100 Achievement Points Total

2 Insane AI

The first to be examined is the 2 Insane AI achievement. In this, you need to defeat two Insane AI at the same time. Luckily, you don’t need to defeat any more of these at once, but this is hard enough.

Naturally, we’re going to use our Photon Cannon rush strategy again, but like an episode if Idol, map selection can really make or break this. I find that people naturally tend to select a 2v2 map when trying to complete this, however there aren’t any in the map pool that are as effective as: Tempest.

Tempest, if you get a close spawn position that you scout first time, has an exceptionally close starting position for your two enemies. The AI also start divided from each other and both have a low ground position that has easy access to both opponents Nexus’. Ideal really!

The beautiful thing is, if you are having trouble with this achievement and find your enemy isn’t in a close spawn location, that’s fine. You can just start again. Once you do get it, you’ll find it is the easiest map by far.

Make sure you select both your opponents as being Protoss, of all three races they are the most vulnerable to a cannon rush, compared with Zerg who have creep and Terran who have such early game range units.

As per all Cannon rush strategies we will be pulling a probe off the line ASAP and sending him off to build a proxy Pylon outside the enemy base on the low ground to be followed by a Forge ASAP. Whenever you can, build and chronoboost Probes, as long as you don’t delay any structures. Once you have a Forge up, build two Cannons on the low ground with an approximate 10-15s gap between commencing the two. Try to keep your buildings designed so that it is difficult for melee units to attack you cannons, without compromising the range of your Pylon power or your Cannons reach.

Then, just before your first Cannon completes, build a third Cannon on the high ground. By the time the Probes arrive, the enemy will see the completed first Cannon and waste even more time running down the ramp after it only to find themselves out of their depth. Like dominoes, your 2nd cannon will have completed (this is why we waited 10-15s), leaving the enemy Probes having bitten off more than they could chew.

Meanwhile, keep pushing with your Cannons, leap frogging with the construction of Pylons and Cannons towards the enemy Nexus.

The important note to keep in mind, is not to spend any longer on your first opponent than is necessary. The moment the AI’s Nexus is within range of Photon Cannons (or is expecting to be once some more warp in), move onto the remaining enemy without delay.

We then use the same strategy, being a little more conservative with our Cannon usage, using 4 or more Cannons before pushing further forward with a Pylon.

If you feel you have done well, but cannot make the final push towards the enemy Nexus, not all is lost. Your last ditch effort can involve teching immediately to Void Rays and try to use Hit & Run tactics on the enemy Nexus whilst avoiding engagements with the main army. You will have some time up your sleeve while the enemy attempts to destroy your existing cannons, however they won’t last long.

4 Very Hard AI

This is a very difficult achievement to attain and luck plays a significant component, especially since the release of patch 1.4 and the Immortal range buff that came with it.

We will be playing on Megaton for this one, with all our opponents being Protoss once more.

Again, we are going for a Cannon Rush strategy but this one will be a bit more difficult.

Pull a probe off the line at about 7 supply, your objective is to get as much early game mining in as possible without getting substantially supply blocked. Then build a Pylon on the low ground of the opponent nearest the small back entrance. Get a Forge up ASAP and using the same strategy as before you will be getting two Cannons on the low ground and as they are completing get a cannon on the high ground. Whilst doing all of this and keep squeezing in Probes (using Chronoboost if available) wherever you can, you’ll find you have more scope to do so compared to the 2 Insane achievement, as the additional mining time at the start will mean you’ve had more probes mining.

Note: Earlier online tutorials recommend pushing heavily up through the middle, but this is too difficult since the AI handle aggressive structures better than they used to.

Your third Cannon (that one on the high ground) should have prevented all mining, so we can consider that opponent completely dead. The ideal mentality here is to consider the best path to take down all opponents ASAP. If we consider the nearest opponent (whose mineral line is quite exposed) our second opponent and his only living neighbour the third opponent, you should be moving towards the nearest possible point to your fourth opponent, whilst still being in range of your third. The idea being, this should make an efficient arc which has built up from your very initial cannons and will move right down the middle of the map. An easy mistake to make is to focus too hard on the next opponent and not on the most challenging end goal. In moving this way towards your third opponent, it will only take a cannon or two to completely disable your second opponent, without more than one additional pylon.

