I feel like yoon vs flash here if anyone seen that game. It's not a matter of overall skill, I get totally demolished in lategame by most terrans past B- (this was a typical B- terran) and I seriously don't know what to do anymore, so I decided to ask TLnet for help! My PvT has always been my weakest matchup, but it's extra evident on maps where it's hard to play past 20 minutes (because I prefer long games in PvT).
I didn't play my usual build because I was extremely paranoid of a 2 factory push - which made my arbiters late - which in turn made me unable to attempt recall. Yes yes, if you're going arbiters you have to recall vs camper terrans... or maybe go carriers? I thought since I had relatively early upgrades I could match him in a ground army fight, but I was WRONG. Yeah, I know I might have made a few bad attacks, but to my defense it is really difficult to know where his army is after he has science vessels. Yeah, I was ahead the first half, but it always looks like this where he slowly crawls back into the game after I suicide army after army and takes his highground exp after his third and I have nowhere else to expand. Should I expand at his highground early to avoid this type of situation?
A few questions:
Did I make too many probes? I'm always unsure of how many probes to make in this matchup. If I want a big army, my expansions won't be saturated and there is no point in mass expanding and I won't be able to replenish my army. If I play with a lot of probes on the other hand, my main army gets smashed over and over again because it just consists of 4 control groups... Where is the ideal balance?
What do I do with my surplus economy once I'm 200/200? Did I add too few gates? Should I have made 10 stargates instead and carriers once my army dies? If so, what about air upgrades?
If I am staying with ground army, how do I know where the ideal place to attack is in lategame? I feel like a scared little rabbit who sits at limit and then when terran finally moves out I try to make a surprise attack which usually fails... I think my main weakness is that because I get scared and stressed, I feel like I don't have time to organize my attacks better and flank well.
I feel the exact same way about PvT, especially on Destination. I've not found the carrier switch effective because the Terran can so easily suicide his army to kill your expansions before the carriers reach a critical mass and then play defensively with 3-3 goliaths until he has enough to win. I try it anyway because when they camp the islands and have depots and ebays all over the middle I just don't know what else to do but it rarely works.
If I can't get an early advantage I like to expand to 3 and 9 before 2 and 11 (if I'm 12) because these are the game deciding expos and 4 gas is sexy. When the Terran does his inevitable push, generally with emp and blocking buildings and other lameness towards them I just abandon them and pull back to the other expansions which I've been undermining. Just trying to steal his minerals. If I hit 200/200 and can't do anything I like to start suiciding probes to get arbiters.
The best thing I've found against this is having a LOT of arbiters and waiting for them to make the first move. It's not unreasonable to have 12 arbiters, it's enough to keep a large portion of his army in constant stasis once he tries moving out or to do a recall + stasis on ramp while holding his inevitable allin response by some blocking stasis in key locations. Just whatever you do don't put them in the same control group because they will stack and EMP GGs you.
Firstly, I know you're better than me so please don't take offence to my critique. I do it with respect.
You can't afford to send your scout probe on 8 and then lose it. All you really need to know is how many scvs on gas for how long, you can get away with a later scout and still check that. For stuff like rax flashing the first dragoon can check. Your late range upgrade I'm assuming was just to mindfuck with him as well as your hidden pylon but I don't get the transition. You mindfuck him into thinking proxy robo rush or proxy dark rush and then go 2 gateways and a robo. He's most likely going to be going ultrasafe many turret FE against the build you're representing and instead of rushing your own expansion you opt for an opening which is really hard to pressure him with on Destination (bridges vs tanks are -_-). I don't disagree with mindfucking but if you mindfuck them into playing scared and defensive then your follow up should be to expand. Once you have 2 dragoons put one on each bridge. Your mindfuck worked and he wasted a load of time scouting around the map for the proxies before checking to see if you'd expanded. He shouldn't have been able to see, it doesn't cost you anything to at the nat wall early game, especially with well placed pylons to scout drops. By letting him see you not only didn't have some proxy thing going on but also hadn't expanded you let him narrow you down to about 2 builds. Dark drop rush and some kind of mass goon attack on his natural. One of them is easy to block if you know it's coming, the other is lolDestination EZ. I just don't see any kind of 2 fac here because he shouldn't be using that against what you're representing. At 7:30 you're already considerably behind. 2 well placed tanks have neutered your 7 dragoon aggression and he's been on 2 base for some time while you're still on 1 with a second coming. Your reaver attack wasn't bad but it didn't work with your army or do enough damage. Remember you've still got those useless dragoons sitting there. Your reaver micro is good enough to deal with the tanks holding the high ground and let your dragoons attack/move/attack micro their way into the nat. It's really difficult for a terran to redeploy his tanks from the back of his base to the ramp to hold that off with an active reaver and shuttle because you can get so many free tank kills as they attempt to move into position. That attack would have been the only working transition from your opening and you didn't use it. Your build was disjointed and didn't go anywhere. You macroed up well, sufficiently to stop him attempting to tornado up to your third although 1 stargate arbiters isn't enough off 3 gas if you're not going for ht as well. Even worse that you stayed on 1 stargate after taking your 4th gas, arbiters are cheap but have a considerable build time, you need to make more stargates. Whenever you check to see if they've taken 7 and 8 you should always go behind the nat and storm. It's just free kills for Protoss. I get that storm wasn't a part of your build but when you're nearing being maxed and have a load of money you should start diversifying because you pretty much can't waste minerals when you're 200/200. 18:53, he's maxed, he's at 2-2 and he's finally moving out. This is when you HAVE to hit him with the recall (and ideally have 5 more arbiters behind to hold up his counter). Yeah, he had a lot of turrets. Suicide a corsair or send 2 arbiters. Also there were routes in if you use an ob to scout them out. You cannot fight that army in the open ground. You especially cannot fight it without storm and with only 3 arbiters. Not really sure what you were thinking tbh but Protoss can only beat a maxed upgraded terran army with magic and you didn't have it. Failing that you avoid the terran and run away and try and counter, and you didn't do that either. You did a nice job vs it anyway but you need to stasis further back. Against an army that size you're not going to be able to roll it up, the best you can hope for is to give them a bloody nose. Stasis half a screen back from the front and then kill everything in front of that stasis. Anything behind that you're not going after, you just wanna kill the front stuff. Stasising at the front and then trying to kill the units in the middle creates walls for your units to get through and means there is no natural point for you to disengage. After you disengage he just moves forwards up to the stasis and he's exactly where he was when it wears off. Maynard all your probes to 9. If you're desperately trying to hold him up and buy time, which you were, then use the time. You were suicidng arbiters and dragoons to keep him from taking that part of the map but you knew he would inevitably. Dry it up before he gets there or your sacrifices are wasted. MAKE MORE STARGATES. You're sitting there on 200/200 with 10k minerals and he's sitting there on 200/200 with 600 minerals and you can't do anything because you can't break his army. Go round it. You're a mile ahead, you can afford to send 10 arbiters and recall everything you have, probes and all, into his main then rebuild it all if you lose them. The single decisive factor that lost you this game was the lack of arbiters.
Once he took the bottom left it was a done deal if he could hold it. All game your only advantage was that you could replace your army if you lose it whereas he couldn't. The bottom left changed that and it was over.
My initial build was to prevent 2 fac vultures or some kind of early drop. You say that terrans will get paranoid and turret up their main when they scout no goon range, but some good terrans think further than that and do something unexpected just for the sake of it. I'd probably have chosen a build that left me with better economy if I didn't lose my first probe. The thing is, I'm not confident with things like 1 gate obs exp on desti since most 2 fac builds rape that easily. I just did this build to get to mid/lategame and I wouldn't see it as a failure not being able to break his nat. It was never my intention anyway. I sometimes do that nat break using my reaver, but it felt like I'd lose the shuttle to turrets that way. I believe he had two turrets blocking the path to his tanks. I've never walked behind his nat to storm in PvT, I suppose it could be useful. 1 stargate is enough when you're on 3 gas and get storm + upgrades. But yeah, my second stargate should have been earlier, I didn't want to emphasis on the arbiter tech so much this game since it was so late and I feared his push would come before I even had 2 stasis. Also, I believe it is very difficult to stasis in the back of his army due to vessels. I always try to get my stasis off as quick as possible or my arbiter will be nullified by EMP instantly...
I really hate those stalled 200/200 games, how do I play my PvT aggressively in lategame?
Ah Shauni, not much of Teamliquid is above A-, so I'm not sure exactly how much help you can get here. Maybe you can ask Idra about how progamers play late game PvT or what he thinks is really hard to play against in TvP. Maybe some tips from like movie or some other CJ Protoss can help you here.
I wish more high level players like Shauni would openly ask for help in TLNet forums because I learn a lot even though it's way past my skill level. so thanks for this thread shauni :D a lot of subtle things in gameplay are revealed in these type of threads, and these threads help just about everyone
I would recommend talking to Mana, JF and other high level gamers ( and i think you are just as good btw) im sure they have had this problem with this type of Terran or maybe other types that you know how to counter. I really couldnt give you advise and if i tried you would probably know it already, the only thing i could have said was to mass arbiters and mass stasis half or more of his army and camp until they unstasis. But Kwark already said that.
On August 10 2009 08:09 SiegeTanksandBlueGoo wrote: Ah Shauni, not much of Teamliquid is above A-, so I'm not sure exactly how much help you can get here. Maybe you can ask Idra about how progamers play late game PvT or what he thinks is really hard to play against in TvP. Maybe some tips from like movie or some other CJ Protoss can help you here.
Well people can still be good at the theoretical part of the game even if they cant play at that level so making help threads can still be useful.
As for the question itself its something I also would really like to get an answer to because I am suffering from the exact same problems and so often I end up losing games vs Terrans I feel I would beat on other maps but loose pretty much only because of the layout of the map.
On August 10 2009 07:28 Kwark wrote: Firstly, I know you're better than me so please don't take offence to my critique. I do it with respect.
You can't afford to send your scout probe on 8 and then lose it. All you really need to know is how many scvs on gas for how long, you can get away with a later scout and still check that. For stuff like rax flashing the first dragoon can check. Your late range upgrade I'm assuming was just to mindfuck with him as well as your hidden pylon but I don't get the transition. You mindfuck him into thinking proxy robo rush or proxy dark rush and then go 2 gateways and a robo. He's most likely going to be going ultrasafe many turret FE against the build you're representing and instead of rushing your own expansion you opt for an opening which is really hard to pressure him with on Destination (bridges vs tanks are -_-). I don't disagree with mindfucking but if you mindfuck them into playing scared and defensive then your follow up should be to expand. Once you have 2 dragoons put one on each bridge. Your mindfuck worked and he wasted a load of time scouting around the map for the proxies before checking to see if you'd expanded. He shouldn't have been able to see, it doesn't cost you anything to at the nat wall early game, especially with well placed pylons to scout drops. By letting him see you not only didn't have some proxy thing going on but also hadn't expanded you let him narrow you down to about 2 builds. Dark drop rush and some kind of mass goon attack on his natural. One of them is easy to block if you know it's coming, the other is lolDestination EZ. I just don't see any kind of 2 fac here because he shouldn't be using that against what you're representing. At 7:30 you're already considerably behind. 2 well placed tanks have neutered your 7 dragoon aggression and he's been on 2 base for some time while you're still on 1 with a second coming. Your reaver attack wasn't bad but it didn't work with your army or do enough damage. Remember you've still got those useless dragoons sitting there. Your reaver micro is good enough to deal with the tanks holding the high ground and let your dragoons attack/move/attack micro their way into the nat. It's really difficult for a terran to redeploy his tanks from the back of his base to the ramp to hold that off with an active reaver and shuttle because you can get so many free tank kills as they attempt to move into position. That attack would have been the only working transition from your opening and you didn't use it. Your build was disjointed and didn't go anywhere. You macroed up well, sufficiently to stop him attempting to tornado up to your third although 1 stargate arbiters isn't enough off 3 gas if you're not going for ht as well. Even worse that you stayed on 1 stargate after taking your 4th gas, arbiters are cheap but have a considerable build time, you need to make more stargates. Whenever you check to see if they've taken 7 and 8 you should always go behind the nat and storm. It's just free kills for Protoss. I get that storm wasn't a part of your build but when you're nearing being maxed and have a load of money you should start diversifying because you pretty much can't waste minerals when you're 200/200. 18:53, he's maxed, he's at 2-2 and he's finally moving out. This is when you HAVE to hit him with the recall (and ideally have 5 more arbiters behind to hold up his counter). Yeah, he had a lot of turrets. Suicide a corsair or send 2 arbiters. Also there were routes in if you use an ob to scout them out. You cannot fight that army in the open ground. You especially cannot fight it without storm and with only 3 arbiters. Not really sure what you were thinking tbh but Protoss can only beat a maxed upgraded terran army with magic and you didn't have it. Failing that you avoid the terran and run away and try and counter, and you didn't do that either. You did a nice job vs it anyway but you need to stasis further back. Against an army that size you're not going to be able to roll it up, the best you can hope for is to give them a bloody nose. Stasis half a screen back from the front and then kill everything in front of that stasis. Anything behind that you're not going after, you just wanna kill the front stuff. Stasising at the front and then trying to kill the units in the middle creates walls for your units to get through and means there is no natural point for you to disengage. After you disengage he just moves forwards up to the stasis and he's exactly where he was when it wears off. Maynard all your probes to 9. If you're desperately trying to hold him up and buy time, which you were, then use the time. You were suicidng arbiters and dragoons to keep him from taking that part of the map but you knew he would inevitably. Dry it up before he gets there or your sacrifices are wasted. MAKE MORE STARGATES. You're sitting there on 200/200 with 10k minerals and he's sitting there on 200/200 with 600 minerals and you can't do anything because you can't break his army. Go round it. You're a mile ahead, you can afford to send 10 arbiters and recall everything you have, probes and all, into his main then rebuild it all if you lose them. The single decisive factor that lost you this game was the lack of arbiters.
