Website Feedback
Closed Threads
IRC Web ChatTeamSpeak 3 (70 users)
Active: 5684 users | |
|
| shadogi United States. July 12 2012 07:54. Posts 194 | Profile # |
I played a ZvT in which I lost in an all too common way. When a Terran knows how to macro, they seem to just get me over a barrel. In this game, everything in my build was going really well: my injects were pretty good, scouting was excellent (spotted the banchees), and my drone count was good until I took my third. At this point in the game (and others), I'm just not sure when I can drone and when I can't. If the Terran attacks, I can almost always hold it off, but when they hold off for a bit, I just fall behind in drones and it's a downward slide from there.
I was hoping to get a few tips on when I know it's safe to drone and when it isn't. Also, any other comments on my build/play would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks!
Shadogi
Replay:
http://drop.sc/218822
NOTES: I currently open gasless with 4 queens; getting my third at ~6:00 minutes and then gas to follow. This replays is from a platinum player against a diamond. |
|
|
| InfCereal Canada. July 12 2012 11:58. Posts 481 | Profile # |
Here's how I view starcraft, and this may or may not help, but I'll go with it anyway.
Before a game, you need a gameplan. With this game plan, you want to take risks to get ahead, if you play solid, you can win, but only if the other guys makes enough mistakes, or doesn't take any risks himself. Risks include attacking, or aggressive droning.
I'll give you an example, then compare it to your game.
Example: I search a game. I see a ZvT. I decide that I'm going to go for a high economy build and try to kill him off of 3 base. I take a third at 4-5 minutes, no gas and before my 3rd and 4th queen. This is a risk, and I'll probably die to absolutely anything early, however it puts me ahead otherwise. (I like to think of it like: If I'm going to be greedy and die anyway, be as greedy as you can.) Then I pump drones, with zero units until I get to saturation on all my bases.
Your game: You're playing safe. You've already lost at 4:00 when that spine went down. What you're doing is preparing for something that doesn't exist. By 4 minutes, you have a spine down and 4 lings. You never use those 4 lings for anything useful, nor does that spine serve any purpose. It's essentially building 4 drones, and then tossing them off the side of the map.
What I can see is that you're mixing up drones and units. You're trying to make an even balance of the two. Don't. If you're going to make drones, power out drones. Due to zerg's macro mechanics, you can make an army on par with your opponent in an instant, but you need the economy, and you need the larva. If you power out 3 fully saturated bases, you're SO far ahead of your opponent there's no way you can lose. You hit 3 base and you power out units while teching up.
Also: Your upgrades were late and you were making an army without saturation at ANY of your bases. Drones are more important than units.
If you're looking for a checklist:
-Take risks. Either be greedy, or go all in. Don't play safe. If you defend against everything, you'll lose to everything.
-I get 3 gasses at 44ish supply, getting speed ASAP with 2 evos, followed by lair. You want to start double upgrades ASAP as well. Generally, you want your hive to start at 80%(I think, someone correct me?) of your 2-2.
-I make a single pair of lings at 24 supply for scouting. I send one into the main and one to the ramp of the natural. First ling tells me what's up (1 rax FE, hellions, etc), and second to tell me when he's moving out.
-Only make drones unless you NEED units. Your queens can hold most early aggression. Once you're fully saturated on 3 base, you can go absolutely crazy with units.
-Double expand every time you wipe the terrans army. You don't want to double expand while he's even with you, that's problematic. If you win an engagement, you have enough units LEFT OVER to defend an attack at expansions, this is why you want to expand at this time.
If the Terran attacks, I can almost always hold it off, but when they hold off for a bit, I just fall behind in drones and it's a downward slide from there.
This is your problem. It's all about committing. Either make drones or make units. If you want to make units on two base, go for a 2 base timing, likewise with 1 base, or 3 base. In any case, make the drones to support that army first.
I'm absolutely horrid at explaining things, so I apologize if any of that was unclear. I'm also sorry about the repetition, as I'm sure there's a lot of it. =/ |
|
|
| bmoneyAK July 12 2012 13:03. Posts 79 | Profile # |
Hi there,
I am a T. I think you needed to be more aggressive or drone harder. You are floating a lot of larva and he is 13 SCV up on you before the first banshee kill a few seconds before 10 minutes in game time. The weak point seems to be from 8-15 minutes when you are floating 10+ larva and 500-1000 minerals.It would be way better to either make lings and try to do some damage, or make drones and try and get ahead, even if you are just chancing it blind. Since you didn't do either, you made what is almost guaranteed to be a bad decision. I think that addressing your macro slip would have a bigger affect on your performance versus T than other changes. If you aren't sure if you should build units or drones, just pick one!
