In this article, I will be referring to units from WarCraft III, but the ideas and concepts discussed are equally applicable to any Real-Time Strategy game.

Why Use Micro?

What separates a merely good players from a great one? The answer is micromanagement ("micro" for short). With good micro skills, when two players meet in battle with 5 Grunts each, the player with good micro skills can easily win the battle with 4 Grunts left over, instead of just 1-2 Grunts left over.

How is this possible? Simply by using the following techniques.

Technique #1 - Dancing

A fully upgraded Grunt does an average of 30 damage per hit. Now, it doesn't matter if the Grunt has full health of 800 hitpoints, or critical health with only 5 hitpoints. The Grunt will still attack at 30 damage.

Now think about this for a minute. You can reduce the damage done by an opposing army more quickly by focusing your attacks on one unit at a time. This will kill the opposing army more quickly than if you were to spread the damage across the entire army.

Now that you know this fact, you can take advantage of it by not allowing the enemy to kill any of your units. When one of your Grunt's health is falling, select him by double clicking his icon in the status window, then run him away from the enemy until the enemy units select a new target. Once the enemy has begun attacking a different Grunt, bring the damaged Grunt back up and begin attacking again. Even if your Grunt only has 1 hitpoint left, he's still doing 30 damage each attack.

This technique also works with and against ranged units. Keep in mind that if you're fighting ranged units with melee units, you need to "dance" your units sooner than against melee units. This is because the ranged opponents will still get a hit or two in while you're running away...but once they select a new target, you quickly bring your unit back.

The term "dancing" comes from when two players micro ranged units vs. ranged units. When the army's are microed, they appear to be dancing with/around one another. An added benefit of this micro is that it costs the enemy unit time, since it takes a small amount of time to acquire a new target. This small amount of time adds up over a long battle. You can even preemptively micro back ranged units, so that the enemy melee unit does not even get to attack.

Technique #2 - Focus Fire

Now that you know how to dance your units, you need to learn how to the exact opposite tactic, called Focus Firing. As previously discussed, killing an army one unit at a time will kill the army much faster than if you let the damage be spread over the entire army.

Just select a group of Headhunters and right click on an enemy unit so they'll attack it all at once. Keep in mind that melee units (like Grunts) can only attack if they're touching the enemy, so if you tell 15 Grunts to attack one Huntress, only half of them will actually be attacking the Huntress, while the other half walk around looking for a path to the Huntress and not attacking anything. So, when attacking with melee units, you need to select smaller groups than when attacking with ranged units.

Seige units are especially prone to getting owned by focus fire, as they are slow moving and often have a minimum attack range. Players will run a small group of Grunts directly up to a Catapult...and the Catapult cannot attack, because they're too close.

One thing that you do have to be careful of, when focus firing. You need to make sure that if the enemy begins to micro his units and run them away from the battle, you immediately select a new target, so that you don't waste time/units chasing the fleeing unit. However, as soon as the unit returns, then you can re-focus fire on it.

Technique #3 - Flanking

What is Flanking? Flanking the enemy is the art of surrounding your enemy to maximize the rate of attack (and consequently, damage).

First up: [Melee vs Melee] or [Melee vs Ranged] or [Ranged vs Ranged].

In a battle where you have several more Grunts than the opponent does, what you should do is to move your units past the enemy units, then when your units are about halfway past the enemy, collaps your formation by attack-moving toward the enemy. This will cause ALL of your Grunts to begin attacking at once. This will help prevent the A.I. or terrain from working against you, by allowing you to attack all at once instead of one at a time, as they arrive. (Note: WarCraft III's "formation" feature is a concept that, although VASTLY improved over WarCraft II and StarCraft, is still not perfect. So, even though you won't gain QUITE as much advantage by Flanking in WarCraft III as you will in StarCraft, Flanking your opponent is a tactic you should practice.)

In a battle where you have several fewer Grunts than your opponent does, what you should do is try to find some terrain where your opponent cannot run past your formation (i.e. in a choke point) By not letting the opponent flank you, even though he may have more units, not all of them can attack at the same time. So, even though you'll still lose the battle, you will take out several more enemy units than if his superior numbers had succeeded in flanking you.

Next up: [Ranged vs Melee].

In a battle where you have HeadHunters and your opponent has Grunts, you need to make sure that your opponent does not try to flank you. If you see the enemy trying to do so, you should probably choose to run, and use tactics I discussed earlier in the "Dancing" section.

Technique #4 - Hotkeys

Knowing and using Hotkeys is probably the best way to increase the speed at which you build your base, and give orders to your units. You should get to know all of the hotkeys for each race...but you should also assign units to group hotkeys (#1-0). Put Spellcasters with Spellcasters, Melee with Melee, and Ranged with Ranged units. This way, you can focus fire your ranged and melee units, as well as effectively casting spells. Also, remember that keys F1-F3 are automatically hotkeyed to your heros, and F8 is the "select idle peon" hotkey. BackSpace will cycle through your Town Halls.

How Can I Practice My Micro?

Download the fairly popular Micro Wars War3 scenario (Put it in the SCENARIO folder. If practicing offline, and by yourself, when you begin the game, set all player slots to 'OPEN'). Play the map by yourself, or on B.net against other players. It will allow you to practice your micro in small, controlled, battles, but the knowledge will carry over to real battles.