Are they moving at the speed of air or ground? How closely are they packed? How far off the ground are they? Little details like this will tell you so much about the threat before you even see it. With intelligence you can act – without it you are fumbling in the dark and you will lose. You want to know where their base is, what force composition they’re building towards, where their armies are, when they’re teching and whether they’re leaving the planet. There is no scouting phase the time for scouting is always. If you know their plan before they carry it out then you can counter it, and likewise you should be maintaining the element of surprise for as long as possible and preventing your opponent from scouting you. Insert some Sun Tzu quotes here because this is where we’re going to talk about the importance of both scouting your enemy, but also denying the enemy intelligence on your operations. A map with lots of chokes brings out mass Ants, while dispersed metal sees you making Dox raids and keeping your opponent on their toes. If you’re vulnerable to the same then you start bringing out Spinners, but if you haven’t sighted air then you replace those Spinners with additional Ants. If you’re dominating the skies then you switch to Bumblebees.

You’re not mindlessly adhering to the meta, rather your composition is adjusted on the fly. You don’t place your bombers on the frontlines where they can be sniped by fighters, they’re held a little further back. A choke into your base makes a good point to position the troops and prevent raids. If the metal is between you and the enemy then you might be rallying your troops there to hold it for your fabber. At this level you’re smarter than that, your rally points more considered.

Before you would have troops pouring out the factory before lassoing them for battle.

With knowledge you know what to put in your army, but at this level you know where to put it as well.

How to play planetary annihilation