[H] TvZ basic understanding

http://drop.sc/184908
so here is a replay of me desperately trying to play a tvz recently. im so unhappy with my tvz right now that i lose it basically when the game is loading as i get frustrated just by the sight of my opponent being zerg. even though im masters, i tend to lose to platinum level players right now.
this replay (as its still fresh in my mind) is a good example of what happens in my tvz games 99% of the time. i will briefly summarize what happens:
i FE and apply marine pressure, as my opponent is pretty bad at micro he loses a lot more than he should, in this case 2 overlords, several lings and a drone (wtf).
i normally follow this up with a bio timing or a starport for drops. in this game i retreat with my bio as i see he has 5 or so infestors with enough energy to fungal me forever and drop him several times.
each time i kill chunks of his drones or queens but as he goes for mass lings, his army takes around 3 seconds to reach different edges of his base. he permanently floats 2k minerals though and i scare him enough that he proceeds to builds a lot of army and tech and forgets about his drones. this leads in me having more income than him for the first 20 minutes of the game. i feel ahead and proceed to build mmm/thor and push him. this is where the fun begins in EVERY game.

I guess im just not able to figure out how to play against ling infestor, but if i split my army lings kill me and if i dont, infestors kill me. i cant engage a zerg army for the sake of my life ( i was pretty good at it when muta ling bling was popular). i think infestors make very bad players have good trade results in fights because they totally depend on your opponent making mistakes. if you catch them offguard you win, otherwise your infestors are pretty much useless (so they basically kill micro a lot of times. i hate them. sorry for the rant).
i begin to trade poorly, though i still try to kill drones and stuff at his expos as in good old muta ling bling days.
funny enough although he wins every engagement in the game he still loses it because his decision making is the most awful thing i have seen in a while. it is one of the few games i won against zerg, but thats not because i know how to play tvz, just because i have a clue of crisis management. what happens before he loses all of his bases and then his army (so the midgame) is basically what kills me every single game.

what i think i do very wrong in this game and in the others i play: (TLDR)
1. my macro is very very bad. this is funny because in tvt and tvp it is most of the time really really crisp and good. it was still better than his in this game though..

2. i dont exactly know a good midgame transition and i lack a general plan on how to beat zerg. this is by far the most important point i think because it leads to the third one:

3. my engagements are terrible. i dont understand how to engage lings and infestors for the sake of my life.

im so disappointed with myself being unable to win the most basic tvzs right now that i begin to hate the zerg race just as much as i used to hate protoss when i was unable to understand how to play tvps.. but as i figured that out pretty well now im confident that your tips can help me improve. thank you in advance and please forgive my zerg hate and dont take it personally. i love all of you, i played z in bw aswell

Last edit: 2012-05-23 02:30:06

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ImANinjaBich United States. May 23 2012 02:42. Posts 174

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honestly i would watch the dail day 9 did last night 466 i believe. watch illusion deny sheths 3rd. sheth is forced to basically just straight make lings and infestors. really he was able to deny it for a long time with just 6 hellions and sheth sort of starved. Daily 466 will help you a lot. he can say far more than me. what i took most out of it was map control. take the center and keep it.

http://day9.tv/archives/ 466 is the first up there

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Last edit: 2012-05-23 02:45:04

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Morfildur Germany. May 23 2012 02:45. Posts 3489

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Watch your mineral count at 6 minutes: It is at 1000.
You don't convert your natural CC into an OC for basically an eternity.

Then you don't build tanks until around 12 minutes and your tank production is very sporadic.
Around 17:30 you attack with the huge number of 2 tanks (+ bio) and don't even siege one tank for the longest time but you still trade ok.
Then you produce Thors for no apparent reason which delays your 3/3 for a long time.

So if every game looks similar:

GET TANKS. Seriously. They are the backbone of TvZ. You can't really win without them. The last 15 minutes of the game you were only producing marines and marauders, i.e. infestor and ling fodder. Once you have 5-6 tanks you can focus fire infestors and/or banelings and slowly push forward.