You saw that he went FE so you know that buys you some time from super early shenanigans, so you can drone for a while. Hellions after expand come out around 7 min or so and queens hold their own and CS style pushes sometime around there (not sure) and again queens do OK. So, I would take his FE as a license to drone harder than you did.
At 8 min you see 3 CC and tech structures so you can expect that he doesn't have a huge army. The TL on port means he's going banshee so get a spore, queens, and either drone or go bust him!
Your attack on his third was good and you killed some SCVs. You traded cost effectively too. Overall, he is 40 food ahead with more powerful units, so you're still behind.
Eventually the game stabilizes and you hit 70 drones but you are mostly ling/bane which is inferior to his composition. I think that if you would've either droned harder earlier in the game you wouldn't be so far behind, or if you had made units you could have punished him severely and he wouldn't be so far ahead.
TLDR, if you aren't sure to drone or make units, do one or the other. Queens and drones is a good default option, since the queens don't cost larva, spread creep, and are good defensively. Secondly, you saw that he FE'd so you know that you've got a window to do whatever you want. Then at 8 minutes you saw that he had 3 OC and TL on port, so you know that you can do whatever you want for a while longer as long as it doesn't die to banshees.
It might pay to adopt the attitude of "70 drones or die trying!"
|
|
|
| Asolmanx Italy. July 12 2012 16:19. Posts 128 | Profile # |
If the terran opens for bio, you can't saturate your third and you need some units ASAP right after you are done saturating 2 bases. If the opens some banshee stuff, he can't do a ground push, so you drone your third and only think about defending the banshee and hellion harass. If he opens for marine tank, he may be doing a timing, but if he has 2 bases i feel like you can drone a little bit before starting to make units.
An EXCELLENT trick that Nestea uses is to make 10 lings in advance, and keep them in your base. When you see the terran pushing out, you can immediatly start morphing banelings from the 10 lings you made earlier, and start pumping lings. I suggest you go read Belial's ZvT guide, where he talks about this and much more: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=340023 |
|
|
| babysimba July 12 2012 17:20. Posts 798 | Profile # |
| For starters, i would say first just try to work on your larva usage. It's fine to build more macro hatches in the mid-to-late game if our hands can't keep up with the injects or constant production. However for the first few mins, concentrate not on just injects but also building drones whenever larva is available. You will probably find yourself having more leeway, more economy in the early game to pump units reactively. |
|
|
| Scurvy United States. July 13 2012 02:31. Posts 109 | Profile # |
| InfCereal, that is a wonderfully helpful post. I am a plat Zerg who sometimes faces the same issue, and I find your input to be wonderful. I will try that style of play vs T in the future. I am not sure if your input helped the OP, but it did help me:D |
| |
|
| zmansman17 United States. July 13 2012 03:41. Posts 2182 | Profile # |
I offrace at Zerg at around my Terran level, and I find the choice of drone or make units a very easy choice to make. With the increase in overlord speed, there is never an excuse not to have near perfect information on your terran opponent. Even if you didn't sac an overlord(s) you could still count the gas on both bases safely and plant overlords at special juncture in maps like cloud kingdom for essentially permanent scouting on timing attacks.
However, even if you don't do any of this, you could still just send (and not even sac, since the overlord may not even die) an overlord at 6:00 to get a sense of the Terran build. Count the gas and go over which of very few builds the Terran could be going for. if it's banshees, drop an evo and prepare accordingly. (Make some queens). If it's reactor hellion, you can also make some more queens. If it's some variant of rax play, also make more queens and maybe a few spines, which can later be mass transfused.