Once he took the bottom left it was a done deal if he could hold it. All game your only advantage was that you could replace your army if you lose it whereas he couldn't. The bottom left changed that and it was over.
On August 10 2009 07:28 Kwark wrote: Firstly, I know you're better than me so please don't take offence to my critique. I do it with respect.
You can't afford to send your scout probe on 8 and then lose it. All you really need to know is how many scvs on gas for how long, you can get away with a later scout and still check that. For stuff like rax flashing the first dragoon can check. Your late range upgrade I'm assuming was just to mindfuck with him as well as your hidden pylon but I don't get the transition. You mindfuck him into thinking proxy robo rush or proxy dark rush and then go 2 gateways and a robo. He's most likely going to be going ultrasafe many turret FE against the build you're representing and instead of rushing your own expansion you opt for an opening which is really hard to pressure him with on Destination (bridges vs tanks are -_-). I don't disagree with mindfucking but if you mindfuck them into playing scared and defensive then your follow up should be to expand. Once you have 2 dragoons put one on each bridge. Your mindfuck worked and he wasted a load of time scouting around the map for the proxies before checking to see if you'd expanded. He shouldn't have been able to see, it doesn't cost you anything to at the nat wall early game, especially with well placed pylons to scout drops. By letting him see you not only didn't have some proxy thing going on but also hadn't expanded you let him narrow you down to about 2 builds. Dark drop rush and some kind of mass goon attack on his natural. One of them is easy to block if you know it's coming, the other is lolDestination EZ. I just don't see any kind of 2 fac here because he shouldn't be using that against what you're representing. At 7:30 you're already considerably behind. 2 well placed tanks have neutered your 7 dragoon aggression and he's been on 2 base for some time while you're still on 1 with a second coming. Your reaver attack wasn't bad but it didn't work with your army or do enough damage. Remember you've still got those useless dragoons sitting there. Your reaver micro is good enough to deal with the tanks holding the high ground and let your dragoons attack/move/attack micro their way into the nat. It's really difficult for a terran to redeploy his tanks from the back of his base to the ramp to hold that off with an active reaver and shuttle because you can get so many free tank kills as they attempt to move into position. That attack would have been the only working transition from your opening and you didn't use it. Your build was disjointed and didn't go anywhere. You macroed up well, sufficiently to stop him attempting to tornado up to your third although 1 stargate arbiters isn't enough off 3 gas if you're not going for ht as well. Even worse that you stayed on 1 stargate after taking your 4th gas, arbiters are cheap but have a considerable build time, you need to make more stargates. Whenever you check to see if they've taken 7 and 8 you should always go behind the nat and storm. It's just free kills for Protoss. I get that storm wasn't a part of your build but when you're nearing being maxed and have a load of money you should start diversifying because you pretty much can't waste minerals when you're 200/200. 18:53, he's maxed, he's at 2-2 and he's finally moving out. This is when you HAVE to hit him with the recall (and ideally have 5 more arbiters behind to hold up his counter). Yeah, he had a lot of turrets. Suicide a corsair or send 2 arbiters. Also there were routes in if you use an ob to scout them out. You cannot fight that army in the open ground. You especially cannot fight it without storm and with only 3 arbiters. Not really sure what you were thinking tbh but Protoss can only beat a maxed upgraded terran army with magic and you didn't have it. Failing that you avoid the terran and run away and try and counter, and you didn't do that either. You did a nice job vs it anyway but you need to stasis further back. Against an army that size you're not going to be able to roll it up, the best you can hope for is to give them a bloody nose. Stasis half a screen back from the front and then kill everything in front of that stasis. Anything behind that you're not going after, you just wanna kill the front stuff. Stasising at the front and then trying to kill the units in the middle creates walls for your units to get through and means there is no natural point for you to disengage. After you disengage he just moves forwards up to the stasis and he's exactly where he was when it wears off. Maynard all your probes to 9. If you're desperately trying to hold him up and buy time, which you were, then use the time. You were suicidng arbiters and dragoons to keep him from taking that part of the map but you knew he would inevitably. Dry it up before he gets there or your sacrifices are wasted. MAKE MORE STARGATES. You're sitting there on 200/200 with 10k minerals and he's sitting there on 200/200 with 600 minerals and you can't do anything because you can't break his army. Go round it. You're a mile ahead, you can afford to send 10 arbiters and recall everything you have, probes and all, into his main then rebuild it all if you lose them. The single decisive factor that lost you this game was the lack of arbiters.
Once he took the bottom left it was a done deal if he could hold it. All game your only advantage was that you could replace your army if you lose it whereas he couldn't. The bottom left changed that and it was over.
you are a good teacher! whats your rank?
Only B so there's a big gap between Shauni and I but our playstyles are sufficiently different (I'd love to be able to macro up like him) that I felt I could contribute something.
What about a good old fashioned reaver opening? It sounds like your trying to take your third without pressuring and the terran is able to move out freely. A reaver opening would hopefully keep the terran from crossing his bridges early on then you could use that to your advantage and keep him contained. The bridges are a bitch to cross for terran when you have goons + a shuttle reaver combo waiting on the other side.
I'm just basing this off jainfei vs brat_ok from highlander, you can DL the reps in the newspost.
PvT is like White vs Black chess. you need to control the flow.
Even my noob SC knowledge can tell that you weren't playing with proper attitude for PvT.
It seemed like you played according to what terran wanted.
When he turtles, arent you supposed to strech him with recalls / overexpanding? Yet you attacked where he was strongest and when it was hopeless to attack.
EDIT: meh, we don't need to tell you anything. You're lucky there are people who smash terrans for a living.
seriously, just watch some jangbi vods or any other uber PvTer.
On August 10 2009 08:53 jimminy_kriket wrote: What about a good old fashioned reaver opening? It sounds like your trying to take your third without pressuring and the terran is able to move out freely. A reaver opening would hopefully keep the terran from crossing his bridges early on then you could use that to your advantage and keep him contained. The bridges are a bitch to cross for terran when you have goons + a shuttle reaver combo waiting on the other side.
I'm just basing this off jainfei vs brat_ok from highlander, you can DL the reps in the newspost.
I'm not sure if there is any good way of denying a terran his third expo on destination. He can take it from his main without moving out with just 2 fac if he'd like to... And since the high ground from your main is so close to the bridges you can just slowly creep out with siege.
On August 10 2009 08:58 niteReloaded wrote: PvT is like White vs Black chess. you need to control the flow.
Even my noob SC knowledge can tell that you weren't playing with proper attitude for PvT.
It seemed like you played according to what terran wanted.
When he turtles, arent you supposed to strech him with recalls / overexpanding? Yet you attacked where he was strongest and when it was hopeless to attack.
EDIT: meh, we don't need to tell you anything. You're lucky there are people who smash terrans for a living.
seriously, just watch some jangbi vods or any other uber PvTer.
On August 10 2009 08:53 jimminy_kriket wrote: What about a good old fashioned reaver opening? It sounds like your trying to take your third without pressuring and the terran is able to move out freely. A reaver opening would hopefully keep the terran from crossing his bridges early on then you could use that to your advantage and keep him contained. The bridges are a bitch to cross for terran when you have goons + a shuttle reaver combo waiting on the other side.
I'm just basing this off jainfei vs brat_ok from highlander, you can DL the reps in the newspost.
I'm not sure if there is any good way of denying a terran his third expo on destination. He can take it from his main without moving out with just 2 fac if he'd like to... And since the high ground from your main is so close to the bridges you can just slowly creep out with siege.
On August 10 2009 08:58 niteReloaded wrote: PvT is like White vs Black chess. you need to control the flow.
Even my noob SC knowledge can tell that you weren't playing with proper attitude for PvT.
It seemed like you played according to what terran wanted.
When he turtles, arent you supposed to strech him with recalls / overexpanding? Yet you attacked where he was strongest and when it was hopeless to attack.
EDIT: meh, we don't need to tell you anything. You're lucky there are people who smash terrans for a living.
seriously, just watch some jangbi vods or any other uber PvTer.
lol...
does the lol mean my post is humorous or too noob to take seriously? ^^
.. anyway, you speak like terran getting the 3rd is the end.
If fighting the Terran with 3rd expo is so hard, perhaps you should tailor some builds that are designed to not fall into the same story that suits the terran.
Some protosses have successfuly went for earlier recalls(again, I think Jangbi?) specifically on Destination, probably because of the similar problems you are facing.
nite, watch the rep. Shauni did the standard PvT thing of mass exping while the Terran camped. His problem was that he mined out the map except for the exps on the T side while the T just kept camping and without attacking and just took all his side. And yeah, the T can take his 3rd and wall it in so easily with tanks on his cliff. Although if you see when he's trying to take it and put 8 dragoons in the edge of that base they're out of tank range while within range of the cc. He then needs to put tanks on low ground and if your shuttle and reaver are still around you can make that a bitch for him. Reavers have enough range that a tank on the cliff can't cover one sieging below it so he needs to actually push along the ground too to take his 3rd. Eventually he will take it but you can buy a lot of time and make him pay heavily for it.
Also you should start walling one of your bridges with buildings. You can hold 2 fac vults so easily with a few dragoons on the other bridge.
On August 10 2009 08:53 jimminy_kriket wrote: What about a good old fashioned reaver opening? It sounds like your trying to take your third without pressuring and the terran is able to move out freely. A reaver opening would hopefully keep the terran from crossing his bridges early on then you could use that to your advantage and keep him contained. The bridges are a bitch to cross for terran when you have goons + a shuttle reaver combo waiting on the other side.
I'm just basing this off jainfei vs brat_ok from highlander, you can DL the reps in the newspost.
I'm not sure if there is any good way of denying a terran his third expo on destination. He can take it from his main without moving out with just 2 fac if he'd like to... And since the high ground from your main is so close to the bridges you can just slowly creep out with siege.
On August 10 2009 08:58 niteReloaded wrote: PvT is like White vs Black chess. you need to control the flow.
Even my noob SC knowledge can tell that you weren't playing with proper attitude for PvT.
It seemed like you played according to what terran wanted.
When he turtles, arent you supposed to strech him with recalls / overexpanding? Yet you attacked where he was strongest and when it was hopeless to attack.
EDIT: meh, we don't need to tell you anything. You're lucky there are people who smash terrans for a living.
seriously, just watch some jangbi vods or any other uber PvTer.
lol...
does the lol mean my post is humorous or too noob to take seriously? ^^
.. anyway, you speak like terran getting the 3rd is the end.
If fighting the Terran with 3rd expo is so hard, perhaps you should tailor some builds that are designed to not fall into the same story that suits the terran.
Some protosses have successfuly went for earlier recalls(again, I think Jangbi?) specifically on Destination, probably because of the similar problems you are facing.
