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Heya,i quite recently started playing zerg and I've read through zerg~legends, ahzz and superiorwolfs guide. I also saw some of Chill´s FPvods and commentarys. But there is one thing thats usually bugging me when i play zvp.
The game starts with FE from the toss and i respond with a 4hatch and fast carapace build. I see hes making a citadel and upgrading +1.
Then the initial speedzeal push comes and i defend with lurker egg on ramp so he cant run through and and lurks in my 2nd nat.
Everything goes pretty smooth so far and i set up two more expos because i know he's not going to push anytime near. Then i see his blob moving out with a few archons, zeals and massie amount of goons. I try to position my army so that i can flank him.
The supply limits are pretty even and i have +3 carapace. But he just rolls over my expos over and over and my miserable atempts to stop him with swarm, ultraling and plague just fails so bad.
What am i supposed to do in this situation. Where and when should i engage him?
Replay :
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after watching few points:
- after defending zealot push you stopped scouting enemy, next time you saw protoss rolling out with 200 limit army.
- I would have build huge lurker field one of the expansion you had and defend that with swarm and so on. That mineral only was acceptable loss and I would have bolstered 8 clock natural with lurker/swarm while expanding main free.
- Countered with few groups of lings lurkers/swarm to his natural while he was moving his ball.
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Keep track of his army and position your army accordingly. Especially the period after he retreated his speedlots and before attacking your expo. If your units were better positioned (instead of camping at the rally point), you could have pulled off a good flank. More importantly, you can't give ground for free.
Also, shouldn't have engaged his army just before he attacked your 7:30.
I agree with the countering suggestion (swarm+ling at his 2nd or 3rd expo, or drop in his main).
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Well you're macro is way better than mine is,and I was quite impressed with your early game play, but it would have been more impressive for a terran player to do what you did, which was macro heavy and sit back.
As others said, you should expect toss to expand behind their early +1 zealot rush --> you had enough lings / lurker / production to stop it and contain him.
Other than that I'd say your biggest problem is with attacking. You should work on your control groups and how you engage the protoss army. Most of the time it was 2-3 groups attacking his full force, while much of your army was left behind. You also didn't get many units under your swarms. Almost all of his units had ridiculous numbers of kills on them - I saw an archon with about 20 kills and multiple zealots with 9 - this is because you weren't denting his army with your attacks, even though you had the numbers and the resources.
Try to engage his army when he is rolling through the middle. With good overlord placement you will know when this is happening and you can attack from various sides. Also, if you are stuck in a bad position (his attack at ur mineral only early on), you should counter / deny additional expos while taking another yourself (bottom woulda been great).
Hope that helps a bit.
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Thanks for all the replys.
I've followed your advices and became more agressive. Ironically the most obvious tip to swarm my lurkers were the one that helped me most.
Now i think im improving, since im in a 5-0 spree against FE tosses right now. Thanks everybody
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Slight eco tip btw, noticed you having same prob as I often have had: doing all tech buildings in main makes main mineral line way too empty. Most of the game I think you had 7 drones occupying 9 mineral patches in main, while all other bases had plenty. Just a little fault didn't of course make the main difference here.
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Cant watch replay (at work).
But an idea: What about unit mix? Perhaps an alternative to putting an emphasis on swarm/lurks would be using more ultra/ling with plague....I have some success with this vs. goon heavy Ps.
I remember a (almost religious) discussion between Chill and some other guy (Day[9]?) in some thread whether using swarm makes sense in ZvP or not; the main point in foregoing swarm was the easier micro and setting up of flanks.
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United States43350 Posts
Swarmlurker is almost unkillable for the standard blob. We're talking goons, chons and zees which can take on anything the Z has in open terrain. But swarmlurk can deal with all of that defensively and by playing defensively with emphasis on dominating the resource centres you can win. So if they go goon heavy you want to counter with this. In theory they'll respond by moving into either a darksair mix or more storm heavy and then you counter that and then they counter you and so forth. But against the standard death blob you want swarmlurks defensively. If you have the eco for it then swarmultracrackslurk is great offensively too simply because the goons are the main damage dealers for his army and the zees are the only swarm damage dealers. Ultraswarm nullifies both.
