Strategy Critique

I'm not sure whether this is only a strategy against CAI, I suppose its not.

Gonna go through it one by one:
* I'd queue 3 rectors for your factory, if you use repeat.
* You dont ever need storages in team games. You only need them in FFA games to save up metal for quickly building whats needed or 1vs1 games if you wanna quickly reclaim a massive wreckage field and cant use all the metal at once.
* Several Faradays against early raids are too much. An llt/missile tower or two should be enough.
* Adv radars at start require too much metal and consume lots of energy. I'd start with a basic radar.

To me it seems like you aint expanding enough and send heaps of metal the enemy can reclaim. Use artillery or assault units if the enemy really spams defenses and make sure you get to reclaim after the battle.

1. You seem to have a large variety of units, which is good, but each has a special role, so use them wisely. Glaives are for raiding. If you are going to do anything against a well defended player, they are not useful except perhaps as cheap scouts. Warriors and Hammers go well together very nicely, but usually you want the Hammers to outnumber the Warriors a bit (5 to 1 or so). This is because if used correctly: the Hammers will be doing most of the damage, taking out defense and units while out of range of retaliation, and the warriors will defend them from raiders (which are very good vs artillery alone) and other units that will try to kill off the Hammers. Rockos are skirmishers; similar to artillery in that they keep distance while doing damage. Adding a bunch of rockos to your build order might be a bit redundant. But they are excellent at killing riots and assaults.

2. Storage is generally bad. In small games you want to be spending all your money as fast as possible on useful things. So storage just takes away from those useful things that could have been built instead. In large games if you are excessing, your teammates can probably find a better use for the metal. Also: the Com should take both eco and defense roles, and so should your cons. The trick is to make less defense that won't be used (or rather: shouldn't be used) and instead make more units.

3. rectors should be going off on their own, not following the com around. If anything is following anything else in the early game, it should be a couple glaives to protect the cons as they build stuff on the frontier.

NEVER EVER build an advanced radar. (sadly this will be ignored by most nubs) It really is only useful in rare situations, and arguably at that. Its better to build regular radar in more places. Not only because it gives you more coverage for cost, but if one goes down you aren't completely blind. Also, you aren't out 500m for nothing.

Placement is the key to defenses and radar. you should not have more than a couple lotus and defenders in your base to begin with, and a few more for your expansion mexes. Radar should be placed on the HIGHEST ELEVATION POSSIBLE (radars behind hills do *nothing*) to detect enemy raids, so your units can come and defend against what your towers cannot.

Caretakers should only be built if you don't have enough cons available to use your resources or you have too many at home and you need them to go to the front lines to reclaim more metal. (so the caretakers can use that metal quickly)

Basically do the opposite of what you have in #3 :P

4. Good, good. All except that Rockos are terrible defenders vs raiders, might as well have them attack.
- If you can, micro your glaives to stay out of range of turrets, and focus on killing the enemy economy.
- Never stream units one by one into the enemy.
- While you're fighting make sure your cons are building eco or reclaiming.
- (insert the rest of the ancient RTS adages here)

5. Tech switches can be very powerful, especially if they can exploit a weakness your opponent is not prepared for. (cloak, air, hard counter to unit composition, etc.) Fleas and darts (and other light-raider types) are not very good tech switches.

When you switch factories, it should be for a purpose. Do they have tons of shieldspam and turrets that you can't break? Think about going heavy tanks or hovers to get the tremor or penetrator. Do they have a huge cloud of gunships? go air and start massing fighter planes. Hunkering down in your base gathering a mass of units that are not effective vs the enemy will not help you win. You need to know what the enemy is making and counter it. Sometimes by the time you find out they have a cloud of gunships, or an army of slashers rolling across the field, or a forest of defenders at your front door, it is too late.

That is why SCOUTING is KEY. Sometimes its hard, sometimes you don't know what to do about it. There is a manual though, and good players to practice against. 1v1s can teach you a lot if you can suffer being crushed over and over and take some time to analyze replays and such.

Anyway, hope that helps. gl hf :)

Wow, thanks for the really detailed responses!

Skasi: so for expanding, could i just have a couple of rockos/warriors surrounding a rector as it builds and expands? Thanks for critiquing my strategy step by step! :)

xponen: thanks for the variable strategies! I know that as the CAI gets smarter it starts using different kinds of units, not just glaives and other cloaky bots, but also spiders and vehicles. So thanks for keeping that in mind! :)

maackey: once again, thanks for a really detailed breakdown of the strategy!
Yeah, I've learned that rockos are good against slow units like riots and assaults, not glaives, as a glaive took out my rockos without a single hit because rockos' missiles are unguided.
Fortunately I actually take advice, so I won't be building any advanced radars soon XD XD XD

I have actually increased my survival time against the CAI, so I'll take a look at more of my replays for sure! Also, thanks for the scouting advice! I always looked at glaives as just hurting the enemy's econ, but maybe it's a good idea to bring in a couple fleas that won't shoot, just take surveillance with their cloaking feature.

waldo: true, i have been building a lot of caretakers. Probs not a good idea to waste metal faster than i make it.

Right now, I've gotten the basics of overdrive down, so I might put that into effect (it's only increased my energy production so it's so far so good).

Thanks a TON for taking the time to analyze the strategy guys! I might just put up a replay instead of giving a wordly description so it's easier to break down.

I know i've said this before, but i'm really glad to know that zero-k has one of the very few internet communities that actually have helpful pros that actually try to help the noobs instead of the snobby "elitist" amateurs that pass themselves off as pros.

Cheers,
xman15