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On March 13 2017 09:31 Jealous wrote:Show nested quote +On March 13 2017 09:20 TooLate wrote:On March 13 2017 09:07 Jealous wrote:Look at Flash/Last/other top Terrans. Watch a few of their games until you find a build order/playstyle you like. Then write down when they build something, when they send the scout, so on and so forth. Then you practice, practice, practice  Thanks! I thought about it and I've been watching a lot of Flash' streams (him being the reason why I wanted to play SCBW haha) but I thought it'd be aiming too high to try to copy one of his builds lol. Guess I will hunt down which ones look the most basic. More specifically to your question, playing safer may be appealing but it's not optimal. I just said safe as in not play too cheesy/aggressive nor way too greedy. I just don't want to fall into bad habits basically, I don't want to just turtle either. What do you mean with playing safe not being optimal? Also, thanks a lot for your suggestions, I'll make sure to try those! For example Siege-Expand is very safe because you are pretty much immune to early Zealot and Dragoon pressure without requiring very much micro. However, it is also somewhat dated because you can get a Command Center earlier if you do the more micro-intensive Zealot-tight semi-wall in your main and then follow up with an FD push. This is a more flexible and economic build, and is better suited for the more common Protoss openings, most of which have a relatively early Nexus (after 1 to 4 goons). So, Siege-Expand is worse than FD in almost every scenario (except vs. 10-15 gate, 9/9 gate, stuff like that), but it is safer. There is a general flow-chart in terms of your build vs. your opponent build, and it goes something like: cheese > greedy > standard > safe > cheese So while the "safe" build is better against the cheesy ladder players you may run into, it will leave you in a disadvantage against someone who played standard or greedy. Standard can still hold some cheese relatively well (even against 10-15 you are unlikely to outright die if you go FD; you just won't be able to take your natural for a while). Greedy loses to cheese most of the time. My overall point I guess is that while going "safe" is okay when you're just learning the game and want to get into the midgame and macro, don't be surprised if you're consistently behind people who played standard or greedy. Once you feel a bit more comfortable, pursue more standard builds. Safe: I already listed what I think are "safe," but I guess in TvZ "safest" would be 1 base 3 rax pressure into fast Vessel? Like some old school Boxer stuff. Will be hard to keep up with a 3 base Zerg though unless you do a lot of damage. Safe and aggressive kinda overlap here? Standard: FD vs. Protoss, Rax FE vs. Zerg, I'm not sure about TvT but maybe Rax FE as well? Greedy: 14cc all 3 MUs. Cheese: BBS, 2 Fac vs. P, Strong FD might be considered cheese since it is hard to scout? vs. P, 2 port Wraith in TvT and TvZ might be considered cheese I guess. Some builds I guess are more "aggressive" than outright cheese, like fast Dropship play. EDIT: Page 300 post 6000! My little thread has grown so much ^-^;
Most of what Jealous said is good advice, but the paragraph about FD and Siege Expand is not quite correct. Siege Expand is more economical than FD as you get your natural up earlier. The reason Siege Expand is rarely played is that you are playing blind for a significant amount of time, because you cannot scout after the initial SCV. With FD you can use your vultures to get a general grasp of what P does. But Siege Expand is very good for beginners as there is not much micro required and it is advantageous vs 2 Gate openings which might be more common at lower levels.
Take a look here if you want to learn it:
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/bw-strategy/446553-how-to-siege-expand-in-tvp
For TvZ I would start with something like 2 Rax Academy into 1 base tech or expo. 1 Rax Expand is standard but kinda hard to pull off as newcomer vs pool first openings.
In TvT you should probably also wall your ramp and go Siege Expand at first. More common is Vulture or Rax Expand but it is also hard to hold 2 factory pushes with that.
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Thanks for the correction Cryoc! I coulda sworn that FD gets you a faster expo because you move out with 1 tank and before an upgrade finishes, whereas with Siege-Expand you need to wait until Siege Mode is finished. Maybe it's just because Protoss can do more to stall a Siege-Expand even if they didn't 10/15 than they can vs. FD? Maybe I'm just bad, haha.