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Thank you Kwark....do I understand that correctly that typically Z will not have to eco in the beginning of the late game to make enough ultraling to dominate the map? And therefore have to rely more on defense until this changes?
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United States43350 Posts
In my experience, yes. But as long as you dominate the gas (by taking islands and naturals (if you take and fortify a nat then you can deny the main and expand to it later)) you're fine. Other low eco options include defilerswarmcrack drops, just to see how many gateways you can tear down before he deals with it. Also the standard defence against speedlings mid game is cannons at expansions and ofc swarm beats that too so try and snipe any expansions you can. If you keep hitting his expansions while presenting him with a solid wall of lurkswarm and every time he gets himself ready for battle you drop him again with just 20 ling or so he'll be unable to cope. It's also really annoying for the protoss player because he's sitting there with total map control but completely impotent while the zerg keeps starting little fires all over the map.
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Swarm comes at a time where your gas economy is really starting to kick in and should mostly be used against heavy goon / archon armies. If he has a nice mix and isnt too goon / chon heavy, I would say get the ultras out first and swarm up later for expansion raids. Once you have 3 gas you can get a hive tech. If you get 4 gas you should GG him easy with swarms of ultra/ling. If his bases are very cannon heavy that's when you need the swarm for sure.
Good comment by kwark - zergling drops with a defiler really tear a toss apart.
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Calgary25990 Posts
On July 24 2008 18:09 Kwark wrote:
Swarmlurker is almost unkillable for the standard blob. We're talking goons, chons and zees which can take on anything the Z has in open terrain. But swarmlurk can deal with all of that defensively and by playing defensively with emphasis on dominating the resource centres you can win. So if they go goon heavy you want to counter with this. In theory they'll respond by moving into either a darksair mix or more storm heavy and then you counter that and then they counter you and so forth. But against the standard death blob you want swarmlurks defensively. If you have the eco for it then swarmultracrackslurk is great offensively too simply because the goons are the main damage dealers for his army and the zees are the only swarm damage dealers. Ultraswarm nullifies both.
Who would ever respond to Lurkers with DTs? That just doesn't make sense. I'm pretty sure the standard response to Swarm, especially with Lurkers, is Reavers.
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what chill said. counter to swarm = reavers, hell counter to anything late game is reavers. and then zerg counter to that is guardians if you make enough reavers. Too bad reavers are so dam expensive in bulk.
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thedeadhaji
39489 Posts
the more convential counters to reavers is defiler plague.
but I think we're getting a bit sidetracked here.
and wtf reavers are cheap man you have a major overstock of minerals lategame.
The only reason they may be expensive is that they are expensive in terms of the time it takes for them to pop out, and the 200 gas each robo takes and you have like 3 robos making reavers. But reavers are only 100 gas as opposed to 300 for an archon, or you know, the equivalent of 2 goons! Surely you'd prefer a reaver over 2 goons when you face a mass of ultraling?
If it's late late late game and both players are running out of mineral income, then sure reaver scarabs arent the best thing to be spending money on, but I think that's outside the scope of this thread I think.
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United States43350 Posts
On July 25 2008 23:24 Chill wrote:Show nested quote +On July 24 2008 18:09 Kwark wrote:
Swarmlurker is almost unkillable for the standard blob. We're talking goons, chons and zees which can take on anything the Z has in open terrain. But swarmlurk can deal with all of that defensively and by playing defensively with emphasis on dominating the resource centres you can win. So if they go goon heavy you want to counter with this. In theory they'll respond by moving into either a darksair mix or more storm heavy and then you counter that and then they counter you and so forth. But against the standard death blob you want swarmlurks defensively. If you have the eco for it then swarmultracrackslurk is great offensively too simply because the goons are the main damage dealers for his army and the zees are the only swarm damage dealers. Ultraswarm nullifies both. Who would ever respond to Lurkers with DTs? That just doesn't make sense. I'm pretty sure the standard response to Swarm, especially with Lurkers, is Reavers.
You've not seen a darksair switch late game PvZ when the opponent is going ultralingswarmlurk?
