subject: Improving your Starcraft 2 skills [print this page] Introduction Introduction
When I first began playing Starcraft , I was rather a lousy player. Barely could win easy-medium computer, which is considered a shame. Good players are beating several computers on a high difficulties.
Basically, I had some really rookie mistakes, which are easy to avoid, if you know what you're doing. Game with a computer is pretty easy, it's the other players, who give you the real headache. Computer has never began a game with a sudden Reaper or Void Ray rush.
Computer is just playing his regular game - gathering minerals, building an army, upgraging, and building an advanced army, when he has the funds. It has few scripted build orders, and the level of the game (easy,medium,hard,etc) just influences its speed.
Know thy enemy
*My first step was to play all the races, to know and understand the tech-tree of every race. You should always know what armies is your opponent building, and of course which ones to build for yourself.
*The second step was to visit Blizzard's site, and learn which units counter which. This is a very important step, since you have to defend and attack, and some units are a direct "counter" to anothers. For example, Marauders are very powerful versus armored units, Immortals are great versus hard-n-slow-hitting enemy (like the Tanks), and so on.
When your scouts report an incoming mass units, you should have the counters ready. For example, Vikings are excellent against Collossi attack,High Templar's Psionic storm or Zerg's Banelings is the right action versus mass Terran bionic units (Marine/Marauders mass), and so on.
Be swift
Third step of preparations is to learn the hotkeys. Thing is, that computer is acting much faster than we are. This means, that we need to speed up our actions somehow. Starcraft even has built in indicator of actions speed, called ApM - Actions Per Minute. This does not indicate the quality of the actions, just the count. I've seen replays, where someone with 150ApM has beat another player , who had about 300ApM. But anyways, beginning player has ApM of about 30 , and we can easily up it with hotkeys.
An example: selecting a terran SCV , and pressing "B" (Build) ,"S" (Supply Depot) - and we can place supply depot. We have just saved 2-3 seconds. "B","R" - here goes a Refinery. 2-3 seconds more. And those seconds are summing up. Learn the hotkeys , and you will see how better you become.
Let the game begin
Economics: don't stop building workers. Ever. 6 should be on gas (3 per a refinery), and 3 more on each crystal. This is called a fully saturated base, and when you have reached this amount - you should already have another base built and ready for more workers. Keep that in mind - always build workers.
Everybody has unique economic advantage
Don't forget using race unique economic abilities: Protoss have "Chrono boost" , which is excellent for speeding up workers creation (or upgrades) , Zerg Queen can add more Larva to the Hatchery (and increase your production a lot) and Terrans can summon a Mule, from their Orbital Command, which is a very effective mineral gatherer.
Unspent resources.
If you have resources piling up, you are probably doing something wrong. Your resources should be under 500-700 most of the time. If you don't know how to spend them - keep building your army. If all of your buildings are already producing units - create more buildings.
Summary.
Those were some simple tips, which are going to help you become much, much better. You can win a computer on any difficulty, if you play like this. Human enemy requires some more planning, we will get later to those topics.
A new expansion for Starcraft is planned soon, it will be called "Heart of The Swarm" , there will be new units, and the balance will change a bit, but those tips are the basics of the Starcraft gameplay , and they will never change.
