Control Groups

Control Groups in SCII are much easier to use than in SCI and BW, for sure.  But still, they aren't necessarily explained as well as they could be.  By far, the most helpful thing I have learned so far is how to put your production buildings into control groups.  This means that you can be out in the field managing your units in an engagement (I don't really understand the subtleties of micro yet, so I will just say "watching" for now) and still be producing units.

Beginners must learn macro, including having a bustling economy.  This means constant worker production, timely expansions, and wise tech upgrades.  Once you get this down, however, you find yourself with extra income.  Ideally, you will never have more than 400 gas or minerals stored in your bank, all available funds will be devoted to production.

The other problem, however, is that I have been recently hearing about the second danger of abusing production queues.  Sure, having five siege tanks queued up spends all your resources, but it isn't really that helpful, since you have no new units to show for it.  Plus, you can't use this money for anything else. Suppose the first tank produces and now you realize a turret would be helpful, first you must cancel the queued tanks, then build turrets.  A better idea is to never have more than one or two items in a queue, and to spend excess resources on additional production facilities.

As this ThinkingGamer video explains, production building control groups solves this problem, almost entirely.  An added benefit is that the game naturally queues up units evenly.  If you have two Factories, and build six helions, three will queue in each without any input from you.  Even better, you can use [Tab] to cycle between different types of buildings.

Two small notes: First of all, I tend to not control group my upgrade buildings, simply because I like to keep the focus entirely on production, and grab upgrades if I have a second.  At my current level, pumping units and workers is enough to keep me plenty busy, forget the tech tree and expanding.  Secondly, as a Zerg player, I like to make two groups of hatcheries.  My 4 group are my harvesting hatcheries, with which I produce mainly drones and overlords, and then I put my production hatcheries in my 5 group.  These are off-position hatcheries designed just for larvae production.  The reason for this is two-fold.  First, I avoid producing drones that then have to travel to minerals, and second, I can waypoint my attack units separately from my overlords.

Watch the video, check out TheThinkingGamer on YouTube, and let me know how you use control groups by leaving a comment.