Poll of the Day > Starcraft/RTS players, can you help me understand something?

(+) Yeah! (+)

I beat Scarcraft 1 campaign even though it took me forever, lots of save-scumming and trial and error. I found it difficult AF despite fans telling me apparently it's super easy and that Brood War is the difficult one.
I skipped over Brood War because I felt intimidated by it given what people have said about the difficulty, so I watched the story on Youtube so I could start Starcraft 2. I started the game on easy because I understand that I suck at RTS games.
Question I have is, is it bad if I'm trying to upgrade everything before I send my army out? Like I want my army's sheilds and weapons to be maxed before I send them out. It's a habit I have because I feel they just won't be effective enough and just die anyway.

You play the single player game exactly how you want to play it fam.

If you want strategy tips, no, just go kill them. But, you play it how you want.

Kinda bad. You need to explore and expand. Also, with some missions, you don't have that luxury to wait.

Also, are you even building your army in the meantime?

Azn_Psycho posted...

Also, are you even building your army in the meantime?

In small numbers

Random tips:
-Build workers constantly until you get saturation of your bases. That takes priority over... basically everything else.
-Don't que building multiple units at once. They cost money that can be spent on other things. It's better to have too many buildings than too little.
-Defensive structures are a very good spice. Don't use too little, and don't use too much. Ideally it's exactly as many as you need. It's better to have an army.
-Against AI you can sometimes pull groups of enemies, so you just fight small groups, rather than the entire army.

I hate RTS but a good strategy I heard once is a rock-paper-scissors trifecta of: expanding, teching, and massing

expanding beats teching
teching beats massing
massing beats expanding

so, if you exclusively tech, you might beat the CPU if it masses, but you won't beat a CPU that expands. in other words, you probably will need to scout and counter-expand if the CPU expands. (ie: you need to have access to as much resources as the CPU).

Sahuagin posted...

I hate RTS but a good strategy I heard once is a rock-paper-scissors trifecta of: expanding, teching, and massing

expanding beats teching
teching beats massing
massing beats expanding

so, if you exclusively tech, you might beat the CPU if it masses, but you won't beat a CPU that expands. in other words, you probably will need to scout and counter-expand if the CPU expands. (ie: you need to have access to as much resources as the CPU).

This is a fairly simple view for multiplayer, but effective. Very different from the main story and does not work.

yeah it doesn't fit main story exactly, it's early MP view. I haven't played in so long I don't think I can give better advice. main thing would be balance, and adapt to the conditions of the map.

shadowsword87 posted...

Random tips:
-Build workers constantly until you get saturation of your bases. That takes priority over... basically everything else.
-Don't que building multiple units at once. They cost money that can be spent on other things. It's better to have too many buildings than too little.
-Defensive structures are a very good spice. Don't use too little, and don't use too much. Ideally it's exactly as many as you need. It's better to have an army.
-Against AI you can sometimes pull groups of enemies, so you just fight small groups, rather than the entire army.

Thanks!
I'm playing Starcraft II on easy now.
What's SC2 on easy compared to SC1 campaign? SC1 is the only one I beat so far.

So I'm not like an expert at RTS but I know a bit: start out by improving your economy as fast as you can. IIRC SC2 tells you how many gathering units will optimize a resource node. I think it's 3 per geyser, and like 20-something for your starting crystals? Anyway you want to be recruiting your peons, while you also have 1 or 2 building a barracks or equivalent and supply buildings. You probably also want to send 1 out to go scouting. Don't fret if it dies. Then you want to start building your army. As you reach peak resource gathering at your main, you want to consider expanding to a nearby base to get more resources. You also want to build more barracks or equivalent to get even more army units out faster. Like 3-5 barracks is what you should aim for. Somewhere in there you should also do some research. Starcraft you can kind of think of as a really complicated game of rock-paper-scissors. In the campaign you're fine if you just do a weird amalgamation of random soldier and vehicles units, but if you know more about the game, you can look to see what your enemy has. "Oh they have x, that means I want y". Which also plays into the importance of scouting. If you can identify what your opponent is doing early, you can hopefully execute your counter before they become a threat. Really though just learn the ropes at your own pace. That's what the campaign is for, and also you can play against bots. Start simply play on like Easy or Normal. When you win, add another opponent. Keep adding opponents as you keep winning. Eventually go up a difficulty setting, start from 1 opponent again. When you win, fight 2 opponents, etc. etc. until you just can't progress any further. That's how I learned WC3 and SC2 waaay back in the day.

Ferarri619 posted...

Thanks!
I'm playing Starcraft II on easy now.
What's SC2 on easy compared to SC1 campaign? SC1 is the only one I beat so far.

Should be decently easier. Unlike SC1, SC2s campaigns have customization so your units can get crazy strong. Some missions might give you trouble like the ones that force you be more active, but itll be a good way to learn how to improve your macro.