I have done a lot of 2 base arb with fast recalls on this map too, but it still loses to this type of terran play most of the time. The terran can leave most of his army in his main to defend against recalls (even while taking his 3rd faster than you) and you have to rely on the terran to EMP badly for that build to work at all. I'm not really sure what type of builds you'd like me to tailor against this kind of play, are you saying that I have to play extremely aggressive 1 base/2 base builds so the game won't get past 20 minutes? I have watched a lot of progames on this map, and the best way I can see to get an advantage in lategame (with my playstyle) is to force him to push at your (extremely early) 3rd while rushing arbiters. But it's very easy to lose to a well controlled 5 fac timing push over the bridge if you're not careful. I still took my third relatively early this game and his 5 fac push failed completely, so I'd say he was behind. It's just that it is difficult to find any opening in lategame. You said my attacks sucked, and it might be true, but I still believe the game would turn out the same even if I was more passive.
Shine gets a fourth base but Horang2 fights an endless amount of battles to keep Shine from getting his 2 left bases. Pretty similiar to my game in that it didn't contain many recalls, but horang2 used a lot of stasis and storm to fend off Shine even though the push distance was a lot shorter for him than for Horang2's reinforcements. Pretty impressive game actually.
Typed this up a few days ago. Didn't want to post it because if people use it too much it may stop working but I find this hugely effective on Destination. I imagine you'll probably want to do a 3 base transition from it but tbh you can go down almost any route from this opening. http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft/Gas_Steal_Elevator_Rush_(vs._Terran)
most pro PvTs on desti involve proxy. for good reason, the terrain is pretty imba in favor of terran. i recommend using proxy robo or proxy dts, that's what bisu does so it's obviously the best way of playing on that map. or 2 base arbiter or maybe 2 base carrier occasionally to spice or up. i remember stork or jangbi (one of them) went 3 base carrier against flash once on desti and won quite handily too
Oh, one thing I LOVE doing on Destination is using my scout probe to run circles around where their rax should go. You should always do that when you do a standard opening, it's by far the most effective type of probe harass. Every second you delay their rax is a second later their first tank arrives. If you do it right you can force them to repair their wall and snipe scv kills and delay their siege expand a lot. If you wanna be really sexy you delay their rax for ages then place a pylon next to their fact as it is about to finish so they can't machine shop. I've won games straight away like that. It's the little tricks that make the game easier.
1) don't scout after your first pylon on a 2 player map; scout after the gateway there is nothing to see until than. don't try to kill scv's, you aren't playing for the msl finals here so its ok if your probe doesn't end up with 6 kills. you mention you don't play your standard BO but its your own fault for losing the scout.
2)start building obs as soon as your reaver is done. they do not cost many minerals so start producing 3 at same time.
3) you go shuttle reaver, you're micro is strong and you do damage. why is this a problem? well instead of taking a third at this point you add 4 gateways and a citadel. he can't push out until he kills your reaver. you already fall behind because of siege expo vs 2 gate robo build and now you take a late 3rd. your build is good against 2 fact granted but he didn't 2 fact.
4) 82/82 stuck on a pylon. nothing more to add.
5) @9 minutes - you have 800 gas. this means two things not enough obs, not enough tech. you're citadel should come soon after your third base.as soon as citadel is done start legs add a templar archives and a stargate. your arbiter tech is so late because you made units out of 6 gateways because taking your third. if you study korean vods you will notice standard BO is 1 gate expand than add robo and a second gateway. the timing to take a third is shortly after your reaver finishes. the next 300 minerals (without cutting probes, nor dragoons nor obs!) go to 2 more gates for a total of 4. and the next 150 go to Citadel. at this point there is 2 options based on scouting. you can delay arbiter tech if terran is doing a gay 6 factory and is getting really aggressive on you and get 4 more gateways for a total of 8 or if they are playing a passive game in which their goal is to take a 3rd you can get your archives and stargate before your 4 gateways and even before leg speed. start making zealots from your 8 gateways. you do not need to start producing zealots before this point except for the 2 going into your shuttle.
6) probe cut the hardest thing in Starcraft. stop making probes when you throw down your extra 4 gateways. you should actually only have about 70 when you cut. when you have 400 minerals take your 4th base and resume making probes until your 4th is done. throw down 4 more gateways for a total of 12.
general tip: always start gateways at the same time and right before a dragoon is about to finish. this maximized unit production and optimized macro. all your gates finish at the same time and finish right when you need to make another round of units. also do no make zealots until you need to because a zealot and a dragoon do not take the same amount of time to build. dragoons are also able to deal with dropship play and vulture harass unlike zealots.
7) you expanded to the wrong third. yes it protects your 4th but they can abuse the cliff near the 2o'clock to push your third. the 10 o'clock allows you to prevent that shit by allowing your pylon wall to take hits for you. also the koreans take that third so their is probably more strategic reasons that I do not fully understand YET.
8) you forgot to put guys on your third gas. you can start a second stargate when your first arbiter is about 2/3 of the way complete. you have enough gas for this because you are making pure zealot and arbiters take 3 years to build.
9) because of earlier arbiter tech you will not get to a point where you have 8k in the bank. strategic recalls will allow you to be aggressive as you should not be letting the terran max. it is a BAD thing to let a terran max on a 2 player map because you will mine out first.
On August 10 2009 12:27 foppa wrote: 1) don't scout after your first pylon on a 2 player map; scout after the gateway there is nothing to see until than. don't try to kill scv's, you aren't playing for the msl finals here so its ok if your probe doesn't end up with 6 kills. you mention you don't play your standard BO but its your own fault for losing the scout.
2)start building obs as soon as your reaver is done. they do not cost many minerals so start producing 3 at same time.
3) you go shuttle reaver, you're micro is strong and you do damage. why is this a problem? well instead of taking a third at this point you add 4 gateways and a citadel. he can't push out until he kills your reaver. you already fall behind because of siege expo vs 2 gate robo build and now you take a late 3rd. your build is good against 2 fact granted but he didn't 2 fact.
4) 82/82 stuck on a pylon. nothing more to add.
5) @9 minutes - you have 800 gas. this means two things not enough obs, not enough tech. you're citadel should come soon after your third base.as soon as citadel is done start legs add a templar archives and a stargate. your arbiter tech is so late because you made units out of 6 gateways because taking your third. if you study korean vods you will notice standard BO is 1 gate expand than add robo and a second gateway. the timing to take a third is shortly after your reaver finishes. the next 300 minerals (without cutting probes, nor dragoons nor obs!) go to 2 more gates for a total of 4. and the next 150 go to Citadel. at this point there is 2 options based on scouting. you can delay arbiter tech if terran is doing a gay 6 factory and is getting really aggressive on you and get 4 more gateways for a total of 8 or if they are playing a passive game in which their goal is to take a 3rd you can get your archives and stargate before your 4 gateways and even before leg speed. start making zealots from your 8 gateways. you do not need to start producing zealots before this point except for the 2 going into your shuttle.
6) probe cut the hardest thing in Starcraft. stop making probes when you throw down your extra 4 gateways. you should actually only have about 70 when you cut. when you have 400 minerals take your 4th base and resume making probes until your 4th is done. throw down 4 more gateways for a total of 12.
general tip: always start gateways at the same time and right before a dragoon is about to finish. this maximized unit production and optimized macro. all your gates finish at the same time and finish right when you need to make another round of units. also do no make zealots until you need to because a zealot and a dragoon do not take the same amount of time to build. dragoons are also able to deal with dropship play and vulture harass unlike zealots.
7) you expanded to the wrong third. yes it protects your 4th but they can abuse the cliff near the 2o'clock to push your third. the 10 o'clock allows you to prevent that shit by allowing your pylon wall to take hits for you. also the koreans take that third so their is probably more strategic reasons that I do not fully understand YET.
8) you forgot to put guys on your third gas. you can start a second stargate when your first arbiter is about 2/3 of the way complete. you have enough gas for this because you are making pure zealot and arbiters take 3 years to build.
9) because of earlier arbiter tech you will not get to a point where you have 8k in the bank. strategic recalls will allow you to be aggressive as you should not be letting the terran max. it is a BAD thing to let a terran max on a 2 player map because you will mine out first.
gl hf
wow felt like you off quite harsh on some points, but still a very strong analysis gw
Four things, The first post by jimminy_kricket is a good idea, what about a rvr opening sounds like that would keep him busy dealing with it while you can expo and mass up real quick, I have seen your rvr micro its pretty damn good so i would try that. Second, Nitereloaded does have a point about your attitude just dont get gloomy and think to yourself how to counter it without suiciding your whole army. Thirdly, after thinking about it for a while i was thinking something along the lines of a 2 base arb/recall BO and after seeing oystein post i remembered he had a really good DT opening into 2 base arbs while he dropped the T's main. and lastly, Oystein did you not switch to a Z player? Whenever i saw you practicing zvt zvp my heart sank because i love your P.
On August 10 2009 12:27 foppa wrote: 1) don't scout after your first pylon on a 2 player map; scout after the gateway there is nothing to see until than. don't try to kill scv's, you aren't playing for the msl finals here so its ok if your probe doesn't end up with 6 kills. you mention you don't play your standard BO but its your own fault for losing the scout.
2)start building obs as soon as your reaver is done. they do not cost many minerals so start producing 3 at same time.
3) you go shuttle reaver, you're micro is strong and you do damage. why is this a problem? well instead of taking a third at this point you add 4 gateways and a citadel. he can't push out until he kills your reaver. you already fall behind because of siege expo vs 2 gate robo build and now you take a late 3rd. your build is good against 2 fact granted but he didn't 2 fact.
4) 82/82 stuck on a pylon. nothing more to add.
5) @9 minutes - you have 800 gas. this means two things not enough obs, not enough tech. you're citadel should come soon after your third base.as soon as citadel is done start legs add a templar archives and a stargate. your arbiter tech is so late because you made units out of 6 gateways because taking your third. if you study korean vods you will notice standard BO is 1 gate expand than add robo and a second gateway. the timing to take a third is shortly after your reaver finishes. the next 300 minerals (without cutting probes, nor dragoons nor obs!) go to 2 more gates for a total of 4. and the next 150 go to Citadel. at this point there is 2 options based on scouting. you can delay arbiter tech if terran is doing a gay 6 factory and is getting really aggressive on you and get 4 more gateways for a total of 8 or if they are playing a passive game in which their goal is to take a 3rd you can get your archives and stargate before your 4 gateways and even before leg speed. start making zealots from your 8 gateways. you do not need to start producing zealots before this point except for the 2 going into your shuttle.
6) probe cut the hardest thing in Starcraft. stop making probes when you throw down your extra 4 gateways. you should actually only have about 70 when you cut. when you have 400 minerals take your 4th base and resume making probes until your 4th is done. throw down 4 more gateways for a total of 12.
general tip: always start gateways at the same time and right before a dragoon is about to finish. this maximized unit production and optimized macro. all your gates finish at the same time and finish right when you need to make another round of units. also do no make zealots until you need to because a zealot and a dragoon do not take the same amount of time to build. dragoons are also able to deal with dropship play and vulture harass unlike zealots.
7) you expanded to the wrong third. yes it protects your 4th but they can abuse the cliff near the 2o'clock to push your third. the 10 o'clock allows you to prevent that shit by allowing your pylon wall to take hits for you. also the koreans take that third so their is probably more strategic reasons that I do not fully understand YET.
8) you forgot to put guys on your third gas. you can start a second stargate when your first arbiter is about 2/3 of the way complete. you have enough gas for this because you are making pure zealot and arbiters take 3 years to build.
9) because of earlier arbiter tech you will not get to a point where you have 8k in the bank. strategic recalls will allow you to be aggressive as you should not be letting the terran max. it is a BAD thing to let a terran max on a 2 player map because you will mine out first.
gl hf
Kwark's advice was mostly helpful on last page, but I'm not too sure I agree with all of this.
Response to:
1. Probe scout after pylon doesn't set you back that much and the reason for that was to scout terran cheese. Last game was a nasty one where he went BBS bunker climbing benhind my minerals. I might not have done the BO I like most, but this one is fine and I believe I can execute most of them quite precise, so I don't really see it as a problem.
2. I agree with this, that was a miss.
3. Dude, he went for an early 5 (or 6?) fac push, are you saying I should get 3 base on 2 gate? I'm not playing the msl finals here. When I do that, I usually get demolished by a timing push or vulture harass style terrans.
4.
5. I know this build, but it is same as the response to the 3rd thing. I really wanted to break his push... Is it such a bad thing to get my third a little bit later? I was still ahead in 30-50 pop, are you saying I should try to get even more ahead? I don't really like balancing between minimal amount of units/maximum amount of expansions. Also, I lost my reaver so I don't think I would have defended a push that moment.