Also thanks for supplementing the TvZ side, that's one area I am clueless in beyond Rax FE and old school Boxer-esque stuff.
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The difference is, you only start your CC after you move out with one tank. With Siege Expand you build your CC right after your factory finishes and floating it to the natural only requires a couple of seconds, so you are more than a minute faster.
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On March 13 2017 12:36 Cryoc wrote:
The difference is, you only start your CC after you move out with one tank. With Siege Expand you build your CC right after your factory finishes and floating it to the natural only requires a couple of seconds, so you are more than a minute faster.
I see! But if Toss is waiting in your natural with a Dragoon or two, then don't you have to wait until your second tank is out before you can start mining? I'm judging this mostly from my games on the Protoss side, where it seems like Terrans struggle to make use of their first CC until they have killed/forced the Dragoons out. Maybe I'm mentally exaggerating the effect my Dragoons have on this or I play mostly bad people, or both.
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On March 13 2017 14:26 Jealous wrote:Show nested quote +On March 13 2017 12:36 Cryoc wrote:
The difference is, you only start your CC after you move out with one tank. With Siege Expand you build your CC right after your factory finishes and floating it to the natural only requires a couple of seconds, so you are more than a minute faster. I see! But if Toss is waiting in your natural with a Dragoon or two, then don't you have to wait until your second tank is out before you can start mining? I'm judging this mostly from my games on the Protoss side, where it seems like Terrans struggle to make use of their first CC until they have killed/forced the Dragoons out. Maybe I'm mentally exaggerating the effect my Dragoons have on this or I play mostly bad people, or both.
My guess is that they are probably bad because you will 2 tanks with siege mode when your CC flies to your natural. Vs 1 gate expo, P has 3 dragoons at that time and if you know it you can take your nat without delay by sieging one on top and one on low ground at the back of the base. Vs 2 gate P has 4 goons so it is a bit more tricky and you might have to wait for your 3rd tank to take your natural, but on the other hand, P is also sacrificing goons if he delays your natural. Vs 10/15 P has 5 goons so T really should just be patient and not get tanks sniped.
Also one advantage of the Siege Expand vs FD that I didn't even mention yet is, that you never stop SCV production, whereas with FD, you usually cut it atleast twice (or thrice if you want to really get your cc started when you move out and not after an additional depot). So even if your CC is delayed to the same timing of an FD (roughly after your 3rd tank is built), you will still have more SCVs and therefore a better economy.
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On March 14 2017 01:14 Cryoc wrote:Show nested quote +On March 13 2017 14:26 Jealous wrote:On March 13 2017 12:36 Cryoc wrote:
The difference is, you only start your CC after you move out with one tank. With Siege Expand you build your CC right after your factory finishes and floating it to the natural only requires a couple of seconds, so you are more than a minute faster. I see! But if Toss is waiting in your natural with a Dragoon or two, then don't you have to wait until your second tank is out before you can start mining? I'm judging this mostly from my games on the Protoss side, where it seems like Terrans struggle to make use of their first CC until they have killed/forced the Dragoons out. Maybe I'm mentally exaggerating the effect my Dragoons have on this or I play mostly bad people, or both. My guess is that they are probably bad because you will 2 tanks with siege mode when your CC flies to your natural. Vs 1 gate expo, P has 3 dragoons at that time and if you know it you can take your nat without delay by sieging one on top and one on low ground at the back of the base. Vs 2 gate P has 4 goons so it is a bit more tricky and you might have to wait for your 3rd tank to take your natural, but on the other hand, P is also sacrificing goons if he delays your natural. Vs 10/15 P has 5 goons so T really should just be patient and not get tanks sniped. Also one advantage of the Siege Expand vs FD that I didn't even mention yet is, that you never stop SCV production, whereas with FD, you usually cut it atleast twice (or thrice if you want to really get your cc started when you move out and not after an additional depot). So even if your CC is delayed to the same timing of an FD (roughly after your 3rd tank is built), you will still have more SCVs and therefore a better economy.
