[hnick]

And it's actually really hard (from personal experience) to keep this up and have your money all spent and controlling your units all at the same time. So simply practicing this one simple rule makes you better at many aspects of the game because you're forced to scramble and keep up.

I actually had games where I was too focused on this where I hadn't made a single aggressive move, the opponent pushed and saw my massive army and just quit.

[bena]

Yeah, I was never amazing, but I played a decent amount of Brood War back in the day. So I had build orders, I knew of the importance of making workers and staying broke and expanding early.

We had my ex-wife's brother living with us for a while and he wanted to play StarCraft. I was like, "Sure, we can play 2v2 against the computer until you're comfortable". He was like "Nah, I've played Age of Empires, I know how RTS works, let's play 1v1." I tried to tell him, "StarCraft is fast". He insisted. So we played.

I built workers, sent a scout across the map, found his base. He was hoarding mineral until he could afford a barracks. I was pumping out workers. I built a secondary base in his expansion area, a barracks and a factory and staged a bunch of siege tanks along his opening, then drop-shipped several marines, firebats, and medics behind his mineral line.

He had just started building his second barracks. He sent his troops to try and handle the situation, then I pushed my siege tanks in from the other side and ruined his barracks.