Fancy unit fever
One unfortunate tendency that I notice amongst novice players is a fever for fancy units. By “fancy” I am referring to, roughly, every unit that costs over 10,000 mass. This includes all of the experimental units as well as tech 3 artillery and nuclear launchers. Yes, it’s true that the big, expensive, game-ender units are are flashy and fun to play around with. But they’re not efficient at winning games. Way too many times have I seen novices go for fancy units when they could have finished off the match much more quickly using “boring” units like siege assault bots.
This also explains why I frequently don’t find unranked games to be fun. A lot of the custom game players just want to play Simcity for awhile and build a nice economy to reach the fancy units. Thus, the games are very boring until the end. I much prefer ranked games, where the fighting starts three minutes into the game and never lets up. If novice players want to play custom games in this fashion, that is their prerogative, but they need to switch styles when they switch over to ranked play.
One of my friends had some unfortunate router-related network difficulties and accumulated two dozen ranked losses because of horrendous connection issues. Thus, he ends up playing players who are worse than him because his rating is artificially low. But my friend is still playing with that novice mindset. He is very good at economy building and quickly jumps ahead of his opponents, but he doesn’t capitalize on it. I’ve looked at some of his replays and he could have easily won within twenty minutes just by overwhelming his opponent with siege assault bots. But he doesn’t! He spends his resources on unnecessary base defenses and techs up until he can get a fancy game-ender, usually an experimental unit or a nuke.
As a result, it takes him 40 minutes to an hour to finish a game that Grokmoo or I would have won within twenty minutes. Also as a result, he has suffered a few unnecessary losses due to silly things that simply wouldn’t have happened had he finished the game like he should have earlier on with siege bots or a strategic bomber assassination run. For instance, he was assassinated by tactical missiles once in a game that he really should have won because he was far ahead, and in another game he wasn’t paying attention and got nuked even though he was far ahead in the resources department.
Game-ending ability disparities do not scale linearly with score. Being twice as far ahead in score at 40,000 means a lot more than being twice ahead in score at 1,000,000. Strike as hard and as fast as possible while still being assured of victory. Do not try to drag it out and win the game with fancy units, because every single second that your opponent survives past the point at which you could have taken him out represents a chance of your opponent snatching away your “assured” victory. Experimentals, nukes, and tech 3 artillery should almost never be seen in ranked games. If they are, you’re probably failing to win fast enough. Dump more resources into your siege bots and your strategic bombers and take your enemy out. Remember, all you need to do is assassinate the commander.
April 29th, 2007 at 6:06 pm
I haven’t had much time to practice recently so I’ve just been playing the odd custom game. As you say they all end up being incredibly long and drawn out. But noobs always tend to prefer going all out defence. That why you see so many “no attack till 30 minutes” games.
It’s great in a strategy game when you do reach the late game. But that should only happen when you have two very evenly matched players. And you have action all the way along until you get to the late game. But if people are picking maps that are very defence friendly, and your 2vs2 partner is doing nothing but teching and building defence you’re pretty much forced to slog it out for over an hour.
April 29th, 2007 at 9:27 pm
also, if you are in a custom game, and lets say its a 6 way ffa… if you spend all your resources building an army and you and one other player are having an intense fight, sure you might eventually beat that one player, but someone across the map is being a “noob” and building an immense tech tree and large game enders, but you’re too busy to do anything about it. its important to play the format of the game you’re in
April 29th, 2007 at 10:12 pm
Breezy: Yes, I suppose that goes without saying that the affliction I’m speaking of only applies to 1v1 ranked.
April 29th, 2007 at 10:22 pm
I’m sure you’re right about your last three sentences, but would you consider it a bad thing that you can so confidently say that several units in the game are not worth building?
April 29th, 2007 at 10:50 pm
Baddox: No, I wouldn’t really consider it a bad thing. They are worth building in many other circumstances, including team games and FFAs. They’re just not so useful in 1v1 ranked play. It’s a simple fact of the world that there are many different situations and many different actions; not all actions will be appropriate for all situations.
April 29th, 2007 at 11:11 pm
I have a new solution to this kind of problem, specifically for games on Isis.
