I'll be completely honest, I svck at StarCraft II. In fact, if a Hover vacuum decided to play against me, I would svck at it more. :facepalm:

Anyway, I enjoy the game when I win, (I.E. never...) but I want to actually be decent at it. The problem is, I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing.

Would anyone here be willing to teach me? I'd like to be able to play without the freaking A.I. Zerg rushing me to death, or better yet, survive against other players.

So can anyone help?

use cheats.

that will be $200. :tongue:

But what I do is set up first my resources, then my barracks, then a good defense. Then when they try to attack you, you have a barracks to train men, resources to get more men, then a good defense to well... defend? haha Then start upgrading and attacking.

Attacking for me- I just go all out on- their buildings that train really good troops and their defenses. For some reason they don't build their troop buildings back up again as fast as their barracks so try to destroy those first. I click on a big amount of troops at a time, then send one wave to get their defenses down, then send another wave to destroy their troop making buildings.

A good way to attack- Make your defenses at your base really strong, build up some more troops and put them somewhere where they won't see when the enemy attacks your base, let the enemy attack your base, and once all of the enemies are destroyed, send your troops that you built up and attack their base. By doing this, their base will more then likely be emptier and you won't have to deal with their defense troops and their attack troops.

If you need clarification on some things just ask.

Change it so the hotkeys are based on a grid (it's an option in it somewhere)so that you can easily switch between races. Use the hotkeys all the time and get used to them. Unfortunately I haven't played recently so I don't remember specific strategies, I'm sure you can look up some online.

A good way to start:

Immediately select all of your starting workers and right click a crystal, any crystal. They will automatically spread to the unclaimed ones rather than wait in line for that one spot. The opening moments can be vital, and this will save you a few seconds individually selecting and sending them to individual crystals (as I did originally). Either quickly before doing this or after, whatever you prefer, have your "homebase" building start on another worker with the 50 minerals you start with. Set the rally point of the building on a crystal; this will make the units it builds immediately start harvesting, and they too will automatically direct themselves to wherever they can harvest fastest from, again saving you some time/attention from selecting them from a different rally point and manually sending them to a crystal. When I originally played I would designate 1 worker per crystal, but the ideal is 2-3. I prefer 2 myself, but that's up to you. You can track this quickly by click-dragging to select all your harvesting workers; you start with 8 crystals, and 1 row in the bottom where selected groups are displayed is 8 units. So, if you have 2 rows, you've got 2 workers per crystal. While this seems like an unnecessary drain on resources (spending minerals to get minerals you'd have all taken in time anyway), the increased speed will soon pay for itself and allow you to afford base building and starting units at the same time. Plus, when it comes time to expand and your resources are drained, you'll have a legion of workers ready to strip another location.

Keep making workers. You'll approach your starting population limit soon, and you'll also approach a point where you can afford the 100 for supply expansion without having to stop training and wait. Grab a worker from the miners to do this, and do it quickly, since you'll need it to make military units (especially for Terran and Protoss, who have it as a building prerequisite). Once you can, build your starting unit factory building (barracks/gateway/spawning pool). For the non-Zerg races, you'll probably want to build a second as soon as possible. You'll probably get as many mining workers as you need as they're building, so feel free to move the rally point, and probably increase the supply limit by another building or two. When you can afford it, make more workers to send to the gas vents, 3 for each. Having extras doesn't help you with that resource. Do this without going below the minimum minerals in stock to immediate start training, for example, keep 100 minerals on-hand with Terrans to be able to immediately start a marine from each of your two barracks. Minerals may be short between paying for those buildings and the gas-harvesters, but you'll be fine as long as you queue the next unit before the first finishes, so you don't lose time between them. Beyond this specific strategy gets harder, such as what to buy next or how many units to make, especially between races, but it should help you get a stable start. Pump out enough units to defend yourself from early attacks and then you can worry about more advanced defenses. At the beginning, units are generally better than defensive buildings for keeping you safe. Upgrades are tempting, but hold off on them; for the price of fully upgrading your air units you can build several battlecruisers, which are likely to make a bigger difference. Two battlecruisers with rank zero stats will easily beat one battlecruiser with rank 1 stats. For longer games and larger armies, though, don't forget them.