You should also use lings to delay expansions and glean scouting information whenever possible. If you can run a group of lings into the main when a depots down, that is yet anohter way to get a full base scout. good luck |
| | ♞ - His EKG is flattening get me a defib stat! Prepped and Ready! - ♞ |
|
|
| FailCow United States. July 13 2012 03:57. Posts 49 | Profile # |
On July 12 2012 11:58 InfCereal wrote:Here's how I view starcraft, and this may or may not help, but I'll go with it anyway. Before a game, you need a gameplan. With this game plan, you want to take risks to get ahead, if you play solid, you can win, but only if the other guys makes enough mistakes, or doesn't take any risks himself. Risks include attacking, or aggressive droning. I'll give you an example, then compare it to your game. Example: I search a game. I see a ZvT. I decide that I'm going to go for a high economy build and try to kill him off of 3 base. I take a third at 4-5 minutes, no gas and before my 3rd and 4th queen. This is a risk, and I'll probably die to absolutely anything early, however it puts me ahead otherwise. (I like to think of it like: If I'm going to be greedy and die anyway, be as greedy as you can.) Then I pump drones, with zero units until I get to saturation on all my bases. Your game: You're playing safe. You've already lost at 4:00 when that spine went down. What you're doing is preparing for something that doesn't exist. By 4 minutes, you have a spine down and 4 lings. You never use those 4 lings for anything useful, nor does that spine serve any purpose. It's essentially building 4 drones, and then tossing them off the side of the map. What I can see is that you're mixing up drones and units. You're trying to make an even balance of the two. Don't. If you're going to make drones, power out drones. Due to zerg's macro mechanics, you can make an army on par with your opponent in an instant, but you need the economy, and you need the larva. If you power out 3 fully saturated bases, you're SO far ahead of your opponent there's no way you can lose. You hit 3 base and you power out units while teching up. Also: Your upgrades were late and you were making an army without saturation at ANY of your bases. Drones are more important than units. If you're looking for a checklist: -Take risks. Either be greedy, or go all in. Don't play safe. If you defend against everything, you'll lose to everything. -I get 3 gasses at 44ish supply, getting speed ASAP with 2 evos, followed by lair. You want to start double upgrades ASAP as well. Generally, you want your hive to start at 80%(I think, someone correct me?) of your 2-2. -I make a single pair of lings at 24 supply for scouting. I send one into the main and one to the ramp of the natural. First ling tells me what's up (1 rax FE, hellions, etc), and second to tell me when he's moving out. -Only make drones unless you NEED units. Your queens can hold most early aggression. Once you're fully saturated on 3 base, you can go absolutely crazy with units. -Double expand every time you wipe the terrans army. You don't want to double expand while he's even with you, that's problematic. If you win an engagement, you have enough units LEFT OVER to defend an attack at expansions, this is why you want to expand at this time.
Show nested quote +If the Terran attacks, I can almost always hold it off, but when they hold off for a bit, I just fall behind in drones and it's a downward slide from there.
This is your problem. It's all about committing. Either make drones or make units. If you want to make units on two base, go for a 2 base timing, likewise with 1 base, or 3 base. In any case, make the drones to support that army first. I'm absolutely horrid at explaining things, so I apologize if any of that was unclear. I'm also sorry about the repetition, as I'm sure there's a lot of it. =/
I disagree with the mentality of being greedy or all-in. This strategy is only if you play 100% blind.
If you scout you can be greedy until he is getting ready to push than pump units defend and get back to droning. You'll be ahead before and after his push that way.
If you scout your enemy being ridiculously greedy (3/4cc) you know you need to put aggression on or his greed will destroy you mid to late game.