6. Is this a rule in starcraft? And when did I cut probes? I don't do these kind of things very consciously...
7. This is kind of bad advice. I did not expand to the wrong third. The bridge third is a lot more difficult to save when they abuse the high ground. It seems like you watch progames so you should know it. Even they are often more comfortable with the 3rd I'm getting. The terrans take the other third because you can protect it from the main. I mentioned it earlier. I could elabore a lot about getting the high ground third vs the bridge third but it isn't relevant. It is very situational and is about preference too.
8. More arbiters... yeah I know
9. I know... It's just that I was afraid of all those mines + sci vess and turrets this game. I tried twice later on in the game, but they died to air damage. There might have been more openings to recall early on, but usually if my first recall fails due to mines, they just steamroll you over with 200/200 army before attempting a second one. I don't believe it should be necessary to rely on recall only to win you games...
A lot of things you addressed is minor mechanical flaws, while they might be accurate, they do not really offer much help. Sure, if I was a very bad player mechanically and if my pylon stop would have any relevance to my loss for example I'd have understood why you brought this up. But as it is, I believe I was on equal ground to my opponent mechanically, if not superior, so some of the things you addressed isn't really necessary. And other things where you critizise my build and exp placement is - at least to me - a matter of preference. It's like you're trying to tell me to play a build you believe is a 'standard' korean progamer build up to even 100 supply. While I am grateful for you trying to help, the problems I am facing is past the 20 min mark, my early game build wasn't really what I was asking pointers on. I have a lot of PvT reps here where I did the build you desribe too, if you'd rather see that.
Yeah man. Camping rules on Destination. And in fact any 2 player map for that matter... I just played a 40 min tvp yesterday and I just siege expoed, got 4 facts, got my third, laid mines and waited. He was passive a lot of the time so I harassed his expansions a bit and just kept him from geting the middle expansions on the plateaus. He recalled me to death and I had to build factories around the map but I still survived.
On August 10 2009 16:32 Shauni wrote: I don't really like balancing between minimal amount of units/maximum amount of expansions.
don't be a pussy. Find some confidence that you can do it right because that's the way to play.
In starcraft, and you should know it, you rarely can afford to have 'safety nets' vs opponents of the same caliber.
The more your play is 'the middle road', the more it requires your opponent to balance his game as well. By pulling yourself to either side of extremes, you actually make it easier for opponents.
Also, in the last page, when I said your attacks were bad, I wasn't saying you shouldn't have attacked. You just attacked where HE wanted you to attack(the front line, where he's the strongest) and when he wanted you to attack.
I don't have enough knowledge to say the specifics, but I would go for early arbiter (perhaps of 2 base) and then start expanding like crazy(by crazy I don't mean having 1 more exp than he does -.-) so that the terran NEEDS to move out. Terran is weaker when on the move, and then when he's streched out, you have many places you can recall to.
. . . I also felt your third was when watching, so now, rewatching; at 6:10 when you see he has expanded and has siege, from what I know the protoss has 3 options. Go for some sort of allin / take third asap (in this case, the first 400 after you start the reaver) / or go for further tech for some sort of 2 base play.
Since you decided to go for 3rd, you're basically putting yourself behind with each second of delaying it.
It's true you may would have lost to a timing push, but that's because your opponent got the lead in early game BO battle.
So, in this specific game, 2 base arbs would be my choice of action after you saw him take nat.
Your later 3rd(to be safe from timing push) means he takes his 3rd easiler and that leads to long game which you don't want.
Unless I know I'm playing a progamer or very good amateur korean, I always try to play it as safe as possible, so that I have something to fall back on if he tries an allin or something unexpected. I suppose it is me underrating my opponents, by thinking 'once it gets to lategame, I'll win with my superior game management'. Sometimes it just doesn't seem to work, especially on maps favorable for terran such as destination. But if you always play on the edge of losing all the time, you won't last very long on a ladder... Despite what Louder says, I'm usually on the defending side of various allins in games, so my playstyle is very cautious, especially in PvT. Oystein always says I should take more risks in this matchup, but I always lose when I do that. This is why I don't do such things as 14 nex, 1 gate exp and similiar 'risky' strategies anymore.
On August 10 2009 19:51 Shauni wrote: Unless I know I'm playing a progamer or very good amateur korean, I always try to play it as safe as possible, so that I have something to fall back on if he tries an allin or something unexpected. I suppose it is me underrating my opponents, by thinking 'once it gets to lategame, I'll win with my superior game management'. Sometimes it just doesn't seem to work, especially on maps favorable for terran such as destination. But if you always play on the edge of losing all the time, you won't last very long on a ladder... Despite what Louder says, I'm usually on the defending side of various allins in games, so my playstyle is very cautious, especially in PvT. Oystein always says I should take more risks in this matchup, but I always lose when I do that. This is why I don't do such things as 14 nex, 1 gate exp and similiar 'risky' strategies anymore.
well, you can't have your cake and eat it too.
each style has its ups and downs.
If you play safe, like you said, you may do well in ladder, but occasionally games like this will happen and you won't be entitled to complain.
In PvT if both play cautiously, Terran wins imo. TvZ, Z wins. Dunno bout ZvP.
I kind of agree that on ladder you're best off playing ultrasafe; but I still think your early build order got directly countered making it a really hard game for you. You don't see many 2 gates on most maps since the terran can just CC in base and get some scvs then lift off when it is safe to push out. If the econ disadvantage to that is enough that that build order isn't used much anymore (outside of places like colosseum), then I would think 2 gate robo places you massively behind. I would think A- micro would own a 2 fact push with just the 2 gate even without obs, just snipe stuff on the way out and goon dance to shoot down mines if he pushes you back too far.
anyways, i'm a noob, so thanks for posting this. We all got to read people's thoughts on the matchup here thanks to you.
On August 10 2009 19:51 Shauni wrote: Unless I know I'm playing a progamer or very good amateur korean, I always try to play it as safe as possible, so that I have something to fall back on if he tries an allin or something unexpected. I suppose it is me underrating my opponents, by thinking 'once it gets to lategame, I'll win with my superior game management'. Sometimes it just doesn't seem to work, especially on maps favorable for terran such as destination. But if you always play on the edge of losing all the time, you won't last very long on a ladder... Despite what Louder says, I'm usually on the defending side of various allins in games, so my playstyle is very cautious, especially in PvT. Oystein always says I should take more risks in this matchup, but I always lose when I do that. This is why I don't do such things as 14 nex, 1 gate exp and similiar 'risky' strategies anymore.
Now now, I believe I told you I retracted that you were nothing but a cheeser
I think winning PvT in a long game on Destination comes down to your ability to find holes, which there always are - and your ability to effectively attack those holes. Storm and proper upgrades are a crucial part of that, as are keeping shuttles with your army at all times and replacing them as they die. Also, hallucinating arbiters for recalls can help you find / abuse not-quite-openings.
Early game I generally feel behind on this map unless I get some kind of advantage. I often either do a fastest possible DT build, a proxy robo reaver build (with shuttle speed), or a dt drop - often with a proxy first gate on any of those builds. I just find the map too hard to play against a Terran who isn't pressured early game and can do a minimal defense early game macro build where he instantly has a huge mid game army that I can't fight on the bridges.
All things considered though, I have been having a lot of trouble PvT lately, though I'm starting to come out of that. I especially feel that no matter what situation I'm in, Terran can just suicide vultures until all my probes are dead, while I can't harass him at all, and then I try to counter a 20 vulture suicide runby and die to 25 siege tanks.
I've found that I get into that situation mostly when I don't apply early pressure and get an advantage - when I just play "normal" macro builds where you just outproduce Terran. When I pressure and use fast tech to get an advantage, double expand into 6-7 gate with arbiter, and aggressively deny pushes / attempts to take a third, things go much better. I've also discovered that I need to time my forges so they finish with my third nexus, as well as a pylon at that base, so I can immediately cannon then pylon wall it. It's really worth it to pylon wall + make enough cannons that they can't vulture the wall and that they can't drop inside the base.
Sorry this wasn't more organized but I've only been awake half an hour. Hope something in it was useful.
On August 10 2009 12:27 foppa wrote: 1) don't scout after your first pylon on a 2 player map; scout after the gateway there is nothing to see until than. don't try to kill scv's, you aren't playing for the msl finals here so its ok if your probe doesn't end up with 6 kills. you mention you don't play your standard BO but its your own fault for losing the scout.
2)start building obs as soon as your reaver is done. they do not cost many minerals so start producing 3 at same time.
3) you go shuttle reaver, you're micro is strong and you do damage. why is this a problem? well instead of taking a third at this point you add 4 gateways and a citadel. he can't push out until he kills your reaver. you already fall behind because of siege expo vs 2 gate robo build and now you take a late 3rd. your build is good against 2 fact granted but he didn't 2 fact.
4) 82/82 stuck on a pylon. nothing more to add.
5) @9 minutes - you have 800 gas. this means two things not enough obs, not enough tech. you're citadel should come soon after your third base.as soon as citadel is done start legs add a templar archives and a stargate. your arbiter tech is so late because you made units out of 6 gateways because taking your third. if you study korean vods you will notice standard BO is 1 gate expand than add robo and a second gateway. the timing to take a third is shortly after your reaver finishes. the next 300 minerals (without cutting probes, nor dragoons nor obs!) go to 2 more gates for a total of 4. and the next 150 go to Citadel. at this point there is 2 options based on scouting. you can delay arbiter tech if terran is doing a gay 6 factory and is getting really aggressive on you and get 4 more gateways for a total of 8 or if they are playing a passive game in which their goal is to take a 3rd you can get your archives and stargate before your 4 gateways and even before leg speed. start making zealots from your 8 gateways. you do not need to start producing zealots before this point except for the 2 going into your shuttle.
6) probe cut the hardest thing in Starcraft. stop making probes when you throw down your extra 4 gateways. you should actually only have about 70 when you cut. when you have 400 minerals take your 4th base and resume making probes until your 4th is done. throw down 4 more gateways for a total of 12.
general tip: always start gateways at the same time and right before a dragoon is about to finish. this maximized unit production and optimized macro. all your gates finish at the same time and finish right when you need to make another round of units. also do no make zealots until you need to because a zealot and a dragoon do not take the same amount of time to build. dragoons are also able to deal with dropship play and vulture harass unlike zealots.
7) you expanded to the wrong third. yes it protects your 4th but they can abuse the cliff near the 2o'clock to push your third. the 10 o'clock allows you to prevent that shit by allowing your pylon wall to take hits for you. also the koreans take that third so their is probably more strategic reasons that I do not fully understand YET.
8) you forgot to put guys on your third gas. you can start a second stargate when your first arbiter is about 2/3 of the way complete. you have enough gas for this because you are making pure zealot and arbiters take 3 years to build.
9) because of earlier arbiter tech you will not get to a point where you have 8k in the bank. strategic recalls will allow you to be aggressive as you should not be letting the terran max. it is a BAD thing to let a terran max on a 2 player map because you will mine out first.
gl hf
1. Wrong. Scout after your pylon 100% of every game you ever play. It doesn't slow down your economy and the sooner you know what's going on the better. Also the ability to probe harass and block buildings is key.
2. Don't queue up obs of all units. They cost a lot of gas and early on can interfere with other things being built. But definitely start one the instant a reaver is finished.
3. It's fine to take your third after you have built some army, especially if you expanded first and have done damage with harassment. Just be sure you don't wait until 120 psi to grab it.
4. Missing pylons sucks but it happens to all of us. I try to stay 8-10 ahead of at all times, so after starting a new round of units, pylons are warping in, and I've got a lot available before I need it.
5. You definitely want to spend your gas better. I like getting citadel and starting arbiter tech while still on 2 gates if I do good damage with reaver harass, before taking a third and adding more gates. Also, a bit point here: you want to make getting storm a BIG priority when you know T is going to do a 5-6 factory push. It's crucial and you should get it quickly. Additionally, storm drops immediately following the end of a line of reaver harass are brutal.
6. Agreed. Cutting probes is pretty important as is gateway timing.
7. This is nonsense. The ramp third is much easier to defend from all sorts of harassment as well as from a push. More importantly after your third is up on Destination, you should be maxing very soon and taking all the bases you can, including both sides and your 4 expands around your main
8. Good observation. 3 on gas, doubt this was intentional.
9. Nothing wrong with a bank once maxed, but 8k is definitely excessive. Be aggressive, find holes, there's always somewhere you can attack and punish T for taking half the map.
