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While waiting for MLG to start as well as during commercials, I decided to replay a lot of Plants vs Zombies. As I was playing PvZ (pun intended), I came across a certain thought.
What does Plants vs Zombies teach us about Starcraft 2?
Oddly enough, it teaches us several things about macro, positioning, and timing! Without further ado, here are my findings.
1) Macro
![[image loading]](http://www.freshpulp.com/shigi/grey%20and%20color%20sunflower.jpg)
the lady that sings the pvz song holding a sunflower
As most of you know, the sunflower is the main key of PvZ. It generates sun (i.e. income) for you to build more delicious plants. Just like in Starcraft, you want as many of these plants as fast as possible. Also there is a cool down on how frequently a sunflower can be placed. Again, just like Starcraft, you need to place sunflowers as quickly as possible to get the upper hand in economy which allows you to produce stronger units.
2) Cutting units to get your econ up
![[image loading]](http://thumbs1.ebaystatic.com/pict/2005198198408080_1.jpg)
The opening of PvZ has you start by building only peashooters as the starting defensive unit. While that does work, it isn't optimal for maximum economy. Instead, potato mines, which cost 25 sun, are excellent. They are much cheaper than the normal peashooter, as well as blowing up whatever zombie. Since two rows of sunflowers is the most optimal economy, using these gets your economy up much faster since you have more sun to spend on sunflowers. This is exactly like playing a zerg where you cut units so you can produce your drones. You don't need 16 zerglings early game, you just need enough to make sure your opponent isn't all inning you.
3) Positioning your units
![[image loading]](http://osxreality.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/pvz1-600x450.jpg)
an example of bad positioning
In PvZ, positioning is everything. You want your heavy meat shields (wall-nuts) up front to prevent zombies from eating your delicious but powerful ranged plants, and you want your weak and non-aggressive sunflowers as far away as possible in the back. This is exactly like in TvZ, where you want marauders absorbing the banelings and the marines in back destroying everything else, as shown recently in HDstarcraft vs Spades.
In conclusion, playing other games can teach us about Starcraft! You never know what other games might have good examples of fundamentals necessary for competitive starcraft play.
Also, I have another blog which is pretty infrequently updated here: http://randomlyevolving.blogspot.com/ Feel free to check it out!
I might make this a series, but I don't know.
  
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lol, #1 & #2 is so true...
i play PvZ the same way i play starcraft, laying down as many SF as possible to get my econ started... and the potato mine is the key to cutting corners so you can keep spending resources on more SF instead of units
scbw just makes you good at everything else 
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Tower defense comes from or at least was popularized by StarCraft (if not WarCraft). Therefore, I still say it's StarCraft teaching you StarCraft. :D
And her name is Laura Shigihara.
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Aahaha this is so funny, because I bought PVZ during the Halloween sale, and was playing yesterday during MLG breaks. Good game!
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On November 06 2010 23:33 Aerox wrote:
Tower defense comes from or at least was popularized by StarCraft (if not WarCraft). Therefore, I still say it's StarCraft teaching you StarCraft. :D
And her name is Laura Shigihara.
I know her name, I got the picture from her blog hahaha. I just decided to use a description so people would know who she is instead of saying Laura Shigihara. =].
Steam screwed over my save, so I'm replaying it a 3rd time.
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hahah 5/5
I've always compared it with SC when i play it.. specially the mining part!
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FREEAGLELAND26782 Posts
Ohh god you just made me want to play this game ><
But nooo midterms next week...
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Also, APM and timing are important. You don't think so until you become gosu and try the Endless Survival mode. The only way to do it is to get a bunch of cob cannons (8+) and bombard the top and bottom halves of the board every 5 seconds, while replacing dying plants and picking up sun floating down (you won't have space for sunflowers with that many cob cannons).
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Hong Kong20321 Posts
lol raelly . it was more like brood war taught me how to rape Plants vs zombies. ... not the other way round
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On November 07 2010 00:25 alffla wrote:
lol raelly . it was more like brood war taught me how to rape Plants vs zombies. ... not the other way round
yeah, so true. I noticed sunflowers are the scv&expansion of PvZ 2 mins in the game lol
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If you guys are not aware, the creator and the daughter (the singer) were fans of starcraft and they based a lot of the game on sc. There was an interview posted previously. Check the games thread about this game when it first came out
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I so agree with 1 and 2! I even throw in squash to delay building peashooter if I can, if I can find space in my seed row.
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haha I thought exactly the same thing while playing
Gotta Macro those sunflowers 
But this game was so ridiculously addicting...
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I facepalm when my friends start missing the money due to lack of mouse control....
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United States4053 Posts
In Plants vs Zombies, I always used Garlic on rows 1, 3, and 5 in order to funnel all the zombies into rows 2 and 4 so they would get demolished by flaming peas (which have splash)
basically, use chokes to your advantage :D
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Garlics only work up to certain level. They get smashed by the giant zombies.
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were you playing against idra?
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I have a legit 9001 ft. ToW in PvZ. :>
Yes, I'm quite ashamed.
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oh man what an addictive game... 12 hours gone just like that.
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United States4126 Posts
On November 07 2010 00:25 alffla wrote:
lol raelly . it was more like brood war taught me how to rape Plants vs zombies. ... not the other way round
Yea, that's pretty much how I felt. Macro with sunflowers and make an army.
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On November 07 2010 18:41 Kinky wrote:Show nested quote +On November 07 2010 00:25 alffla wrote:
lol raelly . it was more like brood war taught me how to rape Plants vs zombies. ... not the other way round Yea, that's pretty much how I felt. Macro with sunflowers and make an army.
It depends on your perspective. For ex-broodwar players such as you and me your right, BW taught us about how to play PvZ. However, for people who maybe only played SC2, my title is accurate, and PvZ taught them the basics of Macro.
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EPT
