can someone PLEASE teach me some micromanagement tactics? thanks

Hotkey your troops... (grouping)
Also, Hotkey your important buildings (TH, raxes)

you'd be surprised how much that helps.

yea... i dont know how to hotkey anything... little help on that subject?

Sorry, I was a bit rushed so didn't answer your question fully. To create a group push CTRL+#, where # is a number between 0 and 9.

What I do is make my town hall group 0, that way when I hear "Ready to work" I can just push 0, p, and train another peon even if I'm looking somewhere else. After that I can put the peon on gold or whatever.

Another trick I use is grouping my raxes. I.e. group 5, 6, 7 for 3 raxes... that way I can train grunts in the middle of an attack.

In addition, I would recommend grouping units. It makes it easier to access them when in combat, and allows you to react more quickly. Also, if you have 9 ogres and a DK, you can make the DK group 2, and the ogres group 1. That way you can control them seperately without having to scroll.

Anyways, just some more quick grouping stuff.

I'm sure that there is tons more to do, but thats all that I remember right now.

Thanks Phoenix, you've been most helpful

Anyone taking the time to hotkey groups of ogres or dks would get run over. It is, however, useful to hotkey your rax. I find that using 0-9-8...etc in decreasing order for rax to be most useful. once u start pumping ogres, with "0" being so close to "O"gre, 0o9o8o7o6o5o4o3o... etc dominates. Hotkeying your hall i think is a waste, just hit spacebar when u hear a peon pop, or whenever u hear an announcement like "work complete" or "we're being attacked"

quote:

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Originally posted by KillaBoBilla:
can someone PLEASE teach me some micromanagement tactics? thanks

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Hotkeying is REALLY important... lets say you've lusted up your ogres and they are charging towards the enemy. And, RIGHT as they start charging, a peon pops out of your hall and yells "Ready to work!"

Problem? Hardly! If you've hotkeyed your town hall to group 0, and your ogres to group 1 (which takes all of 2 seconds...hit control+1 while they are selected) you just push 0, p, 1 and you can continue ravaging your opponent while another peon builds...

quote:

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Originally posted by Phoenix:
Hotkeying is REALLY important... lets say you've lusted up your ogres and they are charging towards the enemy. And, RIGHT as they start charging, a peon pops out of your hall and yells "Ready to work!"

Problem? Hardly! If you've hotkeyed your town hall to group 0, and your ogres to group 1 (which takes all of 2 seconds...hit control+1 while they are selected) you just push 0, p, 1 and you can continue ravaging your opponent while another peon builds...

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I think you guys need to learn what "micromanagement" is. Ctrl setting your buildings is not micromanagement, that's part of your macromanagement. If you ctrl set your units then yes that is micromanagement. Anyway, the best way to practice is to play StarCraft. The units are so small, it's like night and day with War2. Just practice clicking and running around and stuff, and then practice dancing your units in a game, it will really pay off.

Kanuks, clicking your townhall on the minimap would take you away from the action. My way you don't have to scroll at all. Its difficult to get used to but it pays off.

Orkinman, micromanagement is the way you control individual units/buildings... yes it does include how you attack the enemies' units, but is bigger than just that. The way you control your peons is often more important than the way you control your ogres... if you have good economy micromanagement, you can get away with a greater number of errors... if you're relying on your strong unit micromanagment, you'll win the battle but lose the war. War2 is different from War3 in that the individual units aren't as important as the resources that you gather.

Well I think using ctrl is a waste of time. I just use the mini map alot and double clicking for unit selecting. In an intense game using ctrl can slow ur attacks down and your concentration.


-Toe

I really don't think that pushing 1 button on the keyboard is harder than clicking spot on the minimap, selecting a building, pushing p, then returning to where you were before by clicking the minimap again.

Just try it out... or ask some of the top players, they all maximize their effeciency with hotkeys... otherwise they wouldn't be so good

Me personally have never used hotkeys, and dont plan to start. I do it the old fashioned way like kanucks. No ctrl is used in my games, this way i see that you must have better awareness of the minimap and of the game, and I believe that the extra awareness that is needed, can boost your games skills dramatically.


I dont use hotkeys like you Phoenix because the way i see it, is while you're searching with lusted ogres, you can afford to waste 1 or 2 seconds even to pull the peon from ur hall and get more of a res flow, then build another peon before your opponent shows up on the minimap. And/or if your ogres are fighting, theres not reason to be a specatator and watch to see how many live, because u watching will have no effect on who will win the battle. So during this time, you can create peons, and ogres at home, this is also a good time however, to expand.


[This message has been edited by AiRe (edited 02-26-2002).]

[This message has been edited by AiRe (edited 02-26-2002).]

I'm not saying that you HAVE to hotkey or anything like that... I'm just saying that its a useful feature that a new player ought to learn. If you're old fashioned, fine. Just don't say that the hotkeys don't make your life easier... they do. I recommend that any new player become familiar with the hotkeys because it WILL improve your play.