On August 10 2009 08:15 ColdLava wrote: I wish more high level players like Shauni would openly ask for help in TLNet forums because I learn a lot even though it's way past my skill level. so thanks for this thread shauni :D a lot of subtle things in gameplay are revealed in these type of threads, and these threads help just about everyone
After talking for a while with Rage and rewatching the replay again I realized that I should be a lot more careful on in which way to max out my army (the first time around). I was maxed out while he was still around 140 pop - even so I don't believe I could have attacked anything up front, since his tankline was well spread over his natural bridge and third. Because I maxed out with mostly zealgoon and only two arbiters, I let him push to his 'highground' third very easily which also made me lose the game in the end. Later on, I gain a better army composition (even though it's not optimal) with storms and stasis yet it's too late since he's already at 200/200 and set up properly across his half while my expansions starts to run out.
Some people seem to mention that I should get my third up very early, especially after being put in such a disadvantageous build. I'm still not sure whether this is good or bad advice, but Rage said something interesting about how I should be using timing based builds to get superior economy (alike the one foppa talked about - with cutting probes and similiar) instead of the usual 'flowing' style I use in PvT - where I amass units and use my extra minerals to expand once I'm confident I won't get destroyed by a timing push or persistent vulture harass. That is on such maps as Destination and against this type of play... But it's difficult to know how the terran will play, how aggressive he will be and when he will max out, especially when I couldn't get an obs inside his base.
I don't think you watched the replay at the time you posted those replies Louder (the first post wasn't very relevant since he barely vulture harassed at all and never moved past the bridges in the game), but I agree with you on most points, you corrected his advice post better than I did. Hallucinating arbiters is such a desperate move though. I only see them being used in games where terran has an extremely well setup recall defense and has no real openings. It usually ends in failure anyway. I still have a lot of nightmares from the Blue Storm lategame days when I didn't realize you had to go carriers there else you died. I made a similiar help thread for that map and I believe Louder (not sure, might have been someone else) also posted a similiar desperate theorycrafting thread about that map, something about mind controlling scvs to get a double limit army. In any case, I don't believe Destination is as bad as Blue Storm in lategame because of the better layout, but since terrans has gotten a lot better at using EMP (even though this terran was no monster in that regard) it can feel extremely hopeless in some longer games.
"3. It's fine to take your third after you have built some army, especially if you expanded first and have done damage with harassment. Just be sure you don't wait until 120 psi to grab it."
What is so important about doing it before 120? Please explain.
On August 11 2009 03:52 Shauni wrote: After talking for a while with Rage and rewatching the replay again I realized that I should be a lot more careful on in which way to max out my army (the first time around). I was maxed out while he was still around 140 pop - even so I don't believe I could have attacked anything up front, since his tankline was well spread over his natural bridge and third. Because I maxed out with mostly zealgoon and only two arbiters, I let him push to his 'highground' third very easily which also made me lose the game in the end. Later on, I gain a better army composition (even though it's not optimal) with storms and stasis yet it's too late since he's already at 200/200 and set up properly across his half while my expansions starts to run out.
Some people seem to mention that I should get my third up very early, especially after being put in such a disadvantageous build. I'm still not sure whether this is good or bad advice, but Rage said something interesting about how I should be using timing based builds to get superior economy (alike the one foppa talked about - with cutting probes and similiar) instead of the usual 'flowing' style I use in PvT - where I amass units and use my extra minerals to expand once I'm confident I won't get destroyed by a timing push or persistent vulture harass. That is on such maps as Destination and against this type of play... But it's difficult to know how the terran will play, how aggressive he will be and when he will max out, especially when I couldn't get an obs inside his base.
I don't think you watched the replay at the time you posted those replies Louder (the first post wasn't very relevant since he barely vulture harassed at all and never moved past the bridges in the game), but I agree with you on most points, you corrected his advice post better than I did. Hallucinating arbiters is such a desperate move though. I only see them being used in games where terran has an extremely well setup recall defense and has no real openings. It usually ends in failure anyway. I still have a lot of nightmares from the Blue Storm lategame days when I didn't realize you had to go carriers there else you died. I made a similiar help thread for that map and I believe Louder (not sure, might have been someone else) also posted a similiar desperate theorycrafting thread about that map, something about mind controlling scvs to get a double limit army. In any case, I don't believe Destination is as bad as Blue Storm in lategame because of the better layout, but since terrans has gotten a lot better at using EMP (even though this terran was no monster in that regard) it can feel extremely hopeless in some longer games.
Actually no I didn't watch the replay, I just responded to things I saw mentioned in your post , general complaints. It sounds like you already solved the problem though - in regard to army composition especially. Maxed P army with storm should trample a 140 T army like it's nothing.
I actually don't think hallucinated arbs is a desperation move. I have been trying to always send a few hallucinated arbs w/ my main one lately. I did make a theorycrafting post once about stealing a worker on a map like blue storm, and I've actually successfully done this in a few games by making battle cruisers, but you have to have a pretty hellacious lead
1. Wrong. Scout after your pylon 100% of every game you ever play. It doesn't slow down your economy and the sooner you know what's going on the better. Also the ability to probe harass and block buildings is key.
2. Don't queue up obs of all units. They cost a lot of gas and early on can interfere with other things being built. But definitely start one the instant a reaver is finished.
1) difference is your gateway is delayed by about 5.5 to 6 seconds. the entire build is delayed meaning that you will need to delay their barracks 5.5-6 seconds to be cost effective something you will not manage to do on a regular basis.
2) following a 1 gate expand you will have an excess of gas which allows for queuing 3 obs.
1. Wrong. Scout after your pylon 100% of every game you ever play. It doesn't slow down your economy and the sooner you know what's going on the better. Also the ability to probe harass and block buildings is key.
2. Don't queue up obs of all units. They cost a lot of gas and early on can interfere with other things being built. But definitely start one the instant a reaver is finished.
1) difference is your gateway is delayed by about 5.5 to 6 seconds. the entire build is delayed meaning that you will need to delay their barracks 5.5-6 seconds to be cost effective something you will not manage to do on a regular basis.
2) following a 1 gate expand you will have an excess of gas which allows for queuing 3 obs.
When i take a fast natural, I like to take my probes off of gas for a bit to even things out. queing up 3 obs is really bad macro
Guys stop derailing my thread with useless information. queueing up 3 obs or not simply doesn't matter. Also foppa you are yet again wrong, 5.5 to 6 seconds? Where do you get your info from? I had to try it several times just to double check but I never delayed the gate more than 2 seconds by scouting after pylon. Scouting early doesn't put you behind as much as you think, it's barely noticeable. Just because you see progamers do cute stuff like larvae trick and supply near cc doesn't mean they actually matter in-game.
On August 11 2009 07:19 Shauni wrote: Guys stop derailing my thread with useless information. queueing up 3 obs or not simply doesn't matter. Also foppa you are yet again wrong, 5.5 to 6 seconds? Where do you get your info from? I had to try it several times just to double check but I never delayed the gate more than 2 seconds by scouting after pylon. Scouting early doesn't put you behind as much as you think, it's barely noticeable. Just because you see progamers do cute stuff like larvae trick and supply near cc doesn't mean they actually matter in-game.
i tried it in single player. gateway starts at 1:17 without scouting and 1:23 with scouting. maybe one of my splits was just awful but the building placement was the same.
I'd try to sneak in some Corsair with d-web in the mix. Corsair are cheaper and build faster. There fast moving and can rape some Science vessels if they get too close. I think d-web is under used. With d-web you can suppress units without risking gas hogging Arbiters. Just a thought, from a bad player
Corsair is rather impractical if only because it's unlikely they'll be able to throw two D-Webs (250 energy - need to get the fleet beacon, upgrade, and time to charge energy), and thus you probably need ~5+ to be effective, which is supply you really need to be spending on other units.
On August 11 2009 07:19 Shauni wrote: Guys stop derailing my thread with useless information. queueing up 3 obs or not simply doesn't matter. Also foppa you are yet again wrong, 5.5 to 6 seconds? Where do you get your info from? I had to try it several times just to double check but I never delayed the gate more than 2 seconds by scouting after pylon. Scouting early doesn't put you behind as much as you think, it's barely noticeable. Just because you see progamers do cute stuff like larvae trick and supply near cc doesn't mean they actually matter in-game.
i tried it in single player. gateway starts at 1:17 without scouting and 1:23 with scouting. maybe one of my splits was just awful but the building placement was the same.
Also matters on your split and how well you distrubute your workers without overlapping the same mineral. One test run means shit.
Destination is a lot like Blue Storm in that Protoss has a big advantage in the mid-game but they can't let the Terran solidify their hold on their side of the map as the advantage shifts to Terran in the lategame. It seems to throw off a lot of Protoss players because they think they get a big lead because well, the midgame is so easy for them to get that 'lead,' that they neglect the great position the Terran has lategame with 4+ bases and a well defended setup. You can't get complacent, you must exploit any advantages you get and really punish the Terran for anything they mess up on. Against these turtle players, the primary method is aggressively expanding, which contrary to what someone said here, the expansions were very late.
You asked a bunch of questions but I feel this game (along with most TvP comebacks on Destination) was decided by poor decisionmaking more than anything and will focus solely on that aspect.
The key is to limit them to 3 bases, as 3 base Terran really can't fight more than 2-3 maxed battles before going bankrupt. They rely fully on taking a 4th and sniping your expos, but if you prevent either one, they lose.
As for expanding, there are certain timing points where the Terran cannot attack normally for economic reasons. Those are the points where you must keep expanding. Some of the most common are: -during the 2 base reaver harass -Right after the Terran takes their 3rd -If the Terran is doing a quick 3rd/4th base and hasn't began to mass factories (they'll build 6+ at once usually so before that moment)
Of course should the Protoss triple expand or do anything crazy then these don't really mean anything but they are general guidelines for when you can expand and the Terran just has to take it or try to harass.
You should've taken your 3rd as soon as you made the reaver. Pro tosses really abuse the fast 3rd on this map, especially in conjunction with reavers. And Terrans really can't do that much without some kind of risky semi-allin which you would've known he wasn't doing once you flew into his main. Had you done so, your 3rd would've finished by the time the reaver harass was finished and he would've been extremely behind with his much delayed econ. Even had he defended adequately, you would've kept him busy long enough to mess with his timing window and make any fast push a dangerous prospect. Of course, any slow push would fail to be a serious threat, so either way you come ahead if you expand at the right times and don't lose your reaver/shuttle.
After the reaver damage he basically had no hope of winning with a timing push. His only chance was to do exactly what he did, turtle and play for the lategame and hope you really screw up. And you should have known this by a) having an observer in his main and b) seeing his very defensive middle position, and you should have punished it by expanding further and teching faster. In this game there's nothing he can do once your 3rd is done and 6 gates are up to prevent you from expanding again and again. If you had 5 bases running before his 3rd was done, you could've just steamrolled him with zeal/goon.
But let's assume he did a better build, defended well, and wasn't so far behind economically. At 14-15 minutes, what can he do to prevent you from taking 9 and 8? There really isn't anything. It's the timing weakness in the build he's doing and it's part of the midgame issues for Terran. He simply doesn't have the manpower to both pressure the left side and defend the middle/right side while you can run around everywhere.
And as you noted, your army composition was ill-suited for the task at hand. Basically think about it like this. What is the purpose of that first army? All zeal/goon is fine if you want to try to just trade armies while continually expanding and preventing his expansions. But if you don't plan to fight a battle until you are maxed for several minutes, you need to be preparing ahead for the inevitable upgraded/maxed mech + vessel clash and that means storm and stasis. Lots of it. Your 2nd and 3rd stargates should've been up far sooner and as Kwark said the neglect of arbiters really crippled you.
But even failing all of the above, recalls always make a win possible. Before he is really able to establish his 8/7 expansions had you just suicided an army to recall into his 2 expansion, you would've put him in a dangerous position (you tried one at a bad angle with no way of drawing fire I think). Not only does he lose a critical mining source, but you also create a very big opening to recall into his main (as his 2 expansion's defense made defended the right side of his main against recalls unnecessary). So now he has to cover far more territory with far fewer resources and he can't. He never really could in the first place, as he lacked enough turrets/mines to really stop them and didn't cover 2 with a vessel. So had 1 recall went through, it would've been game. Use hallucination, 2 arbs, a decoy shuttle, or whatever you want, just get that recall.
