Your early rush failed and left you behind in macro. Perhaps you made a micro-related blunder when attacking your opponent and are now behind. Or perhaps your opponent has an extra expansion or two on you and you are behind at the macro level.

Your first thought may be to panic, and this emotional response is right in the sense that you do need to do something. However, mindlessly doing a last ditch attack is probably the worst thing you could do. Take a deep breath and figure out a strategy for how to come back.

Step One: Stay Alive

The first step when you are behind is to make sure you dont get finished off. While this of course depends on the circumstances of the game, figure out how much you should invest in defenses. If your opponent launches an attack on you and fails, this may help you get back to even. Do some scouting to see if you think your opponent will attack and where he might attack. If aggression seems likely, invest in defenses to stay alive and hopefully counter-cripple your opponent.

Step Two: Figure Out Your Best Strategy To Gamble On

After doing your best to stay alive, figure out the way you think you may win. Perhaps your opponent is over-investing in land-to-land units and you should throw a last ditch effort into building a lot of air units that can attack land.

If you think your opponent is turtling, gamble that he wont launch an attack soon and expand quickly. Sure, if you are wrong and he attacks you, you may lose. However, you are behind currently and wont win unless you do something risky. By expanding quickly, you may get yourself a macro advantage in about 5 minutes time and can turn the tables on your opponent.

When you are behind, you cant expect to do a standard strategy and beat your opponent. You will likely need to gamble one on strategy to take avantage of a mistake your opponent hopefully makes. It may be pursuing an aggressive expansionary strategy if your opponent is too hesitant to attack you, an air-based assault if he is too focused on land units, or perhaps a cloaked/stealth assault if your opponent is ill-equipped with detectors. Either way, youll likely need to gamble on a strategy and leave yourself exposed someway and just hope your opponent makes a mistake.