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Hello.
I've been playing brood war for about 3 weeks, but I have former RTS experience so the mere basics I had coming in.
I main terran and many a thing has been frustrating, but nothing as much as the TvP matchup.
I will spare you my balance tirade, but I feel like at equal or around equal skill, Terran needs to do one big pre rehearsed timing, and cannot rest on his laurels and let the game get too lategame as any decent protoss will out manouver the slow mech army and swap his army composition after battles in a way that terran cannot respond to.
So then I've been looking at "playstyles" and things to learn. I have decided on playing 3 different openers, all of which I am pretty comfortable with:
- 11/11 FD
- 1rax FE
- Siege Expand
I wouldn't say I am even close to cheese proof, but under normal circumstances I am comfortable playing these openers, and I generally switch it up based on spawn locations (close spawns = bigger likelyhood of playing fd for instance).
Now my issue going from here is what I should be doing after that. I've tried to wing some 4, 5 or 6 fact timings, sometimes it works (game ending) most times it doesn't. I am sure these are legitimately strong timings if executed correctly, however I feel that these timing pushes essentially works in a way that if the protoss is greedy you win, if the protoss is prepared you lose. So to me, it seems the theoretically best way to play is double armory flash build, but on maps like FS it just seems too hard to reliably take an early third or make sure protoss doesn't mass expand (I guess you would need to know some switch into a timing push as a response).
So what exactly should I, as a beginner terran be practicing in TvP? 2 base timings? 3base 3-2 timing or similar?
I have played enough TvPs to say that I honestly do not believe in playing "lategame" vs protoss, the later the game goes the worse it is for terran after a certain point, so I really want to focus on timing pushes.
I gladly accept all help, thank you.
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Maps like FS are the easiest to take a third on, which is the reason double armory works well. The build is completely focused around the late game, though, even if it does have a timing.
Like you said, if toss isn't greedy (or likes to all in) 4/5 fact attacks won't do anything. You have to play late game against Protoss, so get used to them taking the entire map while you're on 3 base.
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I think you hit the nail on the head on a lot of the conceptual things, except for one big issue. I don't think that lategame gets progressively worse for Terran. In fact, I think that it gets progressively better due to the strength of +3/3 Mech, Protoss's need to have more bases and spend more minerals, and thus Terran's superiority in a split-map situation. The problem lies in getting there.
What you said is true about pushes being tailored to hit timings against Protosses who take expansions. The key element for this is understanding why there is a window. Generally speaking, the window opens when Protoss takes their third Nexus, and closes when they get their first macro round out of their newly-made Gateways. Please note that this is a very rudimentary guideline and by no means a "one size fits all" rule.
In order to maximize the chances of hitting this window, you need to:
1. Be cognizant of when Protoss takes their expansion, preferably using Mines or a Vulture.
2. Be cognizant of Protoss's Gateway count, normally using Comsat.
Another thing that could help your timing pushes is keeping Protoss in the dark about your Factory count, which is usually priority #1 for Protosses to scout. If you place your Turrets intelligently and/or use Scan + Marines/Goliath to snipe the Observer, you make your push potentially more lethal.
As far as expanding, it is obviously very difficult to take a base when your opponent is focused entirely on preventing you from taking it. You would need to take it very fast - do not reveal your CC by floating it over prematurely, build it behind a Turret in your main, and when you move to take it on maps like FS you could send 4-5 SCVs to make Depots to wall the ramp, Turret to provide coverage against Observers and Shuttles, and to start your 3rd gas, ~2 Vultures to lay mines at the outward-facing ramp and below it to stall and damage any forces that may be coming to deny it, and a couple of Siege Tanks to secure it, as the CC begins to float over into the 3rd.
To make this process even more likely to succeed, you need to divert Protoss attention from your expansion attempt for a bit. Some form of harass or even just running Vultures out onto the map and laying mines (likely past the Dragoons that are often parked outside your natural bridge) will cause Protoss to divert their attention for a moment. That can be enough time for you to set up your defenses. Dropships can be used as well depending on when it is you are expanding and after what opening/mid-game build. Basically, you want to tax their multitask so that you have more breathing room when you try to expand.
