EPT
GENTLEMEN, I HAVE CREATED IT: THE LEGENDARY OMNITREE, TECH TREE COMPARISON FOR EVERY RACE:
(large image, technical diagram, have a good connection if you open the spoiler)
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![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/DE3sG.png)
Hope that this in-depth technical diagram* that I spent much time** in photoshop*** working on**** helps.
As the diagram clearly shows, there are a lot of things to take into account when teching ie, lower techs being passed to higher techs, like pool-tech roaches getting speed in lair tech, or lair-tech corruptors getting broodlord after hive tech; similar things for terran with tech labs, and particularly factory tech which allows nukes and reaper speed; and lastly protoss which passes twilight tech down into the gateway/warpgate tech areas.
As you can see in my technical diagram, the terran tech tree is linear and chopsticklike (rax -> fact -> port), whereas the protoss tech tree is shaped like a trident (gate -> core -> robo or TC or Stargate). This gives the protoss a lot of late game tech flexibility, but not as much early game tech flexibility. 1/1/1 tries to hit during the window when the chopstick is greater than the trident.
In the later game, the Terran player will strive to use the more trident-like and less chopsticklike by using buildings and tech that tech "sideways" instead of upwards, like making a reactor on his starport, tech labs for his raxes, and ghost academy for ghosts, and armory for +2, etc.
The Zerg has a "comb" tech tree is because there's a basic tech progression (pool -> lair -> pit -> hive), but off of each step in the tech progression there are "branches" that increase your tech but don't let you move to the next level. At pool tech, this is Roach Warren and Baneling Nest. At Lair tech, this is Hydralisk Den, Spire, and Nydus Network. These all give you access to powerful units, but don't let you actually tech up to the next level.
The Terran "comb" is actually shorter than the Zerg "comb", but it's wider, which means you can reach higher levels of tech more quickly, but branching out is more difficult. Also, the Zerg "comb" passes techs from one branch to the next more easily (burrow for roaches in lair, even though roach is pool tech, or spire corruptors learning Broodlord Aspect once you have hive tech) which means that although teching takes longer, it is more backwards-compatible, so to speak.
The protoss has the least "integrated" comb, because 2 branches of the comb (stargate and robo) share very little with the so-called "integrated" TC branch, which passes the technology gained back down the trunk to Warpgate.
Hope this shed some light on the tech differences.
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*: scribble
**: 5 minutes
***: MS Paint
****: dicking around with
