lots of people try to teach new builds when giving lessons. i don't think that this is the right way to go. any build order can win a game up to high masters as long as it is well-executed. it is more important to play a strategy that you know and enjoy doing, even if it is not super efficient. it is part of the learning process, if your build order is bad but you know it really well and keep practicing it, you will start to lose games to the same thing over and over, and then you have to modify your strategy so that it can deal with that thing you are losing to.
it is really important to make sure you have a good set up to take full advantage of the user interface. having a good hotkey setup and using ctrl and shift to select / add units to control groups, in order to be able to do everything with the least possible number of actions is key. so many students have the worst hotkey setups and click so inefficiently, it makes it impossible for them to improve.
lets say you get attacked and weren't expecting it by a protoss and you have mmm, vikings, and ghosts. if you don't have your army hotkeyed you have to scroll over to the battle, drag your mouse over the whole army, then your ghosts will be highlighted so you have to press tab before you can stim, and then your army will attack in a huge ball and fail miserably vs protoss splash damage.
when a protoss attacks me i double tap 1 and i'm over the battle with my army selected, then i press t and 1a2a3a which you can do really fast, and then i still have my ghosts selected ( i hotkey them on 3) and i can rain down emps and it takes like 10 clicks, you can do everything in 2 seconds no problem. the trick is just getting used to it. anyone can do it. it is pretty hard at first.
when i started playing sc2, i used to hotkey my command center on 2 in broodwar, so for the first few months i had the worst 1a syndrome, which everyone seemed to have. then i decided i needed at least 3 control groups for my army so instead of 2 cc 3 rax 4 fac 5 starport i switched to 4cc 5rax 6fac 7 starport and well for like a week played horribly and had to stop and think which button to press to build what i wanted. it was horrible, but i got used to it and i am much better off for it now. people need to do this if they want to improve. they will be worse for a few days but once they get used to a more efficient set up they will see a huge jump in their ability to do this faster and handle stressful situations.
set up a custom hotkey setup that works for you, it will help a lot. for example, i changed the hotkey for planetary fortress to X (default is P) and liftoff/land i changed to Z (default is L) the defaults are on the opposite side of the keyboard and very annoying to press. i also changed the control group 0 to ` so its next to 1 and i have an extra control group for units now
another thing that is really important is unit compositions. you need to have a plan for what kind of army you want to make. you have to know the best way to use your army. there is 100 different ways to play starcraft, and there is no 1 best way. every unit has a counter. say you like going bio with terran. bio is really good, the best players in the world do it all the time. there is however lots of things that own the crap out of bio. against protoss for instance, colossus and high templar. what makes colossus / ht so powerful is that if you only have bio and nothing to support it, then the protoss can make only zealots and spend all of their gas on colossus or ht. zealots aren't that good against terran by themselves because of medivacs and marauder concussive shell, but they do take forever to kill, which buys time and shields the colossus/ht while they lay down the splash damage everywhere.
so what you need to do is make a plan in your head, ok this is what i will do if they go colossus, and this is what i will do if they go ht. if the protoss doesn't go either of those 2 things, then you will probably win the game easily because bio is super strong against everything else. most people generally like to make vikings for the colossus and ghosts for the hts but you can do lots of other things too if you want. let's say for example you make banshees with cloak to snipe the hts, or attack the colossus. they might not be the most efficient way possible to handle things, but if you practice going banshees, and get good at using them then you will be able to win games against players. if you have practiced this banshee strategy 100 times and you face someone on the ladder or in a tournament that has never played against this, then they will not know what to do, and they will not know the best way to counter what you are doing and they will make mistakes. you can capitalize on these mistakes and win.
tvz is really the hardest one for lower level players. zerg has 2 amazing units, infestors and banelings. pros counter these units by having insane micro and splitting up their bio armies to avoid the splash damage. then lower level players try to copy the pros but lets face it, it takes about 10x the apm and attention and time to split up your units than it does for the zerg to a-move some banelings or throw down fungals all over your army. so if you want to win against zerg you are going to have to come up with your own way of dealing with banelings and infestors. you could just say screw it and go mech, hellions and tanks are super cost effective against them. unfortunately zerg does have a counter, mutas and roaches. so if you want to go mech, you are going to have to have a plan of action in place to deal with roaches and mutas. tanks are pretty good against roaches when they are sieged, but roaches are fast and can run around them. so you need to have really good planning with where you build everything so that there are no holes in your defense and you cannot be caught offguard. you could throw in a few bunkers with marines (roaches have pretty bad dps and are bad at killing bunkers, especially if they are just buffering damage or buying time for your tanks. or you could have a handful of banshees flying around the map and keeping the zerg contained, which would allow you to attack and seige up in a position that roaches cant flank you or catch you offguard.