Very nice! Thank you for this post. As a person who has been dabbling with T recently, I found it very informative.
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What great Terran-teachers we have ^^
I just wanted to add two things for TooLate:
a) Just a little warning: Picking the right build-order to play safe is only half the deal or less - most of it is execution and experience.
Some seasoned player might tell you that Siege-Expo is safe - and yet you keep losing more games with it than you survive at first. It's not your mistake necessarily, it's just that even a D/D+ opponent has played hundreds or thousands of games against Siege-Expo and they know what can beat it still - or rather: the build is just potentially safe, in relation to a players skill.
+ Show Spoiler +If you face an aggressive 2gate-opening for example it's a pretty tough job for a newcomer to defend the wall against zealots/goons or just goons - even if Jealous/Cryoc are right to say that it takes relatively little micro compared to the FD.
Before your tank is out, you have to pull SCVs for repair and cycle the ones that get attacked back to the mineral line. You have to dance with your tank for a while to use its slight range-advantage until you have siege. Meanwhile you don't want to miss too many SCVs or your next tank or your engineering bay etc.
Taking the natural with 2-3 tanks is not too easy either if you face an aggressive Protoss. As you are siegeing your tanks, floating your CC, transfering your SCVs, adding turrets, meanwhile going on with your build-order - it's pretty easy to get caught off-guard by just a frontal attack... or one a little later with a shuttle... or DTs... or a reaver...
You can scout/sense all that and react, theoretically, but it's pretty hard at first.
b) I would recommend going for the standard 1rax-expo in TvZ right from the start, maybe with CC always on the highground and bunker+depot-block in the natural as a standard when you move down the ramp.
You never see one-base play these days unless for a gimmick, and if you learn to do the double-SCV-scout you can always see a 9- or 12-pool coming on FS, with enough time to block the ramp - which you have to learn some day anyway - or even to build a bunker down the ramp.
If you don't even try to cut corners, it should be a safe build, too.
edit: Maybe 1base-openings are more common than I know of on Iccup, and if you're good you can do anything. But I would assume that at some point this style just won't do anymore, Zergs scout it and react and are ahead.
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TvZ:
9 depot, 11 rax, 11 scout (later when you get comfortable scout on 12), 13 scout, 14 depot, 16 marine, 17 CC.
You'll always see below before ordering CC:
vs any pool that you meet lings just leaving his base (ramp) or still spawning. bunker in natural. constant marine production
vs lings already coming (9 pool), 5 scv on ramp, CC highground
vs hath first, CC lowground
Afterwards: 21 depot, 2nd barack, gas, academy, EB and 3rd barack. You move out with 10-12 marine + 2 medic, add firebats at home. Try to go for factory/staport/vessel and 2-3 tank push. After that you can go 5-7 rax 2 port, or 5 rax with a lot of tanks, or 3-5 rax with 3 factories into mech switch.
TvP:
9 supply (try to wall-off always), 11 rax, 12 gas, 13 scout, 15 depot and factory (if you see zealot coming or probe in your base make marine 1st, if no zealot make facotry/2nd depot 1st). Command center highground around when factory finishes or after adding addon (depending on marine count). Make 2 tank and siege mode. ALWAYS add engineering bay when CC 3/4 finished and put 1 turret in natural (a little at back vs DT). Add 2 turrets later on, one next to your main CC and other somewhere in between. This is a very conservative approach, but unless you scout that he's going like quick 3rd nexus or just 3-4 gate obs it will pay off most of the times. If you're sure no reaver/DT you can skip turrets for long time.
Try to either go 5 fact push with scan or go for 3rd command center on 2/3 factories. Key things: add armory for upg quickly if you don't plan for timing. Scout with scan if P goes for arbiter (need vessel), carier (need goliaths), or some kind of mass exp/units (need to play safe and move out with big army). As gentlemens discussed before, everything is based on scouting, so try to feel how many units/turrets you need and if you should go for aggresion or wait for big army to move out.
