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Can someone review a replay for meh?

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4 years ago
Finally a game that's good for getting some advise...

http://zero-k.info/Battles/Detail/770070

All game I felt like I couldn't get past his tank armies. I kept throwing Ravagers into them to keep him at bay and not giving him a chance to see that Krow/Paladin; pretty sure I lost more almost every encounter, and he also got all reclaims. Shortly after the Krow went through his base, I felt like I was losing again; I couldn't get past his tanks, I didn't feel like I could all-in push and win, and if I split my units into two forces I would've risked him going for an all-in push and taking down my entire base while my split force probably wouldn't have been enough to take his out. No idea what I should've ideally done at that time.

The one mistake I could tell is losing those Scorchers to Comm explosion. Maybe the game would've been a lot shorter if I didn't do that. Maybe not.

I feel like with my resources and his base in shatters, I should've won way sooner. Instead, I went back to feeling like I was on the losing end again ._.
+0 / -0

4 years ago
InB4 @_Shaman -1 vote
+0 / -0

4 years ago
I say there's very little you did wrong. You self-analysed super well. There are little nit picks I could make, like how it took you too long to try and grab some uncontested mexes, but I see those as no more than nitpicks because that objective is already in your mind(and you got around to them in a reasonable time anyway). So I'll try and isolate a couple of other objectives that could help you play better.

You stopped investing in your economy. Adding a couple solars by naked mexes goes a long way to overdrive, allowing you to build more safe energy sources in base(MOAR WINDZZZ) Possibly connecting the geo plant like noobula did with solars or a pylon to the main base could be an alright option. The idea is to make small metal investments over time into your e-conomy so that games that go later yield some healthy overdrive dividends. Of course, repairs cost energy and eat into overdrive too. In 1v1s I like to make all my grids that deep purple of early overdrive that indicates fast return on investment. Of course, it's easiest to say "Invest in the long game" in hindsight, and between spamming fusions and having an army, you stand on the safer side: having an army.

you could stand to have more constructors. Repairs never hurt anyone, and some of that reclaim may have been in reach. having 2-3 idle cons around your territories can be benificial, expecially for my next point:

More radar. have your base con build a radar at the north lower cliff then set to move back to the safety of the highground safety would have given you radar coverage of noobula's entire 2nd base, which is always nice to have. I don't think I can spend enough metal on radars myself, I build them every 500 elmos.

About losing all you scorchers to the com and taking huge damage from the geo explosion, there is something to be said about 'winning' battles in the enemy territory, but I can't formulate into words those ideas so well. Just something I wish Godde would write a medium article about.

PS: you did really well targeting energy(make them excess metal) keepin those krows alive, I like the micro of the ravagers(they do better against minataurs here than I expect), you moved them intelligently, I liked noobula's resilience and base management/re-management, this was a fun game to watch.
+2 / -0
4 years ago
Running stream of consciousness time!

Early game


  • Opening thoughts: Pretty good pressure game, you're definitely punching above your rank here.
  • Fantastic start, you were ahead in eco, and well ahead in army until the 12 minute mark. At that point, blitzes ran circles around your Ravagers. Ravagers are fantastic for assault, but alone their slow projectiles aren't so useful against high speed targets. Scorchers offer a lot of dps, Rippers offer a decent balance between health and DPS, and the impulse on their projectile can cut the momentum of anything they don't kill outright. The slow from Darts also helps, though they'd be better suited against Minotaurs than Blitzes.
  • Geothermals are the most cost efficient source of power in the game, you pretty much never regret making one; you can always leave it unupgraded if and while you're worried.
  • Very small amounts of overdrive are extremely efficient. A single solar next to a mex can overdrive it up to 35.35%! This is a very cheap way to get quite a lot of payback in the midgame, as that gets you halfway to what a full grid would give you for a fraction of the cost. Once the windfarm got going, or a geothermal is built, you probably would want to think about gridding up, though.

