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Hi guys,
I'm getting back into BW and one of the things I've always had trouble with is how to move large armies and shit. More specifically, here are the things I need help with...
1. Initial rally points? Where do we rally our units at first?
2. Rally points for first three hatches (assuming a ZvT 3 hatch) are these in our natural? Do we move then to another location further on?
3. Rally points for further hatcheries (@3rd, 4th).
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1. How do you manage large armies as zerg? Right now I find myself box moving, but when you have a lot of zerglings it gets to be a real pain in the ass. Especially for spreading when you have to manage multiple screens.
2. Rallies, how do you manage army rallies when reinforcing when you already have a lot of units? I've read some old threads on here that talked about control-clicking and shift+group adding (already do that) but are there any other tips for how to manage rallies?
3. Defiler movement - what hotkeys do you guys use for deflilers and why? Just curious.
4. Same vein of idea, what about for lurks?
Now for some other questions...
1. I have decent muta micro but is lurker first a viable way to play if you want to practice your lurker micro and army movement or will I find myself getting contained?
2. How would you deal with vulture harass @ 3rd and 4th if Terran is going mech, is this just going to be accomplished with proper army positioning? Is there any sim-city you can do at all.
3. What is the go-to macro build in ZvP is it still 3 hatch spire into 5 hatch hydra?
4. Are there any good bust builds out there?
Thanks guys.
 
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should be posted at bw strategy forums .... if you want to ask for help and also post your replay.....
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On November 02 2012 10:04 Sawamura wrote:
should be posted at bw strategy forums .... if you want to ask for help and also post your replay.....
I just decided to ask a bunch of general questions. Since I'm not asking about specific critiques, I don't have any replays to offer.
If you'd like, I could prepend a bunch of sentimental bullcrap so that it would feel like more of a blog to you? I was under the impression that a blog could be about anything lol.
Anyhow what I'm most curious about is the army rallies and how you box move and stuff. I didn't want to bump some two/three year old threads that are long dead, and I also didn't feel that my questions warranted a specific new thread.
So I made a blog. The other info I just tacked on - I can use Liquipedia for that.
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1) Zergs have two potential rally points: their choke or outside their opponent's choke. In the early/mid game, it's a good idea to rally everything to your natural choke. Good zerg players usually select their drones to mine as soon as they pop, so the rallied units are almost always entirely offensive.
2) In general it's best to have your units stay rallied to your natural, or outside your natural. You'd only want to consider rallying to their choke if you're committing to a contain. But siege tanks outrange lurks even in unsieged mode, so it's not a good idea to try and contain a terran until you have defilers/swarm.
3) Usually natural, unless your hatchery is built in another base, in which case just rally to the ramp.
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1) Hotkey the important units. Ultras/Lurkers/Defilers//etc. don't worry about zerglings. Drag-box + a-move them in coordination with your main army when you go for a large engage. If (with zerglings) your army is manageable with unoccupied hotkeys, then by all means hotkey them so you have an even better coordinated engage.
2) Put a few hatcheries near each other. Hotkey screen to F2. Hotkey desired rally point to F3.
F2 -> Click hatch -> F3 -> Right-click ground. Pros can re-rally each in split seconds.
3) Put defilers in the same group as a few zerglings so it can consume when it's low on energy without searching around for zerglings. It doesn't really matter which group you put it in, as long as you remember.
4) I've seen people group lurk/ling in one group because you can't a-move lurks alone. When you engage a terran, you generally want to stagger burrowing the lurks. Burrow the front ones first, let the back ones move up, so you can burrow them further, etc. Burrowing all at once just staples your army to the ground (lurks are your major source of dps), lings/muta will melt to terran mnm. If you can get a good surround so that the mnm are unable to stim-retreat, then just burrow on the spot.
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1) Lurker first is legit in ZvP and ZvT. You will be the one containing, not the one being contained.
2) Against Terran mech, you want a hydra/muta composition. You can build an additional hatch with sunkens at 3rd for a wall. But as everything is situational in this game, don't take a third if you know you can't defend it.
3) Zergs had a lot of success with 6-hatch instead of 5; lets zerg macro harder. Here's an example
http://www.teamliquid.net/tlpd/korean/games/74518_Jaedong_vs_JangBi/vod
4) 3h hydra ZvP. 2h lurker ZvT. Ling all-in ZvZ.
Hotkeys are highly personalized. It differs from person to person. Some pros use 456 for hatch whereas others use 123. Bottom line is just do what's most comfortable for you.
