Lazy Smurf is a much better player, but I can't nail down what he is doing so much better than me. Getting my comm out alone at the end is besides the point. I was already in trouble. I need help recognizing what I did wrong so I can elevate my game.
In the early game, lazysmurf utilized the exiting reclaimable sources of metal far better than you. He put engineers on patrol until all of the metal was reclaimed. Conversely, you chose to reclaim a few piece and then sent your engineer off cap metal sources with extractors.
Here is what was key about the metal reclaiming: note that at 3:30 he has already converted that metal lead into an energy production lead of ~100. After that it was all down hill economically. He was able to continuously ramp up his energy/metal production significantly ahead of yours. Through out the game he maintained 3 engineers building energy and 1 engineer building mass fabs. This allowed him over the course of a few minutes to out produce you while matching your military power.
Thank you. I just realized that those rocks on Open Palms are a key to success. I didn't realize that reclaim was such a factor on theta. Winter Duel was the only map where I actively reclaimed everything (no wonder it's my best map).
