One of the core aspects of the competitive game mode of CS:GO is the economy. Initially all players start off with $800 for the pistol round, immediately they are faced with an crucial decision to make: What should they buy? This responsibility follows them for the rest of the game as players may not always have the cash to purchase all the utility they may require. This has caused different methods of buying to be created, and although many of us are familiar with the types of buys, I believe that the a good size of our community does not understand the philosophy behind them. This post aims to deepen peoples understanding and allow them to come up with new and more creative ways to play the game. But first we need to make sure that we all understand the basics of the economic system in CS:GO.

Basics of CS:GO Economy

The following will be a basic overview of the way the economy works in CS:GO. If you feel like you are already educated on this topic feel free to skip to the next section.

At the absolute fundamental level you get money for winning a round and get considerably less money for losing a round. However this is not adequate information to devise an in-depth method of playing the game so I'll elaborate further. If either T or CT side wins the round by eliminating all of the enemies then they will receive $3250. If they instead win by either bomb defusal or detonation then they will receive $3500. Simple enough, right? However the round loss money is a bit more complicated. There is a round loss bonus, so for every round you lose in a row you gain an extra $500 on the original round loss bonus of $1400. For example: Losing 2 rounds in a row gives you $1900, losing 3 will give you $2400 and so on; this bonus caps off after losing 5 rounds in a row, the bonus being $3400. But that isn't everything. If the T side successfully plants the bomb and then loses the round the whole team gets an additional $800 on top of the money they would get when they lose the round.

The round end money bonuses aren't the only ways to earn money though. For every kill you get, you are awarded with a "kill bonus". This kill bonus changes depending on which weapon you used to achieve the kill. You could look over the table below or alternatively check on the buy screen in game to see the kill rewards for each weapon.

Weapon Reward Pistols (excluding CZ-75) $300 SMGs (excluding P90) $600 Shotguns $900 Rifles(excluding AWP) $300 CZ-75 $100 P90 $300 AWP $100 Knife $1500 Grenade $300

Pistol Round

You have $800 to spend, that might not seem like much but the decisions you make will affect the following 3 rounds. There are two possible builds to consider for the pistol round.

Kevlar/Raid boss

This buy involves buying armor over nades. The idea is to maximise your fragging capability and relying on your team to support you. Buying armor negates the effect of aim punch which will cause your model to stagger and throw off your aim, it also provides some damage resistance to bullets to the chest. These two factors should allow you to do most of the heavy fragging for your team in the pistol round. The downside of this buy is that you won't be able to buy any nades apart from a decoy which has very limited use in competitive mode. The lack of nades may leave you in a tough spot should you need to smoke an area of the map off or flash yourself out of a bad position.

Another form of this buy involves buying armor but also being dropped an upgraded pistol by your teammate. This will allow you to have the weapon advantage over your foes. You will hear this called the Raid Boss by casters.

Utility Player

This build will mean placing more importance on buying nades rather than Kevlar. The grenades you have bought will allow you to help your Kevlar teammate by supporting them. A typical utility player should buy a couple flashbangs and maybe a smoke. The flashes can be used to blind the enemies as the push on to the bomb site begins. Smokes on T side can be vital for certain tactics and executes. There are still more possibilities for the utility player though, they can opt to buy a defuse kit, something which is considered crucial for tournament time retakes. The Utility player is also the one who is the most likely to drop their teammate a upgraded pistol for the Raid Boss buy as mentioned above.

Across a team you will want a mixture of these two loadouts in the pistol round. You want to have fragging power but also want the players with Kevlar to be supported. Most pro teams will play with 1 or 2 Utility players based on if they have an execute planned or if they want to play with a more loose style. Currently the emphasis seems to be on frags, with more players buying Kevlar in the pistol round, but in the future we could see teams with more complex pistol round executes that require more utility players. As it stands now, teams should only really have 2 Utility players at the most. On CT side, one of these utility player should buy a defuse kit and possibly buy a P250 and drop it to a Kevlared teammate.

