The Glade 4.0

Well I ended up doing my practice multiplayer games, won all 5 so I skipped the rest. Did my placement games and it stuck me in gold league. So far so good, I'm running about even with no real crushing defeats yet.

I definitely need to get better but I'm happy with how the game plays so far. Very fun!

I think I'm screwing up blink though unless there are just some ridges you cant blink up to. Most times I do ok but on Lost Temple I couldnt for some reason. Maybe I was just misclicking.

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“Strong people are harder to kill than weak people, and more useful in general”. - Mark Rippetoe

I want to play this game. 60 bucks is not in the budget though.

*grumble*

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"It is true that democracy undermines freedom when voters believe they can live off of others' productivity, when they modify the commandment: 'Thou shalt not steal, except by majority vote.' The politics of plunder is no doubt destructive of both morality and the division of labor."

You need vision to blink.

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Ah ok. Usually i have observers this time I didnt. makes sense thanks.

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“Strong people are harder to kill than weak people, and more useful in general”. - Mark Rippetoe

Uh, so I made a character just named "Kevin" and then saw the note that its your battle.net name. And so far I cant find an option to delete / create a new character?

Yeah, one character per account. There's already a big stink over the ambiguity there, though it may have fallen off the front pages of the forums after the first week or two.

They got rid of the multiple characters and deletions to prevent the "smurfing" that was rampant in WC3 and SC1, by which a veteran player would create a new character with no record, who would then stomp on newbies and amass flawless records and the like.

If it makes you feel better, you're really Kevin.347 or something.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Kevin is a good name *nods*

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Yeah, thank goodness you didn't stick yourself with "pwnnewbzlol" or something.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I played my first and only multiplayer game tonight, 1v1. I'm shocked to have actually won it. It wasn't through my competence, however--more my opponent's lack thereof. I got in the early attack, having fast-tracked to drop ships, and dropped a bunch of marines on his SCVs, but it didn't help. He took them out before I could do much damage...but then he settled in on the definition of insanity (attempting the same thing over and over again in the hope that it would turn out differently.)

I had three siege tanks on a cliff overlooking my only base entrance, and the dummy kept sending marines and marauders and Thor-mechs through there. They got slaughtered en masse over and over again (Achievement: Unbreakable - 40 or more kills with one unit in a single game). While he continued to do that, I had already expanded to two other locations without him noticing...until my cloaked banshees came at him from the other side and he had no defenses (Achievement: Counter-proof. Attack without being counterattacked for 20 seconds.)

It was a bit of a rush, but now that i've won one (seemingly, by the luck of my opponent being less competent even than me), I don't want to try again.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

God damn. I finally decided to get my feet wet in multiplayer tonight. I figure, the only reason I'm really playing is to unlock portraits, so I went with random(since random counts towards your random achievement and whatever race you get stuck with, so it's basically double the progress for one game). First game was against a terran. I got...terran. Guy didn't start building units until about 10 minutes into the game(I watched the replay), so he was beaten really easily(he had about 25ish games played with 10 wins, bronze). Second game was against protoss(144 games played, 71 wins, bronze). I got...terran again. This game was a little better. He tried to void ray rush me, but I had a bunch of marines that easily beat his 6 void rays. From that point, he was pretty boned. I built a couple of ghost(emp for the win) and took him down with a combo of MMM and some vikings for good measure. He had a mish mash of zealots, stalkers, colossi and void rays.

This isn't good for my heart, though. It is still racing. I don't know if it's because I'm excited that I won or that I just don't take 1v1 very well and I was nervous(for example, I never got nervous playing Left 4 Dead versus mode)...but I don't think I can make this a regular thing. I am way too wired right now.

Edit:

I played my third match! Random, of course. Against zerg(was 6 for 11 bronze player). I got protoss this time! No! My worst race! Still, the guy I played against was really new. He did a good job to start by harassing me with zerglings, but my chronoboosted gateways provided me with some zealots to take care of his zerglings. He kept it up for a little bit before stopping, so I went into macro mode. By the time I attacked, he had a really small amount of hydralisks and a couple of spine crawlers. Nothing that could even come close to my zealot/stalker/colossi combo(I had 150ish supply to his 60ish). He GGed me, which the other two didn't. After the match, he sent me a tell and asked me some questions about how my economy was so much higher that his and what strategy I used and such. I talked with him for a bit, nice guy. So I'm 3 for 3 in placement matches so far. Game wasn't nearly as heart racing as the other two for whatever reason.

