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I've been playing Zerg for a while, although I pretty much quit playing now but I still watch VODs and replays. So.. I've written a good deal of strats guilds (for avarage players, not in English though), but I always wanted to make a strats guild at a higher level. Since TvZ is my favorite matchup I think I'll give it a try and write something about it.
There are so many things to talk about in TvZ. I think I'm gonna focus on just one thing: timing. It's an unexplored yet deadly factor in the early game TvZ matchup. My skill and experience are no where near the avarage players on here so hopefully they will give us their experiences and opinions.
+ I would like to write it in the Terran point of view because Terran is the one who needs timing attacks to kill/hurt the zerg. However Zerg players could always refer to this and prevent Terran
+ I'm not really into theorycraft, and also, timing is really situational so don't expect something like "at min 3:05 Zerg do this and Terran do this..."
+ The scope of this writing is only about timing, so I'm not interested in things like how to use scan wisely, how to play vs 1 base zerg, etc
+ English is not my first language so please ignore spelinng(?) and grammar mistake =D
So this is how a TvZ really begins:
Terran with 2 rax rallying to ramp, probably starting to get gas, and Zerg sitting with 4-6 lings and a sunken colony at his expand. Well the terran could try to bunker rush previously. But if Terran fails, it goes to the same picture.
At early game Zerg doesn't have many choices. He has to go lair (quick lair or slow, allowing the 3rd hatch) and he has to build as many drones as possible within the safe margin while using the rest of the money to counter w/e Terran throws at him. After Zerg has lurker/mutalisk, he will try to contain Terran and expanding, depends on the situation. From there the match goes on, anything could happens.
On the other hand, Terran has many choices at early game, thanks to the ability to defend the ramp. This is where a timing attack is need. Terran has to damage the Zerg as much as possible before midgame.
Well that's the story that every avarage players should know, now I'm gonna try to get into deeper details.
I cagetory the attacks into 3 types:
- Fully-timed attack:
The Terran devotes all of his resources for a attack at an exact time to kill or hurt the Zerg badly. If the attack fails and Terran has to retreat, Terran will be on the disadvantage edge.
- Fake attack:
The Terran spends as least as possible for an as most efficent as possible false attack. Fake attack are meant to delay the zerg economy. Terran can take this as an advan tage to tech, probably for a second Fully-timing attack. Or Terran could fast-expand which the delayed zerg can't break in time later on. Or Terran could just launch the False attack just to gain an advantage in midgame.
- Normal-timed attack:
This is the most common and better type of attack. One attack to finish the game at early stage is really rare so this type of attack lies somewhere between a fully-timed attack and fake attack. Terran play normally, cumulative his troops and launch the attack at a good timimg. If somehow the attack fails and Terran has to retreat, he's not hurt as bad as if the fully-timed attack fails.
What it takes for a timing attack
Don't let he know what you have. It's pretty straight foward, if he knows what you have, he will adjust his drones/troop acordingly, your attack won't success, even the fake attack won't hurt him much. If you can, give him false information.
Try to know what he has without letting him know that you know what he has. This is just a minor thing, however may becomes important especially if you want a suprise attack. Most of the time you might want to guess what he has, with your experience, or you might wanna scout far before the attack and guess what he might has to defense you.
Knowing the Zerg's weak spots
One of the most significant weak spots of the Zerg is the time right before the Zerg has muta/lurker. Every good Terran knows this and every Zerg always tries to delay Terran until muta/lurker arrives.
The greedy zerg: after sunken up his choke, Zerg pumps lots of drones, Terran might catch Zerg off-guard due to lack of sunken/zergling.
In midgame, the concept of timing attack is not clear, since the Zerg is problably prepared for everyhing. Expanding has nothing to do with timing attack because the money Zerg spend to expand is just a small part of the Zerg money, he needs gas more than mineral. But, don't let the zerg gets away with free gas, kill his expand. About timing attack, in some cases, you need to attack right before he got darkswarm and got him off-guard or something like that.
Delaying the Zerg
Sometimes, it's just impossible to kill the zerg at early game, but you can always delay his economy and gain the advantage in midgame. The idea is to pressure him as soon as possible, so that he has to spend money on troops at early game. Unfortunately, fake attack has its risks. Zerg might has more lings than you think and he will kill the false attack with minimal loss, putting you in the passive position. So when Terran moves out his mmb force for a false attack, stay alert for flank, scout the map and always be ready to retreat the troops to your choke.
