Replay:
Loss vs TrepZ

+ Show Spoiler [Conclusions Reached] +

• Spawn Overlords with each group of larvae.
  
• Spawn anything with larvae! Don't let them sit out, or they'll spoil!
  
• Get upgrades.
  

There comes a point in every match where I switch to making units, and never again make any drones. What I think ended up happening in this match was that my opponent had an extremely strong 2~3 base play, and I just didn't have the economy to match it. I'm going to take a closer look at the replay to see if I can identify exactly when it is that my resources start piling up, so that I can figure out some cues that might help me while playing.

At around 4 minutes, my gas is piling up. That's all gas that could have been minerals, which would have meant more drones or lings or whatever. I remember when I noticed my gas was so high, I thought "I might as well leave those drones there because I'll need the gas eventually". Kind of flawed thinking, though. I do eventually take them off, though.

Another observation that still hasn't sunk in for me. When you go for an early hatchery, you're actually behind in economy until you can get it saturated. Where I normally go for early hatch and double queen (I didn't in this game, though), I bet I end up even further behind.

I'm still doing a poor job making overlords. I need to start doing so as I make units... Specifically, before I morph in units, make enough overlords to cover their supply. I might end up with a few too many overlords doing this, but ultimately it's probably better to have too much supply than to be supply capped.

In any event, even at the 7-minute mark, I'm still behind my opponent on drones. It's not until about now that I actually start to really be able to make use of my early expansion. One thing is for sure, I wouldn't be able to be droning up and have enough larvae or income to produce an army... My creep spread is also pretty bad.

At 7:20 I hit 400 minerals, 400 gas, and have 8 larvae available. I build a couple more queens, and still don't deal with the now-12 larvae that I have. I'm also still behind my opponent in harvesters. My goodness, I really have to be putting more effort into saturating that expansion more quickly. Now, despite that, I'm still ahead on income because my opponent is over-saturated, so that tells me that having the early hatch is a positive thing for me. I just have to work harder at saturating it.

Given how many larvae I have available at that moment (12), I am way behind in supply. At 35/44, I wouldn't be able to morph all those larvae even if I wanted to. Hmm. I hadn't thought about that. Other races can essentially make units and supply evenly, because you can't really 'stockpile' unit production. Zerg, on the other hand, do have the ability to stockpile larvae (intentionally or not), and therefore keeping up with supply ultimately involves making sure that you have enough supply for big influxes of units. Interesting.

(Disclaimer: this is information that is useful for me as a Gold-league player. I don't doubt that supply works fairly similarly to other races once you get used to it. I don't come from an RTS background, though, so keeping up with supply is something I struggle with.)

Going back to my early point, I wonder if making overlords along with my other larva morphs would make more sense, then, even if it did result in being a big over-supplied?

Regardless, I don't think I really have the income to do a whole lot with those larvae. Since I made another couple queens, I don't even have enough minerals to morph those larvae into drones. Ooooh, but imagine if I had morphed those larvae into drones sooner -- the extra income would be kicking in by now, and I bet I could afford not only the extra queens, but also whatever extra larvae I have. Hmmm!

By 8 minutes in, I'm just barely even on harvesters with my opponent, and I'm behind on supply. I have 400 minerals and gas in the bank....... which I spend on a bunch of roaches because I see that my opponent has a tiny army that he's positioning to move out. Given that I build extra queens to help with defense, I definitely went overboard. Not only that, but now I don't have enough money to make more drones! I would have been much better off getting, say, four roaches and a few extra drones. The roaches could have worked on the rocks leading to a third while waiting for my opponent to attack. One other thing -- I'm making a single overlord (8 supply) while making 8 roaches (16 supply). It's no wonder I get supply blocked all the time.

Not too long after, I have larvae piling up again, and enough money to spend them on drones. Spend larvae!!!! Goodness gracious! Any time I inject, I should be spending larave, because obviously if I'm able to inject, I have larvae kicking around.

I toss up a third at around the 10 minute mark, which seems reasonable, except for the fact that I don't think I make drones for it for a long time... Let's see. In the meantime, at 11:20, I have 16 larvae, ~1000 mins, and ~500 gas. I do actually end up morphing in a bunch of drones with the intent of saturating the third, but since i don't make overlords too, I'm going to end up supply blocked very soon. At 12 minutes, the third is complete, and I haven't transferred drones, and I'm again sitting on a dozen larvae and more than enough resources to do something with them -- but not enough supply to do something with them. Especially once I get a queen at that third, larvae will be spawning in batches of 12 -- that means 24 supply worth of larvae, assuming I spend it all on tier 2 units or roaches.

One thing I do poorly in the game that probably plays a big part in how quickly my army disintegrates is not getting upgrades. It's part of the build I had been practicing, but I had been doing things differently, and therefore standard things I was doing previously (like getting evo chambers) aren't happening anymore.

Once I start doing Nydus drops, everything just falls apart. I don't have my third saturated, I have 20 (!!!!) larvae kicking around... I should have been able to sit back and get a fourth or just macro up an army again. I should have gone for probes instead of infrastructure in my initial attack, that's for sure. Something to remember for the future.

It isn't until 16:30 that I saturate my third. 16:30!!!! Referencing above where I observe that I got my third at 10 minutes, I didn't actually move drones to it for six and a half minutes. Six and a half minutes that I should have had higher income and did not.

At this point, my opponent was definitely on the back foot. He was supply blocked, oversaturated on his natural, and I'm sure that if I did have the income of my third, and upgrades, I could have made an army to seal the deal right then and there. I think he thought that I was going to do so, because he comments on the fact that it was a good attack. Little did he know then that my macro sucks, and I only have one punch in me, with no followup.

Biggest problem from here on out is that my opponent goes for upgrades and I still do not, then grabs a gold expansion that I had totally forgotten to scout.

Things just get silly after that. at 21 minutes, I have 49 (!!!!!) larvae, 3500 minerals, 2100 gas, and I'm not making anything at all. I think I've learned what I need to from this replay, though.

Alright, I'm going to put my conclusions/key-weaknesses-to-work on above, so chances are good you have already seen them.