For me personally, my prerogative in PvT is to prevent the third base of Terran because it becomes much, much harder to kill Terran once they secure three gas. So, I focus most of my attention and energy on that. If you aren't doing anything to prevent me from having my full attention there, making it up that ramp to land your CC will be very tough for you.
Because I'm a Protoss player and C+ max, there may be a few things that need to be corrected/altered a bit, but I think these general concepts are valid. Hopefully one of our stronger Terran players who posts in this forum will take a look at this post and correct any mistakes.
@Cryoc? Sero?
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There are a lot of strong timings Terrans can hit but unfortunately most toss builds are optimized to be able to barely hold them. Late game is awful for Terrans at low levels and honestly if you don't have the patience to learn it you might want to switch races because it is very hard to beat a decent Protoss before the late game. If you are willing to learn it I would recommend going for a fast academy as a followup to your opening. I like to scan the Protoss base around 6:10 and see if I can take a fast third versus them or not. After that point its a matter of being able to macro fast and safe, control a late game army well, harass a bit and of course prep strong defenses to stop recall in as little time as possible.
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I'll leave the specifics to the rest, advice from me is be patient and be prepared to lose 8 out of 10 games. 2 to dt rushes, 2 to reaver drops, 2 to some weird 2-3 base all in and final 2 to late game where you win the first battle but lose anyway cause P has more bases and recall.
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Thanks for the replies everyone. Extra big thank you to Jealous for your lengthy and descriptive post.
Sero - while holding third on FS is easy, taking it can be tricky. I'll need to keep practicing on taking it, as I've just gg'ed out of several games because I can't take it.
Jealous - fantastic post!!! Very helpful. I think what you are saying about gateway count is very true and my biggest problem in TvP is probably being in the dark about what protoss is doing, or understanding what I'm seeing. For instance, I don't know how many gates protoss should have at any given pont or what the number indicates (should I push vs this gateway count or not etc)
When I say the game becomes harder for terran the later it goes, I am thinking from the following perspective:
Terran lategame is harder than Protoss on both a mechanical and tactical level. Keeping bases, defending from harass, defending recalls, correct army spread, laying spider mines, pushing at a correct tempo, EMPing Arbiters.. All of this is difficult to do well, especially the later the game goes. So while a perfectly played Terran might be stronger than Protoss because the Terran mech army scales better, I don't think the average winrates would show a higher winrate for terran lategame (200/200 vs 200/200 and beyond). I imagine terran WR is very low until the first two base timing hits, then it keeps going up until around 3-2 timing, and after that (if terran misses this window) it falls off.
Thats just me thinking out loud, I don't know of any sources for any of this.
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Welcome to the world of pain, that is TvP. You assume right, that timing pushes usually only work vs in certain situations vs Protoss players (otherwise it wouldn't be much of a strategy game). So if you want to increase your winrate in the long run you have to learn how to play lategame vs Protoss just like Sero said. From my experience I would roughly say if you have like 20% more apm/eapm than the P you have the basics to win lategame vs them.
As a general rule of thumb the best scenarios to use 2 base timing pushes are either when you defended an aggressive opening like 2 gate or reaver/dt opening without trouble or when P takes a really fast 3rd with only 1 or 2 gateways. For everything else, going for a 3rd yourself is usually the better option, but also hard to take if you don't have your timings down and P's play revolves around denying it. The only maps with easy 3rds are maps with backdoor expansions.
As you say, you don't want to play lategame vs P so far, there is still a good chance to win with 2 base pushes vs safer builds if you adjust as best as you can to your opponents actions and have better micro. The later the 3rd goes up the later your push should start and have more factories behind it. Vs 2 gate triple for example a 3-4 fac push would be a good choice. Vs 3-4 gate reaver and then 3rd, a 6 fac is a good choice.