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On July 26 2008 03:27 Kwark wrote:Show nested quote +On July 25 2008 23:24 Chill wrote:On July 24 2008 18:09 Kwark wrote:
Swarmlurker is almost unkillable for the standard blob. We're talking goons, chons and zees which can take on anything the Z has in open terrain. But swarmlurk can deal with all of that defensively and by playing defensively with emphasis on dominating the resource centres you can win. So if they go goon heavy you want to counter with this. In theory they'll respond by moving into either a darksair mix or more storm heavy and then you counter that and then they counter you and so forth. But against the standard death blob you want swarmlurks defensively. If you have the eco for it then swarmultracrackslurk is great offensively too simply because the goons are the main damage dealers for his army and the zees are the only swarm damage dealers. Ultraswarm nullifies both. Who would ever respond to Lurkers with DTs? That just doesn't make sense. I'm pretty sure the standard response to Swarm, especially with Lurkers, is Reavers. You've not seen a darksair switch late game PvZ when the opponent is going ultralingswarmlurk? I sure haven't. Players typically open sair and switch to ground, not the other way around. I can't think of a single solitary instance in a pro match where a toss opened ground and switched to sair, lategame they either stay on the ground or do carriers instead. It doesn't make any sense at all to go sair lategame, especially if they have a billion lurkers on the ground, you need the supply to deal with zerg's ground forces. Once you're in the 200 supply range you can afford to lose overlords, they only cost minerals. It hurts the zerg a hell of a lot less than T losing a vessel or P losing an obs.
Furthermore if they're pumping lurkers then they probably have a few hydras lying around waiting to morph and if they scout a substantial number of sairs then they just won't morph the next wave of hydras, then what do you do? Sairs work because midgame the Z has a hard time pacing their hydra production against it.
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I've played against some protoss players who got a fleet of 4-6 sair in the lategame after I'm not making many hydras... mostly it's just annoying, cause my macro is bad enough for me to have many excess minerals to spend on overlords. But I guess if a zerg had good enough macro then the protoss army would just get owned during the sair switch so...
Yeah I don't think dt/sair is much of a lategame strat except if the zerg doesn't have good overlord usage. But feel free to shoot this down, I'm certainly no jaedong.
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On July 26 2008 03:27 Kwark wrote:Show nested quote +On July 25 2008 23:24 Chill wrote:On July 24 2008 18:09 Kwark wrote:
Swarmlurker is almost unkillable for the standard blob. We're talking goons, chons and zees which can take on anything the Z has in open terrain. But swarmlurk can deal with all of that defensively and by playing defensively with emphasis on dominating the resource centres you can win. So if they go goon heavy you want to counter with this. In theory they'll respond by moving into either a darksair mix or more storm heavy and then you counter that and then they counter you and so forth. But against the standard death blob you want swarmlurks defensively. If you have the eco for it then swarmultracrackslurk is great offensively too simply because the goons are the main damage dealers for his army and the zees are the only swarm damage dealers. Ultraswarm nullifies both. Who would ever respond to Lurkers with DTs? That just doesn't make sense. I'm pretty sure the standard response to Swarm, especially with Lurkers, is Reavers. You've not seen a darksair switch late game PvZ when the opponent is going ultralingswarmlurk?
Thats because of the lack of hydralisks, its never "omg defilers i need dts asap!"
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On July 26 2008 03:56 Zanno wrote:Show nested quote +On July 26 2008 03:27 Kwark wrote:On July 25 2008 23:24 Chill wrote:On July 24 2008 18:09 Kwark wrote:
Swarmlurker is almost unkillable for the standard blob. We're talking goons, chons and zees which can take on anything the Z has in open terrain. But swarmlurk can deal with all of that defensively and by playing defensively with emphasis on dominating the resource centres you can win. So if they go goon heavy you want to counter with this. In theory they'll respond by moving into either a darksair mix or more storm heavy and then you counter that and then they counter you and so forth. But against the standard death blob you want swarmlurks defensively. If you have the eco for it then swarmultracrackslurk is great offensively too simply because the goons are the main damage dealers for his army and the zees are the only swarm damage dealers. Ultraswarm nullifies both. Who would ever respond to Lurkers with DTs? That just doesn't make sense. I'm pretty sure the standard response to Swarm, especially with Lurkers, is Reavers. You've not seen a darksair switch late game PvZ when the opponent is going ultralingswarmlurk? I sure haven't. Players typically open sair and switch to ground, not the other way around. I can't think of a single solitary instance in a pro match where a toss opened ground and switched to sair, lategame they either stay on the ground or do carriers instead. It doesn't make any sense at all to go sair lategame, especially if they have a billion lurkers on the ground, you need the supply to deal with zerg's ground forces. Once you're in the 200 supply range you can afford to lose overlords, they only cost minerals. It hurts the zerg a hell of a lot less than T losing a vessel or P losing an obs. Furthermore if they're pumping lurkers then they probably have a few hydras lying around waiting to morph and if they scout a substantial number of sairs then they just won't morph the next wave of hydras, then what do you do? Sairs work because midgame the Z has a hard time pacing their hydra production against it.