"Remember kids, the 3 most important things for becoming a good player: Micro, Macro and always take your Dailies!" - Rastaban

HappyMiku United States. May 23 2012 03:04. Posts 10

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When you go for your MMM Thor push you are using gas where it shouldn't be used. Marads get eaten by lings while doing minimum damage where 2 marines would help a lot more for the same mineral count and with 0 gas used. Thors are also very bad against lings as well and fungal will stop it letting lings get an easy surround. What I suggest is dropping the thor and marads for Ghost and tanks. You'll need to always scan ahead to not get caught off guard. if you see an infestor that you can snipe well of course snipe it. Trading energy for such a high gas unit is always good. Before engaging you need to scan your opponents army and try to let your ghost get a good position to either EMP or snipe the infestors. you can do so by either cloak first or just deny enough creep so they won't see it coming. Have your tanks target infestors before lings making it a lot easier to clump up and deny ling surrounds. In this map you can't so much but dropping tanks on a high ground or low ground making lings harder to surround is always good to get free shells off at the sacrifice for most of the time range.

Okay, after watching it. I feel you could deny a lot more creep then you did. at around 21:40 or so you let those lings do a lot more damage then they should have you didn't protect the tank at all. The depo wall was down when they were running in try to keybind 2 of them and you can easily put them up and down. What I'm doing now is upgrading vehicle weapons not armor since I can mostly cut off and protect my tanks and thors you should try to see if you can get better at that and then try that but at the moment upgrade your armor as well as your weapons.

ITT: get better at protecting siege tanks, use ghost, keybind supply depo choose unit comps better to what your opponent does.

Note: Right now I know I may get flamed for this but Terran is the hardest race to play you have to do all of the pressure while being amazing at micro and scouting and reacting that with how weak we are late game means we have to put on a tons more pressure early/mid game to either win there or try to leave your opponent left with as little as possible.

Sajiki Germany. May 23 2012 03:27. Posts 461

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On May 23 2012 02:45 Morfildur wrote:
Watch your mineral count at 6 minutes: It is at 1000.
You don't convert your natural CC into an OC for basically an eternity.

Then you don't build tanks until around 12 minutes and your tank production is very sporadic.
Around 17:30 you attack with the huge number of 2 tanks (+ bio) and don't even siege one tank for the longest time but you still trade ok.
Then you produce Thors for no apparent reason which delays your 3/3 for a long time.

So if every game looks similar:

GET TANKS. Seriously. They are the backbone of TvZ. You can't really win without them. The last 15 minutes of the game you were only producing marines and marauders, i.e. infestor and ling fodder. Once you have 5-6 tanks you can focus fire infestors and/or banelings and slowly push forward.

ok first of all i did a lot of damage which basically negates my late production and natural OC.
then i have also a good reason to NOT build tanks, as they always get slaughtered by mass lings and deal more damage to my army than to his. then i made the experience that marines compared to marine/marauder die A LOT more to infestor ling than you would think and it even gets worse when zerg has his ultras because you cant kill infestors at all with just marines.

The last 15 minutes of the game you were only producing marines and marauders, i.e. infestor and ling fodder.

as i saw myself being low on money and needing the mobility in this stage where i was already so behind, yes, i decided to go mmm only. i think that is the reason i won the game in the end.

still, thank you for your opinion. i dont really think tanks are the solution to beat infestors but i will try it out eventually.

ITT: get better at protecting siege tanks, use ghost, keybind supply depo choose unit comps better to what your opponent does.

yes i think i should get ghosts eventually but i didnt come up with it because none of the pro replays i watched did contain any of them. whats also funny is the fact that pros in most of the games dont put any pressure at all and just go 3 bases without being behind (which seems absolutely impossibru to me). i also read mmm thor should be very strong against zerg so i tried it out, usually i dont build them but instead go blueflame hellions or tanks (but i feel most of the time i dont have enough of them to complement my army.)

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teamhozac May 23 2012 03:59. Posts 404

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Go mech and win befoer the 20 minute mark, pretty much the only way I can ever win... youre pretty safe until the dreaded BLs get out

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Blazinghand United States. May 23 2012 04:00. Posts 12272

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Bunker rush: don't try to restart the bunker if there's a spinecrawler that close to it-- the crawler will finish first.

Your nat finishes at 5:22 so it should turn into an OC and begin producing scvs at 6:00. If you do this, by 10:00 you should have ~52 food of workers.

On May 23 2012 03:27 Sajiki wrote:
ok first of all i did a lot of damage which basically negates my late production and natural OC.

That, in my opinion, is not correct. At 6:45 after your attack is over, he still has 21 drones and plenty of larvae and gas whereas you have only 23 workers. You leave him alone until 10:00 when he's comfortably at 44 workers.