The real stuff:
ok i'm a bit tired now so here goes the actual stuff, please share your experiences/opinions
At most of the time, try to pressure the zerg early, but always be ready to run back to your choke.
vs 3 hatch zerg
the slow lair tech put the zerg in a serious danger. Zerg either has to mass lings or mass sunkens to defense against the Terran. What Terran could do is to pressure the Zerg early, slowing him a while, then retreat back to his ramp. The reason is that 3 hatchs zerg could pump zergling really fast. But as the number of mmb increase, the effect of mass zerglings decrease. So Terran has two choice. He could mass marine +1 defense and slice through the sunkens. Or Terran could go tank push. In the later case, the timing must be adjusted so that you have enough amount of mmb to deal with any size of zerglings army, and you need to break the choke before he got lurker/muta. Good Zerg will try to save his lings so that he could combine his lings and muta/lurker to push you out. Bad Zerg will desperate throw everything at you and lose. To sum up, the keys are: how much you delayed him at early stage + how good the timing is + how good you are at micro management.
vs 2 hatchs zerg:
After sunk up the expand, the Zerg sit back and relax, thinks that he's safe and he could get away with it. The early Lair tech did slow down zerg economy a bit. So Terran can also do a couple of things to suprise the Zerg. Terran can do an exremely fast academy build. Don't pressure the Zerg early. After you got enough mmb, rush out your forces to his choke, as fast as possible. Chances are he either doesn't have enough zerglings or sunkens. You can really catch him off-guard and finish the game, or you can run pass the choke straight to his main base. The second option is to go for drops. Just do normal 2 rax while going for dropship. Go out with your mmb for a false attack, force him to build more sunkens and defense his choke, right after that bring the dropship and begin to drop rines/firebat to his main's landscape.
Mid game timing:
There are times in midgame that the Terran looks really strong, mostly because of the previous battle or something like that, especially when Terran is leading in weapon/armor upgrades.
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I think this is a great post, I think it would be good for experienced Zerg users to talk more about the timing in which they take their expansions. There are certain phases where Terran or Zerg has map control, for example:
Beginning:
Zerg Fast Expands, Terran has map control, Zerg builds Sunkens to protect econ advantage
OR
Zerg Goes Fast Pool, Zerg has map control, Terran stays on ramp with rines
Early Game:
Terran goes Academy, Terran has map control, Zerg builds more Sunkens and Lair tech to counter MM
Zerg Goes Lurker or Muta, Zerg has map control, Terran techs to vessel or tank appropriately
Then, if the Zerg goes Muta, he has map control until vessel, in which the Terran can split forces and try to take out the expo if there. The Zerg has two choices when he opens Muta - switch to lurker (and then take 3rd/4th expo//3rd + go to hive), or go mutaling and take a 3rd expo quicker (becuase no switch). Same goes for opening Lurker and whether he wants to go lurkerling + hive, or hydralurker w/drop+speed, or a combo of whatever.
What I don't really get is the timing for getting evolution chambers - chamber + upgrade is practically an expansion (when taking into account 50 for the drone itself), why go upgrade when one could expand? It's hard for me to grasp the timing of upgrades comming into play becuase they seem to take such a long time to kick in (although I can obviously see that with zerg units ups are crucial, similar to +1 ups with Marines due to stim and large quantity). Thoughts on any of this would be sweet.
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At early midgame, the number of lurkers really matters. So I usually upgrade early only if the Terran is not so agressive. Oh, I also upgrade early if the distance is far. But I think it's how you expect the game to be, or how well you micro, etc. I'm not really sure, someone could help ?
And when to expand? Well, iloveoov expands when his opponent least expects.... I don't know if same goes with Zerg or not :p
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is awesome32282 Posts
If the terran upgrades you should upgrade caparace as soon as possible...
evo = expo
evo "protects itsefl" Expansion needs units to be protected...of course this depends on maps and positions... for example y would rather go fast ups in nostalgia but i would probably go for and expo in lt.
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i like exalted's discussion about early zvt and how map control switches between the two players in the first 5 min or so. striving for that next level of play really is about noticing and taking advantage of these slight nuances, especially for the zerg's larva choices.
there really is no clear cut answer to when you expand or when u upgrade. typically i expo if i feel like i have map control, or more precisely, if i feel like i can stop the terran from taking out the expo when the army arrives at my zerg base. this is an important point: you can still expo/drone even if your army is smaller than the T, but you should stop droning and start making men at a certain point - the ideal timing is to get enough men to stop T army once it arrives at its target. it's also fine to over-make men - the more men you have the less you will lose (due to rate of fire). but imo flanking and positioning men well and choosing the point of collapse is much more important than things like upgrades. well it's a matter of balancing econ and men. if you choose to stop droning even before T comes out, you better hope that T comes out soon, or else you'd have been better off expoing/droning.
oh another subtle point is...if zerg goes something like 1 to 1.3 drones per mineral patch, its almost the same to get, say 7-10 more drones on mining on your existing bases than to expo. mineral-wise, i think its roughly the same. the advantage will come later though, with the extra larva.
regarding upgrades - if you dont evo soon...your lack of upgrades will really really hurt. but then again i've seen 0-0 zerg own like 2-2 terran simply with very good attacks.
but all this timing talk makes it sound VERY lost temple-ish. these specific talks of "standard" zvt play really is only standard on LT. sure, i use these tactics for many of my games, even on non-lt maps. but my point is, every map is different, u can choose to be an expert and specialize in all the various builds for every single map there is, or choose to improvise and just play generally. specialized builds will come either naturally through experience with general play, or with experiments via practice partners.