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On November 02 2012 10:32 Shiro)Tenshi wrote:1) Zergs have two potential rally points: their choke or outside their opponent's choke. In the early/mid game, it's a good idea to rally everything to your natural choke. Good zerg players usually select their drones to mine as soon as they pop, so the rallied units are almost always entirely offensive. 2) In general it's best to have your units stay rallied to your natural, or outside your natural. You'd only want to consider rallying to their choke if you're committing to a contain. But siege tanks outrange lurks even in unsieged mode, so it's not a good idea to try and contain a terran until you have defilers/swarm. 3) Usually natural, unless your hatchery is built in another base, in which case just rally to the ramp. ---- 1) Hotkey the important units. Ultras/Lurkers/Defilers//etc. don't worry about zerglings. Drag-box + a-move them in coordination with your main army when you go for a large engage. If (with zerglings) your army is manageable with unoccupied hotkeys, then by all means hotkey them so you have an even better coordinated engage. 2) Put a few hatcheries near each other. Hotkey screen to F2. Hotkey desired rally point to F3. F2 -> Click hatch -> F3 -> Right-click ground. Pros can re-rally each in split seconds. 3) Put defilers in the same group as a few zerglings so it can consume when it's low on energy without searching around for zerglings. It doesn't really matter which group you put it in, as long as you remember. 4) I've seen people group lurk/ling in one group because you can't a-move lurks alone. When you engage a terran, you generally want to stagger burrowing the lurks. Burrow the front ones first, let the back ones move up, so you can burrow them further, etc. Burrowing all at once just staples your army to the ground (lurks are your major source of dps), lings/muta will melt to terran mnm. If you can get a good surround so that the mnm are unable to stim-retreat, then just burrow on the spot. ----- 1) Lurker first is legit in ZvP and ZvT. You will be the one containing, not the one being contained. 2) Against Terran mech, you want a hydra/muta composition. You can build an additional hatch with sunkens at 3rd for a wall. But as everything is situational in this game, don't take a third if you know you can't defend it. 3) Zergs had a lot of success with 6-hatch instead of 5; lets zerg macro harder. Here's an example http://www.teamliquid.net/tlpd/korean/games/74518_Jaedong_vs_JangBi/vod4) 3h hydra ZvP. 2h lurker ZvT. Ling all-in ZvZ. Hotkeys are highly personalized. It differs from person to person. Some pros use 456 for hatch whereas others use 123. Bottom line is just do what's most comfortable for you.
Hey man thanks for all the advice! Do you ever use the camera hotkeys to manage bases beyond your third? Or would you rather use camera hotkeys to manage a bunch of macro hatches? Or would you suggest using whatever works, OR remapping depending on the situation?
I'm getting back into the swing of things and am really enjoying how much more there is to do in a game compared to SCII. It makes #2 feel slow lol.
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box box box box 1a2a3a.
That's how a lot of high level players do it. You have a good flank set up and you send the units that you've preplaced in groups of 12. The first group being furthest, then gradually closer each time. then a quick 1a2a3a.
Rally to key locations on the map that you need to hold. Places that defend multiple bases, in other words.
you can hotkey further, but then you have to remember to rehotkey your hatches.
That's basically how it works. Macro is important for zergs, so its often more important to keep hatches on hotkey than units. Modern styles often use low numbers of good tech units like defiler lurker ultra, esp. in ZvT. focus on controlling those first 3 control groups well, and position them in a way that makes it easy to box click the rest.
Terran and Protoss armies often do their best not to lose many units in their engagements so they can keep growing a bigger an bigger ball. They devote a lot of hotkeys to them for this reason. Zerg uses sometimes don't have much of a choice. Zerglings will die no matter what as fodder, hydras are also vulnerable. Only units you can keep alive are mutas, lurkers and ultra/defiler. So for Zerg, we keep up by replacing our armies as our bases grow and grow, attacking in multiple places, knowing full well we don't expect those units to survive. It's not hard to go 1a2a3a4a5a6a7a8a9a0a, but it's not that useful compared to just replacing your army. Course, you don't want to throw units away, but when you do make your attack, you're mostly just setting up the flank and dodging storms, killing key units etc. You're not gonna be microing lings much after they've engaged, so it's ok to not have them on a group.
