EPTKnowing when to expand is critical in Starcraft. It takes this same course in Starcraft II, where it can make or break your games depending if you do it too quickly. I walk into games wanting to test different build orders, 1 base roach, 2 base speedings to hydra or mutalisk, but it's pretty much a mystery to me when the average expansion should occur.
Many zerg players like myself enjoy going 15 pool 16 hatch, getting them right off the bat. I certainly feel better when this happens, but when scouting is indeterminate of what the opposition is going to do (playing aggressive or maybe turtle till XXX or YYY is achieved (this is often done in silver/gold). You'll see pros knowing exactly when to attack and when to defend. When 15 roaches or 15 marines and 1 medivac dropship could do the job against 25 marines. I'm not sure what the math is like, I suppose I could go back and create custom games to see how many X kills how many Y. I'd imagine it's pretty similar to 1 though, where a zealot could almost just kill 3 zergling (non-upgraded). I love build orders, but they get so foggy in the middle of the games and nonexistent late game. The general answer is to just counter your opponent, I know, but to find the balance of when im expanding or just overextending. I'll push for yellows maybe too late, no creep there to drop 3-4 spines or spores depending on the opponent army composition. Then if I don't scout yellows, people take them early game.
Kulas Ravine is a great example. I never expected a player from across the map come to my side and take the yellows at 16 supply. It was a masterstroke in the silver league and now I'm always scouting BOTH of them to keep from being so surprised when the econ of the other player far outstrips my own. Also a great map to scout on in general because it's so huge. I'm starting to see tendencies on certain official ladder maps such as Kulas, where protoss are likely to go air or proxy warpgate with a well hidden pylon while they stack their base with cannons screwing any and all use of non armored units. Broodlords are effective against this, but it takes a long time to get those and you might already see some phoenixes or vikings to come combat them.
Speaking of Broodlords, there's a lot of things I don't really know about them. They do damage by shooting out the broodlings, I think they do a straight shot damage when it *hits* something, then the broodling sticks around to attack. I'm thinking there must be a 'sweet-spot' in the amount of broodlords needed to be effective. You're going to see some kind of anti air coming at you when you've gotten so late that you're actually USING brood lords. Maybe 4 brood lords is enough? Or is exponentially better to have tons more at the expense of lost corruptors, which I need dearly to protect the broods.
Back to expansion talking. It's not too crazy to take the next one near your original base, but where do you go from there? I've watched plenty of HD/Husky videos from that tournament they casted, and it looked like idRa just went in the semicircle type of effect with his bases. Was this only because he made just a ground army? Could he not afford to overextend to the yellows on metalopolis? If I had ever seen him use mutalisks in that series they casted, I probably would have had my answer.
When do you think it's best to expand?
GosuCoaching.com
After hearing about this on the SotG (State of the Game) Podcast, I was anxious to see what it had to offer. I was rather disappointed that looked like it was just a blog site. I thought it would be similar to SkillCapped for WoW Arena. Though SkillCapped costs a bit of money and I doubt it offers individual coaching, it has a website that looks like it's... well... a gaming website. Much like GameRiot without the spam! I suppose I held it to a standard of looking like a GotFrag or GosuGamers (probably the latter due to it's name). But, the service STILL looks interesting, in that they train scrubs like myself to become better players. Introduces you to other players far beyond your skill level, and gives you practice against them. They'll tell you what you did wrongly, how you could have scouted more efficiently, and what to do to keep your APM higher and control more units at once. However, no prices are shown on the website as far as I know, so I can hardly say if it's worth it or not. I'm not aware of what counterstrike tutoring is an hour any more. I'm assuming about $30 or perhaps more. I'll keep an eye on it to see how things change after launch and I hope everyone else does too.
Resorting back to bots
Now that phase 2 is over and I can't go a day without my fucking fix, we resort back to SC2 loaders. I'm still pretty happy with these bots, and now that blizzard bots are in at full throttle it should make for some interesting play. Most diamond players will say this is a waste of time to watch or learn from, since they only can get so far. I think it's pretty damn special though if I a bot could be compared to a gold ranked player. I set my team member to zerg just to watch him go at it, counter units, attack, expand out, take yellows. Apparently the bots are a bit retarded when it comes to roach burrow though as expected. Run them a little bit away from the observer and you're quite free to just burrow and run the hell around him. But I can't complain much, even though that's a strategy I use often against most players as my one surprise and forces them to make the extra stealth detection, depleting their gas just a little more.
As always, welcoming comments!