Always be sure to only build Cannons where it is intelligent to do so, it you feel you cannot place a cannon in a position where it will be very useful, simply spend the money on probes or if your mineral line is saturated then save for more cannons in the right places later.

Now, here is where the luck component comes in. Sometimes your third and fourth opponents will include Immortals in their unit mix, if that is the case the achievement is very difficult to attain. They are very effective against Cannons. By this stage, it’s up to you as to whether you continue with Cannons, or if you wish to attempt a transition at home into Void Rays with a plan to hit and run their main base. If you feel the enemy is too hard to overcome, you can always restart and hope for better luck next time.

The enemy does not do a good job of it’s expansion timing, so after the 20 min mark you should be keeping in mind that they will have or will be expanding, likely to their nearest expansion. A pylon and a couple of cannons will do the job here. By preventing this, they will be getting mined out and not have the wisdom to expand as you can.

An alternative strategy, put forward by Artreides of the Team Liquid forums is to play TvZZZZ on Lava Flow expand immediately to an island and build mass Thors to starve out the 4 enemies taking advantage of the ultra cost-effective exchange between Thors and Zerg air.

If you have a request for an achievement you would like to see covered or have any questions/comments about this one be sure to leave a comment below!

In this episode of Achievement Hunters Highlander looks at how to get the 4v4 Kin vs Insane AI and 4v4 vs Insane AI Kin achievements. To clarify, the achievements for being all the same race and for defeating all of the same race against the Insane AI.

This achievement is one which can seem quite challenging, but if you know your way around and a few bits and pieces, it’s really quite easy. The pay off is good too, for if you take the lessons and apply them to each difficulty and the similar 3v3 achievements, you can get a quick sweep of 160 achievement points!

Background

Before I get stuck into the achievements, I’ll let you in on a little interesting fact that should not be used in a balance argument! On all difficulties when the match is even a Terran AI will always beat a Protoss or a Zerg AI, and a Protoss AI will always beat a Zerg AI. Or, simply put.

Terran AI > Protoss AI > Zerg AI

Precisely why this is the case I think has to do with how the AI engages, the challenges for it using melee units and it’s type of air units not giving it the vision it wants of the high ground. But, we won’t go too deep here, you just need to know the principal.

For both of these achievements, we are going to be playing on the map Megaton. Why this map? Well, when you are Protoss it is the best available map for good cannon rushing positions. For when playing as Terran or Zerg on Insane difficulty, it is ideal to have your opponents close together.

How To

The first of these achievements is the 4v4 Kin vs Insane AI.

To achieve this, we need to play as 4 Protoss, 4 Zerg and 4 Terran against any combinations of Insane AI.

The second of these achivements is the 4v4 vs Insane AI Kin

To achieve this, we can use any combination of races but must defeat 4 Protoss, 4 Zerg and 4 Terran.

So, the quickest way to achieve both of these achievements in only three games is to play these as complete mirror matches. That is PPPPvPPPP, ZZZZvZZZZ and TTTTvTTTT.

When playing as Protoss you will be using the Cannon Rush strategy found in the first video in the series: Achievement Hunters: Insane AI 3v3 Co-op Streak (http://learningsc2.com/achievements/achievement-hunters-insane-ai-3v3-co-op-streak/). You will be able to take out one opponent with ease and be able to start putting pressure on a second opponent while you wait for your teammates to build up and come to dominate the rest. Once your Cannon Rush strategy isn’t worth persuing any further, you should transition to Void Rays and be mindful of sticking together with you allies and giving them vision of the high ground when they foolishly don’t try to.