Mid game


  • There was a massive reclaim field in the NW from around the 15-16 minute mark. You were behind in army at this point, but you could probably have gotten away with burying a forward caretaker to both eat part of the field and repair your army in combat as needed. Caretakers have a surprising amount of range and have the best buildpower for cost out of anything, and a slight burial makes for a cheap stall against artillery.
  • Surprise Krow ended up being way more effective than I expected. Hey, it worked! Neither of you were doing that much scouting at that point, though. In your place I probably would have gone Planes rather than Gunships and a bit earlier, as I really like having an Owl around to scout. Without an Owl, a few more radars could have done much the same job. Lurking ravens is a really nice threat to have in reserve, and there were a few engagements where a Thunderbird strike into Dart+Scorcher would have destroyed everything.
  • The Krow surviving at 20 minutes on 36hp was very lucky. Regarding the engagement, I'd still really want some form of reliable DPS mixed into your army, as the Ravagers repeatedly missing moving Targets is making these engagements pretty painful. They are doing much better against the Minotaurs than the Blitzes, though.
  • The reclaim field had grown to 3k at 21 minutes! I'm torn here; I really wouldn't be comfortable leaving that completely uncontested, given your army values were around 6-9k at the time, but the raid was really good.

Late game


  • I'm not sure a second Krow was the best choice, especially given the first survived. You'd already forced your opponent to sink large amounts of their resources into AA, and to the extent there were still openings for Air I believe a single Krow could take advantage of them about as well as two could. For the same cost you could get a strider hub and scorpion with a lot left over, and gain the threat of interrupting the standard tank runby -> repair -> runby cycle with heavy paralysis damage. Without the "Free" healing, tanks are much less scary. You were sort of accomplishing this anyway with your really nice raids killing their E, though.
  • The engagement with a mixed army at 26 minutes was very good. Those Scorchers hit pretty hard.
  • Paladin did seal the deal. While you could have won earlier, with say Scorpions or a tacsilo, once you're that far ahead - in this case, even getting your opponent down to single digit income! - you can pretty much win however you want. Nicely done.

Closing thoughts


  • Mixing your army composition goes a long way. You want at least something that stops your Ravagers being cut down by Blitzes.
  • Radar, either through dedicated towers or through an owl, is really useful. I expect the tanks would have been much less scary if you had been able to see them coming and position accordingly, and you would be able to spot openings much faster.
  • Reclaim is (almost always) victory! Your opponent managed to keep their economy very nearly on par with yours right to the end - 70k to 65k - just from the reclaim, 1k reclaimed to 17k reclaimed.


That was really fun to watch. I love your raiding and pressure game, and I'll look forward to seeing you on ladder! :)
+1 / -0

4 years ago
If there is one point to take home it's: Dont stop investing in eco. It would have solidified your lead immensely
+0 / -0
4 years ago
So in general, pay more attention to eco from midgame onwards and more radar and/or scouting overall (hey, at least I remember to make a radar these days... most of the time -_-'' Still working on timely rebuilding when it gets destroyed).

USrankAdminSteel_Blue The idle cons makes sense. So far I've just been told to "make more cons" without any explanation on why or how I should use them. At one point DErankManu12 advised me to make less early cons since my early eco couldn't handle them anyway; I had the same line of thinking, but up till that point I was just following that "make more cons" - advise I'd gotten plenty of times.

I don't think I needed to lose all those Scorchers, with a bit of micro I could've easily saved more than half of them by driving away from Comm and letting one or two blow it up. Or just drive all of them away and micro around the Comm at their max range. I vastly underestimated both the radius and damage of Comm explosion though; I was expecting to lose some of the units, but definitely not all of them like I did. Also completely missed whatever damage I took from the Geo plant at that time :L

NZrankesainane Don't curse me, I finally got dropped down to top 20% :( Here's to hoping that this prevents me from getting screwed in small team games (if I ever manage to get one again), where the auto-teaming rated me well above my actual skill level.

The Blitzes were an annoyance, though not really a huge issue in the big picture. Normally I'd deal with a situation like that by using fast hit squads, like Scorchers, as a support unit around my main force. Line move, collision and loss of LoS due to scrap makes this unwieldy though. Scatter would also work, but if that command exists in ZK I haven't found it yet. Or the 'selected units all move at the same speed' - command; this would let me put a counter into the same group as Ravagers. Essentially, dealing with these situations is still a work in progress.

I was considering going planes rather than gunships, but going planes had little surprise factor in them and they would've required for me to fight face to face. Not only did I lack any confidence in winning a head-on fight, the enemy's overall skill level was obviously far higher than mine so I'd been playing into his strengths if I chose that route.

Unironically I was also considering Scorpion at the time I made my second Krow. However the last time I used a Scorpion against tanks three or four Minotaurs laughed it off the field so I wasn't sure how effective it'd be, considering I already felt like having lackluster dps overall. Rather than a Scorpion, I was more seriously considering a Dante/Iris combo; if I managed to bait him out a bit and pincer his troops between Ravagers/Scorchers and Dante, I think I would've came out well on top. While I wasn't confident in successfully baiting him out I could've gave it a shot, but I had little confidence in hiding the existence of an Iris and avoid tipping him off.

