yet, usually play against medium or hard for getting warm ). I'd guess you would be put into gold league or even higher - don't know how the system works.

The problem is, though, that the AI pretty much plays the same way every time. So if you know how to counter it once, you're pretty much done with your enemys. They mostly go for the same build and tactics. Real people don't. You can be a Diamond-Player and get beaten up by a bronze player if you go for the same build every time and he just plays different to what you've ever played before. In multiplayer, scouting is the key to everything. You must be able to change your playstyle very quick to win.

Unfortunatly there ain't no comparison between playing against AI and playing against real people. Try it out once you're connection is working again. And don't forget: It doesn't depend on the league you're playing but how much fun you have while you're playing

 

Pretty much says it, you cant overlook the importance of scouting in this game ... it makes all the difference

 

I got a bunch of USB extensions, tethered my phone outside, and used it as a modem, and played a placement match yesterday

I really, really should have lost, but I was teching to T3, so I happened to have an infestor nest when I did a fly-over on his base with a couple mutas and noticed he was massing hydras, and I forget the map, but theres kind of a chokepoint that runs along one edge of the base against high ground. Since I had the building already, I was able to get five or so infestors in position while he ran in, and did that fungus thing on the hydras in the front, and I guess he wasn't paying attention, because he just left them trying to run into my base, so I got to fungal growth some more, and cleaned them up with the 6 or 7 mutas I had, which probably would not have fared well at all without the help of the infestors. There had been a few skirmishes before that, he did a rush thing that I countered, and another time I should have probably lost but I got lucky with banelings vs zerglings and roaches, but he did manage to kill most of my drones while I was getting my first batch of flying shrimp out, so I was having a few resource issues. But, I think he massed hydras again, while I took a 3rd and 4th expansion, and when he attacked my 4th expansion, I had more infestors there + crawlers, and my mutas destroyed his base.

I didn't play that well, had the jitters, very nervous / excited, and only sort of scouted, but I don't think he scouted at all, he didn't seem to notice my first expansion at all, and didn't notice my third expansion until the last 30 seconds of the game

I think other than maybe more practice with terran / protoss, most of the rest of the practice / experience I'll benefit much from will come from playing actual people

Can't wait till I get a more stable connection, that was fun

 

The first matches always makes you some kind of nervous / exited when your heart is beating fast and you always misclick. But with time you get a lot calmer, no matter if you think you're losing or winning.

Over all you pretty much see that you can't really compare playing AI to real people. Keep getting a good mixure of units instead of focusing on only one. A good army is always made out of at least 3 unit-types (like Zealot+Sentry+Stalker(+Immortal/Colossus) or Marine+Marauder+Medivac(+Siege) etc...)

 

Just practice and practice. I have almost 150 matches now and I'm not great. I'm in bronze and about at 50% win. I watched alot of pro video's and watched what they did.

 

Yeah, my job is very boring sometimes, so I watch a lot of replays during downtime, trouble is there don't seem to be that many zerg players >.>

 

Watch some replays with tlo (thelittleone) or idra, these show some real impressive zerg gameplay. They play rather macro intensive, if you want to see some fine one base action, watch replays with the korean checkprime, he micros like an insane bastard

 

Mostly stuck with Youtube videos at work, have SC2 up would be a bit tricky

But I did manage to catch a few videos from checkprime, he is really good with banelings, like, stuff that I wouldn't have done in a game, but if I went back and watched all the units I would have liked to have killed but didn't have my banelings in the right place at the right time stuff.

Most of TLO videos appear to be terran, only a few zerg matches, I think? On YouTube, that is

 

I just remember one epic shoutcast from huskystarcraft where tlo played zerg vs terran, and he absolutely owned him with ultralisks.