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Good post. While I agree with the Lost Templish feeling of the discussion, I feel this is what has the most use to most players (who play there), and people who wish to discuss (becuase of more familiar terrain). To cover briefly on other maps, of course there are situations where you are more limited in the choices that you take and the pros and cons of each. An example is Nostalgia, where as there is no gas at the natural and no cliff hitting the natural, mutalisk becuase much more limited in power as an opening build (practically impossible). Therefore, lurkerling is the alternative to take the expansion.
On maps without a cliff to defend, perhaps mutalisk becomes less useful, in that mutalisk is a very good "Lost Temple" build in that - there's an appropriate amount of gas, you protect against all Terran tech choices and your cliff (vulture/siege tank on cliff/goliath drop/double wraith/fast mm drop), get map control, keeps him in his base, AND you get great scouting and can stay aggressive vs SCVs.
As for the discussion, I think what is important is to notice when mins or gas are required - that is, I don't know which needs more gas - Hydralurker or Lurkerling (obviously with the intention of fast hive) - which builds favor getting speed/drop over faster hive tech. Further, most of the time when the 3rd or 4th base are gotten are for the gas nodes and not the mins - therefore it is definitely required to have an adequate amount of drones at the central main and natural.
It is definitely difficult to talk in great specifics of midgame builds, and I will go briefly into why. As previously mentioned, there is also a "power" and "economy" ratio in a battle - and they are a tradeoff. You want to fast expand? Your power goes to the floor, Economy shoots up, later on, your Power increases dramatically to make up for it. Zerg however, has the flexibility of controlling the power/economy "statistic" much more accurately than T or P. For example:
Open Mutalisk - Get 7 Muta - start pumping drones, switching to lurker, then double expand
Open Mutalisk - Get 7 Muta - expand - start pumping mutaling - lurker (if applicable)
They can choose if they still wish to stay in power even as their opponent's tech comes in. They can choose to get burrow and mass ling vs the inital MM attack (of course at great cost to their economy). But becuase of this Zerg feature, it is difficult to talk about exact times to "drone" and when to pump units except in general terms (which sucks, nobody likes generalities). As such I think that this is the borderline of strategic discussion in which it goes "too far" into the realm of theorycraft and decisions like these should be made from experience and intuition.
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One thing about zerg weeknesses and timing. If the zerg went a standard fast expo and you have gotten your standard marines + 2 meds + 2 bats it's almost allways worth it to do a fake attack. Due to timing issues he won't have lurkers or muta yet so he has to build sunkens when he see it coming and he has to build 4 or 5 as well. Terran on the other hand only needs to march halfway down the map and back again and looses nothing.
Another thing that I have won perhaps half of my zerg games with (I'm relativly noob) is the window of opportunity that terran gives zerg when he decides to camp outside their base. If the z went lurker + drop just when he get's drop he has a window before they t can possibly have vessels and t army is outside his base means he cannot defend drop at home. If you take out scan and the few turrets that T has he is completly helpless and even with tanks pounding the sunkens 1-2 lurkers will mean that T cannot enter the expand anyway. Usually you can get in somewhere around 5 lurks and around 8 lings in the terran base, more than enough to run over the defences in the base. If the terran has split his forces he can just drop behind and flank whatever contain is there. I think that's a definite timing issue.
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Re: mutas - I agree that mutas are not a very good opening on the new cliff-less maps. (Pretty much all the new ogn/wcg maps have no cliffs). On LT a fast muta build is the right way to go vs any type of fast gas terran simply due to the cliff. But on other maps, i think the standard anti-fasttech terran is just fast hydra (2 or 3 hat, no lair), which stops pretty much anything - vults, fast
acad, wraith, dship. It should even stop some types of 1 rax fast tank push.
On May 04 2005 08:50 exalted wrote:
As for the discussion, I think what is important is to notice when mins or gas are required - that is, I don't know which needs more gas - Hydralurker or Lurkerling (obviously with the intention of fast hive) - which builds favor getting speed/drop over faster hive tech. Further, most of the time when the 3rd or 4th base are gotten are for the gas nodes and not the mins - therefore it is definitely required to have an adequate amount of drones at the central main and natural.