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On November 02 2012 10:39 Qwyn wrote:Show nested quote +On November 02 2012 10:32 Shiro)Tenshi wrote:1) Zergs have two potential rally points: their choke or outside their opponent's choke. In the early/mid game, it's a good idea to rally everything to your natural choke. Good zerg players usually select their drones to mine as soon as they pop, so the rallied units are almost always entirely offensive. 2) In general it's best to have your units stay rallied to your natural, or outside your natural. You'd only want to consider rallying to their choke if you're committing to a contain. But siege tanks outrange lurks even in unsieged mode, so it's not a good idea to try and contain a terran until you have defilers/swarm. 3) Usually natural, unless your hatchery is built in another base, in which case just rally to the ramp. ---- 1) Hotkey the important units. Ultras/Lurkers/Defilers//etc. don't worry about zerglings. Drag-box + a-move them in coordination with your main army when you go for a large engage. If (with zerglings) your army is manageable with unoccupied hotkeys, then by all means hotkey them so you have an even better coordinated engage. 2) Put a few hatcheries near each other. Hotkey screen to F2. Hotkey desired rally point to F3. F2 -> Click hatch -> F3 -> Right-click ground. Pros can re-rally each in split seconds. 3) Put defilers in the same group as a few zerglings so it can consume when it's low on energy without searching around for zerglings. It doesn't really matter which group you put it in, as long as you remember. 4) I've seen people group lurk/ling in one group because you can't a-move lurks alone. When you engage a terran, you generally want to stagger burrowing the lurks. Burrow the front ones first, let the back ones move up, so you can burrow them further, etc. Burrowing all at once just staples your army to the ground (lurks are your major source of dps), lings/muta will melt to terran mnm. If you can get a good surround so that the mnm are unable to stim-retreat, then just burrow on the spot. ----- 1) Lurker first is legit in ZvP and ZvT. You will be the one containing, not the one being contained. 2) Against Terran mech, you want a hydra/muta composition. You can build an additional hatch with sunkens at 3rd for a wall. But as everything is situational in this game, don't take a third if you know you can't defend it. 3) Zergs had a lot of success with 6-hatch instead of 5; lets zerg macro harder. Here's an example http://www.teamliquid.net/tlpd/korean/games/74518_Jaedong_vs_JangBi/vod4) 3h hydra ZvP. 2h lurker ZvT. Ling all-in ZvZ. Hotkeys are highly personalized. It differs from person to person. Some pros use 456 for hatch whereas others use 123. Bottom line is just do what's most comfortable for you. Hey man thanks for all the advice! Do you ever use the camera hotkeys to manage bases beyond your third? Or would you rather use camera hotkeys to manage a bunch of macro hatches? Or would you suggest using whatever works, OR remapping depending on the situation? I'm getting back into the swing of things and am really enjoying how much more there is to do in a game compared to SCII. It makes #2 feel slow lol.
Remapping depending on situation; definitely.
In general, in until I get the drone saturation I would like, I have my F-keys mapped on hatcheries. After I get the economy and can really bust out my macro, I remap my hotkeys to my hatcheries, chokes, and key points on the map. This usually happens more-so in ZvP because your third is far away so there's no simple gesture other than F-keys to instantly move your camera location to your third (besides maybe clicking on the minimap, but that's inconsistent).
Yeah I played about 150 games of SC2 before I'm tempted to hit the Uninstall button.
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On November 02 2012 10:41 Chef wrote:
box box box box 1a2a3a.
That's how a lot of high level players do it. You have a good flank set up and you send the units that you've preplaced in groups of 12. The first group being furthest, then gradually closer each time. then a quick 1a2a3a.
Rally to key locations on the map that you need to hold. Places that defend multiple bases, in other words.
you can hotkey further, but then you have to remember to rehotkey your hatches.
That's basically how it works. Macro is important for zergs, so its often more important to keep hatches on hotkey than units. Modern styles often use low numbers of good tech units like defiler lurker ultra, esp. in ZvT. focus on controlling those first 3 control groups well, and position them in a way that makes it easy to box click the rest.
Terran and Protoss armies often do their best not to lose many units in their engagements so they can keep growing a bigger an bigger ball. They devote a lot of hotkeys to them for this reason. Zerg uses sometimes don't have much of a choice. Zerglings will die no matter what as fodder, hydras are also vulnerable. Only units you can keep alive are mutas, lurkers and ultra/defiler. So for Zerg, we keep up by replacing our armies as our bases grow and grow, attacking in multiple places, knowing full well we don't expect those units to survive. It's not hard to go 1a2a3a4a5a6a7a8a9a0a, but it's not that useful compared to just replacing your army. Course, you don't want to throw units away, but when you do make your attack, you're mostly just setting up the flank and dodging storms, killing key units etc. You're not gonna be microing lings much after they've engaged, so it's ok to not have them on a group.
So to decide rallies I have to look at what places on the map are going to be key to control, thanks for that. Yeah lings are going to be cannon fodder. So basically I want to figure out hotkeys for all my power units.