EDIT2:
I'm also not too thrilled about winning 3 games in placement matches. I think that will automatically put me in gold. If I win one more, I'll be placed in platinum. I don't want that. I'm thinking I should throw the next two matches. But maybe I should play and just see how well I do in whatever league they throw me in.

Edit3:
Game 4 down. Got zerg this time! Yay, my best race! Against another zerg(bronze, 12 for 22). I basically overwhelmed him with zerglings with speed upgrade. He went roaches. 4 for 4 in placement. *sigh*

Edit4:

Fifth match. I get protoss against terran. It turns out this terran is platinum league. I played my earlier stalker/zealot/colossi build I did previously. Was a little slow, though. He dropped a bunch of units into my base. Took out my nexus. Luckily I had an expansion and was able to repel the attack. So I went in for the attack. He still had a good chunk of units at his base, but my three colossi with range upgrade was able to take them all out. He tried to counter with vikings, but it was too late. With all of my zealots dead, I broke into his base and was able to defeat him. Got placed in the platinum league. GG for me. I guess I can't expect anymore wins for a while.

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Los Angeles Kings 2014 Stanley Cup Champions

"I love this **** team right here."
-Jonathan Quick

I'm surprised the Marine drop wasn't more effective. You did keep the dropships nearby to heal the marines, right? How many marines and dropships did you use?

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Yes, but he killed it first.
8 marines, one drop ship.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

My second day of 1v1 was much worse than my first. I lost more games than I won, but I'm fairly close to a 50/50 ratio. This is what Blizzard wants, apparently, and they will start matching you with lower ranked players if you start losing a lot(at least, that's how it went with me). I find that if I am terran and I'm playing against protoss or zerg, I win. Pretty much no matter what. If I'm terran and playing against terran...well, I seem to lose about 75% of the time against them regardless of which race I am.

Last game I played, I was zerg against a terran. I went speedlings and mutas. It was a pretty quite game for the most part until he sent in a small force accompanied by a thor. I killed all of the units except the thor no problem. But for some reason, my zerglings were running around in circles around the thor not attacking and the 4 mutalisks I still had weren't doing any damage. That's when I noticed the sneaky **** had completely surrounded his thor with SCVs and they were constantly repairing. So I focused down the SCVs and killed the Thor. He never really recovered after that.

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Los Angeles Kings 2014 Stanley Cup Champions

"I love this **** team right here."
-Jonathan Quick

Finally got this game...gonna install it after work tomorrow morning. Can't wait to try it out!

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Ron Paul 2012

Eh, Blizzard keeps telling me that Zerglings are strong against Roaches. And I keep seeing my roaches destroyed 50 supply worth of Zerglings. Roaches are awesomesauce except against Marauders.

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I had an amusing game this morning, still in the beginner league. I was paired with another Terran player against a Zerg player and a Terran, so I decided not to go with the 1BAR FE this time from Mook's video since the maker didn't recommend it against Zerg.

I went back to my 2 barracks, and tried for an infantry+air force (med, banshee, viking) progression, with a few siege tanks for defense while the air units built up. While I was building this up I scanned the enemy bases as soon as I had orbital command and then I sent in a raid of 4 reapers and popped every scv and a couple missile turrets at the Terran player's expansion. In the mean time the Zerg player made 2 fairly weak, but clever attempts at an attack; he dropped in Creep at my expansion and built a Nydus worm there which I didn't notice right away, but I did in time for my marauders and marines to kill it and the overlord before it could drop units on my SCVs. This was about the point at which I was building my factory so I had a sizeable infantry defense.