The problem is, that P always knows that you are not expanding so they either might not expand at all and just go 2 base arbiter with a very late 3rd which will almost always stop the push or they already put a 3rd down but completely cut probe production and just build mass gateways to overwhelm you.
There are some things to improve your chances build order wise. Some of it depends on the taste I guess. One common possibility is to go for fast academy after FD like puppykiller says to adjust your build order easier like skipping turrets when you don't see any reaver/dt tech from P to get your factories faster. The downside is, that your pushes for really fast thirds are weaker than just building an ebay after a 2nd fac and 2-3 preemptive turrets. But then you don't always know exactly what P does so your timing might not be optimal.
Hiding your push with a turret ring just for the purpose of hiding it is not very useful, because you need alteast 5 turrets and that fast enough before observers arrive. This investment delays the push for quite some time and P sees you are not taking a third so they will react accordingly. Only in case of a deep six, a turret ring is good because your overall push will be much stronger but fail very hard if they see it too early.
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On May 30 2017 12:39 krooked wrote:
Hello.
I've been playing brood war for about 3 weeks, but I have former RTS experience so the mere basics I had coming in.
I main terran and many a thing has been frustrating, but nothing as much as the TvP matchup.
I will spare you my balance tirade, but I feel like at equal or around equal skill, Terran needs to do one big pre rehearsed timing, and cannot rest on his laurels and let the game get too lategame as any decent protoss will out manouver the slow mech army and swap his army composition after battles in a way that terran cannot respond to.
So then I've been looking at "playstyles" and things to learn. I have decided on playing 3 different openers, all of which I am pretty comfortable with:
- 11/11 FD
- 1rax FE
- Siege Expand
I wouldn't say I am even close to cheese proof, but under normal circumstances I am comfortable playing these openers, and I generally switch it up based on spawn locations (close spawns = bigger likelyhood of playing fd for instance).
Now my issue going from here is what I should be doing after that. I've tried to wing some 4, 5 or 6 fact timings, sometimes it works (game ending) most times it doesn't. I am sure these are legitimately strong timings if executed correctly, however I feel that these timing pushes essentially works in a way that if the protoss is greedy you win, if the protoss is prepared you lose. So to me, it seems the theoretically best way to play is double armory flash build, but on maps like FS it just seems too hard to reliably take an early third or make sure protoss doesn't mass expand (I guess you would need to know some switch into a timing push as a response).
So what exactly should I, as a beginner terran be practicing in TvP? 2 base timings? 3base 3-2 timing or similar?
I have played enough TvPs to say that I honestly do not believe in playing "lategame" vs protoss, the later the game goes the worse it is for terran after a certain point, so I really want to focus on timing pushes.
I gladly accept all help, thank you.
lol, you know and are comfortable with three builds in TvP and you call yourself a beginner? wtf? you're probably in the top half of the distribution already. also, "at or equal skill" when comparing across BW races is a self-serving construct of the imagination that is used as a coping mechanism to protect the psyche against losses. since i've roasted you in public, i sent you a nice pm so don't hate on me.
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Jealous and Cryoc have said all that is to be said about your questions I guess.
I just want to point out the nature and complexity of the learning process that lies ahead of you, that after 3 weeks (!) of playing BW you cannot 'have played enough TvPs to believe' anything about it (unless your beliefs are relatively shallow + Show Spoiler +admittingly: relative to the other BW-players that's not hard. Literally 99% of the people you play have several years more of experience in this game... what do you expect?
TvP - as all BW matchups - breaks down into dozens or hundreds of different more or less 'general' scenarios (and myriads of variations of those of course), so no single strategy or style will fit them all. What you will need is a) a lot of practice and replay analysis of your own, but also b) good advice on games that you played, by experienced players who actually watch your games/replays and point out mistakes or chances you left out that you're not even able to see yet.