And even if recalls aren't practical, you can still force him to make a potential error and trade expansions. At around the 27th-28th minute mark when he sieges up at your 3 expo, you could've taken your army and stormed the left side, killing both of his expansions. The proper response for him in this situation is to scan it early enough, leave a few tanks sieged to kill 3, and retreat his army to save 8/7 while making sure his army doesn't get clumped and preempetively stasised in transition. But if he doesn't react in that exact fashion, he loses the game because suddenly he's not mining and you're rich. When you have advantages like you did, you can basically force the Terran to make really hard decisions and when they choose/execute wrong once they lose, while you can suffer losses many times over. And overall in late-late-game Destination, position is more important than army strength. Once any part of the Terran's formation is breached, (like when you broke the middle around 30 or so) their entire position becomes compromised as they simply can't defend everywhere.
But overall note that a lot of your problems this game came from a lack of emphasis on information. Keeping that probe alive in his base would've let you 1 gate expo and start off positively rather than behind, and getting your obs deep into his base before his turrets completed (or even after by suiciding one) would've let you expand so much more aggressively. In addition, you lacked so many observers throughout the whole game and didn't rebuild them after they died. Those mistakes compounded bigtime, and while they are rather obvious to see, they remain still important enough to deserve a mention. A lot of the decisions I described can only come from near-perfect information, but observers let you get that information.
Edit: My apologies if I sound too harsh. This was not so much intended as a critique on your play, instead I just wanted to emphasis all the important late game decisions that can swing the game in one direction or another.
Most games I've played against decent tosses they either go 2 base arbs and play map position while trying to get a critical mass of 4-5 arbs (which is a guaranteed 1-3 stasis if you can keep them spread out enough and prevent them from all being emped simultaneously) then just recall in my nat, then in my 4th and try and engage as im moving tanks.
OR
They take 4 base pretty fast (I have nightmares about timing pushing good toss's on Desti) and spend the whole game denying my 4th. Just all in aggression the entire game.
But tbh man I dunno, Desti is a considerably T >> P map in the late game.
Just trying to say if the norm is not working. Try something new. If you keep losing with the same text book counters, try a different book. Your best bet is trying things that you don't normally do in those cases. Whats the worst that can happen you lose. If your losing in this matches any way, what can it hurt. From what I seen you had lots of mineral. So speed zels could but that extra mineral to use. Don't break yourself with them. There speed is great for closing the gap that sieged tanks have with there rang. D-web hits Turrets and stops them, not just the units that stasis effects. There were some turrets that gave you hell killing your arbiters. That and spell units are worth the slots they take. Use like three group of two, in three different spots. Make them wast emps on Corsair then you can send in the real units. If they don't use emp on your Corsairs then make him pay bye webbing his shit. Then your Arbiters are full of energy and there out of emp or there covered in web and the anti air is not such a scary thought. He was so stacked on himself. Psy storm could have been useful. And for thous who say "this thread is falling apart" This is to share info, not to make yourself seem cool. Good or bad, people are trying to help and you shouldn't try to belittle there advice. If its bad, just say thanks, and blow it off. Telling someone there dumb just case you don't like the advice is dumb. The smallest thing can spark a great idea.(i.e. a apple falls from a tree, blam you got the theory of gravity, a man sees a beautiful women and pants the Mona Lisa, a couple of boys want to fly like a bird they seen and next thing you know were flying) Don't undereastmate the small and simple ideas. They hold more power then you think. We should help each other not attack.
Mass.crafT, Shauni is an extremely good player and there are very few players qualified to advise him. Giving him the same line of generic PvT bullshit that everyone knows is utterly pointless. You should watch the replay and if you still feel you can contribute then edit out your post and edit in some genuine comments on his game. Saying "you have extra minerals so you should make zealots because they're good vs tanks" is really, really stupid. He had extra minerals because he maxed out while locked in a stalemate. I get that you want to help and if you'd actually watched the replay and still had something to add I wouldn't mind so much. But you clearly haven't.
This topic was on average one of the highest quality the strategy forum has ever had, both in terms of poster skill and quality of contribution. Reread what you wrote and ask yourself if it really adds to this.
your prob numbers are fine, and with a full supply limit you are the only one who knows what you can and can't do with it. Its limited to your control. Have confidence in your skills and know your limits. If you feel like you have a hard time with large Terran army. Find your strength be micro or macro or a deadly mix of the two. And use it. From the looks of thing your micro is the better. So keep you units moving back and forth from his expos picking on them. Us the fact that your army is faster then his. A Terran army on the move is weaker then the one how set up shop. Just watch the stork vs idra match on Othello. Storks army mobility is a pain in idra neck and he never gets to get his army in place. Now I know Othello is no Destination. Its smaller but the principle is the same. You have the more mobile army don't go Toe to Toe with them. Duck and weave man duck and weave
The Terran was sitting on 3 bases on Destination with half his tanks on the cliff of his main base overlooking the army below. You can't duck and weave against a static opponent. Just watch the damn replay.
thanks for making my point that all that most of people do is beat other players down case you think you know it all. thanks for supporting the new players and missing the point all together. Im not telling him what to do. He knows hes better then me. Hell, I lost to a single cell life form the other day. So, go poor yourself a tall glass of Hateraid. Sip slowly and enjoy the fact that you know everything and I know nothing. I'm just trying to get him to think of thing he might not. So i'll shut up and go away.
On August 12 2009 02:31 Mass.crafT wrote: I know nothing.
This was my problem with what you were posting. You don't seem to understand. If you're bad at Starcraft and you didn't even watch the replay then you have nothing to add. Nothing to add on the theoretical area because you don't fucking know shit and nothing to add on the gameplay feedback area because you didn't even take the time to look. Stop martyring yourself like you did something good and I'm bashing you for it. What you did was take a huge shit in an otherwise good topic and then whine because when you were little your teacher told you every idea was a good one.
When the Terran is sitting on 3 bases and has a single defensive line that covers them all you cannot abuse your mobility. Mobility allows you to pressure an overstretched Terran, hitting at opposite ends of his defensive line. He had one defensive point, you can't duck and weave vs that. You move about, he stays still. You pressure the empty base site at 3, he stays still. You suddenly switch across to pressure the untaken base at 8, he stays still. Everything you wrote was a big pile of wank.
On August 12 2009 02:31 Mass.crafT wrote: i'll shut up and go away.
On August 12 2009 02:31 Mass.crafT wrote: thanks for making my point that all that most of people do is beat other players down case you think you know it all. thanks for supporting the new players and missing the point all together. Im not telling him what to do. He knows hes better then me. Hell, I lost to a single cell life form the other day. So, go poor yourself a tall glass of Hateraid. Sip slowly and enjoy the fact that you know everything and I know nothing. I'm just trying to get him to think of thing he might not. So i'll shut up and go away.
Usually I would be the one banned and not the one suggesting this but. for incoherent English and arguing with established titans over obscure and worthless things.
Your advice is appreciated, but it's unlikely that it'll help shauni coz it's not high level advice.
It's a fact and it has nothing to do with anything other than that. Don't take the criticism personally.
And Kwark, Mass.crafT is also trying to help, just as you are, not his fault he's not aware his advice is not top-skill-level. There are better ways of critisizing his post that calling it stupid.
He didn't watch the replay. His advice isn't just low level, it's just wrong. Everything he wrote is wrong in pretty much every way. His stuff about corsairs (lol, really?). His stuff about 'psy' storm (Shauni used it). His stuff about not playing textbook (at the top levels textbook is what works). His stuff about if you're losing anyway (Shauni was a mile ahead but couldn't capitalise on it). His zealots> tanks (orly? probably why he used them). His stuff about spending the extra minerals on zealots (he was on 200/200 pretty much all game). His mobility stuff (completely inapplicable to the game). His Othello example (the problem was on 2 player maps like Desti the T can camp and the P mines out his half of the map). His combine your skills to find a deadly mix (wtf does that even mean?). His duck and weave (against a single wall of tanks you're just dancing around your half of the map).
Seriously, the only thing that he wrote which is true is that he's really bad at starcraft. I don't generally mind people posting bad advice if they put some effort into it or watched the replay and genuinely had something they felt was worth offering. But he put no effort in and every single thing he said was wrong in every single way. This isn't "not top-skill-level". This isn't on the skill level chart. It's just wrong.
Well, i guess every topic is bound to have that guy who knows nothing trying to throw in his 2cents. I would suggest getting good then trying to post. And all the others just ignore him.
against terranz like this, It really becomes crucial to get good spells off(storm and stasis). it needs to be done and you need to kill/paralyze alot of his shit to be able to fight his army. Otherwise, you could have done some recalls, carrier switch(saw you had like 5g minerals/gas) just add like 7 stargates behind your natural, thats where I like to add it, and just catch him completely off guard
On August 12 2009 09:03 SkepTicAL wrote: After reading this all, i suggest mass scouts.
Bizarrely enough, that might have worked. The problem with a carrier switch is the build time lets him level you before they're done while getting goliaths up. If you had 12 stargates and 3-3 grades prepared a scout switch after a mass army suicide might actually be effective. Only because the Terran only had one working expo though. He was unable to rapidly replace units if he ever lost his army.
On August 12 2009 09:03 SkepTicAL wrote: After reading this all, i suggest mass scouts.
Bizarrely enough, that might have worked. The problem with a carrier switch is the build time lets him level you before they're done while getting goliaths up. If you had 12 stargates and 3-3 grades prepared a scout switch after a mass army suicide might actually be effective. Only because the Terran only had one working expo though. He was unable to rapidly replace units if he ever lost his army.
but couldnt a carrier switch have worked? i mean... get the upgrades beforehand, lay down 6 stargates, suicide ur army, rebuild only half of it and fill the other half of ur supply with carriers. while he is busy rebuilding or microing his push chances are high that he doesnt notice/scan ur carrier switch in time before they are out. once u got 6 carriers with high upgrades out while he didnt even start building goliaths it should be pretty much gg imho.
maybe suicide ur army in 2 waves to enlarge the timespan between ur psy getting freed up for carriers and him being rdy to push out... but ofc this is theorycrafting, u and that guy are miles above my skill and experience level
On August 12 2009 09:03 SkepTicAL wrote: After reading this all, i suggest mass scouts.
Bizarrely enough, that might have worked. The problem with a carrier switch is the build time lets him level you before they're done while getting goliaths up. If you had 12 stargates and 3-3 grades prepared a scout switch after a mass army suicide might actually be effective. Only because the Terran only had one working expo though. He was unable to rapidly replace units if he ever lost his army.
i hope youre not serious, lol
I think I might be lol. The Terran at one point had 200/200 in vultures and tanks, no money and only one working expansion. The Protoss at this point had 200/200 in zealots and dragoons and 10k minerals. If a tech switch hit the Terrans only expansion fast enough he wouldn't have the money to adapt into goliaths and keep pace. But it'd need to hit really damn fast and ideally have some ht in shuttles in support. We're talking about a really strange situational context here but maybe it could have worked.
On August 12 2009 09:03 SkepTicAL wrote: After reading this all, i suggest mass scouts.
Bizarrely enough, that might have worked. The problem with a carrier switch is the build time lets him level you before they're done while getting goliaths up. If you had 12 stargates and 3-3 grades prepared a scout switch after a mass army suicide might actually be effective. Only because the Terran only had one working expo though. He was unable to rapidly replace units if he ever lost his army.
Kwark; is now god. This thread; Is now officially awesome. And I: Am beaming with joy that there may be a practical use for scouts (OBVIOUSLY SITUATIONAL) after all these years (Apart from the stove).
In all seriousness, this thread is very very useful and helpful, and I hope this gets into recommended threads, perhaps "Discussion of late game PvTurtle" or something. The tactical and strategic information here from you higher-level folk is excellent reading, thank you all.
Two Kwark has already pointed out. Your initial strategy is counter productive. You create the illusion of some kind of hidden tech by delaying goon range and then after you've convinced your opponent to play defensively you opt for 2 gate reaver instead of expanding aggressively.
The second is that you built an arbiter tech but only made one Stargate despite having ample gas for more. You need at least 2, and this is a huge leak in your play.
The third problem is an even larger leak, and probably explains most if not all of your difficulty in PvT. You chose to get arbiters but you don't have an arbiter until the 15 minute mark (despite the fact that you haven't been harassed at all). Your arbiter tech was roughly on time but you didn't DO ANYTHING with it. You had a Stargate and an Arbiter Tribunal just sitting around doing nothing.
Arbiter timing is ABSOLUTELY crucial to modern PvT because you HAVE to push the pace of the game if the terran (like this one) likes to turtle.
On the use of Arbiters in PvT: Upgrade the energy upgrade as soon as you have the tribunal. Wait a couple moments and start an arbiter (preferably two). This ensures that your first arbiters all benefit from the energy upgrade upon being built (and start with 63 energy).
Your PvT is too passive. You put all the control of the game into the opponents' hands as you have no way to efficiently attack him at any point.