I'm no expert on hydralurk vs lurkling, but I can do both pretty decently *shh looks around*.
Obviously if you lurk ling from 2 gas you can get enormous amounts of lurks. Because of this, theres the option of skimping on lurks and going fast 2 gas hive, which requires quite some skill to pull off. Gotta be very aggressive early on I think..the zerg really should try to storm/flank the initial mnm army if its wandering around. If zerg kills that army with minimal losses, he gets an enormous advantage. Theres really only so much 5 groups of lurkling can do. Once an mnm/tank/vessel army is big enough AND wandering around in open areas, 5 groups of lurk ling can't really do much without defiler. Hmm another point, you can opt for around 4-5 hatches from 2 bases, instead of something like 3 hat for hydralurk.
On the other hand, Hydra lurk is very very easy to use...i think upgrades are more important for hydralurk than lurkling. It is quite difficult to get hive tech early on if you do ol upgrades (which you should). During mid/late game, some medium sized drops are very easy to do (4-5 ols full) and really keeps terran contained/occupied. I often get hive tech purely for the 3-3 upgrade, but if you have extra gas, defiler of course. I feel like i have much more control over where battles occur with hydra lurk (in terms of flanking, amount of units, etc). With lurk ling, i do try to flank, but for me its pretty hard to set it up correctly...also it's a lot harder for me to judge who will win a lurkling fight vs a hydra lurk fight. sometimes 5+ groups of lurkling just disappear in an instant.
Hopefully some of these points about hydralurk vs lurkling are points that are not too obvious and will enlighten some people. But i think this whole discussion is pretty off topic now..so back on topic - I'm never a huge fan of these specialized timed attacks elvin_vn talks about, but I do know one that's not mentioned here...it's pretty obvious, but 3 rax +1, attack right before lurks or muta. Good scouting and comsatting leads to good timing, and can own zergs who don't see 3 rax coming.
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On May 04 2005 13:34 WhizKid77 wrote:
I'm never a huge fan of these specialized timed attacks elvin_vn talks about, but I do know one that's not mentioned here...it's pretty obvious, but 3 rax +1, attack right before lurks or muta. Good scouting and comsatting leads to good timing, and can own zergs who don't see 3 rax coming.
I think what Elvin is really referring to is to come out before the tech comes online - regardless of if you have the ability to kill him or not. It's important to do these to force him to sunken up and play more defensively, if you don't come out he can leave those sunkens unmorphed and therefore get more drones (faster tech, whatever). Since all he has is a zergling to see the army, he really does not know if you are going 2rax fast expand or 3rax fast sunken break. It's definitely crucial to do this and is pretty standard in any TvZ.
Obviously if the zerg opts for muta, you should be able to feel the timing and move back at an appropriate time, but if he goes lurker, you're already there containing him, if not you'll have to wait to push out when you have tank + vessel, and he gets his expos at other bases much quicker. By containing him he has to sacrifice lings to get you back to your base and cannot expand until he's got you out of the choke, all good things.
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You can always not let that ling see your army comming out. isn't that a great advantage? ^^
all you have to do is lift off your 2 rax on the side of your base and bulid up mm force and go own the zerg up even if it didn't work you can always relift those rax back inside base.
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On July 26 2005 19:09 rei wrote:
You can always not let that ling see your army comming out. isn't that a great advantage? ^^
all you have to do is lift off your 2 rax on the side of your base and bulid up mm force and go own the zerg up even if it didn't work you can always relift those rax back inside base.
Haha, definitely worth a try 
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this should be in the recommanded thread, someone PM grot 
About expanding...
I think terran expand when he has enought MnM to fend off muta harass. Not sure though. But heck, expand with 1 marine, like goodfriend :D
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I thought grot is away or something cause of his computer.
Nice post, but I can't really participate cause I'm a toss player =P
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mis infromation is a powerful toy you can play with. There are many ways you can trick the zerg to defend the wrong place, or even not defending at all. The game is half won when the zerg player fail to realize they had been feeded with the wrong infromation. ^^
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I really only got into Brood War just recently, but I've been advised about the difference between "mech" attacks and "bio" attacks. Personally, I prefer the mechs, but about 90% of the time I try to mech quickly the Zerg will consume me! Can anybody please tell me how I can go about this business. I prefer TvZ with one on one. Thanks, all.
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First of all bumping a 5 year old thread is bad idea, especially in the strategy section as these things are way outdated.
Modern TvZ is either 14 CC or some 1 rax CC variant (1 rax fac CC possibly). Check http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft/Category:TvZ_Builds - updated builds and ways to execute them.
Good luck and welcome to Teamliquid.
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Some maps bio is preferred. For example the "classic" (lol) Python I would go bio over mech.
Destination is a good mech map though
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EPT