marines are definitely the best unit against zerg, if used to their maximum potential, however that is impossible even for the best player. going for heavier armored units is a much easier way to play, but it is just not as efficient. however if you can figure out your own style and learn what to do when the zerg makes units that are good against mech ( roaches / mutalisks / broodlords ) then you will probably have an easier time against zerg if you are below high masters league. your opponent will not be used to playing against this style too, every zerg knows what to do against marinemaraudermedivac and marine tank. that really is the most important thing in defeating zerg, is keeping them offguard, if the zerg knows what you are doing and exactly what units to make, if they know when you are going to move out it is really hard to play against because they will just make the minimum number of units they need to stop your attack and mass drones
its kind of annoying, because bio is the easiest way to play for terran, its easy to macro and get a big army and it is very mobile and versatile. but for lower level players against zerg you need to have a plan of action for those infestors and banelings. one thing that you can do when you are attacking is stop before you get to their base, and pre-emptively spread your units out, and then just send in a few units at a time and have your medivacs heal them. zerg will have to use fungals to trap and kill those units and it's not very cost effective for them. then once they are low on infestor energy you can attack with your whole army. this is pretty hard to do and it takes a lot of practice, but its easier to do than the sick progamer splits.
so what i am trying to say is, you shouldn't copy other peoples build orders. you should find a strategy that you like doing. figure out all the strengths and weaknesses of said strategy and learn all the timings and in's and out's. you will have a lot more success on the ladder and you will have more fun doing it. if you are constantly trying to improve your strategy and fix the holes then you will be learning every game too. getting a deeper understanding of the game and knowing how to best use each unit is one of the most important things you can learn, and you can't learn that from watching a stream. you can't learn that from copying someone elses build order like a robot.
ok lets move on to macro. for me, i build scvs non-stop (until i reach about 70), or at least i plan to, unless something happens in the game and i need to stop building scvs (defending an allin, or if your 3rd base dies and you have 55 scvs on 2 base, or allining yourself for example). i like to have about 3 production buildings per base, if you macro non-stop then that is about all that you can afford. once i have enough supply depots that my cap is 200 and i am done making scvs however, that extra money that you were spending on scvs and depots needs to be put into more production.
unfortunately, players that are below high masters in skill level cannot macro while fighting, hell i can't even do it sometimes. so you need to build more barracks / starports / factories. if your money goes above 1000 minerals, make 3 more production buildings, and before you build them, stop and think for a second. what is my opponent going? what units do i need more of? don't just mindlessly spam barracks if your opponent has 30 infestors, or mass tanks, or 8 colossus. if your money continues to go up, building orbital command centers in your base is always a good option, mules pay for themselves pretty quick, they don't take up supply (freeing up more supply for your army) and they are really easy to macro, every 2 or 3 minutes just go to your freshest expansion and rain down mules until you are out of energy. it's also really smart to go build planetary fortresses at random expansions all over the map. if you get a PF up and call down 10 mules there then it will instantly pay for itself, and your opponent won't be able to take that base. they will also have to commit a pretty good amount of units to kill a planetary fortress, which opens up for options for you. you can go and counter attack the rest of their army while they are fighting the PF, or if you think you can trap and kill the units the P used on the PF then you can do that too
i think that it's probably best to stop at around 50 scvs if you don't have pro level macro. lower level players expand slower, and it takes a lot of their attention to transfer scvs and get a new base up and running. if you build 70 scvs you are just going to end up mining out your main and natural a lot faster and if you don't get those new bases going fast enough, then you are just going to run out of money and get stuck later on. also if you aren't good enough to macro while you are fighting then your money is going to skyrocket and although its nice to have 10k minerals in the bank it's pretty useless. you are better off having an extra 20 supply for your army, and having to worry less about macroing and worry more about fighting. if you make only 50 workers and your opponent makes 70 well once you start attacking him, he is going to have to dedicate more attention to macroing, spending his money, transfering workers, building new expansions faster (because his will mine out faster) and you can use your army better and be more cost effective in the fights and force him to make mistakes.