Generally speaking, turtling until you have a top-tier army isn't a great way to play RTS games. While you sit there waiting for upgrades, your opponents will be able to take advantage of your passivity to expand and collect more resources than you, which will actually enable them to produce a larger army and upgrade them faster than you can. That's not to say you should immediately launch a full assault on their base every time a Marine finishes training, obviously, but don't be afraid of sending out smaller squads to claim new territory or harass your opponents to weaken their economy, even if you end up losing those units. It's a balancing act that you'll get better at the more you play and try to improve.

Now, saying that, I also tend to err too much on the side of "make super army and hope I don't get killed first", while neglecting expansion and other macro aspects, so I get where you're coming from. But that's why I'm not very good at RTS's.

the problem with RTS games is that the campaign rarely matches the multiplayer

Almost every single player mission in SC2 can be beaten by first concentrating on fully saturating your resources with workers, then constantly building army units and adding them to your deathball while you attack-move your entire army to the objectives. Don't forget to build base defences before you head out with the deathball.

Turtling while you establish a strong economy and build a super army is a very reliable strategy in single player SC1 and SC2. The AI tends to have unlimited resources and/or scripted reinforcements, so there's little benefit to harassing. Sometime missions will have a time pressure that forces you to move out and be proactive at various points, but the goal is still to put together a single mass of units that can kill smaller groups very efficiently and then to keep making it stronger until it reaches critical mass.

The biggest exploit with Starcraft 1's AI is the CPU seems to know where all the resource caches are, but will only try to expand if they run out of resources in their starting base(s). If you start expanding early and put moderate defenses on those expansion bases, combined with the fact the CPU has a set "escalating" attack pattern on your main base, and you can basically force the CPU to stave itself of resources and take them over at your leisure. Slow, but almost foolproof strategy except for in some of the later maps in brood war.

I only played a little bit of Starcraft 2, but I remember it was pretty much a cake walk until the last Terran mission (which is when I stopped).

Dikitain posted...

The biggest exploit with Starcraft 1's AI is the CPU seems to know where all the resource caches are, but will only try to expand if they run out of resources in their starting base(s). If you start expanding early and put moderate defenses on those expansion bases, combined with the fact the CPU has a set "escalating" attack pattern on your main base, and you can basically force the CPU to stave itself of resources and take them over at your leisure. Slow, but almost foolproof strategy except for in some of the later maps in brood war.

I only played a little bit of Starcraft 2, but I remember it was pretty much a cake walk until the last Terran mission (which is when I stopped).

on the flip side, the AI in Starcraft 64 is insane and will rush you right away - using that rush to cover their expansion

Ok so I've finished the first 3 missions in Starcraft 2 on easy.
It seems like there is a more "go at your own pace" sort of thing than SC1 had, with more customization.
I'll have bought many upgrades from the armory once I finish easy and I can use all of that when I start normal, which is pretty cool.

Most important thing period is just max out your economy as fast as possible. Get used to hotkeying your command center and your barracks/factory/starport and keep pumping shit out endlessly (until you reach saturation for workers, anyways). If you find yourself queueing shit up a lot, build more production buildings. The stronger your economy, the more you can afford to slip up.

If you ever have more than like 1000 minerals, definitely just build another barracks. "Average unspent resources" is more important of a metric than you'd first realize; 1000 unspent minerals could be another 20 marines on the field, which would in turn let your kill things faster and incur fewer losses.

At the same time, for the first 10~ minutes of a match, be careful with your engagements, but stay aggressive. The AI will purchase upgrades too, most of the time, so you aren't making things easier by turtling up for 20 minutes.

I have a couple thousand matches in SC2's coop mode, which are basically variations on campaign missions and designed for two players. Constant measured aggression while making sure all your units are being productive somehow is the key to success.

If you wanna get into RTS games that are less combat focused I highly recommend Offworld Trading Company...

It's an economic battle!

Ferarri619 posted...

What's SC2 on easy compared to SC1 campaign? SC1 is the only one I beat so far.

SC2 has so many quality of life improvements that you'll probably find it a much smoother and easier experience. The campaign does a really good job of slowly introducing things to you and letting you build up your skills. You'll find yourself playing significantly better by the end.

Each campaign mission is so different that I can't really offer any advice. If it's a standard "base" mission, then Shadowsword's advice is a really good start. Just play the game on the easiest difficulty if you're worried and enjoy the ride. Then go back and try to beat missions on higher difficulties -- unlike many games, SC2 really rewards playing each difficulty setting.

Just play the game and let it teach you. It does a good job at it.

First of all, Starcraft is all about timing. You need to be able to use they keyboard & mouse in tandem. There is no way around that.

Build up a small exploration army ASAP. Upgrades affect all units on the map instantly, so there is no reason to wait to move your army. Make your base a shortcut (Shift + F2-F4) so you can quickly go back and upgrade as you get resources.