Starcraft 2 Strategy Guide:
7 Ways to Improve Your Game
If you want to become good at playing Starcraft 2 – or any other game for that matter – you’ll inevitably have to put in a lot of time and effort. Basically, it comes down to a combination of learning the rules and tricks of the game, planning your strategy, and practicing. Of course the sheer complexity of SC2 is one of the things that make it such good fun, so your efforts to improve your playing skills won’t seem like a chore at all!
While each player will find a slightly different set of points he needs to work on to perfect his game, there are certain general areas that everyone should get up to speed on. Here are seven tips we’ve put together to help steer you in the right direction:
1. Invest, invest, invest!
Just like in the real world, the earlier you invest your money the higher the potential rewards, given that it will be working for you for a longer period.
It’s actually even more important to use your resources wisely in Starcraft 2 than in real life. This is because investing in the wrong assets (economy, army or technology), or not spending your resources quickly enough, can leave you dangerously exposed to enemy attack.
You need to be spending constantly, for example on workers, and then using those workers to gather new resources, in the hope that your enemy doesn’t outspend you and amass more buildings and units that can be used to defeat you. That can, believe it or not, be quite tricky when your resources keep piling up and your attention is required elsewhere.
Your strategy here is important too. For instance, when you’re playing as Protoss or Terran you must be careful not to tie up valuable resources by queuing up too many units under construction in each building.
If you need to deploy more units quickly, a better strategy would be to build multiples of the same structure to produce those units without the need to queue them. In other words, with two or three of each building you can build two or three times as many units in the same amount of time.
2. Keep an eye on your enemy at all times
Scouting is the practice of gathering information about what your opponent is doing – basically where they’re positioning their army and what they’re spending their resources on. It’s very important to frequent conduct scouting sorties to the other player’s base, as well as to other parts of the map where they might have hidden some buildings or units. Try to vary the intervals between each time you send your scouts out so that your adversaries don’t get away with sneaking in a major upgrade or construction campaign right after your visit.
3. Don’t restrict yourself to playing only one race
Many players have a favorite race that they play most of the time and do better at than the others. However, it’s a good idea to round out your skills by varying how and what you play from time to time. So, try playing Protoss next time, even if you feel you’re better suited to Terran or Zerg, or vice-versa. Or you could go for a game of 1v1 if you’re a die-hard 2v2 fan, just to remind yourself how it is. You’ll become a more proficient player overall, and you’ll have more fun!