Timing pushes before the lategame are a good option in TvP, but they have to fit the situation, and if they do depends on a number of variables + Show Spoiler +your build order, Protoss' build order and how they intertwine; how the first engagements turned out; how much information you have and your opponent has gained; your transition of choice and Protoss', and how they intertwine
Practicing the lategame is inevitable to become a good player + Show Spoiler +and good long lategames are one of the most exciting things in BW, too, so you don't want to decide to miss out on them right from the start...
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Sadly in my experience, tvp relies a lot on experience. Some of the timings, whether you can skip on turret, how many marines to build, are completely by feel. Even if we started to rattle off how you should count pylons, number of factories on 1/2/3 bases etc., at the beginning level you are going to forget. Maybe it will be more fun if you played some pvt and see what works well for the terran and what doesn't.
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Funny that playing on a relatively high level you still get the same thoughts, like "you need to get the advantage or close the game before late game, because late game is just too much pain in the ass to handle with recalls/statis/cariers and all the harras unless you are Flash". :D
I myself find it impossible to win late games vs better P players, it's just impossible to cover all the angles and have good fights all the time. You can obviously win early/mid games vs P, you can also win vs better Terrans and Zergs in late game, but for some reason TvP lategame is just impossible unless you are better than P. :D
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this is a great thread to have.
it's nice to see my struggle with protoss isn't singular.
my struggle with toss is that i have zero map control, i have to do these ridiculous builds just to get an expo up (triple 10 FD, siege expo) and because of my lack of experience and build order issues (because of the aforementioned lack of experience)
I either lose to some cheesy crap, or get steamrolled mid and especially late game because of arbiters, turret rings apparently don't help on CB unless you float a rax or ebay over your natural/third, I learned that the hard way. Taking a third is insanely difficult and factory count is all relative to gateway and probe count which i can only learn from watching thousands of games.
I like the idea of taking your third behind multi pronged harras, but I don't understand how I can hold it with just a few siege tanks and mines, i mean come on.
edit: I should also note that I lose fights when I know that the protoss players gateway count should not nearly be sufficient enough, basically if you AREN'T maxed, it's insanely difficult to win any fight at low level. P players often forget that.
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On June 01 2017 06:30 paxconsciente wrote:
this is a great thread to have.
it's nice to see my struggle with protoss isn't singular.
my struggle with toss is that i have zero map control, i have to do these ridiculous builds just to get an expo up (triple 10 FD, siege expo) and because of my lack of experience and build order issues (because of the aforementioned lack of experience)
I either lose to some cheesy crap, or get steamrolled mid and especially late game because of arbiters, turret rings apparently don't help on CB unless you float a rax or ebay over your natural/third, I learned that the hard way. Taking a third is insanely difficult and factory count is all relative to gateway and probe count which i can only learn from watching thousands of games.
I like the idea of taking your third behind multi pronged harras, but I don't understand how I can hold it with just a few siege tanks and mines, i mean come on.
edit: I should also note that I lose fights when I know that the protoss players gateway count should not nearly be sufficient enough, basically if you AREN'T maxed, it's insanely difficult to win any fight at low level. P players often forget that.
On CB it's different because the layout of the map is different, but on FS the reason you can hold with less is because in an ideal scenario, Protoss is not pre-cognizant of your CC floating to the expo, you start your Depots ASAP, and your mines/Vultures at the ramp prevent Protoss from simply walking up the ramp before your Depots are started/up.
To your edit, I'd say that even a 180/200 +2/+1 push is very scary for a Toss who often just maxed not too long ago, because we don't yet have the bank/bases/Gateways to re-max if we take a bad engagement. The key is pushing intelligently and patiently, with Mines as both spotters and flank preventers, and scans to help you determine how far you can extend/how many Siege Tanks you can unsiege to leapfrog/when you need to siege up, etc.
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Taking third is very difficult against p who pylon wall well vs vulture harass and play aggressive. One trick that helps is sending an scv to check the spot of your third a tiny bit before you are about to land the cc. If p is camping there grab all your army and prep it to help. Get vision of just a single mineral patch and tell a lot of scv to come. Then time out your tanks to seige the third position just as the scv run in. Use scv and your army to push the goons away. If P tries to fight you you should kill a lot of his army and come out ahead.