Proper reclaim requires me to split attention even further, and for now that would make a mess of my control everywhere else. I'll get to that when I get to that :/
+0 / -0
quote:
I don't think I needed to lose all those Scorchers, with a bit of micro I could've easily saved more than half of them by driving away from Comm and letting one or two blow it up. Or just drive all of them away and micro around the Comm at their max range. I vastly underestimated both the radius and damage of Comm explosion though; I was expecting to lose some of the units, but definitely not all of them like I did.

In my experience, trying to save the scorchers quite often results in defeat by detail or otherwise failed kills. The commander needs very little time to bury itself, for example. So while saving units from explosive defenseless statics like pylons and geos is usually worth the low risk of failure, i think this applies to commanders much less often due to their much higher probability of escape.
+1 / -0
4 years ago
Btw. @Highrule1, I posted on the other match you wanted some advice.

https://zero-k.info/Battles/Detail/769586
+0 / -0
4 years ago
Yup, I read up on that. Thanks :)
+0 / -0

4 years ago
I really don't think you have anything to complain about in that game.

You razed your opponent's base several times. Although he did well to get back into the game as much as did, at no point did he seriously threaten your own major infrastructure, hence your ability to crank out Krows and striders while he was reeling from repeated bodyblows.

My review of your replay would simply be this: don't obsess over minor micro failings such as losing a few more raiders than you might have done in a perfect world. Micro and macro matter. The close coordination in your use of Ravagers to absorb porc fire while Scorchers wrecked everything was quality play. Most of your Krow sorties were well timed and accomplished sensible objectives. Losing more metal in scorchers than your target comm's face value isn't a big deal since you've permanently killed 4m/s income which will soon make up for any excess losses (in the case of scorchers, the foregone income from a dead comm pays for 1 of the losses suffered to make the kill every 32.5 seconds).
+1 / -0
4 years ago
quote:
Or the 'selected units all move at the same speed' - command; this would let me put a counter into the same group as Ravagers.


Holding ctrl while issuing a move or attack command?



Formation is only roughly preserved, but it should cause all selected units to move at the same speed
+3 / -0
4 years ago
NZrankesainane Oh yeah, that's exactly what I've been looking for. Didn't find it from the wiki or just plain missed it since multiple pages had movement-related commands.

Thanks.
+0 / -0
4 years ago
*Season 2*

http://zero-k.info/Battles/Detail/779164

Why'd I fail? My gameplan was to deny their third large mex, giving us a clear edge on econ. Well it all obviously went to shit, so what did I do wrong? Was my idea wrong from the word go? -_-
+1 / -0
4 years ago
Nothing really stands out to me there. It was a good early push, and your team held about two thirds of the map for most of the game because of it. If I had to pick something, Striders take a long time to complete, so it's a bit risky building your hub so far forward.

With that said, in your position I think I would have tried to build a forward tacsilo in the same place, and the cyclops would have probably done exactly the same thing to me, also before anything was ready.
+0 / -0
4 years ago
I didn't really like the idea of Striders even as I went for it. Because of the Tremor and Lance, pressure was building up and it was simply a matter of time before they broke through. Based on what I saw on minimap, the other side was at a deadlock, so if they broke through and got the initiative in addition to the extra metal, I didn't think we'd have much of a chance of bouncing back. Best of the shitty ideas I could come up with was getting a Dante, upping the pressure for one more push and hopefully creating an opening elsewhere that my team could use.

I don't really understand why we lost. Normally I'd go and blame my team, but I don't think the team comps were ones that'd allow the enemies to easily outplay my team while at an eco disadvantage. Not to mention that most of the other players, if not all, are overall better at ZK than me. I think I killed two comms as well (not entirely sure about the other one as it went to fog before last rockets hit it), giving us an even bigger edge. After the game indaled said that the troll com was a bad idea, but thinking on it, I don't think I agree. The only way that push could be successful was to have a Guardian at the front lines; no other unit could replace its early tankiness, especially as I was guaranteed to go 1v2 or 1v3 on their side of the map. Once you count on it as a front line pusher, upgrades are a given. Going to lvl 4 was questionable, but I wanted to add a repair module at lvl 3 and eventually decided to go for it. D-gun was a secondary concern, which unexpectedly paid itself off.