I've noticed that in the midgame zerg is often on the defensive against the terran and prefer to rally their units near their hatcheries (power units) to control area. Is zerg usually going to be reactive when Terran pushes out with his midgame bio, and from there on?
Timings for flanks seem really damn difficult. Not so much the act of engagement as it is setting all your units up and having them prepared to go. I realized that one thing I neglected was lurker pairs.
I've been practicing a lot on Match Point. I love the dynamic of the map.
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On November 02 2012 10:51 Qwyn wrote:Show nested quote +On November 02 2012 10:41 Chef wrote:
box box box box 1a2a3a.
That's how a lot of high level players do it. You have a good flank set up and you send the units that you've preplaced in groups of 12. The first group being furthest, then gradually closer each time. then a quick 1a2a3a.
Rally to key locations on the map that you need to hold. Places that defend multiple bases, in other words.
you can hotkey further, but then you have to remember to rehotkey your hatches.
That's basically how it works. Macro is important for zergs, so its often more important to keep hatches on hotkey than units. Modern styles often use low numbers of good tech units like defiler lurker ultra, esp. in ZvT. focus on controlling those first 3 control groups well, and position them in a way that makes it easy to box click the rest.
Terran and Protoss armies often do their best not to lose many units in their engagements so they can keep growing a bigger an bigger ball. They devote a lot of hotkeys to them for this reason. Zerg uses sometimes don't have much of a choice. Zerglings will die no matter what as fodder, hydras are also vulnerable. Only units you can keep alive are mutas, lurkers and ultra/defiler. So for Zerg, we keep up by replacing our armies as our bases grow and grow, attacking in multiple places, knowing full well we don't expect those units to survive. It's not hard to go 1a2a3a4a5a6a7a8a9a0a, but it's not that useful compared to just replacing your army. Course, you don't want to throw units away, but when you do make your attack, you're mostly just setting up the flank and dodging storms, killing key units etc. You're not gonna be microing lings much after they've engaged, so it's ok to not have them on a group. So to decide rallies I have to look at what places on the map are going to be key to control, thanks for that. Yeah lings are going to be cannon fodder. So basically I want to figure out hotkeys for all my power units. I've noticed that in the midgame zerg is often on the defensive against the terran and prefer to rally their units near their hatcheries (power units) to control area. Is zerg usually going to be reactive when Terran pushes out with his midgame bio, and from there on? Timings for flanks seem really damn difficult. Not so much the act of engagement as it is setting all your units up and having them prepared to go. I realized that one thing I neglected was lurker pairs. I've been practicing a lot on Match Point. I love the dynamic of the map.
ZvT is a very delicate matchup.
Zergs have map control early/early-mid game with muta micro. But Zergs cannot prevent Terran from constantly massing up his mnm (assuming the two players are on equal skill level), and Terran will usually push out with mnm/tank/vessel as soon as his first vessel pops (~9min push) or some other variation that tries to hit a pre-hive timing. At this point, the Zerg needs to be defensive, with highest priority being securing his third base, which is usually done by having lurkers on top of the ramp.
Lurkers are strongest while burrowed, so you generally can't engage a mnm/tank ball with lurker/ling because the time it takes for lurks to burrow will allow too much time for the terran to dps them down. This is why zergs are going to be on the defensive until they have defiler/swarm. After you have defiler swarm, then the entire game turns into a match of attrition. Killing bases, trading armies, remacro'ing, etc. Whoever does it better will emerge ahead as winner.
It's important for the Zerg to secure at least 3 gas because you needs it to keep your lurker count while teching to hive (125 gas per lurk is a huge investment) and that's why securing a third base is so important.
5 gas is the point where you can go ultra/defiler/ling.
After 5 gas, you can just practically build whatever gas-intensive units you want.
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something to consider when attacking with ur large zerg army, lets say u have ur units vertically along the left side and u want to attack the top right, u should grab the ones furthest away, than the next furthest and so on, so they all arrive at the same time, if u reply too much 1a2a3a5a5a6a ect
ur gonna have stuff arrive in limbo lines and in a non-optimal order. also in the late game clumping macro hatchs next to each other is very good for a screen hot key, u dont even need to click all the hatchs to make larvae u just ctrl-click on a single on and it selects them all, or u can just box the larva
Also as zerg when u take bases that in the corners of the map, dont screen hotkey in the late game or hotkey them at all, instead u can save those hotkeys for units and others hatchs, and simply hold down the scroll button and tilt to the corner your hatch is, and it instantly moves u there, tho depending how sensitive ur mouse is.