You would be amazed at how effective a sudden switch to sair dt is when the zerg is 200/200 and no hydralisks.
Well not exactly sudden but without the zergs knowledge preferably (specially vs those newbies who love their sunken spores)
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United States43350 Posts
On July 26 2008 03:56 Zanno wrote:Show nested quote +On July 26 2008 03:27 Kwark wrote:On July 25 2008 23:24 Chill wrote:On July 24 2008 18:09 Kwark wrote:
Swarmlurker is almost unkillable for the standard blob. We're talking goons, chons and zees which can take on anything the Z has in open terrain. But swarmlurk can deal with all of that defensively and by playing defensively with emphasis on dominating the resource centres you can win. So if they go goon heavy you want to counter with this. In theory they'll respond by moving into either a darksair mix or more storm heavy and then you counter that and then they counter you and so forth. But against the standard death blob you want swarmlurks defensively. If you have the eco for it then swarmultracrackslurk is great offensively too simply because the goons are the main damage dealers for his army and the zees are the only swarm damage dealers. Ultraswarm nullifies both. Who would ever respond to Lurkers with DTs? That just doesn't make sense. I'm pretty sure the standard response to Swarm, especially with Lurkers, is Reavers. You've not seen a darksair switch late game PvZ when the opponent is going ultralingswarmlurk? I sure haven't. Players typically open sair and switch to ground, not the other way around. I can't think of a single solitary instance in a pro match where a toss opened ground and switched to sair, lategame they either stay on the ground or do carriers instead. It doesn't make any sense at all to go sair lategame, especially if they have a billion lurkers on the ground, you need the supply to deal with zerg's ground forces. Once you're in the 200 supply range you can afford to lose overlords, they only cost minerals. It hurts the zerg a hell of a lot less than T losing a vessel or P losing an obs. Furthermore if they're pumping lurkers then they probably have a few hydras lying around waiting to morph and if they scout a substantial number of sairs then they just won't morph the next wave of hydras, then what do you do? Sairs work because midgame the Z has a hard time pacing their hydra production against it.
I'm obviously not advocating going darksair whatever the z does. There's no strategy that is always good. I'm saying when you've opened darksair, switched to ground, reached the late game and they're mass ground with no hydra mixing some darksair into your army is very effective. Firstly it means he loses at least one battle because he'll engage, go "omg darksair, shit, need hydra" and have a painful retreat. At this point you can start making his life hell with sairs because those sairs just don't die. You can keep killing ovis all game as long as you avoid the hydra clumps. You can make a darchon or two with a few spare darks for mael and feedback and maybe do a dark drop on his main with sair support to try and kill some tech. It's very viable as a sudden switch and the momentum it gives you can change the balance of a game completely. When you break out the darksair you gain map control until he gets a decent number of hydra up and by that point you've stopped making darks (you only make 8 or so).
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There are so many things wrong with this post I don't know where to begin. I rarely feel the need to criticize someone for giving bad strategy advice but you're way off in the deep end of theorycraft here.
