Starcraft 2 Beginners Guide
Welcome to this Starcraft 2 Beginners Guide, the perfect starting point if you’re just starting out in Starcraft 2. What you won’t find is the basics that the Single Player Tutorial gives you (no point in me being redundant) but rather some tips that you tend to learn the hard way. This should accelerate your learning significantly and boost your win ratio early on.
Firstly a brief overview of the game before jumping into this Starcraft 2 beginners guide. The objective on online play is to destroy the enemy structures (units left do not matter). Obviously this is achieved through the construction of your own army. To do this you need to collect resources (vespene gas, minerals) and use them to either construct buildings, build units or upgrade your technology.
I list here my top 3 tips for beginners – these are things I wished I had learned when I first started so I could’ve avoided the ass-whopping I received early on.
1. Optimizing your economy is vital to secure victory
The optimal number of workers on each mineral patch is 2 and 3 for vespene geysers. You can go up to 3 per patch for minerals but there will be some time wasted – even though you will increase your overall mineral production. When starting out, allocate your workers evenly between the patches. You must never stop producing workers until you have hit the optimal number of workers (22 per base – 2 x 8 mineral patches + 3 x 2 vespene geysers). If each mineral patch is saturated (having 3 workers) then you may need to get a base expansion to continue harvesting more minerals.
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Getting an expansion base is crucial to allow you to harvest more minerals, however the timing is very important. Considering the right timing is also very important. Before you get bogged down on fine-tuning micro control of your units, consider this saying – micro wins battles, but macro (economy control) wins wars. Master the art of harvesting efficiently and expanding at the right time. Trust me, even if you got everything in this Starcraft 2 beginners guide spot on and mess up your economy, you are toast.
2. Pay attention to unit weaknesses, bonuses and strengths
The major difference starcraft 2 has compared to starcraft is the unit bonus damage feature (which Blizzard employed in Warcraft III, incidentally). The surest way to lose a battle is by rushing headlong into battle with units that are naturally weak against your opponent’s units. The following are some examples of unit bonuses:
Siege Tanks : +10 damage against armoured (+12 in siege mode)
Marauder: +10 damage vs armoured
Baneling: +15 vs. light units
Corruptor: +6 vs. massive units (excellent against colossus!)
Immortals: +33 vs. armoured (absolute killer for siege tanks)
Stalkers: + 4 vs. armoured
Of course there are way more than the ones listed in this Starcraft 2 beginners guide, but its a good starting point. Knowing these bonuses help you determine what units to send as counters to what your opponent is doing. Conversely, you should be wary of attacking units you are weak against even if you have FAR superior numbers. False confidence in numbers will not work in Starcraft 2 unlike in Starcraft.
3. Recognize your greatest resource – Real Time
Many players, even advanced ones forget that their main resource is neither minerals nor gas but something called real time. If there’s only one thing you take from this Starcraft 2 beginners guide, let this be it! Its not a tangible quantity but recognizing its importance will be the difference between victory or crushing defeat. The following examples should give you an idea of what it means.
Assume for a moment you were going protoss vs. protoss. At some stage in a game you find your opponent had a cybernetics core (50s build time) and 1 twilight council (50s BT) more than you. You could say that he had an advantage of 100s real time over you. Another way to think of it would be to know that you had to spend 100s just to catch up to where he was at.
Another example demonstrates this well – in the same protoss vs. protoss situation if you had 3 stalkers and your opponent had 6 stalkers waiting outside your base to attack, his real time advantage of 126s (42s x 3 stalkers) plus whatever time it took for him to travel to your base. Even if you had 500 more minerals and gas at that time, it would mean nothing because you failed to translate that into a real time advantage.
How do you maximize your real time advantage? Well, here are some must-do tips. Firstly, don’t ever get supply blocked (reaching current supply limit without any excess supply to use). This is the biggest waster of real time and you’ll find yourself instantly 30s behind. Secondly, know your hot keys – there is nothing worse than not being able to produce buildings or units instantly. Thirdly, don’t wait until the last minute before building expansion bases. It takes time for command centers to be built, and even more for scv to be built for harvesting – plan this in advance, not just an after thought.
Well, this concludes my starcraft 2 beginners guide. There are plenty of other resources you will find on this site teaching more advanced strategies (and tips) now that you’ve gone through this list. However, the best recommendation I can give you to improve your skills dramatically would be to get the Shokz Guide which provides you with the best strategies and training methods in Starcraft 2. Whatever you do, remember these 3 words – practise, practise, practise!
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