TvT:
9 depot, 11 rax, 12 gas, 13,5 scout, depot with factory. Make 2 marines, lift rax and go scout your opponent with it, 1-2 vultures (tank afterwards) and add command center just before factory or little after. Don't make wall, it doesn't help with anything vs T. Quickly add 2nd factory after 1-2 tanks and armory and try to see what is coming (most popular options are expo with tank/vulture, tank/goliath, tank/wraith, 3 to 5 fact vults, or if no expo it's probably 2 fact vulure with some tank / 1 fact 1 port wraith / 2 port wraith)
Try to fight for area to secure expos and limit opponents movement (tank lines), either make a lot of factory units or go for wraith play. In super late game consider BC if position is locked.
Good luck and welcome!
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Wow guys, this is more information that I could ask for. Thanks a lot! My motivation to play was starting to wind down but now I really gotta give it a chance after this much help.
The most discouraging thing is that I can't even beat the AI. It probably is me sucking at macro, but they always come at me with a stupid amount of zealots/zerglings and I can't seem to do anything. Guess I should just start focusing in one matchup at a time, and maybe drop the AI and learn to handle the losses again real players.
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all you have to do to beat the AI most of the time is have a proper wall
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On March 14 2017 20:54 rand0MPrecisi0n wrote:
all you have to do to beat the AI most of the time is have a proper wall
True. The AI is really dumb... you can create most any 'kill zone' you want, and they'll happily march right into it.
They're also usually pretty predictable. IIRC, once they have 12 zerglings or 12 zealots, they attack.
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to beat the ai attack their nexus with your probe and run away gg :p
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Don't get discouraged from losing against the A.I., TooLate.
Every A.I.-race has only 1 (Terran), 2 (Zerg), or 3 (Protoss) build-orders. The more you play them, the more you know what is coming. Also, they are very easy to throw off, just by attacking them with your scouting worker (the A.I. will react by ordering ALL their workers to attack your scout... = no income for them as long as you keep doing this) - but this is cheating, DON'T DO IT.
Still: the A.I. shows up with a push at some point, the mass-zealot-push or DT-rush are actually really dangerous if you're a beginner and don't have a full wall-off or detection. The A.I. also has infinite APM, so the longer the game goes, the more they do crazy stuff like use nukes, storms, maelstroms, Yamato-cannon etc. Can be hard for a beginner to keep track of all that.
If you can't beat the A.I. 100% of the time yet: Rejoice! because it means you can improve immensely with relatively little, but well-informed practice, and this kind of improvement will also transfer to your online-play because it revolves around the very basics of the game.
Like you said: Pick one race, one matchup, one map at a time and practice only your build order until you don't miss stuff (workers, units, buildings, upgraes) for the first 10 minutes.
Keep using unit-/building-/ability-shortcuts and the F2,F3,F4-keys, and learn a good hotkey-setup for your race.
You can even do this without the PC, it's much better to practice the mechanical stuff on your own at first. Just open an online-game (melee or OneVsOne), add the A.I., press start, and kick the A.I. during countdown.
Then try to keep scouting your opponent if you play vs one: his base, then his natural, then as close as you can get, later with scan etc. Try to always know when an attack is coming and what kind of attack.
Then try to get 'above your game', meaning: do all the stuff I just explained while still keeping track of what your overall strategy and goal is in the game. What are you building up your economy for? When do you want to attack with what kind of army and where? How do you want to end the game, by what moves do you want to force your opponent to gg?
Just getting half-way decent at BW is pretty hard and takes a lot of time and effort. But when you get there you achieved a real skill, you can feel it. Playing the likes of you then is one of the best experiences in gaming imo.
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What's the best response to a 11 nexus 11 forge in zvp at 1 or 7 o'clock position, let's assume you scout him on first try...