First off zerg can cough and produce a new 200/200 army, catching a Z's pants down with an air switch is nowhere near as effective as catching a T with a carrier switch at all. You're still missing the point that killing ovies lategame does NOT hurt the zerg, merely annoys them. zerg is limited by gas, they literally can't spend their minerals fast enough endgame because of the supply cap. any resources you dump into killing ovies lategame would be better spent killing an expo, or perhaps their hatcheries. In order to hurt a lategame zerg you must damage their gas income, in case you haven't been watching pro games for the past million billion years, how many geysers a zerg can get ahold typically makes or break the game for them.
second off why are you killing their tech, drones are always a more viable target. i'm not the best player, i'm not even a great player, but i have enough common sense to realize it's never a good idea to try and zerg/protoss tech buildings lategame, it's annoying but it's an absolutely negligble setback compared to levelling their economy. i guess if you manage to take their hive itself down it's a good idea to knock off all the tech buildings but otherwise it's a completely minor inconvenience, and if a good player notices they're going to lose a tech building they'll typically start rebuilding it somewhere else before it's even dead. again you're making the same mistake you made in the first point and i'm utterly baffled by this.
so basically, in both instances, you'd rather accomplish delaying a few high tech units for a handful of SECONDS than permanently damage their eco. that makes sense. Then you suggest that DAs actually have practical uses and I totally stopped paying attention. Here's the thing about DAs: they are powerful yes, but they're so powerful that their mere existence in the tech tree prevents any sane opponent from attempting to use any strategy that they are designed to counter.
i'm by no means saying that dt/sair is useless in general but i'm saying that there are way better ways to inflict damage vs a 200/200 zerg. you may be able to stall for time but you won't tip the game in your favor doing this, and as a counter to swarm+lurker it makes as much sense as yamato.
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Sair/dt is quite viable late game if you have the money for it, and please don't try to compare progaming to people asking strategic advice on teamliquid, the two are distinctly different.
Also dropping 2-4 dt's and killing all tech / evo chambers midgame is probably the most underrated strategy in the world. Also seems hypocritical that you'd assume zerg has endless minerals but find it important to still hurt his eco? If the zerg has endless minerals it takes him about ~3 seconds to build 14 drones again, whereas losing tech/evo chambers takes awhile to replace and can set them back massively (evo chambers are massive in early'ish/midgame).
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United States43350 Posts
On July 26 2008 05:18 Zanno wrote:
There are so many things wrong with this post I don't know where to begin. I rarely feel the need to criticize someone for giving bad strategy advice but you're way off in the deep end of theorycraft here.
First off zerg can cough and produce a new 200/200 army, catching a Z's pants down with an air switch is nowhere near as effective as catching a T with a carrier switch at all. You're still missing the point that killing ovies lategame does NOT hurt the zerg, merely annoys them. zerg is limited by gas, they literally can't spend their minerals fast enough endgame because of the supply cap. any resources you dump into killing ovies lategame would be better spent killing an expo, or perhaps their hatcheries. In order to hurt a lategame zerg you must damage their gas income, in case you haven't been watching pro games for the past million billion years, how many geysers a zerg can get ahold typically makes or break the game for them.
second off why are you killing their tech, drones are always a more viable target. i'm not the best player, i'm not even a great player, but i have enough common sense to realize it's never a good idea to try and zerg/protoss tech buildings lategame, it's annoying but it's an absolutely negligble setback compared to levelling their economy. i guess if you manage to take their hive itself down it's a good idea to knock off all the tech buildings but otherwise it's a completely minor inconvenience, and if a good player notices they're going to lose a tech building they'll typically start rebuilding it somewhere else before it's even dead. again you're making the same mistake you made in the first point and i'm utterly baffled by this.
so basically, in both instances, you'd rather accomplish delaying a few high tech units for a handful of SECONDS than permanently damage their eco. that makes sense. Then you suggest that DAs actually have practical uses and I totally stopped paying attention. Here's the thing about DAs: they are powerful yes, but they're so powerful that their mere existence in the tech tree prevents any sane opponent from attempting to use any strategy that they are designed to counter.
i'm by no means saying that dt/sair is useless in general but i'm saying that there are way better ways to inflict damage vs a 200/200 zerg. you may be able to stall for time but you won't tip the game in your favor doing this, and as a counter to swarm+lurker it makes as much sense as yamato.
Sigh. What's your icc rank?
Have you ever actually played late game PvZ against a defiler user?
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