At this point is when it got funny. About a minute after that my partner yells "help!!". I find this odd since I ahve not been notified that he's under attack. An overlord was dropping creep at HIS expansion, trying to do the same thing. I send my marines across to kill the overlord because I discover that he's built nary a single unit, despite having a factory and at least 2 barracks. This is one of those newbie maps where you and your partner share a base with a mineral field and an expansion right there inside it for each of you so it was easy to help him. I tell him to start building some units, and send another Reaper raid to slow down the Terran player some more, who thankfully didn't repel it any faster than the first one.

Thankfully he takes my advice and starts building Thors, Siege Tanks, and then Battlecruisers while my air forces are coming out. Then he decides to give me control of his forces! I decided when I had about 10 each of banshees and vikings and 3 medevacs full of infantry to send the Thors with a small marine screen up their front ramp and then hit the Zerg player with the air (my air + 4 of his battlecruisers) from the side.

This worked out pretty well, and I was like "whew" ebcause when he had nothing to even stop an overlord from laying creep, I thought we were totally ****.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Just FYI, I didn't post a video.

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So I'm about 15 missions in so far, pretty fun game. The story is so-so, a little bit disappointed there. But I like the Research and Upgrade system they've put in. The gameplay is more fun too, although not terrible challenging on Normal. Maybe its just me but the jump from Normal to Hard was very drastic, so I'm just going to play it through on Normal once.

Tried out some multiplayer with 2 friends last night. We started out with a match vs 3 Medium AI and got trounced pretty quickly. Laughed about it and then decided to try and we beat em no problem next try. We decided to try some humans next and ended up playing vs 2 Terrans and a Protoss, which was our team makeup as well. We almost dropped one with our initial rush but couldn't finish em off, and ended up losing the match after about an hour. Was lotso f fun though!

Oh, I thought it was you since you suggested the tactic. Sorry.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Things I have learned about StarCraft II ...

1. The League Placement Algorithm is weird, strange, and/or totally non-intuitive. For example ...

I went 1 and 4 during my placement games. I got placed in Bronze.
One of my 2v2s, after I've had about a week to learn online multiplayer, went 5-0. We got placed in Bronze.
One of my 2v2s, made first, went 0-5, and we got placed in Gold.
One of my 2v2s, made second, went 4-1, and we got placed in Silver.

2. Reapers sucks.

3. Terran Mech is OP if you use a good build order.

4. Macro minded Zerg won't have anything more than Zerglings and a Queen until 20 supply at the earliest.

5. Most Protoss Players are idiots about Pylon Placement.

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It is really all over the place. But I think it really depends on the players you lose and win against. If you play only bronze players and lose most of them, clearly you belong in bronze and it sticks you there. On the flip side, if you win against only bronze players, they can't place you in anything higher than silver because you weren't tested very well. My own placement matches were 4 bronze and one platinum and I got stuck in platinum because I won all 5 matches and if I beat a plat player, I probably belong there.

That's how it should work, at any rate. Regardless of how it should work, I hear people talk about going 4-1 against all gold+ and still ending up in silver. Or people going 1-4 and ending up in platinum. It makes little sense.

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Los Angeles Kings 2014 Stanley Cup Champions

"I love this **** team right here."
-Jonathan Quick

Do you mean Reapers suck if your opponent has them, or as in you don't think they're useful? I've found they're devastating against an insufficiently-protected expansion or someone who doesn't protect their main base rear or flanks, but they aren't worthwhile for much of anything else.

What's "Terran Mech"?

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Mech is anything out of a starport and factory.

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Los Angeles Kings 2014 Stanley Cup Champions

"I love this **** team right here."
-Jonathan Quick

Terran Mech is Terran Mechanical Units ...

A typical building is something like:

For Every 1 Thor you have ...

3 Siege Tanks
4 Hellions
4 Marines
2 Marauders
3 SCVs

For Every 4 Thors you add 1 Wraith and 3 Medvacs

You play contain and expand.

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Reapers aren't useful in a good game after the first 5 minutes. And if I see a single Reaper on the board, my build order changes to negate them entirely. The only major problem with Reapers is 4-6 before you can tech/build counters. And since I play primarily Zerg or Protoss, there aren't any real solutions to Reapers in the time most players can have 4-6.

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