Re-rallying in bw is awesome imo, hard for low apm players but still awesome, u make screen hotkeys for where ur hatchs are and save 1 for a re-rally point for when u want to attack or stop attacking, the last thing u want is to rally to the infront of them
and forget about it lol.
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Hmm this is a lot to consider, lol. I like it. Time to play some more gamezzz....One thing I wish that would be really cool is if the game offered more camera hotkeys for use. It's something I love about SCII but I don't think SC1's game developers thought about that much when they were making the game  .
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I've noticed that in the midgame zerg is often on the defensive against the terran and prefer to rally their units near their hatcheries (power units) to control area.
Zerg want to wait to attack Terran army until it is just at zergs front door. This is because Zerg can cut off reinforcements while delaying the push until they either have created a lot of units for a strong midgame flank, or have teched to defilers and can hold with like 1-2 lurkers with a swarm.
We're talking about army management, so I was thinking later in the game. Imagine you have 4 bases and your tech figured out. Often there's a way to defend a wide ramp to your 4th and 3rd (especially on 2p maps). As the armies get big, these points become critical (blue storm and matchpoint have obvious control points with those high ground pods... Losing those means your opponent can attack many different expos and you'll be running your units thru a bottle neck or up a hill to attack him).
As far as early game and mid game plans, you shouldn't need more than 3 hotkeys most of the time. Modern play revolves around Terran and Toss trying to take their 3rd asap, and zerg trying to get an economy that can compete with it. So tactics generally occur between tech units or small groups of units. Zerg have options to go for midgame strength which needs more units, and probably does mean you're rallying near your nat (if only so your drones you're powering are not going across the map). You plan to battle at your nat, and delay while you build up units at your nat, even with a strong mid game army though. Deny an expo if he tries to take it without enough units.
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On November 02 2012 10:30 Qwyn wrote:Show nested quote +On November 02 2012 10:04 Sawamura wrote:
should be posted at bw strategy forums .... if you want to ask for help and also post your replay..... I just decided to ask a bunch of general questions. Since I'm not asking about specific critiques, I don't have any replays to offer. If you'd like, I could prepend a bunch of sentimental bullcrap so that it would feel like more of a blog to you? I was under the impression that a blog could be about anything lol. Anyhow what I'm most curious about is the army rallies and how you box move and stuff. I didn't want to bump some two/three year old threads that are long dead, and I also didn't feel that my questions warranted a specific new thread. So I made a blog. The other info I just tacked on - I can use Liquipedia for that.
Funny I didn't know you need to bump two/ three year old threads in the bw strategy forums to ask a question also there is a never a restriction or rules that limit anyone from making a thread in the strategy forums after all your question that you deem general is pertaining to bw strategy .
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On November 02 2012 11:51 Sawamura wrote:Show nested quote +On November 02 2012 10:30 Qwyn wrote:On November 02 2012 10:04 Sawamura wrote:
should be posted at bw strategy forums .... if you want to ask for help and also post your replay..... I just decided to ask a bunch of general questions. Since I'm not asking about specific critiques, I don't have any replays to offer. If you'd like, I could prepend a bunch of sentimental bullcrap so that it would feel like more of a blog to you? I was under the impression that a blog could be about anything lol. Anyhow what I'm most curious about is the army rallies and how you box move and stuff. I didn't want to bump some two/three year old threads that are long dead, and I also didn't feel that my questions warranted a specific new thread. So I made a blog. The other info I just tacked on - I can use Liquipedia for that. Funny I didn't know you need to bump two/ three year old threads in the bw strategy forums to ask a question also there is a never a restriction or rules that limit anyone from making a thread in the strategy forums after all your question that you deem general is pertaining to bw strategy .
Alright, I'll keep that in mind, but I made a personal judgement call and decided to ask questions phrased generally for lack of a better way to put it.
In the SCII forums I figured stuff like that would be closed immediately. Perhaps you would a bit more lenient of those questions, I don't know.
Regardless I learned a lot of helpful information already. If I have any more simple questions or intricate needs I'll be sure to post in the Strat thread.
Thanks.
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When you draw a box with your mouse to select units, start at the Northeast corner and end in the Southwest corner. You should be dragging boxes toward the mini map so that you can right click it quickly after. This makes a huge difference since you will be spending so much time right clicking various things to different areas of the mini map.
Also, I don't hotkey defilers, I just right click them on some random unit in my army and manually click them when I need them. Since autocast doesn't work in BW, it isn't actually very helpful keeping all your spellcasters in 1 control group. You will have to click them all individually anyway. Plus if you have 12 defilers in one area you are making a mistake.
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EPT
