The Planetary Annihilation Pyramid - A guide to improving your skills

eXodus eSports is proud to unveil its latest guide: The Planetary Annihilation Pyramid.

Thanks to Budha for his Starcraft pyramid which was the inspiration for this guide.

The Planetary Annihilation pyramid is intended a guideline first and foremost; these are all areas you should focus on mastering to improve your game. The order is Quitch's take on how key they are to playing the game and how far they can take you. Focus on working your way up the pyramid as you would the league and no matter where you rank you should see progress.

Agree with the order? Disagree? Read the guide and leave your thoughts.

As someone tempted to start playing ranked 1v1's, this is very helpful

Gneiss.

Nice, I mean.

on the graphic micro is below management, in the text it is the other way around, I agree with the text: management is more important than micro. Hell management is the part where the game becomes fun anyway
Apart from that: nice.

Really nice read quitch. 10/10 would buy your book. X

Good catch. The text order is indeed correct so I've updated the graphic.

I'm not convinced on that really... with the starting resources PA gives you, on *some maps* good micro can beat good macro. To be a truly top player you need a bit of everything, still there is enough in this game to say that *effective use of a smaller amount of resources* can in actual fact defeat *ineffective use of a larger amount of resources*.

Also I think the pyramid misses out a key factor- aggression. A common issue with newer players is they tend to hold back. They could learn superb builds but the natural reaction is to be defensive. I would recommend all players *attacking* wherever possible, even with small numbers of units, as otherwise your effectively handing control to your opponent.

Edit: Another area I think needs adding: Deception. You mentioned about scouting, however another thing is *controling* the information your opponent gets. Let them see what *you* want them to see.

Want to build up a bomber snipe, that needs to be hidden however if you hold back they'll undoubtedly scout you and realise. So start to build up ground forces in radar range- they will scout that (which chances are means their attention isn't on your bomber blob in your base).

When you come to attack, send a smaller air force to raid an expansion (natural reaction is for them to send their air force to intercept) at which point you unveil your true intentions when its too late for them to react Another good distraction technique in multi planet games is to *start building a catalyst or halley* as it will be highlighted to them. Using only 1 fabber won't actually drain any resources and you *know* exactly where any nukes they have are going

PA is a better game because of this stuff.

11/10

Just remember, everyone: You can write articles too! The exodus team isn't very big and article contributions are always welcome. We will happily help with formatting and editing.

It's a great guide. From my own experience of teaching new players I would probably provide more detail on economy and intelligence. Production is probably as important, but I have nothing to add to it. Also @cdrkf made a good point about aggression, that should be in there somewhere too.

In economy I'd put even more emphasis on always having 1-3 fabbers grabbing mex, and being careful not to go too many fabbers early game (recommend some number)

In intelligence I would probably recommend some more precise examples of how to counter specific things, so the players know what to do when they know something. Not every case, of course, but I spectated a game in gold league where a guy scouted an orbital factory in the beginning and got SXX-sniped 20 minutes later because he neglected it, so i figure some examples would be good.

Of course, I'm not a teacher or a writer or anything. The above is just suggestions from my experience.

I love the quotes in yellow, btw.

And I hate the white background behind the micro alot. It hurt my eyes.

I don't believe aggression should be a category because aggression is never something you do for its own sake. It's covered as a subset of the other categories. Economy speaks about the need to continually take more resources, which leads to conflict, which Production provides you an army for, which Army tells you how to utilise, which Control and Force advise should dictate the play.

With the ease of scouting in PA I'm not sure I'd recommend deception as a core skill. I can't really think of any top level games where I've seen it. Denying intelligence? Yes. but out-and-out deception? No. I suppose repositioning an orbital force so as not to give away your base's location could count, but that's getting pretty specific.

I want to keep the pyramid relatively high level, something that remains true at all times. Look at Foundations of Good Play which had a video with a standard opening... until it wasn't. This isn't a guide about recommending openings or ratios, rather it's areas you should be thinking about and then the means (such as links to build order guides) by which you can make a proper determination of those things.

I prefer to think of this guide as a starting point for a longer PA journey. Indeed, as we build up our own guides we'll probably start to link them to the naming scheme shown on the pyramid.

I changed it just for you

I only have but one like to give.... damn fine work guys this is stellar and much needed

And yet you didn't fix the "alot"

Theme song of this thread

He is trolling us. It worked. I am angry too.

Get mad!

*old Chinese man accent*This will be used to teach our next sales swarm of new players how to play the game well, and the next after that and so on....

"Are they moving at the speed of air or group?"

Ground*

Also, there are a few areas that could flow better, however that's just my opinion. Such as: "If you haven’t made it your business already to step through..." might feel better as: "If you haven’t already made it your business to step through..."