I'm sure thousands of people have made this thread but after spending the majority of today fighting AI, i just need to ask the people who know. How do i beat normal AI and what do i do wrong? First; i can already tell you guys i'm a very bad harasser. Units take so long to reach the enemy and air is shot down almost instantly, also you've got to micro manage it alot. This is something that makes me not wanna harass someone. A summary of my matches of today: build some eco, build bots / air factory, build some fabbers and more eco, build some defenses, getting harassed abit by the AI, eventually go T2, make 3 advanced fabbers, 1 for energy, 1 for metal, 1 for nuke/other ****, sometimes more of those. Then i get nuked, my nuke is halfway and i have some factories left. Try to build up some eco and finish that nuke. I got a small army of shellers with escort at this moment or kestrels, but when i try to attack they most of the time get rekt before i even see the enemy comm. I get nuked again, my comm is 10% HP, my eco is gone, my nuke is gone/close to finished but no eco and the enemy has tons of units surrounding my territory. I've managed to win once with kestrels when the enemy was out of position but besides that i've lost 6 matches today. I feel like de-installing might be a better idea for now. So yeah, help pls?
As Brian said, you should check out the tutorials but get ready for a huge change! A very thorough update is in the works so don't get too used to it. Also, if you need someone to help I'd be up for playing a game; also- If you ever have the need to join a clan Nova would appreciate it.
To more easily harass early: scout with spread out radar or air scouts early, then build a proxy base right up next to them in pelter range. Just build 1-2 turrets first, then pelters, maybe a factory if you want afterwards. Build them closer and closer to the enemy.
A quick-and-dirty substitue for harass is to dedicate a few bot factories to a mix of dox and stingers (or just dox, or maybe a ratio of 5:1), set on infinite build, area patrolling the planet. It's very low micro, improves your intel at the same time, can stop some enemy expansion, and finds weak spots if you're paying attention. Point 2, never stop expanding your eco. Many people initially build a few mex, a factory or two, then spam energy with the commander until tier 2 is up or the end of the game. Much of your micro early on should be spent securing mex fields, getting enough build power to use all the metal you have, and balancing the energy production with build power.
AI is pretty tough, much smarter than in most games. On this game the first 5 minutes are critical to your success. Lots of good tutorials out there that help you in this stage. Good base building skills "turtling" is not a viable strategy in this game, this is something that I am trying to adjust to as well. Your base should not have a center that can be destroyed by a single nuke strike, you have to spread out the best you can. Your focus should be on your opponent and what they are doing; while expanding as rapidly as possible. This will be more so after the PTE build goes public. One tip that I like to do for intel/scouting is to build a air factory and set it to infinity build scouts. I set the factory to an area patrol of the entire planet. I get loads of cheap intel with this method without the need to micro. Also, my expanding engineers build radars in every mex cluster once I have the energy to run them. Although they have overlapping coverage, if I loose one I am not blind.
The core principles of the game won't change. Seems like the only major things that will change is when to go to Advanced and/or Orbital and what units are to be used for what. Some of the details of say, the opening build, or whatnot, will change, but that's not that big of a deal. But the core game and game concepts will stay pretty well the same. Most of my videos talk mostly about concepts rather than giving specific recipes. And of course, new tutorials will be released.
Expanding in stuff doesn't change if that is what you mean. What you specifically build does, but you can get a feel for that when you play you will know what you want to build, and that is fairly simple as long as how you build is right. As long as you learn to collect eco as far as you can and from the very beginning to destroy some enemy eco so they can't expand/build, then you win. Let's make this simple: Goal: You need metal and energy to build. You don't want others to have metal and energy to build. You must gather up the most metal and energy, and hurt your enemy so they have the least. Details: very early bombers, in the first minute, can kill enemy fabbers. Those fabbers would collect 6 metal and energy in a minute's time, with a high chance of defending it all game. Killing the fabber prevents that metal from ever giving anything to the enemy. Scan the planet for them. On smaller planets moreso, dox can do the same thing when scurried all over the place. If you see some enemy metal being built, build a turret sneakily nearby, clear the builders off, then build another turret, defending the area so you can build instead. If you find the enemy starting position, you can build nearby and have a pelter clear the buildings. Turrets first of course to try to hold off the enemy units. In the current build, if you get about 10 metal points and 12 energy, or more for confort, you can build a t2 and start building t2 mexes and energy which wildly boost your economy, thousands of metal instead of a hundred. This is why the earlier you get 12 metal points and t2, the better, and why keeping metal from your enemy and scouting him is good. If you see him getting t2, dont get yours too much later! After getting a better position than your enemy (more metal, him less metal, you faster t2), come up with a way to actually wipe his whole base out, or kill his commander. Ways follow: sniper bots, artillery tanks, vanguards, pelicans with vanguards drop on commander, holkins and catapult in total range of their main base/commander, nuke or doublenuke or nuke/gunship, massive swarms of gunships, SXX Laser Satellite. Next build theoretically, t1 unit masses will greatly assist t2 because of their cheap cost and numbers, if you have 3-4 shellers its much cheaper just to swarm t1 tanks in front to cushon and have the shellers just clear turrets and soften targets.
Alright guys i'll check some tutorials next time i'm gonna play. There are some things that bother me in the current build but i should check if those things will be changed sooner or later. As thetrophysystem said i'll try to improve my harassing, but i'm abit cautious on spending early metal/energy on military stuff because i have in mind i should just expand eco as fast as possible (in that process i've made the mistake to build too many fabbers quite often). Thanks for the help
Disregard everything everyone has said. 1. Understand how the economy works. 2. Never crash your eco. 3. Regard what everyone else said. 4. Learn to love canned ham. 5. Invest in military. Seriously. Your eco is worthless unless you are spending it. Your fabbers are useless unless tgey are protected. 6. Sing it loud, sing it proud, sing it like a Viking, even if it's not to your liking.
Spam Everything? You mean fields of walls, storage structures, and t1 radars? Actually, I was wondering what WOULD happen if I changed walls to an area command, and tried building them on all sides of my base. Think I could build faster than units could defeat the health ratio of the walls, thus negating the use of units, even the grenadier who's entire range cannot reach over the walls without hitting another wall? What if I got to a planet first, put anchors around it, and then had an air fabber cover the surface in walls?
You know, at the very least if you space them out just far enough to deny teleporters, THAT would be a real **** move. And the walls spaced out would take probably a minute to cover a 400 planet with... It's like covering a planet with mexes, if the mexes instabuilt.
There's not much point in learning the actual balance, or how units function. There's still too much that is going to change. Learning economy & priority management seems more important. Learning the basic building blocks of playing any RTS are still in PA, such as scouting, harrassing/aggresion, macro, micro will always profit you no matter how the balance may pan out. I've watched Day9's starcraft channel quite a lot, and he explains many of the things needed to become a great RTS player. He mentions how it's important that you record yourself and review your mistakes after every game. And that it's important that in order to win, you must not only be able to gain an advantage, but also recognise when you have the advantage, and manage to keep that advantage. Too bad I don't have the attention span to properly put those things he explained to good use.