When playing as Zerg, you will need to use the aggro Extractor strategy to distract the enemy. Take a drone or two ASAP and use them to build extractors in the opponents base. They will send Drone’s from miles around to take out such a terrible threat. All you have to do is cancel just before it dies and get your drone back on the geyser as an extractor before it gets killed. Repeating that well should be enough to give your teammates enough of an advantage to win. Once they have Zerglings out or your trick fails, you can transition to either Speedlings or Mutalisks and harass any attempts the enemy makes to expand and be mindful to help your allies out with some high ground vision.

For Terran, it gets a little bit trickier.

When playing as Terran, you’ll want to use a very similar to the aggro Extractor strategy however instead of an Extractor you will use a Supply Depot (or Engineering Bay if you can spare the extra minerals) and put these buildings on the high ground at the main entrance to the enemy base. That will create a reacion from all four enemies, so you need to watch your SCV very closely to use the Halt (T) command at the first sign of trouble and have him run away.

After you cannot persue that strategy further rush to banshees and ask your allies (using the button in the top right hand corner) to send you gas as soon as the game reaches 5mins). Focus your efforts on supporting your allies, harassing expansions/mineral lines and giving vision of the high ground.

I personally found trying to use this strategy significantly harder in a TvT environment than the other mirror match ups.

As a result, instead of playin this as a mirror, for anyone who finds this difficult you can do the following as I did:

For the win playing as all Terran, you can do this playing against four Zerg (TTTTvZZZZ). Still follow the same steps as above, but you won’t need to do this as well as your Terran buddies will have the race advantage over Zerg which I mentioned earlier.

For the win playing against all Terran, retain your Terran allies, but you yourself can select Protoss (PTTTvTTTT) Just use the simple Photon Cannon rush to neutralise one of the Terran opponents. After that, as before, you can just tech to Void Rays to help out.

Other notes

This set of achievements is unique in one way, defeating the Insane AI will not grant you the achievements for the lower difficulties. This was changed in a later patch so that you now have to fight with even allies/opponents at each level.

None of the aggressive tricks to distract workers will work below Insane difficulty however the other strategies remain valid. If you are ever having trouble defeating a Kin team, just remember that the strongest team is TTTP with you as Protoss using a Cannon Rush. If you are having trouble using a Kin team, don’t forget that ZZZZ are the weakest opponents.

When you aren’t using the aggressive trick, Outpost likely becomes the favourite map for a 4v4 as it divides your opponents making them easy to conquer for your more organised team (that is, a team where at least two armies stick together (you and at least one AI)).

For the similar 3v3 achievements you will want to pick Cinder Fortress on Insane difficulty or Frontier on lower difficulties.

Patch 1.4 Update:

As Zerg:

Insane AI Workers no longer react to a gas steal, however for this achievement using an Evolution Chamber is just as effective.

For best results, place it as close to a wall/mineral line chokepoint as possible. It will help it to last longer and make your life easier to keep the drone alive before rebuilding. Don’t forget that if it looks trapped, you can use the Mining-Pathing Trick (by clicking on a mineral patch your workers will not be blocked by enemy units and pass straight through them).

As Terran:

Insane AI Workers will now persue your SCV forever unless they are distracted by another target. Use this to your advantage and run your first SCV all over the map until you or your allies have an army and can trap them. Whilst you are doing that with your first SCV, take a second to distract another wave of workers with the same trick.

Replays

PPPP v PPPP 
ZZZZ v ZZZZ 
TTTT v ZZZZ 
PTTT v TTTT 

If you enjoyed this or any of Highlander’s guides or if you have a suggestion for an achievement you would like to see covered let us know in the comments section below!

I recently had a very good question asked of me on the SEA Forums. BlackTalyn, who had not yet started online multiplayer, wanted to know whether practicing against the computer AI was a good way to prepare for online play, or whether it would teach bad habits. He also wondered the same about practice league. Knowing that he was probably eager to get started I provided a short answer, but I also wanted to write a more detailed response here as it is quite a relevant question for brand new players. So in this article I will discuss the above options for preparing for multiplayer as well as a few more.

Playing the Computer AI

Playing against the computer AI can be an excellent way to prepare for online multiplayer provided you are aware of the differences between the AI and human players. Basically what you do to defeat the AI is quite different from what you will have to do to defeat a human opponent. The AI is predictable and uses very simple strategies that do not employ any of the tricks that human players use.

