So this blog is about what decisions you should take according to the current situation in the game. Most strategy guides tell you what army composition to get, what creepspots to take, how you should tech and so on. This is only part of the game. Many times you'll be in a position where you have the upper hand or actually be at a disadvantage and you'll want to win from both these situations.

First of all, you obviously have to have a way to find out whether you're in front or not. Sometimes it's easy, when you playing a mirror and you've killed 3 footmen to nothing, but sometimes it's not. For example, even if you've killed 3 footmen and you don't have a shop but all of your army is low on health and your opponent has just hired a panda and is coming for your base, you'll be at a temporary disadvantage until you can heal your units. It's something you learn with experience, but also something you can see from replays of experienced players. Just check the moments before the armies would meet. Who is the one going back? Why is he going back? These are often related to temporary disadvantages like when one of the players has just trained 3 units in 3 buildings and is waiting for them to join his army, when the militia is waiting to come, when the whisps are getting into position to detonate on the casters etc.

If you know you have a real disadvantage that you cannot overcome easily, there are a few limited options that you can take:
1) If you have a better economy than your opponent (e.g. you have an expo, he doesn't or you stay at 50 food and he's over it), then you may want to slow the game down.
This is most effectively done by efficient harassing. For example, you can harass using a zeppelin to drop units into the back of his base, you can use quick units or flying ones (raiders, wyverns, gryphons, destroyers) to harass his economy further, thereby increasing your economic advantage. It's best to avoid battles until you can gather a bigger army than his, so you'll want to avoid skirmishes.
2) If you have lost units and your opponent hasn't.
This means you don't want to wait until his army becomes bigger. There is of course no sure way to win this because if there were, losing early would mean winning the game. But there are a couple of things you can try to do to get back. You can harass the base, but it's more expensive for you if you have to use tps. You don't have an economic advantage in this scenario, so you'll be out as much gold as your opponent and your army will stay smaller. The things to do in this case are rather limited. the best option is to get a good creepjack on your opponent. This has to be prepared with scouting, so you'll want to increase your scouting when you have a disadvantage. The other main option is exactly the opposite. You creep a big, dangerous camp to get the advantage back through experience and items. To pull this off in many games, you'll also need to know whether your opponent is going to creepjack you or not, so scouting is again important.

3) Your tech is late, but you have more T1 units.
In this case, it depends on how late your T2 tech is. If it's only a few tens of seconds late (