At 10:00, if you hadn't forgotten about your natural and if you had constant scvs production, you'd have like 52 workers instead of your 40. That's a ~25% increase in income, and instead of being "about on par" with your opponent's economy, you'd be SUPER AHEAD and able to launch a major attack.

Really the way to look at it was: any damage you did was negated by your late production and natural OC, not the other way around. You could have won the game but your macro made things even-ish at 10:00 when you should have been vastly overwhelming. If your ~700 minerals were units and you had the economy you deserved, you could have just pushed and won at that point.

So, a couple of notes: when your natural CC is constructing, as soon as it starts, add it to your 4th control group along with your main CC. You're planning on doing this anyways, but there's no reason not to do it right away, and it'll help you check on the construction so this kind of thing doesn't happen.

As other people have said, at 6:00 you have 1000 minerals, which is gamelosingly bad macro. to mitigate this, whenever you see your money start to climb, invest in extra infrastructure like barracks, and make sure to stay on top of your depots.

and despite everything, I still think you could have attacked at the 10:00 mark, or at least tried to harass his wall. you move out after your stim finishes, but it's better (given that you know where his army is due to yoru hellions) to move out beforehand, and arrive just as stim finishes.

during your push at 11:00, you back off instead of engaging. At the very least, go and scan and get rid of his creep. Trading armies (assuming you don't get crushed by banes or fungals) is good at that point, and you can anticipate his army being smaller due to his 3rd base.

Last edit: 2012-05-23 04:01:15

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Sajiki Germany. May 23 2012 04:02. Posts 461

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On May 23 2012 03:59 teamhozac wrote:
Go mech and win befoer the 20 minute mark, pretty much the only way I can ever win... youre pretty safe until the dreaded BLs get out

thanks for the bump but.. no. :/

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Blazinghand United States. May 23 2012 04:06. Posts 12272

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as an addendum: I'd also like to say that you're right insofar as tanks aren't needed against pure ling. However, against infestors they work wonders. See, infestors are pretty immobile, so it's ok to incorporate tanks into your army. Tanks 2-shot or rather, 2 tanks 1-shot an infestor, and they outrange fungal growth. Although it slows down your push a bit, you can't easily push into infestors without seige tanks. Try them out on a seperate hotkey and focus them onto infestors to fight against fungal growth as well as not splash your own dudes

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Sajiki Germany. May 23 2012 04:07. Posts 461

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On May 23 2012 04:00 Blazinghand wrote:
Bunker rush: don't try to restart the bunker if there's a spinecrawler that close to it-- the crawler will finish first.

i was just trying to bait him with his drones so that he will lose mining time.

Really the way to look at it was: any damage you did was negated by your late production and natural OC, not the other way around.

So, a couple of notes: when your natural CC is constructing, as soon as it starts, add it to your 4th control group along with your main CC. You're planning on doing this anyways, but there's no reason not to do it right away, and it'll help you check on the construction so this kind of thing doesn't happen.

youre right, but the only reason i forgot my oc was that i was sure i had it in the group but it didnt work. i usually do that and i dont forget about it (as you can see i was still producing workers when i was harrassing him).

As other people have said, at 6:00 you have 1000 minerals, which is gamelosingly bad macro. to mitigate this, whenever you see your money start to climb, invest in extra infrastructure like barracks, and make sure to stay on top of your depots.

and despite everything, I still think you could have attacked at the 10:00 mark, or at least tried to harass his wall. you move out after your stim finishes, but it's better (given that you know where his army is due to yoru hellions) to move out beforehand, and arrive just as stim finishes.

watching the replay i dont feel the 1000 minerals were gamelosing. and i also dont think i could have done anything against his 1/1 lings and 6 infestors with energy to be quite honest. the 10-20 seconds would probably have made a difference but only in cancelling his third once. i would have lost my whole army in the process.

during your push at 11:00, you back off instead of engaging. At the very least, go and scan and get rid of his creep. Trading armies (assuming you don't get crushed by banes or fungals) is good at that point, and you can anticipate his army being smaller due to his 3rd base.

hm.. ok. i can accept that and will try it out next time. thank you.

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Mephtral Sweden. May 23 2012 04:11. Posts 51

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I dont think you did enough damage to negate the late production and natural OC tbh.

While it's true that tanks do damage your own units, they damage the lings more(And are ofc great vs infestors), so tanks are important!
also, by good army positioning and splitting you can decrease the amount of damage you take from your own tanks.

