Seem to have reduced my life to academic work and StarCraft the past few days, falling behind on things like reading e-mails and the news etc., which has been fun. I’ve spent some time between actual games collecting achievements and this has had me playing outside the 1v1 ladder, in a couple of team games, a FFA and a number of Co-op games. These are full of casual RTS players—I think they’re sort of like I was when I played loads of strategy games (we didn’t have the term ‘RTS’ back then) when I was younger. I’ve only been playing them to try it out and for the sake of the achievements though, since I really don’t find that style of play very much fun anymore: if I’m not going to try and optimise and win hard, I’d rather play something like Supreme Commander, I think, or if it’s just for fun (and it’s not multiplayer with IRL friends), I’d rather play a non-RTS.
Back in the 1v1 league I’m feeling rather forever bronze, and starting to learn how much I have to learn, if you like: instead of not knowing much and just playing naïvely, I’m seeing areas where I have no idea what to do. For example when I forge fast expand I get hit with a load of Mutas and I’m not sure when I should start building Phoenixes (or if I should just get cannons or spread my stalkers instead or whatever); one can find answers though. I lost against Protoss early pressure and in the replay saw that my opening was probably better executed than his, and apparently my mistake was to expand early which you should never do in a PvP. Time to learn Day[9]’s 2 gate robo.
In terms of what I’m trying to learn, I’m trying to sort out getting supply blocked. By this I mean learning how fast I need to build pylons relative to my production; as well as just forgetting, I frequently misjudge how much supply I’m using up per warp-in and end up not producing for ages while my pylons catch up. Oh and I’m getting better at warp-ins: I’m starting to get a sense for it, where I’m like “hmm I bet there’s a warp in due within the next five seconds” and sure enough, there is, which is sweet. After this I want to work on probe production, which I generally do fine but I think I need to expand more in order to not be wasting my supply on probes.
This is brilliant, even if you don’t play/like StarCraft:
Their SCV Love Song and Void Rays Rebecca Black parody are also very good.