What is good about playing the AI:

You will never see the computer AI Proxy Zealot-Cannon rush like this person.

• Learn the units, hotkeys, and mechanics of each race with no pressure. I highly recommend playing at least a few games as each race before you decide which one to play online. See my article on the three races for more info on choosing a race.
• The AI (Medium and Hard) will do frequent and decently sized attacks. These attacks are predictable but can still be pretty hard to defend if you do not play well enough. If you can defend these attacks you are on your way to doing so online.
• You can practice you’re opening over and over. Set the AI to very easy and you can practice and practice until you’re opening is smooth. The first 10 mins of online games can be quite difficult when you first start, seconds can mean the difference between losing or defending an early attack. A tight opening can help you dominate this portion of the game.

I recommend playing against the AI for a while before going online. Before I went online I played a few games against the Easy, Medium and Hard AI and it helped me build my familiarity with the game and get my confidence up. Just remember that the AI cannot prepare you for all of the wacky and tricky things that your opponents will do online.

Challenges are mainly micro-focused.

Completing the Challenges

The challenges are a series of specially designed scenarios for the purpose of practicing certain skills. They were added to the game by Blizzard to help prepare new players for online play, so use them!

If there is a problem with the challenges however, it’s that they too heavily emphasise micro (unit control) which is actually less important for beginners then macro (production). Only one or two challenges focus on macro and even then they only focus on the opening few minutes of the game. As such the challenges will not teach you the skills required for constant production in the later stages of games.

I recommend trying to get a silver rating in most of the matches, particularly Rush defence and Opening Gambit. You can always come back and polish your skills by going for golds later on.

Watching Games/Replays

At any stage in your Starcraft 2 career watching casts of matches or replays is an excellent way to improve. Usually you are looking for new strategies, tricks, and other specific things. However, when you are just beginning the goal of watching games and replays is not to give you specific insight or even strategies, but rather to give you an idea of what the game is about.

So try not to pay too close attention to all the specific details of the games you watch. Focus instead on the broad strokes of play and the general way that matches play out. For example, if you notice that one player decides to build a second base really early take note of how that impacts the game. “Oh, he built a second base really quickly and almost died there for a while but later on he had a heaps bigger army”. Those are the types of things you want to take notice of because it gives you a fundamental understanding of the game to build upon. As such watching games and replays is the best thing you can do early on to improve your understanding of the game.

Want to know where to get videos of games or replays to download? Head to my Learning Resources section.

Playing in the Practice League

I am going to come right out and say that I do not recommend the practice league for preparing for multiplayer Starcraft 2. Practice league is designed as a way to ease very new players into the game with it’s lower speed setting and destructible rocks to prevent early attacks. I would only recommend this to players who have never played against a human before and are having severe confidence issues or to people who are looking for a super casual playing experience.

Unfortunately for the vast majority of players the design of the practice league creates bad habits such as not defending early on in the game or being too passive. The lower speed setting I feel just makes the real thing seem much more hectic once you do move on. I played a few (maybe ten) practice league matches and I would have preferred that I had just skipped it entirely, it has taken me a long time to break away from the passiveness of those games.

Preparing Mentally

Bronze league is nothing to be ashamed of!

All of the above things will help to prepare you mentally for online play and will help you feel more confident. But you should remember that it’s not your goal to go in and win a heap of matches because you are super prepared. The point of the above preparation is only to give you an appreciation of the game and an understanding of why you will lose most of your matches. Thats right, it is very likely that you will lose a lot of matches when you begin, particularly your placement matches.

Hopefully all of your preparation and understanding of the game will allow you to see this as a challenge to overcome rather than a deterrence to playing again. I get the feeling that those initial losses are a big deciding factor in whether new players come back for more. Hopefully by being better prepared this hurdle can be overcome.

Do you know anyone who is about to start playing online or has lost a heap of matches early on and has lost interest? If so share this article with them and hopefully we can get more people playing and loving SC2.