Morons, you dont have to hit ctrl everytime. Hotkeying your rax makes your game 10x better than scrubs who click minimap for everything. As soon as you hear "we're ready master im not ready" it takes no mouse moving at all to make 9 ogres in about 1 second with 0o9o8o7o6o5o40....etc. Scrubs saying that it is a waste of time are truly scrubs who do not even know how to hotkey their rax. Making troops without having to click back on your rax or on the minimap saves tons of time and lets your mouse do whatever it was doing before like controlling dks or attacking. Then u go back to your town and have the pleasant surprise of 40 more ogres waiting.

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Originally posted by OUTdamage:
Morons, you dont have to hit ctrl everytime. Hotkeying your rax makes your game 10x better than scrubs who click minimap for everything. As soon as you hear "we're ready master im not ready" it takes no mouse moving at all to make 9 ogres in about 1 second with 0o9o8o7o6o5o40....etc. Scrubs saying that it is a waste of time are truly scrubs who do not even know how to hotkey their rax. Making troops without having to click back on your rax or on the minimap saves tons of time and lets your mouse do whatever it was doing before like controlling dks or attacking. Then u go back to your town and have the pleasant surprise of 40 more ogres waiting.

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Once you've played the game long enough, you'll have a sense of when your ogres and peons are about to finish.

"Once you've played the game long enough, you'll have a sense of when your ogres and peons are about to finish."

Your brain has limited space...why fill it with useless timing crap like that when you can just remember to hotkey something in 1/10th of a second?

I'd rather store useful stuff in my head... like how long beserker regeneration takes to complete *grin*

Any1 using space bar at all? While cntr+# might be nice (I do not like it, so I dunno :) I find space bar the greatest help in micro.
Killa, try it & you'll not regreat: it brings you to the place of the last event - peon/grunt/ogre/DK made, building finished, place where u are attacked. You can picture what use it has :).

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I'll mantain against the grain...

Kanuks try playing the game for more than a year before you try to say what is faster. When you have 9 rax or so, assigning them makes your game so much faster than having to click on every rax. You can continue to control shiet other places on the map while your left hand that is doing nothing pumps ogres. u sux0r. And yes, spacebar also helps immensely everytime peon pops or work is complete, spacebar... owned.

Obviously, you misunderstood what I said. All I said is that once you have played the game for a long enough period, you will have a sense of when units are going to be done. Perhaps it's just me, but I have a good timing on all the upgrades, peons, ogres etc... it's certainly not something you have to "memorize"; it comes naturally after a long enough time of playing, a sort of "instinct" if you will

some top players use ctrl groups, and some dont. take ash for instance, from what I understand he hotkeys everything he possibly can. khb on the other hand, just clicks a hundred times a minute with his mouse.

I say whatever floats your boat.

Yah i agree with you sluggo.. after a while ou dont even need to think about it, it just comes natural.

Well try playing even longer and you'll soon realize that hotkeying your rax is 300x more efficient than clicking on every rax to make troops. Sure i've played long enuf to know how long upgrades take and build times, etc. But you dont even need to know how long if u use your hotkeys efficiently. As soon as you hear anything finish hit spacebar and it centers it on the screen. Anything like hotkeying rax and using spacebar limits the amount of mouse movement you have to make resulting in much more efficient gaming.

I don't hotkey anything.

I used to hotkey stuff and it helped. Not by much though. I agree with the "awareness" bit. try both (ctrl way and mouse way) and see which one is right for you. Use space bar, double clicking..
i mostly use keyboards for building (bh, p, etc) oh and multi dk and stuff.

and dont fight over war2 strategies it is a waste of time..

I played just over a year..

b,h,f,g,o,t,p,l

I never waste much time looking over a battle that I don't have time to build ogres. Of course, I admit there have been times and will be times in the future that pushing 0o9o8o... would be helpful, but without good UNIT CONTROL and RESOURCE control (what this topic should be about) it isn't going to help much.

Not that it wouldn't be helpful to do this for some people, I just don't see it as a critical issue.

quote:

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Originally posted by sLuGGo:
Obviously, you misunderstood what I said. All I said is that once you have played the game for a long enough period, you will have a sense of when units are going to be done. Perhaps it's just me, but I have a good timing on all the upgrades, peons, ogres etc... it's certainly not something you have to "memorize"; it comes naturally after a long enough time of playing, a sort of "instinct" if you will

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i always had godly micromanagement and i never ctrl grouped my units

well, i only did that for multi-whirlwinding Vice style =D


hotkeying raxes is important for macromanagement
i find it helps alot making units faster but i never had the need to hotkey units

also try using diversions like when your opponent is patrolling at you you seperate one grunt from yours and send him somewhere else so some of the patrolling grunts follow him.

doing this, you seperate your enemy for a few seconds, giving you a little bit of extra time that is crucial

[This message has been edited by Scrubbolator (edited 06-08-2002).]