Reaction to the pistol round

After the pistol round concludes, the battle for economic dominance begins. It starts with what kind of buys you are going to have going into the next 2 or 3 rounds. Those buys will be dependent on your team's performance in the pistol round. If you manage to get the bomb down as Ts but still lost the round it is recommended to Eco the next round and have a full buy on the third round; This puts you on the most even ground possible and makes winning the match easier.

At least that's what most people have been thinking for the last year. Recently it has become popular to force buy on the second round after a bomb plant and loss on the pistol. The thinking behind this comes from the buff to SMGs, Shotguns and the Deagle. After the SMG/Shotgun buff, players have started to chose weapons such as the Nova, MP9 and MP7 to make money off what they believe to be an ecoing player. This would have been a safe bet to make, as around 6 months ago if Ts got the bomb down and lost on the pistol they would eco 95% of the time. But as people started to realise that players were trying to take advantage of the SMGs, they started force buying with Kevlar and an upgraded pistol or a scout. In theory, the force bought player will have the advantage over the player who bought the SMG, as the SMG's armor penetration is low and the force bought player can hold angles that give his weapon choice the advantage. However this strategy can be like shooting yourself in the foot if the opponents buy a Rifle such as a FAMAS, they will have the weapon advantage and will likely obliterate you. In this case you could be forced on to a double eco giving the other team a 0-4 lead for just winning the pistol round. It's a gamble to force buy on second, and, due to this, teams have started to have at least two players who buy rifles on second round to counter the second round force buy, which has lead to a return to the old meta of ecoing on the second round after a bomb plant.

A lot less thought goes into the early game if you lose the round without a bomb plant. There are only two popular approaches currently, and the thinking behind them is quite straightforward. The first of them is to take the double Eco and allow the enemy to win the next two rounds and to have a strong buy for yourself on the fourth round. The downside to this is that there is a higher possibility of the opponent building up a strong economy by using anti-Eco weapons meaning that if you win the fourth round you will still have to face a full buy on the fifth. The other approach attempts to leave the oppositions economy weaker on that fourth round, meaning that if you win that round the enemy will be forced on to a weaker buy. This is achieved by force buying on the second round after the loss. The aim in this round is to kill as many of the enemy team as possible so that they will have to rebuy the next round. The primary goal isn't to win the round but rather to damage their economy. The more players you kill in this round, the weaker their buys will become in the following rounds. If you lose that second round after force buying you should be able to have a decent buy on the fourth round after Ecoing on the third. That buy won't be as strong as the one you could have gained by double Ecoing, but this won't matter if you have done a good amount of damage on the force buy.

General Buys

These are the decisions you will have to make in the rest of the half, I have already mentioned them previously and almost everyone is familiar with most of them.

Full Buy

Possibly the easiest buy to understand, if you choose to full buy you have the required amount of money(Rifle: $2700/3100 + Kevlar/Helmet: $1000 + Full Nades: $1000= $4700/5100). This will give you everything you will need to play the way you want in the round. You will have all the nades necessary to execute onto a bombsite as the Ts or hold them off by smoking choke points as the CTs. If these things aren't enough to win they round (and they normally aren't), then you will have the best weapons available to you take the round away from the other team.

You may choose to add a Defuse kit or AWP depending on how you want to play that round or how much money you have in your bank. Alternatively if you are short of the minimum money you can sacrifice on the following aspects: Rifle(Buy a FAMAS or Galil instead of an AK-47 or M4) or if you are on CT side avoid spending £350 on a Helmet as the T side AK-47 is a one shot kill even with a helmet.