Every now and then, I like to play a 2v2 custom game, and when I see my opponents tutling and teching up as they almost always do, I just do the same thing, except I only tech up to get 6 T2 engineers, 2 mobile stealths, and 2 T2 transports. Fly them in to each base undetected, and quickly build behind each base: T1 radar, T2 shield (immediately upgrade), 3 Cerberus, a couple AA, and TML. It seems to finish off noobs very quickly, first of all because they have no idea what’s going on until they fly a scout over the little expo after you’ve been shooting his mex for 2 minutes, and they still have no idea what to do about it and take to long to make a decision. By that time, you may have sniped their commanders already. There are nice little open spots in the back of all four bases where you can land, and because there are so many rocks lying around, it’s not hard to tech up to those units before they have sufficient AA around their hills.
“A lot of the custom game players just want to play Simcity for awhile.”
I absolutely hate when they do that, and I always have to make a comment on it.
Also, the kind of thing you’re talking about has actually happened in a fair number of ranked 1v1 games I’ve played against pretty good oppontents. It most often happens on Syrtis Major (I think because a lot of people aren’t comfortable with that map). We’ll be fighting a good battle and all, and sometimes my opponent will have a really big lead over me, and pumping out SABs, but won’t finish me off. It’s like they’re just waiting to get enough bots to plow through my whole base at once, so I take the opportunity to fly in 10 SABs of my own, or build a TML behind his base and snipe his commander.
You always have to remember that the object of the game is the commander. Destroying other stuff is only to make it easier to get to him in the end, but if you see the chance earlier, better take it.
April 29th, 2007 at 11:25 pm
I think this is a well written post.. except it might sound a little harsh. Everything CydeWeys says here is true.
From a competitive standpoint these game-enders are most effective for winning from behind. It’s kind of silly to play that way if you actually the lead. And as CydeWeys pointed out, delaying your win increases the chance of you opponent successfully coming from behind and winning.
That being said, playing at the highest tech level can be amusing every now and then but I personally find more competitive play to be much more engaging and satisfying.
April 30th, 2007 at 12:37 am
Simcity, huh?
There have been better posts.
April 30th, 2007 at 1:44 am
Will: SimCity indeed. I take it you like long games?
April 30th, 2007 at 1:51 am
Top ranked 1vs1 replays are the most boring on the replay vaults . Its mostly Aoen mirrors and fast tech to Siege bots .Thats not really unlike the tank spam in CandC 3 .The most diverse and interesting games are actually in the lower ranks where people experiment and play around.
April 30th, 2007 at 2:15 am
Most of those lower ranked games you’re talking about take so damn long to watch that nobody can be bothered with it. People don’t watch 1v1 replays of top players to be entertained, they watch them to learn so that they can win more games.
April 30th, 2007 at 4:33 am
So if its not entertaining whats the point ?Its a game after all. I stand by what I said. The Aoen Siege bot strat is boring and ends up being like a chore. Yes , I have seen lower ranked replays that were more entertaining than a top 10 game .
April 30th, 2007 at 5:31 am
Well you see the difference is most of the people playing custom games are doing it for fun relaxed games. I’ve had many discussions with DaveL about this and to a point he is right.
His arguement is that when doing custom why stick to the boring standard methods of winning a game like tml/strat bomb/siege spam. This is all well and good if you just want to practise how to kill a noob fast but as I said most people are playing for a relaxed fun match not to push their abilities.
So instead try things out like a massive air drop of siege bots, SCU’s massively upgraded, armies of experimentals things that are in the game that sadly rarely ever get used in ranked.
One persons 1v1 fast killing fun in ranked maybe another persons idea of boredom. I for one gave up playing 1v1 ranked long ago as I found it fairly tedious. 2v2 is far more enjoyable for me ranked or custom.
April 30th, 2007 at 5:34 am
I think it’s important that people play in their own style.. some people like building defenses and teching up, it’s a perfectly valid style in RTS. In Red Alert we all know tanks were the way to win but the most memorable games involved lines of tesla coils.
The point that you should finish off an enemy whilst you still can is worth baring in mind, but why do you think a cat plays with a mouse when it could just kill it?
Personally I like to see all units utilised in a game, from tech 1 to experimental.
April 30th, 2007 at 7:42 am
I disagree. You can develop a defensive playstyle and make your strength in different areas than quick victories. Against equally skilled players in an equally good game, tier 4 is unavoidable.
April 30th, 2007 at 8:11 am
The use of experimentals etc draws the line between those playing to win, and those playing for fun or relaxation. This line can also be drawn between ranked games and custom games. The ranking ladder is designed to pit you against someone of a similar skill, whereby custom games allow you to play any joe who wants a game, no matter their skill.