For Zerg things are a bit difference. You especially want that spawning pool ASAP, because you want to make a Queen immediately. Do not neglect her Spawn Larvae ability! A quick start with the Zerg is hard without it, because you've got the same building needing to create drones, overlords, and soon zerglings all at the same time. The queen will regenerate more than the 25 cost in energy in the time it takes for the extra larvae to hatch, so don't be afraid to use it again immediately. When you have the chance/need, only have her make one creep tumor; they can propogate themselves indefinitely, since each new tumor has the ability to spawn one additional one. Instead, keep the focus on those extra larvae.

I would offer to help in-game, but I've got things that needed doing 15 minutes ago and won't have the free time until later.

Watch replays and learn from the mistakes of others so you don't have to make them yourself

there are thousands of replays on youtube and a lot of them with good commentary. They're really helpful, especially for people who svck at sc2 (like me) and they are also fun to watch ^_^

Go watch some of totalbiscuits videos

Watch Day9.

He is there to make us all better gamers.

He is OK but insists on calling supply, food.
Watch any tournament really. Observe the techniques and if you can't do that go to totalhalibut's channel on youtube and watch the "I svck at starcraft". In fact there are 2 tournaments on live now.

play age of empires

But when you are watching whatever video you decide, you have to do it like you are studying. Don't just sit back with a beer or something and just watch the battles and such. You gotta pay attention to every little thing going on if you truly wanna get "better." SC 2 is srs bsns. Hell, I even took NOTES when I would watch day9 back when I still played ladder a lot.




Because that is what it is. The supply depots for Terran hold food, because they are human. So he just calls it food for everyone else too.

Do you build multiple military buildings? You should always have more than one barracks (or other equivalent) to speed up army production.


I do too sometimes.... probably because my first RTS was Warcraft II.

http://pc.ign.com/articles/115/1156588p1.html

Only n00bs fall any of those.

:P

Morrowind Fan, what is your APM atm?

Also to raise the spirits off all downtrodden swarmlings. Meaning, he tells people that Zerg just have to be played differently - they're not as bad off as many claim.

APM?

Actions per minute...

Approximate Parts Made

Oh. Dunno... Let me see if I can find out.

Zerg are my favourite race so far. They are hard as hell to play as but they have so many fun tricks you can play with to make things interesting. I don't really have an established early game build order for them yet though but it doesn't matter because I only play against friends for the moment.

My advice would be to have a well rounded army. If you focuss on one unit as the basis of your army it can be countered very easily. For example as zerg I will rarely build just roaches or Hydras, I'll throw in some Zerglings and mutas for good measure.

and my APM at the moment is usually around 37.

Terran is the best beginner race. Mixing in marauders and marines for an early attack is usually the strongest. With stimpack.

I played toss a lot and usually went for the 3gate build and that helped me qualify for the gold league when in beta I was copper.

Also, if you haven't already, try those "challenges" in the singleplayer section. They can teach you some valuable things.

Weeell... You might really have to work a little harder then if you try to play ranked Zerg. Pure APM is irrelevant, but you should take some action every second at least. Especially with Zerg. ^_^

But yeah, they are so much fun to play. Different than the fun in SC1, where you just swarmed, and swarmed, and swarmed... Now, you wait. And lurk. And put your nice purple jelly everywhere. But then you SWARM once you're poked, and your opponents will have to defend everywhere, instead of attacking that one place they aimed for when they launched their army. Before they know it, their sure attack will turn into a desperate defence. :celebration:

I'm not that bothered about ranks and I haven't played enough matches to even be placed yet but it is a lot of fun so far. I think the next step is to get a build order established because for the moment I have no idea whether to prioritise drones, expansion or queens in the opening moments of the game.

I usually work my way up to 10 drones, set an extractor and get an 11th, then cancel the extractor. The drone that was going to build an extractor becomes a scout, then an overlord is ordered, and then I go from there. Usually that means I'll go for a 14pool, 14gas, and on from there. One queen per hatchery, and you're set - the rest is up to scouting. In case of Zerg, that of course means spreading your creep everywhere. That was enough to get me into platinum, at least. Haven't played much lately though, which probably means I'm vastly out of shape now. ^_^

That sounds like a plan, I'll give it a go next time I play. Thanks for the advice