on the ghostlake game, he simply outplayed you in lategame. I thought you had the game easy when u already had his tc down + had EQ coming soon.
The reason why you couldn't keep pushing and finish him off is because you lacked building spam ^^. But you know that since as soon as u got pushed back u started spamming buildings xD.
Anyways, i'm not a fan of both of your guys' strategy during classical. It's 1 mine ghostlake with open and unprotected gold. If one of you went full hips -> gg gold starve. Even if he goes heroic early while he still has 700+/- gold in his starting mine so he can make podromos, all you do is go mass hips for uber raiding (to delay his heroic time even further) and then transition into hips/tox to finish the gold starve IF he can make pods. When u do this, u have to micro ur hips well and focus fire the tox onto the pods (super low pierce armor).
I think the meta-game of aom and aot nowadays is really pansy (im not talking about you specifically, viper
, just making a general observation). U rarely see strong and aggressive strats anymore like rushes and such. Everyone just booms and plays lame and boring :S. I dont like it.
but anyways, 1 more comment on this game: structure your eco different when you go into classical. (you should've made a 2nd archery range if u were going hip/tox. He simply wasn't aggressive, which was to your benefit cuz he could've done some serious damage). Anyways so lets say you go 2 stable 2 archery range -> this is better on closed maps like alfheim, on open maps like this specific ghostlake one, a full hip army would win a battle. anyways enough of the tangents 11. So lets say you have 2 stable 2 archery. You had 2 on gold and 6 on wood going into classical (the house builder went to goold after). That leaves you too wood heavy and not enough gold to keep the proper ratio of units being created, imo. 80 gold hips get pretty darn expensive lol, and if your opponent is making stables (which u should scout as soon as u see him advance) you'll know that you need a strong hip force early because tox wont be much benefit until you have a nice chunk of them. So ya, having a more proper eco that will supplement your unit choice is important. Imo, i dont think tox/hips is a good choice for this specific map because of how open it was + gold placement, but whatever.
2nd game: nice goat steal XD! if u think about it, he can just ss his goats back lol, so i think its a titch more important to do some hunt scouting+ as much goat stealing as u can. besides, he has ptah farms too.... so ya...
hmm okay. so here's my interpretation of the map: all the gold is really close together, so i want to gold starve him. to do that ill need to get past ancestors and some early pressure from mig units (unless he cf's, which ill need to have better micro than him to beat). Anyways, regardless what he chooses to do, im going to build my stables/archeries farther forward so that i have better reinforcements when fighting happens. Plus, im going to wall the middle so he cant get to that mine + i can run behind it during ancestors. You can either go HARD with classical hips and not let him get the 2nd mine innitially -> your heroic time is later, or you can force him to use defensive ancestors, earlier heroic time, come back with 2 god powers and some counter-units to take the gold mines away from him. I'm not sure which i would choose, it depends on my mood, what im able to do with my economy and such beforehand, etc. But both are viable options. Perhaps the 2nd is a bit more safe, but hips are a very strong unit, so ya, when massed they're op
So, you basically did a version of option #2. Some light early pressure, forcing him to use ancestors to secure the mine, etc. The part where you lost the game is that you weren't micro'ing well enough -> chiron + ajax need to be killing ancestor units, not human units. Plus, if you built your military buildings closer to the action -> your reinforcements come earlier, your pressure is stronger, you can hold the gold starve -> gg.
I mean, of course your macro can be better, everyone's can lol (except magyar....). But i think in these 2 games, your micro and your military building issues cost you the game.
I think a more aggressive strategy would have won both games pretty handily, but whatever 11. So ya
Hopefully someone else will comment too, and maybe ocmment on my comments