Strategy Let's analyze games !

[Bloodcount]

How to: Analyze games​

You know, at least 2-3 times a week there is a game in which I have no idea what went wrong. A game which makes me doubt my skills, a game which makes me hate myself for deciding to play right now. I know you have them too, it is part of the pvp scene- sometimes you are the greatest one, sometimes you are the weakest one. Fear not, this small tutorial will teach you how to know where you've fucked up.​

Step 1: Load up the match stats​

We won't look at the replay. Most of the times you don't have to. Okay, you have them loaded up ? Great. Go to "economy breakdown" See how much workers you have. Now according to the number:

• If you have lost workers in the game due to harass and the numbers of you and your opponent's workers are simular his harass killed you. This is where you need to improve
  
  
• If you have similar or more, look at the resources mined. If you have mined more, but you have spent a lot less than him, you need to improve your macro. In particular the resource management.
  
  
• Let's say, that you have used your resourses better than him, have mined the same or greater amount. There is one last thing we are going to look at before we move on. The apm tab. If you have less apm than him, you need to spam more.

Just kidding, really. you don't need more than 120 apm even in most battles. We are going to look at the Graph, the unit section. We are going to look for the time when we had a huge downfall. Just note at arround when it happened.

Step 2: Load up the replay​

Now we are going to look at the game. We are interested in 2 things- Unit composition and the engagements.


The unit composition is obvious

When did you find what he was going for and did you have time to react?

• If you didn't have enough time you must improve your scouting.
  
  
• If you did have enough time you just need to react better

The Engagements

Remember in the first step when you took the note ? You are going to fast forward to these points

• If you have been caught out of position it is mostly luck which has decided this game. Just for the record you can always be more aware of what is going on in the map, however take it from me. Even the top 10 players in a region don't constantly scout or play nearly as safe as they can, let alone just a player like you and me.
  
  
• If you had fought in a place where you shouldn't have fought. For example if you had mass lings it is obviously better to fight in open spaces rather than fight in chocked. If you have made a mistake like that, you need to try and engage more wisely
  
  
• If you have engaged properly but your micro wasn't good enough- for example you couldn't feed back the ghosts and have lost, you need to work on your micro- unit spread, unit control.

This concludes this small tutorial on how to analyze the games we played, if you have any questions or feedback, feel free to leave a comment.

 

[Sgqvur]

I think when a player has reached the level to carry out his builds/tactics (aka good enough macro) without much trouble
he/she should concentrate on other aspects like adjusting his build by scouting his opponent (aka reacting) and
most importantly engaging properly.

It seams to me that a great amount of games are pretty much determined from a single battle.
So engaging properly in this game ending battle has a very high priority.

So my suggestion to the players is that they can skip the cumbersome part of every game to
build, expand and make army and instead go straight to the ending battle.

How can the building part be skipped? Well in normal/ladder gameplay it can't be but in custom games
it is quite possible. So players need to find a micro arena kind of a map that allows quick army composition,
upgrades selection, etc. and of course a good buddy that with whom to try out different tactics against each other.

This kind of game practice is good because lets face it battles in Starcraft 2 end fast due to units having low hp and
high dps so players need a lot of practice in end battles. And of course imagine how much time it will save you, because
almost every game's first 5-10 minutes are just a preparation for the 1 deciding battle.

 

[Bloodcount]

I tend to disagree with you on this one. Although I agree that the best way to practise just micro and tactics is to use these sort of maps dedicated to creating an army and fighting with it, I have to say that the battles fought in these maps are irrelevant, because the amount of resources mined and spent is rarely the same. In most games one of the player maces a challenging macro move and attempts to get an economic edge.


Still, as mentioned above, these maps are perfect for pure micro

 

[Miz]

I reformatted the tutorial somewhat. Added Indents, Lists, Fixed some typos, etc.

 

[Bloodcount]

<3<3<3


Btw, anyone have any tutorial requests ? I will have time to write something this weekend, what do you want me to write ?

 

[GFreak45]

i would like one on using the different views of the data editor, ie: raw data and all those views, what differences they make, what they make visible, how to read them all that

 

[UndeadDragon]

i would like one on using the different views of the data editor, ie: raw data and all those views, what differences they make, what they make visible, how to read them all that

His guides are on gameplay, not making maps.

 

[Siretu]

i would like one on using the different views of the data editor, ie: raw data and all those views, what differences they make, what they make visible, how to read them all that

Although, this might be what you're looking for: http://www.thehelper.net/forums/showthread.php/167683-Data-Editor-Data-Editing-for-Dummies?p=1375577