Do you build 6 zerglings initially and kill a probe or two and have him pull some probes off minerals or would it just be better to get 3 drones immediately and improve your own economy?
I've noticed that killing one or two probes doesn't really do much to the protoss' economy since he has those 2 nexi so fast and he can skip the second pylon to get his cyber core roughly 20 seconds earlier than normal...
Or would you advise just going for a 3 hatch hydra all-in? lol..
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I thought about it myself some and in case you open with an overpool you just have to accept that there's no real way to do any damage against a good player. You just have to abuse the weakness of the build, which is that it can't put up any zealot pressure at all, by focusing entirely on strengthening your own economy.
3 hatch hydra all-in and variants also don't seem so good to me now that I've thought about it more. The protoss has a much stronger economy than normal so he will easily be able to afford additional cannons while investing into gateways, corsairs,...
The corsair is also a solid 20 seconds earlier than normal meaning he'll scout your build this amount of time sooner even if he had "no clue" it was coming.
So unless you can completely surprise him (but then again, 3 hatch hydra will probably work vs anything if they don't know it's coming at all...), I don't think it's a smart idea to go for it.
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As P player I've been experimenting myself quite a lot with this build, since everyone is going overpool nowadays due to gate 1st openings.
I don't think the hydra allin is a good idea for the reasons you said, me personally I hate when Z goes for 3rd hatch at another nat, and just focuses on eco + defenses, but this is maybe just me hating this type of play. Also the 6 zlings you mentioned, usually is not a big deal to block with probes, since the transfer is done more or less at that time as well, so I guess probably making drones would be more useful for you.
Also my impression, that even if P gets a better economy out of this build, is still something really manageable within a normal ZvP framework, meaning you don't need to do anything out of the ordinary to win vs this.
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On March 17 2017 13:42 B-royal wrote:
I thought about it myself some and in case you open with an overpool you just have to accept that there's no real way to do any damage against a good player [who's going 11 nex, 11 forge]. You just have to abuse the weakness of the build, which is that it can't put up any zealot pressure at all, by focusing entirely on strengthening your own economy.
3 hatch hydra all-in and variants also don't seem so good to me now that I've thought about it more. The protoss has a much stronger economy than normal so he will easily be able to afford additional cannons while investing into gateways, corsairs,...
The corsair is also a solid 20 seconds earlier than normal meaning he'll scout your build this amount of time sooner even if he had "no clue" it was coming.
So unless you can completely surprise him (but then again, 3 hatch hydra will probably work vs anything if they don't know it's coming at all...), I don't think it's a smart idea to go for it.
How about 9 pool speedling? That'd get there easily before cannons are up, and should do damage.
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On March 17 2017 18:54 [[Starlight]] wrote:Show nested quote +On March 17 2017 13:42 B-royal wrote:
I thought about it myself some and in case you open with an overpool you just have to accept that there's no real way to do any damage against a good player [who's going 11 nex, 11 forge]. You just have to abuse the weakness of the build, which is that it can't put up any zealot pressure at all, by focusing entirely on strengthening your own economy.
3 hatch hydra all-in and variants also don't seem so good to me now that I've thought about it more. The protoss has a much stronger economy than normal so he will easily be able to afford additional cannons while investing into gateways, corsairs,...
The corsair is also a solid 20 seconds earlier than normal meaning he'll scout your build this amount of time sooner even if he had "no clue" it was coming.
So unless you can completely surprise him (but then again, 3 hatch hydra will probably work vs anything if they don't know it's coming at all...), I don't think it's a smart idea to go for it. How about 9 pool speedling? That'd get there easily before cannons are up, and should do damage.
9 pool beats this, it is clear, but against any other opening it puts you quite behind, not sure is the type of answer the OP was looking for
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Yes protoss takes quites a risk because a 5 pool and 9 pool are most likely auto-wins. But I'm not talking about series, where you should and have to mix up your build order. Just talking about ladder games, which are in my case 99% of the time overpool.
I haven't had the situation occur to me where I went 12 hatch vs this build.
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EPT