My friend and I much prefer to play custom games rather than arranged team games. This allows us to have fun with games, and do stupid things like launching 42 nukes or building an army of Czars. We’re by no means the greatest players in the world, but we can hold our own against people who do just want to win, but ideally, we play to win in humourous or unusual ways.
The experimentals are nice eye candy, and battles look nice when they’re involved, and most important, they’re fun.
April 30th, 2007 at 8:30 am
I completly agree with you : I had given up with Ranked game, and now i’m fed up with custom games because that’s allways the same ….. Now i will go back to ranked games, because i did one last week and that was really much more an excitement compared to custom games. until they balance the game in a better way so that It’s far more difficult to reach T3, i will probably stay in rank game where strategy taked its whole dimention.
April 30th, 2007 at 9:46 am
RDon: If you can “sneak” such a large force into someone’s base area and build all that stuff, they deserve to lose.
tyndale: yup, rush to T3 SABs is the common tactic and hopefully the patch will change that so that folks are “rushing” only to T2 because T2 is made more effective and T3 takes too long to be a “rush’ tactic anymore. That would be nice. Tired of watching replays where the first to T3 SAB wins the game just about every time.
April 30th, 2007 at 2:40 pm
Jay: It’s harder to defend against than you think. Even if you do the blips on radar as soon as the incursion starts, by the time your ground units can get there, the engineers will have been able to build some point defenses. This is a deadly, under-used tactic. Don’t under-estimate it.
April 30th, 2007 at 3:46 pm
Jay: What Cyde Weys said is very true. Mobile stealth generators are definitely underused, especially in transports because unlike shield generators, they don’t get turned off in the transport. The first Cerberus goes up very quickly when I do this.
tyndale: The point of watching top replays is to get better at the game, like I said. I agree that top replays do get repetitive at times, but for new players who want to compete in this game, you have to watch a fair share of replays before you can climb the ladder. For some people, the thrill is not in seeing Monkeylords roll over an army, the thrill is just plain winning.
April 30th, 2007 at 4:40 pm
This weekend saw my first real versus match, and it was pretty fun. I was playing against a rusher who has some experience playing competively, and my random blundering seems to have been fairly effective. He’s convinced, though, that the only way to play is annihilation, with no civilians, map explored, and so on. I almost lost a match on Sentry Point because I was counting on the civilians to be occupying the middle for at least the first few minutes, but he had them off. I realize it’s my fault for not looking, but it was a pretty close call.
He beat me in two games solely because he comm bombed me, though. It fried my hard defenses and almost all of my production both times, and he just kept the pressure on with Mantises. He seems to rely on the comm bomb as a large part of his tactic, however, and it seems like he’s trying to approach the game as if it’s static, which I suspect will be his downfall in a number of games.
Hm.
Anyway, the relevance for this post merely comes from the fact that I successfully turtled against him after his ACU had gone up in my base. I later managed to repel two Monkeylords on Seton’s clutch. Probably no mean feat for most of you, but it felt good.
April 30th, 2007 at 4:42 pm
And yes, I like long games. To me, SupCom isn’t Starcraft, so why do I need to finish a game in 20 minutes? SupCom is fun for the massive battles of three elements all clashing at once.
Also, killing off bases by crashing CZARs into them, since that’s all they’re good for.
April 30th, 2007 at 4:46 pm
Regarding top player replays: while it is true that top players would have more options if tier two was better balanced, games really aren’t about who can put SABs on the field first. Nearly all good players use a balance between ‘teching’ and ’swarming’ but wins come from putting a new twist on an old strategy. In fact, if you watch closely you can see strategies change on a weekly basis as players find counters to various tactics.
Games at the highest level usually come down to things like who has the exact right number of artillery in their T1 force, who held on to their scout longer, who built that single point defense in the most clutch spot or who harvested the right rocks or groups of trees with their engineers.
I find replays like this to be fascinating. If you don’t, try being more active while watching replays. Focus on the places where the action is taking place; it might actually be in two or three parts of the map. Watch how players react when they gain certain kinds of intel. Try thinking like one or both of the players. But don’t sit there zoomed in on a factory and watch it tech up to T3; that’s really boring.
November 19th, 2007 at 5:22 am
Computer Game News and Reviews…
I couldn’t understand some parts of this article, but it sounds interesting…