BUT if you really hate tanks and cant play with them, - instead go marine/marauder/blueflame hellion and use the extra gas for alot(12+) of medivacs and be really aggresive.

with a very large number of medivacs, infestors need a huge amount of lings to be able to kill bio.

Also your 3-3 was late, the most important things when playing vs large amounts of lings/infestors is upgrades, and after that either alot of tanks or medivacs imo.

Last edit: 2012-05-23 04:13:55

straycat May 23 2012 05:34. Posts 182

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Your whine in-game and constant bashing of you opponent in the OP is really a turn off. Just a tip in case you want to make a help thread again.

netherh United Kingdom. May 23 2012 05:36. Posts 269

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On May 23 2012 03:27 Sajiki wrote:

Show nested quote +

ok first of all i did a lot of damage which basically negates my late production and natural OC.

Ok. First of all, this was obviously a pretty big mistake you can work on then. You've killed a couple of his overlords, but you haven't built any infra-structure, or made your nat into an OC, and you even stop making marines from your one barracks. If you put 2 barracks down at 5:00 when you can afford them, you'd have more units, and stim more than a minute earlier - then you'd arrive at his third before his infestors are out.

Your macro suffers later on too:

At a glance it looks like you can afford your third base at 10:00, and additional infrastructure (3 more barracks) around 10:30... but you start just 1 barracks at 11:20, and your third at 12:00.

As a side note, you lose a few workers at your third, but never remake them

For composition, I would actually suggest more medivacs, instead of tanks. You get a reactored starport, but production out of it is much more sporadic than your other buildings. When you have >10 medivacs, you can keep much of your bio alive through almost anything - fungals do very little if you spread well, and zerglings just melt.

In engagements, you claim it's about the zerg messing up, and you catching him unawares, but I don't think that's true. It's up to you to make sure you know where his army is, and spread your units to minimize damage. You do an ok job of scanning ahead of your army, but you don't do any preparation of your own. At 18 minutes, for example, you're advancing onto creep with all your marines in a long line in front of your marauders, with an unseiged tank. You can only blame yourself if everything dies.

Instead, try putting the marauders in front (ctrl-click on your marines and move them behind). You can pull the marines back further and spread them a little when he engages to stop fungals from doing too much damage.

23 minutes is a perfect example of the wrong way to do things - you see his army, stim madly and run up a ramp - you know his army is there, but you let everything clump up into the perfect blob for fungals. If you'd just moved the marines behind and split them, you'd probably have been fine there.

Last edit: 2012-05-23 05:44:32

Blazinghand United States. May 23 2012 05:42. Posts 12272

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As an addendum to my previous advice, try to A) post games in which lost, rather than games in which you won-- it'll be easier to offer helpful advice in [H] threads and B) not post games in which you BM your opponent for his race at the end after beating him. That's kinda poor mannered.

Last edit: 2012-05-23 05:42:45

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Sajiki Germany. May 23 2012 06:28. Posts 461

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On May 23 2012 05:34 straycat wrote:
Your whine in-game and constant bashing of you opponent in the OP is really a turn off. Just a tip in case you want to make a help thread again.

thank you but i actually dont need any tips from you for creating a help thread. and i dont bash anybody i was and am just frustrated seeing my opponent did so many mistakes and still stressed me out so badly. i guess even you get to that point sometimes.

On May 23 2012 05:42 Blazinghand wrote:
As an addendum to my previous advice, try to A) post games in which lost, rather than games in which you won-- it'll be easier to offer helpful advice in [H] threads and B) not post games in which you BM your opponent for his race at the end after beating him. That's kinda poor mannered.

i did SO clearly lose the midgame that this game does not really count for me as "won". it was up to him to finish it and he had basically won the game at this point where i bm'd him. his terrible decision making in the lategame like not letting a zergling at my lifted base or just build ONE mutalisk led to his loss and not me playing well or doing things right.

On May 23 2012 05:36 netherh wrote:+ Show Spoiler +

that is very useful advice, thanks a lot! tvz just stresses me out like shit thats why i make more macro errors than in other matchups.

+ Show Spoiler +

i dont think you understood me well there. i said it is up to the terran to make terrible mistakes and zerg cant do anything right or wrong besides a move and fungals. and those terrible mistakes are exactly what i did throughout the whole game. i was looking for help how to engage zerg armies.

+ Show Spoiler +

youre probably right about that.