To correct your play: Create a consistent early game that forces your opponent to do what you want, aside from that you play fine until midgame. After that you must time your arbiters properly so that recall becomes an asset as early as possible. If you opt for Arbiters it's absolutely essential that you have at least 2 before initially maxing out, and in most situations you should have at least another 2 in production. As soon as you max out several things should happen. You should lay down more gateways, though never more than perhaps 20 even on macro maps. You should begin probing intently as to your opponents' weakest points (and there must inevitably be weak points as you will max out ahead of him and have recall). And finally, once you are maxed out, have 15-20 gateways, and roughly 2,000 minerals you must commit to an attack that will do as much damage as possible and discombobulate the Terran.
With these simple rules in mind your PvT will improve drastically.
Some notes on probe count: Consider some research published on TL.net about the marginal returns of additional probes. Namely, there is a huge gulf once you have a number of probes equal to one and a half times the number of mineral patches at your expansion until around two and a half times the number mineral patches where more mining probes really doesn't benefit you so much. This is important because in your replay there were like 15 probes mining at a 7 patch base. So you were something like in the middle of this gulf with several hundred minerals not really well spent. If you watch some FPVODs of bisu available on youtube you'll see that the TL.net research is corroborated there. Bisu makes roughly the amount of probes I'm suggesting and it seems evident that many Koreans are aware of this phenomenon.
On cutting probes: Probes cuts, aside from merely observing efficiency should be in response to your opponent's decisions. You should really only cut probes in an anticipation of an attack, timing the probe cut to maximize your army strength before the attack (but I guess this is largely obvious and depends on your ability to read your opponent's timings). Not specifically directed to Shauni: reactionary probe cutting is integral to properly executing double expos without leaving yourself incredibly vulnerable to Terran timing attacks. Reactionary probe cuts are less important for the type of build Shauni did.
And that's how straight up PvT with arbiters is played. I'm persuaded by evidence that this is perfect. Good luck fellow Protosses!
On August 12 2009 11:32 Failsafe wrote: There are three gaping defects in this PvT.
Two Kwark has already pointed out. Your initial strategy is counter productive. You create the illusion of some kind of hidden tech by delaying goon range and then after you've convinced your opponent to play defensively you opt for 2 gate reaver instead of expanding aggressively.
The second is that you built an arbiter tech but only made one Stargate despite having ample gas for more. You need at least 2, and this is a huge leak in your play.
The third problem is an even larger leak, and probably explains most if not all of your difficulty in PvT. You chose to get arbiters but you don't have an arbiter until the 15 minute mark (despite the fact that you haven't been harassed at all). Your arbiter tech was roughly on time but you didn't DO ANYTHING with it. You had a Stargate and an Arbiter Tribunal just sitting around doing nothing.
Arbiter timing is ABSOLUTELY crucial to modern PvT because you HAVE to push the pace of the game if the terran (like this one) likes to turtle.
On the use of Arbiters in PvT: Upgrade the energy upgrade as soon as you have the tribunal. Wait a couple moments and start an arbiter (preferably two). This ensures that your first arbiters all benefit from the energy upgrade upon being built (and start with 63 energy).
Your PvT is too passive. You put all the control of the game into the opponents' hands as you have no way to efficiently attack him at any point.
To correct your play: Create a consistent early game that forces your opponent to do what you want, aside from that you play fine until midgame. After that you must time your arbiters properly so that recall becomes an asset as early as possible. If you opt for Arbiters it's absolutely essential that you have at least 2 before initially maxing out, and in most situations you should have at least another 2 in production. As soon as you max out several things should happen. You should lay down more gateways, though never more than perhaps 20 even on macro maps. You should begin probing intently as to your opponents' weakest points (and there must inevitably be weak points as you will max out ahead of him and have recall). And finally, once you are maxed out, have 15-20 gateways, and roughly 2,000 minerals you must commit to an attack that will do as much damage as possible and discombobulate the Terran.
With these simple rules in mind your PvT will improve drastically.
Some notes on probe count: Consider some research published on TL.net about the marginal returns of additional probes. Namely, there is a huge gulf once you have a number of probes equal to one and a half times the number of mineral patches at your expansion until around two and a half times the number mineral patches where more mining probes really doesn't benefit you so much. This is important because in your replay there were like 15 probes mining at a 7 patch base. So you were something like in the middle of this gulf with several hundred minerals not really well spent. If you watch some FPVODs of bisu available on youtube you'll see that the TL.net research is corroborated there. Bisu makes roughly the amount of probes I'm suggesting and it seems evident that many Koreans are aware of this phenomenon.
On cutting probes: Probes cuts, aside from merely observing efficiency should be in response to your opponent's decisions. You should really only cut probes in an anticipation of an attack, timing the probe cut to maximize your army strength before the attack (but I guess this is largely obvious and depends on your ability to read your opponent's timings). Not specifically directed to Shauni: reactionary probe cutting is integral to properly executing double expos without leaving yourself incredibly vulnerable to Terran timing attacks. Reactionary probe cuts are less important for the type of build Shauni did.
And that's how straight up PvT with arbiters is played. I'm persuaded by evidence that this is perfect. Good luck fellow Protosses!
On August 12 2009 11:32 Failsafe wrote: On the use of Arbiters in PvT: Upgrade the energy upgrade as soon as you have the tribunal. Wait a couple moments and start an arbiter (preferably two). This ensures that your first arbiters all benefit from the energy upgrade upon being built (and start with 63 energy).
The rest of your post was all excellent advice but I'm afraid you're wrong here. The energy upgrade must be complete at the start of a building a unit for them to benefit from it upon completion. The correct way to do it is to start energy upgrade and arbiter as soon as you have tribunal and then wait a few seconds for the upgrade to complete before building the second one. Only the second round of arbiters will benefit from the extra energy.
On August 12 2009 11:32 Failsafe wrote: On the use of Arbiters in PvT: Upgrade the energy upgrade as soon as you have the tribunal. Wait a couple moments and start an arbiter (preferably two). This ensures that your first arbiters all benefit from the energy upgrade upon being built (and start with 63 energy).
The rest of your post was all excellent advice but I'm afraid you're wrong here. The energy upgrade must be complete at the start of a building a unit for them to benefit from it upon completion. The correct way to do it is to start energy upgrade and arbiter as soon as you have tribunal and then wait a few seconds for the upgrade to complete before building the second one. Only the second round of arbiters will benefit from the extra energy.
Yeah, you're right. Another quick addendum from the game I watched to see you were right, I noticed that I had 2 Arbiters by 13:30 and was maxed at just about the same time. This timing was from starting the Arbiter tech after securing a double expo. Ideally you'll have 2 Arbiters, with 2 more in production, and a maxed army at around 13-13:30 assuming you play a standard safe opening and get a relatively quick double expo while also doing a decent job of defending against harassment.
The difference in timings makes all the difference in the game outcome because you can begin your recall harassment before the Terran has an opportunity to begin to reinforce with superfluous mines and turret walls. He'll also not have had time to reinforce his factories before you begin your attacks but your 15-20 gateways should come operational with the end of your first wave of aggression.
This is so awesome to read, I've been enjoying this thread because it's full of learning on a whole new level for a low ranked player, the understanding and underlying thinking about the game, in the game and around every move makes me think even more about what to do in my next game, what to think and use in PvT on destination and PvT overall. I must say thank you Shauni for taking the time and ask TL for help this is not just helping yourself but allot of players to!
Yeah, so I'm just a d+ protoss, but I can see your problem... Your build is all wrong, you need to start out with the stove. User was strat forum banned for this post.
Cant you just use Hallucination to get recalls in and Disruption Web to break defences. i mean its clear answer to me. And imo would make ur PvT more deadly cuz T's couldnt Turtle so easily.
On August 12 2009 13:44 tossinYoSalad wrote: Yeah, so I'm just a d+ protoss, but I can see your problem... Your build is all wrong, you need to start out with the stove.
On August 12 2009 11:32 Failsafe wrote: There are three gaping defects in this PvT.
Two Kwark has already pointed out. Your initial strategy is counter productive. You create the illusion of some kind of hidden tech by delaying goon range and then after you've convinced your opponent to play defensively you opt for 2 gate reaver instead of expanding aggressively.
The second is that you built an arbiter tech but only made one Stargate despite having ample gas for more. You need at least 2, and this is a huge leak in your play.
The third problem is an even larger leak, and probably explains most if not all of your difficulty in PvT. You chose to get arbiters but you don't have an arbiter until the 15 minute mark (despite the fact that you haven't been harassed at all). Your arbiter tech was roughly on time but you didn't DO ANYTHING with it. You had a Stargate and an Arbiter Tribunal just sitting around doing nothing.
Arbiter timing is ABSOLUTELY crucial to modern PvT because you HAVE to push the pace of the game if the terran (like this one) likes to turtle.
On the use of Arbiters in PvT: Upgrade the energy upgrade as soon as you have the tribunal. Wait a couple moments and start an arbiter (preferably two). This ensures that your first arbiters all benefit from the energy upgrade upon being built (and start with 63 energy).
Your PvT is too passive. You put all the control of the game into the opponents' hands as you have no way to efficiently attack him at any point.
To correct your play: Create a consistent early game that forces your opponent to do what you want, aside from that you play fine until midgame. After that you must time your arbiters properly so that recall becomes an asset as early as possible. If you opt for Arbiters it's absolutely essential that you have at least 2 before initially maxing out, and in most situations you should have at least another 2 in production. As soon as you max out several things should happen. You should lay down more gateways, though never more than perhaps 20 even on macro maps. You should begin probing intently as to your opponents' weakest points (and there must inevitably be weak points as you will max out ahead of him and have recall). And finally, once you are maxed out, have 15-20 gateways, and roughly 2,000 minerals you must commit to an attack that will do as much damage as possible and discombobulate the Terran.
With these simple rules in mind your PvT will improve drastically.
I guess I'll have to reply since some of you put a lot of thoughts into your replies.
I still don't quite agree with your first point. Even though it was counterproductive, it turned out just how I expected it to, it was a very safe opening that only set me slightly behind. I believe I accepted this and consciously turned it into a macro game. The late arbiter was a relatively small mistake that turned out to have worse consequences than I expected. It was really bad, and I usually don't miss things like that but hey, everyone makes mistakes. The passive play is something I agree with and I have a lot of problems because of this. I believe Ver addressed this flaw very well. In PvZ and PvP, I try to gather intelligence, send out scouts, corsairs, observers to see exactly what he is up to. In PvT however, it's as if I'm playing in the dark, and not just in this game. I don't prioritize to get an observer into his base and my observer usage is generally very low, which makes me unable to see if the terran has any weaknesses to exploit. I'm usually attacking blindly, so even if I understand the matchup well, I don't have anything to base my choices on. Because of this, I can deal with aggressive terrans a lot better than the passive ones (especially the ones who camp very well). But to my defense, it is at least to me a lot more difficult to scout high level terrans. With well placed turrets and early scan+goliaths you don't have any option to gather intelligence and you can't get a good look into his defense setup to see whether you should attack or not. It is even more impossible after he gets a vessel out and kill all of your observers. In the other matchups, you can always retreat after judging his army size without losing too many units, but if you attack a terran with a lot of siege tanks and make the judgement you won't be able to break him, you can't retreat until you've lost at least half your army which usually makes you lose the game right there. This is the main reason why I usually play a passive lategame in PvT...
You're right about the difficulty of using observers and gathering intelligence against high level Terran, and especially this style of camping Terran who makes it literally impossible to enter his base with an observer. On the other hand, I think that concerns about intelligence gathering and observer usage have been overstated in general.
The main priority of Protoss intelligence is to anticipate the Terran's attack by keeping track of the Terran army, and you did this well. It's great to know the Terran's factory count as well and all the other minute details of his base, but it's certainly not absolutely necessary at this level. All you really need to know is whether the Terran is playing aggressively or passively (and this guy certainly wasn't capable of mixing it up and tricking you).
Once it was clear that the Terran had opted to turtle you opted for 3 bases and an Arbiter tech. It's really worth emphasizing the point that this is a viable PvT midgame but you have to follow through with immediate arbiter usage and recall aggression. The immediacy of the Arbiters and recall can't be reiterated enough because the entire strategy depends upon it. Once you opt for a lower econ game (by not taking a fourth or even fifth expansion midgame) you have to play it aggressively. If you're not comfortable as Ver said "suiciding" armies with recall, then you can't really play a 3 base Arbiter midgame and should opt for a more macro-oriented approach.
