Gowerly Profile Blog Joined July 2011 United Kingdom 770 Posts #1



So, the guys over at IEM have released the replays for the tournament pretty much as the last game was finishing.



I've grabbed them and, after fighting with the fact that some of them were made using the Korean client (Blizzard please standardise your replay files!), have some information about the games that may or may not be interesting to you all.



This was done using what I've written



TL;DR

- Pros are consistent

- Matchups swing back and forth over time

- We can probably find optimal scouting routes

- Protoss players hate the middle of the map

- People attacked right to left and top to bottom. Most fights happened on the left or bottom of the map.



Item 1 - Pro players are consistent.

"Well, duh" you might be thinking, but to me the numbers were striking.

Let's look at our favourite build of the semi-finals, the 6+ Gate blink attack. We'll focus on herO's execution for this.





You can see from this that herO's execution of his gateway + blink build doesn't seem to depend on the map too much. 3 games and the Nexus timing is out by at most 2 seconds from each other. It was possible to see from watching the games that he had even the timing of Polt's SCV to avoid the scout!

The slowest build was finished at most no more the fastest.

From the build overview screen we can see that the whole build is timed to pretty much perfection:





It shows through skill levels, too.

Looking at our now eternal friend Scoobers:





What's this down to? Is it lack of stacking? Not paying enough attention? Extra base scouting before depot placement? Nerves?



Switching to Taeja:



All within a much narrower window. Wrists be damned.



However, builds aren't everything:



Highlighted is Polt vs herO. The W and L I have added to the image to show the builds that won and lost. You can see the builds he won his units were out LATER than when he lost. This suggests that it's not something you can just be better at your build to beat. Which, in honesty, sucks.



Item 2 - There's a time and a place for you.





Zerg seems to have a window where their builds come through.

As you can see, as well, even though Zergs didn't feature in RO4 onwards, they won 50% of their games against Protoss.

After 20 mintues, though. Zerg won 3/12 games.





Protoss 20 - 13 Terran.

A larger difference, here. Terran seem to have more of a midgame presence. If you can live past 10 minutes you stand a chance! It's pretty much 50/50 past then.





Zerg 13 - 8 Terran

Interesting for me here is that Zerg lost 0 games before the 18 minute mark.



Also on this build front it looks like certain builds have phased out. The Protoss vs Zerg build of going early 4 gates and attacking with zealots to deny a 3rd was used ONCE during the tournament. It lost. I guess there wre only 5 PvZ games in the whole tournament, though, so don't read much into that!



Item 3 - Watch Towers aren't always the best places to camp out

Again, focussing on Blink v T:





So, whether you have your worker on the watch tower or not, it might be worthwhile having a force around there (especially if it's more marauder heavy - research concussive first?) to deny early 2 stalker + probe moveout. It seems that the blink build is only really powerful if there are actually stalkers there, and you can see that there aren't many other pylons around (the others were placed much earlier, maybe different builds?) then it might deny the build before it starts.



I'm actually really interested in this aspect and I will be looking through all the maps over time to see if I can come up with the best scouting routes or locations to either shut down or disrupt particular builds.



Item 4 - Protoss games end up with fights anywhere but the middle of the map

Protoss games seem to end up with more straight up aggression or defense. I assume this is because at the start there's a lot of aggressive openings and later on nobody wants to engage a deathball if they can help it:





Item 5 - People like attacking from the right to the left, or from the top to the bottom

This one REALLY interests me.

Check it out:





More markedly:





Again, pretty strongly on Heavy Rain:





Finally, pray you don't spawn bottom left on Frost:





So those are the questions that could think of to answer with the IEM games.



I'm interested in questions you may have about high level analysis of games. Think about:

- Build information

- Building Placement

- Maps

- Player Stats

- Anything else you can come up with



Any questions on here I will reply to. If I can I'll add them to this post, too, so they're easily viewable.



Thanks for reading! Post 2 will contain the same for Seat Story Cup!

Hello, once again.So, the guys over at IEM have released the replays for the tournament pretty much as the last game was finishing.I've grabbed them and, after fighting with the fact that some of them were made using the Korean client (Blizzard please standardise your replay files!), have some information about the games that may or may not be interesting to you all.This was done using what I've written over here , which I will be releasing once I've added Starbow functionality and removed the Python dependency.TL;DR- Pros are consistent- Matchups swing back and forth over time- We can probably find optimal scouting routes- Protoss players hate the middle of the map- People attacked right to left and top to bottom. Most fights happened on the left or bottom of the map."Well, duh" you might be thinking, but to me the numbers were striking.Let's look at our favourite build of the semi-finals, the 6+ Gate blink attack. We'll focus on herO's execution for this.You can see from this that herO's execution of his gateway + blink build doesn't seem to depend on the map too much. 3 games and the Nexus timing is out by at most 2 seconds from each other. It was possible to see from watching the games that he had even the timing of Polt's SCV to avoid the scout!The slowest build was finished at most no more the fastest.From the build overview screen we can see that the whole build is timed to pretty much perfection:It shows through skill levels, too.Looking at our now eternal friend Scoobers:What's this down to? Is it lack of stacking? Not paying enough attention? Extra base scouting before depot placement? Nerves?Switching to Taeja:All within a much narrower window. Wrists be damned.However, builds aren't everything:Highlighted is Polt vs herO. The W and L I have added to the image to show the builds that won and lost. You can see the builds he won his units were out LATER than when he lost. This suggests that it's not something you can just be better at your build to beat. Which, in honesty, sucks.Zerg seems to have a window where their builds come through.As you can see, as well, even though Zergs didn't feature in RO4 onwards, they won 50% of their games against Protoss.After 20 mintues, though. Zerg won 3/12 games.Protoss 20 - 13 Terran.A larger difference, here. Terran seem to have more of a midgame presence. If you can live past 10 minutes you stand a chance! It's pretty much 50/50 past then.Zerg 13 - 8 TerranInteresting for me here is that Zerg lost 0 games before the 18 minute mark.Also on this build front it looks like certain builds have phased out. The Protoss vs Zerg build of going early 4 gates and attacking with zealots to deny a 3rd was used ONCE during the tournament. It lost. I guess there wre only 5 PvZ games in the whole tournament, though, so don't read much into that!Again, focussing on Blink v T:So, whether you have your worker on the watch tower or not, it might be worthwhile having a force around there (especially if it's more marauder heavy - research concussive first?) to deny early 2 stalker + probe moveout. It seems that the blink build is only really powerful if there are actually stalkers there, and you can see that there aren't many other pylons around (the others were placed much earlier, maybe different builds?) then it might deny the build before it starts.I'm actually really interested in this aspect and I will be looking through all the maps over time to see if I can come up with the best scouting routes or locations to either shut down or disrupt particular builds.Protoss games seem to end up with more straight up aggression or defense. I assume this is because at the start there's a lot of aggressive openings and later on nobody wants to engage a deathball if they can help it:This one REALLY interests me.Check it out:More markedly:Again, pretty strongly on Heavy Rain:Finally, pray you don't spawn bottom left on Frost:So those are the questions that could think of to answer with the IEM games.I'm interested in questions you may have about high level analysis of games. Think about:- Build information- Building Placement- Maps- Player Stats- Anything else you can come up withAny questions on here I will reply to. If I can I'll add them to this post, too, so they're easily viewable.Thanks for reading! Post 2 will contain the same for Seat Story Cup! I will reduce you to a series of numbers.