Plus, I have always felt that 'The winner is the one who can click the mouse the fastest' isn't really strategy. At least to me.
Oh come on. That has very very little to do with it until very high level of play.
I also prefer TBS to RTS because I literally feel stressed while playing RTS games. But I can at least acknowledge the strategy in them.
The problem is Starcraft 2 has been out for abit now, so most people know how to perfectly execute rush tactics.
As a newbie, 9 out of 10 times you ll get caught and be slaughtered.
So the first thing you ll do is play the single player campagne to learn about the units.
Then you ll play a week or so against a A.I, to practics some Rush tactics.
Then you ll start playing with others, ane either turn out to be good at rushing people, or learn to counter them.
Its not a "easy" learning curve.
Its very unforgiveing, something like how fast you can plant down buildings/manage unit production, while sticking to a rush tactic, determines if you win.
people that have played 200,000 games, know what to to execute these plans by heart, and have practiced doing them to reduce the time needed to get them working, to the point where if you where to try it against them, you ll probably be halfways ready by the time their already done (which means you get rushed and killed).
So starcraft 2 starts out with you dieing alot.
Then it becomes a game of who can rush who, which is alot like Rock-papir-scissors.
Sometimes you get lucky others not.
When your insanely good, things like micro controll of units can play almost as big a part as tactics. The thing is there is a ladder, so you ll work your way up. Which is good, so you probably wont start out playing against the most hardend players in the world.
Not really. If I take 5s to click between A and B, and you take 3s (on average)
You almost get 2 clicks to my 1. That is a huge difference. And then there is getting the mouse at the right spot and not far from it. It actually makes a difference on all scales, and makes or breaks games at the extremely skilled levels.
Oh come on. That has very very little to do with it until very high level of play.
My advice is that if you're trying to learn to play Civ5, then play Civ5. There is complete documentation on every element of the game, so take it slow and read a lot. Playing Starcraft will not teach you how to play Civ. You're still going to have to learn the UI, rules, hotkeys, strategies, etc. from scratch.
I think what the OP was saying was that they were intimidated by the complexity of Civ5 and they wanted to learn to walk before they ran. so they were looking to cut their teeth on a strategy game that was less overwhelming. Not that they were "Necessarily" looking to learn Civ5 (although i grant that is probably the Ultimate goal). And there is a kind of logic in that thinking.
I should also mention, i have a bunch of strategy games already on my steam account that ive never played. (I have game buying problems) Heres my game list: lemme know which you would recommend. Keep in mind my real end goal here to to be able to play civ 5.
http://steamcommunity.com/id/lourivellini/games/?tab=all&sort=name - another reason steam needs to fix its category system. I wish i could sort by strategy, or make a category for strategy games, but then you get overlapping categories, and your worse off than you started.
I have always been a bigger fan at turnbased strategy, like tactics and civ5 and chess or w/e.
Because it removes all the factors of "speed" and reaction times from the equation, and makes it simply into a pure strategy game, (with some background dice rolls for some)
Where on your monitor does it take you 5s?
I guess to start things out it all depends on the game. If the game relies heavily on macro (SC2), high APM isn't needed until high levels of play. Don't kid yourself otherwise. There aren't that many clicks required, especially so if you keybind properly. Don't tell me you struggle to find keys on a keyboard. If your brain can't keep up, that's another issue.
You don't realize it do you. Not only would one have to set-up good/correct macros he would want to use, but with all/any clicking done, he would have to be fast, get it over the icon/spot he plans on clicking and click. What if he misses the spot and clicks somewhere else? That is a wasted click.
You don't realize it in fact.
- The hassle of setting up a keybind is not an argument (Think opportunity costs here please)
- High APM isn't needed for most RTS games until very high levels of play (Right decisions > fast decisions because of strategy)
- RTS stands for Real Time Strategy
Yes, someone who is too old to drive will probably struggle with an RTS game. Telling me that the outlier of people who can't competently click on things in a decent amount of time make RTS not a strategy game is not an sound argument.
There are plenty of Diamond SC2 players with 30 APM. Keystrokes make up over 50% of APM, so I'm asking for one click every 4 seconds which is not asking for a lot. At some point it's the brain not keeping up, please understand this.
We are both probably talking to brick walls here, but maybe we can agree to disagree that 30 APM (1 click per 4 seconds) is / is not asking for too much.
I never claimed RTS has as much strategy as TBS. I was merely arguing that faster clicks means nothing until top tier and that RTS has plenty of strategy in it. If your brain can't process what to do in time (i.e. 72 vs 23) that is a different story as I've always said.
I think 1 mouse click every 4 seconds is entirely reasonable and really keystrokes could be as high as 70% of APM (macro macro macro) which would bring required clicks all the way down to 1 click every 6.5 seconds.
Yes you have to think fast, no you don't have to click fast.
Someone who was clicking faster than I, but not using any particular strategy, still mopped the floor with me. And even most of the strategies that I read up on were very specific on how important it was that you got X units out within Y time period or you were hosed.
Build orders aren't APM intensive, in fact, you are juggling much less at the start and it's a lot easier to keep tabs on everything. Look at X/Y and tell me how you need high APM. Count out the total amount of actions needed.
Lets take an in depth look at a 6 min (6:20 is the actual timing) 4 warpgate rush.
24 Units is 48 actions
lets say you have 10 buildings at a generous 5 actions per building (select b building location return) - 50 actions
8 chronoboosts at 3 actions is 24 actions
Research warpgate is 2 actions
apply warpgate is 4 actions
The amount of actual mouseclicks required for this is incredibly low, much lower than 50% with proper keybinding.
That's 128 actions over the course of 6 min allowing ~50% more actions for additional moving/rallying/keybinding for a low 30 APM.
You have to think fast, but it doesn't take that many actions.
That build alone can get you into Gold easily. Getting out macro'd or rushed doesn't mean they clicked faster and there is strategy in both of those.
I dunno, this post is probably over the top, but the fact is there are TONS of diamond/plat players with 30-45 APM and mouse clicking abilities don't matter anywhere near as much as thinking fast does.