On August 13 2009 01:59 Failsafe wrote: I'd say both games are between B- and A- level and feature better Terran than the one in the OP
No.
Gretorp and... Game?
No offense to Gretorp but why did you post a replay against Game? This feels more like a silly bragging post than anything else. And what do you mean by 'between B- and A-'? Why not just say between D- and Olympic while you're at it?
I still watched the reps though. Game didn't play this style at all, and while Gretorp tried to, he was far behind and even so went back to defend with all but two tanks against the recall. I don't intend to question the skill of you and your opponents, I'm sure it's at least B- games like you said. Yet I don't see the relevance to this thread. It's as if you try to tell me 'this is how you recall with arbiters'.
I dislike to generalize between korean and foreigners, but there is no non korean terran who can play this kind of camping style well. I never had this kind of problems against top non korean terrans on either of these two maps. They usually overextend themselves, panic against recalls, doesn't EMP well and doesn't scan army and arbiter movement well.
While I do think I am pretty good at PvT, I genuinely thought the replays were good examples of a meaningful difference in strategy. On the one hand, your late game was very passive and illustrated how an intelligent turtling Terran could effectively prevent Protoss from making a sufficient dent unless the Protoss had a cohesive, aggressive late game strategy. On the other hand I thought the replays offered some indication of what I thought that strategy to be, not that I executed it perfectly nor that my opponents were capable of the same level defense as Koreans. You can understand my surprise, though, to see a strong Protoss player losing a game with two armies worth of resources in the bank and no clear indication of any strategy for what to do with them.
A very nice read indeed. I, like many others, am also struggling with mid-to-late game PvT and this thread has greatly increased my understanding on the subject. Thanks to all who've contributed, Kwark, Failsafe and Shauni in particular
Also, this should be a featured thread of the strategy forum - a very relevant PvT discussion.
Maybe I was too harsh, you didn't have to remove them. There could be others who benefit from them. I was just saying I didn't and that I have a lot of similiar recall games.
On August 13 2009 06:21 Failsafe wrote: Alright, my bad. I'll remove them.
While I do think I am pretty good at PvT, I genuinely thought the replays were good examples of a meaningful difference in strategy. On the one hand, your late game was very passive and illustrated how an intelligent turtling Terran could effectively prevent Protoss from making a sufficient dent unless the Protoss had a cohesive, aggressive late game strategy. On the other hand I thought the replays offered some indication of what I thought that strategy to be, not that I executed it perfectly nor that my opponents were capable of the same level defense as Koreans. You can understand my surprise, though, to see a strong Protoss player losing a game with two armies worth of resources in the bank and no clear indication of any strategy for what to do with them.
I saw the replays and am curious about why you so rarely used storm - in the one vs game, I think, you never made templar despite having an archives and his tanks being clumped much of the time, and in both you rarely used it to engage the push. Just a stylistic prefrence or is there something deeper than that?
On a related note, Shauni, I saw you use shuttle storms effectively in that rep. How do you micro that exactly? I find if I leave the shuttle stationary I don't have the clicking accuracy to select ht and if I drop them on the move I have to either drop them one at a time and storm before returning to the shuttle and dropping the next or risk losing them all to vultures. In early game battles I can use them fairly well but as the scale of the battle goes up the amount of micro involved increases too (for the Protoss at least).
On August 13 2009 10:19 Kwark wrote: On a related note, Shauni, I saw you use shuttle storms effectively in that rep. How do you micro that exactly? I find if I leave the shuttle stationary I don't have the clicking accuracy to select ht and if I drop them on the move I have to either drop them one at a time and storm before returning to the shuttle and dropping the next or risk losing them all to vultures. In early game battles I can use them fairly well but as the scale of the battle goes up the amount of micro involved increases too (for the Protoss at least).
I used to have the same problem with the lack of clicking accuracy instead of improving my accuracy I actually hotkey each templar before putting them in the shuttle so when they unload you 5t6t i use 5 and 6 because they are so close to t it just seems logical
On August 13 2009 10:19 Kwark wrote: On a related note, Shauni, I saw you use shuttle storms effectively in that rep. How do you micro that exactly? I find if I leave the shuttle stationary I don't have the clicking accuracy to select ht and if I drop them on the move I have to either drop them one at a time and storm before returning to the shuttle and dropping the next or risk losing them all to vultures. In early game battles I can use them fairly well but as the scale of the battle goes up the amount of micro involved increases too (for the Protoss at least).
Yeah, I've also noticed that Shauni has very good shuttle micro (particularly for storm drops) and have been wondering if he (or anyone else) has any tips.
I just watched a stream of Shauni playing a PvP on Outsider and the shuttle control was exemplary.
On August 13 2009 10:19 Kwark wrote: On a related note, Shauni, I saw you use shuttle storms effectively in that rep. How do you micro that exactly? I find if I leave the shuttle stationary I don't have the clicking accuracy to select ht and if I drop them on the move I have to either drop them one at a time and storm before returning to the shuttle and dropping the next or risk losing them all to vultures. In early game battles I can use them fairly well but as the scale of the battle goes up the amount of micro involved increases too (for the Protoss at least).
Press U and click on your shuttle after you told it to move somewhere, it drops the temps while moving. As far as what failsafe said about factory count. It is incredibly important for probe cutting and when you start massing. When terran is movin up past 2 facs, you should be very alert to what he is trying to accomplish, whether it be 4 fac 3rd expo, or eventually a 5-6 fac rush.
Yeah I didn't mean to downplay the importance of factory count. It's essential to know what's gonna happen after the first two factories, but once you've seen that it doesn't matter much. Since Shauni had already seen what was going on in the replay (5 factories) it doesn't matter so much whether the Terran is getting 8 or 10 after that. Was definitely misleading on my part though
I was just meaning to address some commentary I've seen on PvT lately where players insist that Protoss needs to know not only how many factories, but how many armories, and at what time they start spinning and also needs to observe the Terran's SCV cuts etc etc. And of course while all this is useful, it's not in my opinion absolutely essential except in the most refined situations.
On August 13 2009 06:21 Failsafe wrote: Alright, my bad. I'll remove them.
While I do think I am pretty good at PvT, I genuinely thought the replays were good examples of a meaningful difference in strategy. On the one hand, your late game was very passive and illustrated how an intelligent turtling Terran could effectively prevent Protoss from making a sufficient dent unless the Protoss had a cohesive, aggressive late game strategy. On the other hand I thought the replays offered some indication of what I thought that strategy to be, not that I executed it perfectly nor that my opponents were capable of the same level defense as Koreans. You can understand my surprise, though, to see a strong Protoss player losing a game with two armies worth of resources in the bank and no clear indication of any strategy for what to do with them.
I saw the replays and am curious about why you so rarely used storm - in the one vs game, I think, you never made templar despite having an archives and his tanks being clumped much of the time, and in both you rarely used it to engage the push. Just a stylistic prefrence or is there something deeper than that?
It was mostly that my plans relied heavily on Recall, and I needed to constantly pump Arbiters in order to constantly recall. I think I had double digit gas quite often in the game against Game and so there just wasn't any room for HTs in my army composition as Psi Storm was secondary in importance to Recall. I could have cut Dragoons of course, but I think that's a pretty big error, especially on a low resource map like Blue Storm where you can't afford to gobble a lot of mines with Zealots.
I'd say it's mainly a stylistic preference, but it's one that effects pervasive changes to your master plan. Actually, the difference in preference for HTs vs Arbiters was another reason that I posted the replays.
Against a camping and relatively passive Terran who is looking to stalemate maps such as Destination or Blue Storm (which I think are conceptually quite similar maps) and then win by virtue of his more efficient army, I prefer more Arbiters to a mix of Arbiters and HTs. Against a more aggressive Terran who likes to take stabs and who I can catch off-guard, I prefer HTs in conjunction with Arbiters.
It's just so difficult to play aggressively against a defensive Terran by attacking them headlong which is what HTs equip you to do. Even with HTs, it's too often gonna be the case that you simply can't get enough of an opening against a camping Terran. In such a case, I strongly prefer the added mobility of Arbiters with Recall to the added headlong offensive capacity from HTs. Against the aggressive Terrans or counter-attacking Terrans, I'd say HTs are as good if not better suited to the task.
An additional consideration is that HTs are simply more tricky to use and require more micromanagement than Arbiters (as Kwark pointed out). Moveover, other factors in favor of Arbiters include cloaking which creates more opportunities for Terran to make mistakes. HTs, on the other hand, are quite the opposite in that they have to be used from a Shuttle and kept safely inside a Shuttle at all times. HTs essentially create more opportunities for you to make mistakes and are a major multi-tasking concern. Arbiters are healthier units that fly and so are not prone to Vultures, plus they're roughly as quick as your army which itself is a big advantage over HTs. In addition to Recall for mobility Arbiters also have Stasis which is a good substitute for Storm should you push come to shove. While as Bisu demonstrated, Hallucination is not a particularly great substitute for Recall.
On August 13 2009 10:19 Kwark wrote: On a related note, Shauni, I saw you use shuttle storms effectively in that rep. How do you micro that exactly? I find if I leave the shuttle stationary I don't have the clicking accuracy to select ht and if I drop them on the move I have to either drop them one at a time and storm before returning to the shuttle and dropping the next or risk losing them all to vultures. In early game battles I can use them fairly well but as the scale of the battle goes up the amount of micro involved increases too (for the Protoss at least).
It's okay if you lose them as long as they get off one or two good storms. I don't really have any secret and I probably do not use the most effective way, but I tell the shuttle to move a few tiles away while I click the portraits (not u because I sometimes want to decide the drop order). Then I just select them manually one by one and storm. It's often good to have a zealot dropped first because I like to move the shuttle in closer range than the rest of my army and then the first unit dropped will be killed by tank fire that doesn't reach anything else. The 'secret' is just to have very good mouse accuracy so you can storm quickly and return them to the shuttle.
(Bisu vs Canata Fpvod) At 17:31 you can see Bisu's fpview doing it, it looks like he uses the method skeptical outlined above, while using the wireframe click to unload the first one, and then just uses timing/magic boxes for storming. Seems really complex to get the position right, but I think that using that method if you unload the first one manually, it will unload all the rest in a predetermined distance from it (due to the cooldown), so you can drop them in a line equidistant.
1) There's a point when you nearly break into terran base but your troops didnt move in but stuck at choke. I know you cant finish the base but taking a few factory or supply would be great.
2) You didnt do multiple attacks from different area. I would suggest a templar drop storm + some suicide would be great at two different areas.
3) why not get some cosair with web. It can serves many purpose.
.................... I hope it helps.....................
Anyway, why cant toss turtle too, just find a chance to mind control a scv then the terran will be forced to find you.
On August 15 2009 05:10 larryhoo wrote: My humble advice:
1) There's a point when you nearly break into terran base but your troops didnt move in but stuck at choke. I know you cant finish the base but taking a few factory or supply would be great.
2) You didnt do multiple attacks from different area. I would suggest a templar drop storm + some suicide would be great at two different areas.
3) why not get some cosair with web. It can serves many purpose.
.................... I hope it helps.....................
Anyway, why cant toss turtle too, just find a chance to mind control a scv then the terran will be forced to find you.
On August 15 2009 05:10 larryhoo wrote: My humble advice:
1) There's a point when you nearly break into terran base but your troops didnt move in but stuck at choke. I know you cant finish the base but taking a few factory or supply would be great.
2) You didnt do multiple attacks from different area. I would suggest a templar drop storm + some suicide would be great at two different areas.
3) why not get some cosair with web. It can serves many purpose.
.................... I hope it helps.....................
Anyway, why cant toss turtle too, just find a chance to mind control a scv then the terran will be forced to find you.
This makes me so sad its ridiculous.
It's like my relentless aggression a few pages ago doesn't even deter them anymore. Sometimes I wonder why I bother.
On August 15 2009 05:10 larryhoo wrote: My humble advice:
1) There's a point when you nearly break into terran base but your troops didnt move in but stuck at choke. I know you cant finish the base but taking a few factory or supply would be great.
2) You didnt do multiple attacks from different area. I would suggest a templar drop storm + some suicide would be great at two different areas.
3) why not get some cosair with web. It can serves many purpose.
.................... I hope it helps.....................
Anyway, why cant toss turtle too, just find a chance to mind control a scv then the terran will be forced to find you.
This makes me so sad its ridiculous.
It's like my relentless aggression a few pages ago doesn't even deter them anymore. Sometimes I wonder why I bother.
Chances are they didn't read the pages before. But at least it's mannered with the intent to help.
EPT