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On June 01 2017 06:59 puppykiller wrote:
Taking third is very difficult against p who pylon wall well vs vulture harass and play aggressive. One trick that helps is sending an scv to check the spot of your third a tiny bit before you are about to land the cc. If p is camping there grab all your army and prep it to help. Get vision of just a single mineral patch and tell a lot of scv to come. Then time out your tanks to seige the third position just as the scv run in. Use scv and your army to push the goons away. If P tries to fight you you should kill a lot of his army and come out ahead.
Can confirm, I overcommitted trying to deny Lumix' third and he just pushed and killed me then and there gfg.
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On low levels its easier to play protoss. On higher levels it becomes more annoying for protoss.
Pay attention to the protoss army composition. If he has more zealots, make more vultures. If he has more dragoons, make more tanks.
When you are moving out, scan around for the protoss army, or send a couple of vultures around to find it. As you go out protoss will probably try to surround or flank you. Place mines on your flanks and roll out with tanks. Siege a few. Once youre out, keep an eye on his army, and utilize terrain and mines to your advantage. Try to hit in such a way to cut off his reinforcements, then push to your desired target. Leave a few tanks with mines behind to get a cost efficient trade if he tries to break out with reinforcements. Always know where his army is, if you are pushing out, or already pushing. There are a lot of subtleties in controlling and placing the army, but I forgot most, and it would take long to list them. One of the basic ones is to place vults in front of tanks for about 1/3 of the screen, and slowly bring them back to the tanks as the protoss wave of zealots hit, so that your vults can take more shots, and later tank for the tanks when they are close together (this interaction is a bit different depending on the army compositions and positions).
Id suggest just using FD and 5-6 factory pushes on 2 bases instead of many different builds. On low levels, if you're good with controlling the initial FD push, you can get a lot of easy advantages. After that, push out around 110-120 supply, stop scv production a bit before that. Make sure you macro is on point once youre pushing, this is critical to a 6 fact early push, and try not to get ganked/surprised by his army. If the protoss is not taking a third and has lots of gateways, dont push out, but take a third and mass up to around 180 and then move out (maybe with some upgrades). In the mean time try to have a few vults on the map.
When you play the same build over and over, you'll learn to recognize patterns in protoss actions, and experiment by changing some details in your build. Tackle one problem at a time, and learn by reviewing the game. You'll learn what to do in a specific situation, and how to read and hold cheeses. Conversely, if you change builds all the time, its harder to see patterns and learn. You can throw some different build from time to time to get a new perspective and ideas, but for the start, stick with one, and try to improve one aspect at a time. Once you get better, you can judge what changes and possibly different builds to use, and start doing them instead of always using the same one. After you get better, I suggest practicing getting a quick third and going for a quick 200/200 push with some upgrades. If you got the macro down, are decent with holding cheese and controlling your army tactically, you'll roll trough lower ranks just with macro.
Oh yeah, and get some friends closeish in skill and have fun with them.
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terran viability greatly depends on micro, the better your micro is the more viable any builds youll do will become. play safer until you feel comfortable macroing with less units and scouting/map control/map awereness are the keys. the more info you have on your opponent's build the easier it will be to adapt your playstyle to counter his.
gl ^^
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I tried timing pushes, after seeing them work and be strong in progames. But I never really felt it was working for me.
One of the reasons for this was that on 4 player maps especially (even more so on cross positions), protoss lategame would be taking both other mains, and I would be pushing the non-main fourth or one of the neutral mains, and I would be able to win one battle. But then I would have to send out small groups of 3-4 tanks and a few vultures to kill all nexuses, while protoss would be rallying in speedlots or whole new armies like crazy. Especially if they had a bank and gates in one of the other mains. Then pushing up the ramp, having vision there, made everything so slow, that I would always fall apart, become disorganized. And this while I knew protoss had an easy job of just macroing stuff and sending it in to trade units effectively.