I can't improve without understanding the reason behind my losses, and this is one of the rare few cases where I really don't understand why or how. From what I can see, we held large advantages over the enemy and team balance wasn't skewed to a point where you'd expect these disadvantages to not matter. The result is incomprehensible to me.
+0 / -0
4 years ago
Well, of the usual key indicators:

  • You had a better economy, though not overwhelmingly so.
  • They had better reclaim, though not overwhelmingly so, and not quite enough to make up for your eco advantage.
  • They had better fights, though not overwhelmingly so: most of the time, they were at ~110-130% efficiency.

The third point is the more interesting and significant one. They did drop to 80-90% efficiency after losing two of their commanders - one to you (I'm afraid you didn't get the first one), one to Astran, but came right back to 120% again after the two of you lost your commanders in an attempted follow up.

Just for some numbers on the second point: by the time you resigned, they'd reclaimed 8366 metal to your 2957, narrowing the eco gap from 36.4k against 46.8k down to 44.8k against 49.8k.

Where did this come from? The glib answer would be to say that Widows and Lances trade very effectively against a pair of trollcoms, and reclaiming four commanders gives more metal than reclaiming none, but there were more battles than those. Your hovercraft came very close to inflicting critical damage, but got caught out by a Faraday. Your Nimbuses and Revenants could have done much more, if they hadn't been shut down by an Ettin. And even then, some encounters came extremely close, as an actively bombing Krow very nearly destroyed all of their cloaked lances.

Neither their reclaim advantage nor their combat advantage would have been enough to overtake your eco advantage alone, but combined, they slowly ground you out.
+0 / -0
I think your biggest mistake was not informing and getting buy-in from your team mates. You were never going to keep that expansion with 2v1 pressure.

Your enemy went porc+arti+AA while PErankvenom69 went gunships on a small map and then didn't manage them properly (repeatedly going for the wrong targets like a caretaker or com rather than emissary or lance), severely harming your chances. Porc+Arti is a great long term strategy when the enemy doesn't/can't just bunch through and on a tiny map like this they could support all fronts with the same piece of arti.

Going skirms when an emissary and lance were on the field was a mistake I think (particularly as you had no Iris to hide in). Halberd and your own lance(s) on hold fire would have been better given what your opponent's strategy seemed to be (though you'd need some Faraday to hide in), though some well microd raiders would have been devastating for them.

ZArankAstran's trollcom wasn't very cost effective I feel and he should have fac switched once Tremor appeared due to how small and hard to navigate this map is (the enemy only needs to protect one place and can Tremor your shield ball to nothing).
+0 / -0
4 years ago
GBrankdyth68 Buy-in means what exactly?

I never intended to keep the expansion. I was there to deny them from getting it, and I didn't want/need anyone else to come. If we tied up two or more people in a struggle right next to enemy base, it'd have been a massive hazard elsewhere and a shortcut to Losetown if we failed to properly hold the mex area. I had quite a bit of confidence of being able to solo deny and contend the area, as well as to tie them there 1v2 for a period of time. And if they came 1v3, some openings would surely show up elsewhere.

Point taken about Iris, Halberd and Lance. Not entirely sure about raiders though? Daggers' turning radius is shite at best, there was a lack of space to micro them and enemies held a chokepoint to boot.
+0 / -0


4 years ago
@Highrule1: By "buy-in" I mean awareness that you are doing this and that they will probably need to pay attention (and pick facs appropriately).

I'm not convinced that kind of denial works. The enemy normally makes up for the mex with more favourable attrition and reclaim from the inevitable victory.

About raiders, I forgot you only had Daggers. Yeah, they would struggle to take that arti.
+0 / -0
4 years ago
GBrankdyth68 ...How many players you think know to pick a fac for aggression? :/ It's not that the denial won't work, but you did inadvertently show me the light. It's the damn attrition/porc mentality that most players seem to have. The way I played wasn't to crush my side or for my personal win, it was ultimately for the team to win. If my team pushed the top spider guy hard, the enemies would be stuck at an impasse where they couldn't control my front without a 1v2 (at least not without a Guardian), but at the same time their top would be facing a 2v1 situation as well. Add this to the eco disadvantage; even if they managed to stabilize the situation, we'd be well ahead in terms of mid/late game all the same.

Welp. At least I can consider having traced the issue now. There are still unconscious expectations screwing me over, and I'll somehow have to integrate my aggressive style with the relatively passive play that many seem to love. Fuck me if I'll ever start playing the artillery chess though >_>
+0 / -0
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