Eco

If you don't have enough money for a full buy you should choose to Eco. This means that you will buy close to nothing and save money for following round. Some may think of an Eco as a throwaway round but it can still have a significant impact on the rest of the game. Even if you don't win the Eco, if you manage to make it a close round where there are only 2 or 3 players left alive, then the other team's economy is notably decreased making it easier to break their bank. Eco rounds can still have an objective. Examples can be to get the bomb down (doing this gives everyone on your team an extra $800) or to isolate a player or two from the other team and steal their weapon to use in the following round.

Anti-Eco

An Anti-Eco round's main aim is to further your economic advantage over the opposition. Anti-Ecos take place when one team knows the other team is Ecoing and choses to buy weapons that have a high kill reward such as Shotguns and SMGs. The extra money from this round will help create a cushion for the team with the current economic advantage. This cushion will allow the team to buy if they lose a round or two in a row. Picking when to Anti-Eco is the key to its success. If you pick to Anti-Eco at the wrong time you make be facing people who have bought Kevlar and your SMGs will be as effective as nerf guns against them.

Picking when to Anti-Eco is a very hard skill to learn. Some people use "game sense" to determine when the opposition is Ecoing, while others use the statistics on the scoreboard (Round win history, how many people survived in each round or number of kills) and the weapons the enemy had the last round to decide when to Anti-Eco. It's my belief that looking at the statistics is more reliable than game sense as that can be thrown off by things such an unorganised enemy team.

Force Buy

If teams don't have enough money to full buy but need to win that round desperately you will see them force buy. Players will empty their banks on Kevlar and traditionally a pistol of their preference or (more recently) a Scout. The way players should play on force buys rounds is distinctively different from a normal round. The team who has force bought needs to do something to bring the situation into their advantage. This may include a quick push in a certain part of the map to take control or to hold off angles which benefit their weapon of choice (Close Quarters for a CZ and Long Ranges for a Scout). If the team wins the force buy, they are then on the road to regain economic stability. The way to do this is to chain round wins with 3 or more players left alive. If they lose however they may have to Eco for the next round or two giving the enemy even more of an advantage, not just on the scoreboard but also in economy.

Choosing when to force buy really depends on the players on the team and their own idea of how to play the economy. It is normally done when the team has already lost a couple rounds in a row, so their loss bonus is high, and they have an average of less than $3000. Some teams have a tendency to continue to force buy round after round, refusing to Eco; This can lead to an wipe out. On the other hand, some teams will be too conservative and never force buy, thus making it easier for the enemy to build up a really strong bank. The matter of Force Buy vs Eco is a very subjective matter and there may be no right answer, but I'm certain that neither option is 100% correct or incorrect.

Examples of good off-angles to hold with Scout and CZ-75; de_dust2, B ramp and de_inferno B Porch.

Quasi Buy

The Quasi Buy is probably the buy that people are the most unfamiliar with, most of us will have heard of it but not many are sure what its intention is. As the name suggests, the buy is very uncertain. Let's say that across the team the average money is $3400. Some players have more than that, others have less; that's not enough for a full buy, but you could still get a decent force buy from it. When doing a Quasi Buy, you will buy weapons with consideration to what your economy will be like the following round, so to leave around $2400 for the next round. This will give you a larger chance to win the round than a full eco would, but it will reduce the strength your next full buy. Another thing the Quasi Buy can help with is confusing the enemy's perception of your economy, which will make calling Anti-Ecos harder for them.

The way a Quasi Buy is played is very similar to a force buy, but the objective of it is much less defined. It's my belief that players almost treat a Quasi Buy as a throwaway. This may be because they know that they will have enough money to fully buy the next round and they just want to go for a big play that could win a round they didn't account for.

Overall this buy is very abstract and can be summarised as buying a lottery ticket. You have a small chance of winning big, but to do that you are spending a comparatively small amount of money which could be used for a better buy. I still prefer it to the idea of force buying though which can be likened to going all in on a terrible hand hoping that the other person will fold.

Hopefully sharing my thoughts about the buys that we make in CS have taught people something new and possibly inspired someone to put their own spin on the way we currently buy.

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