Last edit: 2012-05-23 06:29:48

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Mongoose United Kingdom. May 23 2012 06:31. Posts 124

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Sorry to be harsh, but your basic mechanics are just bad in the replay :S

When you do the first push you get around 1k minerals and forget to make any scvs or marines.
After the push you spend the money adding on loadsa barracks and finally make the orbital.
You only had 8 SCVs and mules mining mineral patches at like 6:30 which is incredibly bad.

I think the reason you didn't win soon after that push was because you did almost as much damage to yourself as you did to the zerg guy during the push (by not keeping up worker production and floating a lot of minerals).

I know you were ahead of the zerg after your push, but you could have been much more ahead if you didn't halt all macro while pushing. I think you should prioritize your build order even when pushing.

Last edit: 2012-05-23 06:34:29

Master league EU Terran

Sajiki Germany. May 23 2012 06:41. Posts 461

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On May 23 2012 06:31 Mongoose wrote:
Sorry to be harsh, but your basic mechanics are just bad in the replay :S

When you do the first push you get around 1k minerals and forget to make any scvs or marines.
After the push you spend the money adding on loadsa barracks and finally make the orbital.
You only had 8 SCVs and mules mining mineral patches at like 6:30 which is incredibly bad.

I think the reason you didn't win soon after that push was because you did almost as much damage to yourself as you did to the zerg guy during the push (by not keeping up worker production and floating a lot of minerals).

I know you were ahead of the zerg after your push, but you could have been much more ahead if you didn't halt all macro while pushing. I think you should prioritize your build order even when pushing.

for the fourth time:
i didnt lose my worker production, i just didnt build production and the oc.
and im sorry to be harsh to you but you repeat something that has been posted in this thread around 3 times even though i mentioned it in the OP to be something i usually do not forget (although this initial pressure gets repelled by 5range queens most of the time too so i dont have a reason to forget it).

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Blazinghand United States. May 23 2012 06:43. Posts 12272

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On May 23 2012 06:41 Sajiki wrote:

Show nested quote +

For what it's worth, delaying the Orbital command DOES cut workers, since the later you start the OC, the later it finishes, and the later it can start making workers. You cut 12 workers by the 10 minute mark, which would have been a 25% increase. Not upgrading your CC to an OC and leaving it idle is the same as not making workers-- it delays when the worker production begins.

I think you also wonder how pros can get a quick third base without being super behind, but given how much money you're banking, you might as well make a third base, and you'd be able to put on the same amount of pressure, right? I think the main thing to focus on is just not let the money spiral out of hand like that. Try to focus on a "macro cycle" when you're microing your army, such as tapping your production hotkeys, starting buildings and depots , and making more infrastructure if your money climbs.

Last edit: 2012-05-23 06:46:38

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phiinix United States. May 23 2012 06:56. Posts 1124

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Fungel good skill.

Besides your macro, (floating 1k before 10:00??) just try to be more careful with your engagements, especially if you're not using any tanks. That last engagement was a little too aggressive on your part. he retreated to fungel cover and you ran right into it. x.x The fact that fungel is a complete lockdown means that you need to constantly be thinking about splitting units.

loginn France. May 23 2012 07:00. Posts 485

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On May 23 2012 04:07 Sajiki wrote:

Show nested quote +

This is not true. 1000 minerals at 6:20 is just ridiculously bad macro. Even if you had forgotten your CC/OC in the control group (which happens to the best of us), you still should have seen the minerals rise and spent them on production facilities. You said you feel bio is better. Make them barracks ! Had it been the case, you would have ended up with almost twice as big of an army by the 10 min mark, which would have made a push much more viable.

A basic advice is making more depots than you need when you expect your push to be micro heavy. That way you can reinforce with more ease.

Basically though, what Blazinghand said : Just focus on your macro. A platinum Zerg shouldn't be able to keep up with a master's macro and you should win even if you went marines only. These 1000 minerals at 6 20 were really important. Especially if you're not planning to go for a third. That means you're macro was off by more than 600 minerals 6 mins into the game. You really shouldn't see that and say it was fine.

Also, please don't turn down some advices you are given by saying : No this is false in a help thread you made. It makes no sense to do so. You're asking for help, accept the critical views of other.

EDIT - BBCode Failure

Last edit: 2012-05-23 07:26:17

Stephano, Taking skill to the bank till IPL3. Also Lucifron and FBH

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