Playing blindly could lead you to get really far ahead via chance; but getting better its about playing more consistent. |
| | There is "fail" in my name for a reason. |
|
|
| InfCereal Canada. July 13 2012 04:22. Posts 481 | Profile # |
On July 13 2012 03:57 FailCow wrote:
Show nested quote +On July 12 2012 11:58 InfCereal wrote:Here's how I view starcraft, and this may or may not help, but I'll go with it anyway. Before a game, you need a gameplan. With this game plan, you want to take risks to get ahead, if you play solid, you can win, but only if the other guys makes enough mistakes, or doesn't take any risks himself. Risks include attacking, or aggressive droning. I'll give you an example, then compare it to your game. Example: I search a game. I see a ZvT. I decide that I'm going to go for a high economy build and try to kill him off of 3 base. I take a third at 4-5 minutes, no gas and before my 3rd and 4th queen. This is a risk, and I'll probably die to absolutely anything early, however it puts me ahead otherwise. (I like to think of it like: If I'm going to be greedy and die anyway, be as greedy as you can.) Then I pump drones, with zero units until I get to saturation on all my bases. Your game: You're playing safe. You've already lost at 4:00 when that spine went down. What you're doing is preparing for something that doesn't exist. By 4 minutes, you have a spine down and 4 lings. You never use those 4 lings for anything useful, nor does that spine serve any purpose. It's essentially building 4 drones, and then tossing them off the side of the map. What I can see is that you're mixing up drones and units. You're trying to make an even balance of the two. Don't. If you're going to make drones, power out drones. Due to zerg's macro mechanics, you can make an army on par with your opponent in an instant, but you need the economy, and you need the larva. If you power out 3 fully saturated bases, you're SO far ahead of your opponent there's no way you can lose. You hit 3 base and you power out units while teching up. Also: Your upgrades were late and you were making an army without saturation at ANY of your bases. Drones are more important than units. If you're looking for a checklist: -Take risks. Either be greedy, or go all in. Don't play safe. If you defend against everything, you'll lose to everything. -I get 3 gasses at 44ish supply, getting speed ASAP with 2 evos, followed by lair. You want to start double upgrades ASAP as well. Generally, you want your hive to start at 80%(I think, someone correct me?) of your 2-2. -I make a single pair of lings at 24 supply for scouting. I send one into the main and one to the ramp of the natural. First ling tells me what's up (1 rax FE, hellions, etc), and second to tell me when he's moving out. -Only make drones unless you NEED units. Your queens can hold most early aggression. Once you're fully saturated on 3 base, you can go absolutely crazy with units. -Double expand every time you wipe the terrans army. You don't want to double expand while he's even with you, that's problematic. If you win an engagement, you have enough units LEFT OVER to defend an attack at expansions, this is why you want to expand at this time.
If the Terran attacks, I can almost always hold it off, but when they hold off for a bit, I just fall behind in drones and it's a downward slide from there.
This is your problem. It's all about committing. Either make drones or make units. If you want to make units on two base, go for a 2 base timing, likewise with 1 base, or 3 base. In any case, make the drones to support that army first. I'm absolutely horrid at explaining things, so I apologize if any of that was unclear. I'm also sorry about the repetition, as I'm sure there's a lot of it. =/
I disagree with the mentality of being greedy or all-in. This strategy is only if you play 100% blind. If you scout you can be greedy until he is getting ready to push than pump units defend and get back to droning. You'll be ahead before and after his push that way. If you scout your enemy being ridiculously greedy (3/4cc) you know you need to put aggression on or his greed will destroy you mid to late game. Playing blindly could lead you to get really far ahead via chance; but getting better its about playing more consistent.
I agree, you should never play blind. It's a terrible habit to get into, even if it will win you games.
I'm terrible at explaining things, but going into a game with a game plan doesn't mean you have to follow it. Rarely will I ever be able to go into a game and straight pump 66 drones vs a terran. It's the ideal situation, sure, but everything you see the terran do should influence your play. Frequently have I gone into a game thinking I want to get to late game, but simply couldn't let my opponent get away with some things he might be doing.
The mentality of the post is more of "everything is a risk", whether it be taking that stupid early third, or spending all your larva on units to attack. Likewise, you can take the risk of putting a spine down, and making 4 lings. (I dislike the term "all in", and I shouldn't have used it.)
I can clarify some things if my original (or this) post came out wrong. I'm in no way implying someone should just ignore their opponent and play a game as if they weren't there; That's a terrible position to put yourself in.
|
|
|
| ErrorNA United States. July 13 2012 17:45. Posts 86 | Profile # |
| Check out:Intimate ZvX with Stoic. Its a GM level player that does commentary of his games. everything i have learned is in there because you need to learn how to macro. |
|
|
| TangSC Canada. July 16 2012 22:57. Posts 1614 | Profile Blog # |
I apologize that I didn't view the replay, but in ZvT I've found that one of the keys is reaching full 2base saturation with all the gas (at least 44 drones) before producing too many units. A lot of players either:
A) Produce way too many units early on without attacking, and don't reach the full saturation early enough.
B) Produce way too many drones and start saturating the third without being able to defend it.
Rule of thumb: Reach full 2base saturation and then build units, and once you feel safe with the units you have (or you hold off his mid-game aggression), that's your time to saturate the third. |
| | Coaching TangStarcraft.com | Team All-Inspiration.com | Stream Twitch.TV/TangSC |
|
|
| | |
|
|
|
| |
|
|