This scenario and lack of confidence was always in the back of my mind, and that would always make me not patient enough to try to max out with upgrades and split the map and wait out.
But at low levels, having the protoss donkey attack-move into you, suiciding her/his army is actually strong.
I often saw terrans unsiege all their tanks and just attack unsieged and beat the protoss, that very rarely worked for me.
I had so much more luck slowpushing, just leapfrogging tanks as you build more. But that only works on non-cross positions and sometimes 2 player maps with lots of terrain. that way you could actually choke out the protoss, zone them out of your bases and their choke, with a minefield and turrets/depots with siege tanks behind it.
Timing pushes not working at low level should make sense. You can only do a timing push if the P player actually gives you a timing window to beat her/him. Then you need to recognize the timing. And then you need to execute it and be in time. The only 'timing pushes' that worked for me was unsieging vs carriers. And unsieging and juts moving up to contain the P vs very bad P players, that didn't even see my army unsiege and move up to contain, not recognizing the danger.
And for a timing push against a P who takes a third too early&gives you a timing, you should force her/him to fight before they get for example speedlots. Or force them to fight if they only got like 1 round(maybe 2) of units from their gateway explosion, and they were on 1 or 2 gates before they added 4-5 more gateways at the same time.
Also, if you didn't save up enough tanks, ie you made vultures to try to harass and try to prevent P from taking a third in the first place, you may not have a timing at all.
Then there is micro. I lost so many games because I unsieged my tanks, then sieged them all in panick, too clumped, and they were so close they all died to 1 DT&splash, storm, or got stasised. I also had a phase where I tried to fight zealots with my vultures in front of my tanks, rather than move the vultures back behind my tanks, trying to kill the incoming zealots before they would get too close for the tanks to splash themselves. etc etc
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Yeah in the end you can't "reliably" avoid late game TvP.
But think about it differently for a second. Instead of killing him (if you can't manage it) what if you played for the map split?
You could for example use the 2/1 timing to get your 4th, not attack, and build tons of defensive structures.
What's nice about FS is that you can take the center base as a 4th this way, wall off one side of it, put some tanks inside, float some buildings over the wall, block enemy movement, and simply wait for him to suicide waves and waves of shit onto you.
Because most of your units wouldnt move, you'd have hand time to lay tons of mines in all your bases to prevent recalls, and scan bases to see eventual stargates.
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On June 03 2017 02:50 TwiggyWan wrote:
But think about it differently for a second. Instead of killing him (if you can't manage it) what if you played for the map split?
You could for example use the 2/1 timing to get your 4th, not attack, and build tons of defensive structures.
What's nice about FS is that you can take the center base as a 4th this way, wall off one side of it, put some tanks inside, float some buildings over the wall, block enemy movement, and simply wait for him to suicide waves and waves of shit onto you.
Because most of your units wouldnt move, you'd have hand time to lay tons of mines in all your bases to prevent recalls, and scan bases to see eventual stargates.
Show me a game between evenly matched opponents above true D+ where this works and I give you a medal...
You'll die to 3 or more 200/200 Protoss armies from 30-40 gates...
Or to 10 Arbiters (hallucination-)recalling or stasising, w/e...
Or 12 carriers...
And maybe you actually win one game or two in 10.
Ernaine pointed out a lot of the obstacles that lie in the way of a TvP-victory on low to mid level. It feels like on that level, Protoss can consistently raise enough of the obstacles that Terran has to overcome, all of them, to win a game, while Terrans that train and try just as hard (or harder) cannot achieve that yet. They lose to one average move by Protoss after one, two, three or more good moves they made themselves... it always takes some more experience, games sense, control, multitasking, some more of everything to not have that one bad moment that preludes gg.
That said: Even if you win 35-45% of your TvPs convincingly, and lose 35-45% deservedly to better Protoss players - you still rage about those 10-30% that just don't feel right, and this narrowed picture ruined my gaming sessions far too often...
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EPT