ok about map awareness and unit movement and such. pro gamers don't really need to use scans on their opponent all that much, and they are able to move their army around the map while macroing near-perfect, and they also know the metagame and what their opponent is likely to make. their opponent will probably go for an efficient as possible unit composition, and i know what those units are and i know what i need to make to counter them. however, in the lower leagues people make whatever they want, and they also don't know what the best and most efficient unit compositions are. so you need to scout more. using a few scans, isn't going to lo the bank then dropping mules isn't going to benefit you at all. using calldown supply is actually free 100 minerals, where the minerals in your main/expo are going to be gone 20 minutes into the game whether or not you use mules on them. if you are supply blocked, CALL DOWN SUPPLY ITS REALLY GOOD. also you need to know what your opponent is doing, if you have 1000 minerals banked up then you should of course be adding more production, so take a second to scan your opponent and find out exactly what he is doing, and then decide what units you would benefit most from having. if you are going marine tank and your opponent is going roach infestor, maybe add 2 more barracks with techlabs and another starport for banshees and medivacs. just stop and think about it for a second, try and figure out the best thing to do in each situation. that's how you learn. if you make the wrong units and end up losing, go back and watch the replay and see what you could have made. ok i am kind of getting off-topic sorry lol.
you have no idea how many students i have seen just sitting there happily macroing away, their army is rallied wherever, they have buildings build at random locations all over their base. then, suddenly, an army comes out of nowhere and attacks them. their army isn't hotkeyed, they weren't positioned properly for the fight, and they die and barely kill a single unit. this is something really important that you have to learn. you have to keep an eye on where your opponent is at. i think that everyone should make sensor towers, and fight for those watchtowers. when pros play, their splits are pretty good, so is the unit positioning before battles, it seems like they are never caught offguard. that's because they know where their opponent is. they have units at strategic places on the map to see their opponent coming. i know lots of times i'm not paying close enough attention and my opponent comes out of nowhere and attacks me, it can instantly end the game. against muta ling baneling when we used to see sick marine splits, well the terran is already set up well before the fight starts, his tanks are spread out and his units are in an arc, and they know their opponent is coming so they are ready to start microing before the battle even starts. one little thing you can do, when you move out into the map just stim a marine or 2 and send them out infront of your army so that you don't get ambushed.
there is a lot of information here and its impossible to read this and remember everything when you are playing and put it in action. if you really want to improve at starcraft you have to play a lot. thats the thing about starcraft, its the hardest game i've ever played and it is impossible to reach the skill ceiling, there is always things that you can improve on. if you are dedicated and want to improve, find a strategy that you enjoy doing in each matchup and keep working on it. your apm and mechanics will improve without you even having to think about it. you will memorize what you have to build at every point in the game and every time you do it you will get a little bit faster. if you come to a point where you have figured out everything about this strategy and you are bored of it, well then find a new build that seems cool and start working on it. you will always have that old strategy in your back pocket and can use it if you need to.
starcraft gets a lot more fun when you play a lot and are improving. it's not fun when you play once every 2 weeks and you don't have a build order and you just screw around and lose. its frustrating, really frustrating. but when you play a lot and improve and learn it's really enjoyable and you get rewarded for your effort.
make sure to write things down, when you have a good idea or lose to a 4 gate, go and watch the replay and figure out what you could have done to stop it and write it down so that you can remember it later. when you are losing and playing bad, go back and read what you wrote down and just go back to the basics, sometimes you can get in a rut and play badly without even realizing it.
i wrote a guide about 8 months ago that outlines some good standard build orders that are efficient and explain what to do at all stages of the game. if you are having trouble figuring out a strategy to use that is a good place to start, the guide is here: http://www.complexitygaming.com/forums/ ... php?t=4456
i hope this wall of text helped, thanks for reading and good luck
and i will try to keep writing terran strategy material so please keep checking back, and if you have any comments or feedback post on here and let me know !
sorry for not using caps
when i started writing i didn't think it would get this long and well now it's too late LOL
