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Judging at some of the posts I've recently read on TL, it seems that people are slowly starting to figure out that late game SC2 Zerg has no counter.
If you checked my post historic, you would realize that I was among the numerous ones who foresee this problem. But as soon as the beta came in, people were too eager to play the damn game (and test all the infamous builds they had though at) to keep the theoretical discussions alive.
This of course may have been the right thing to do at the time, but now that the basic timings and strategies are slowly being figured out, I guess we could once again look at the big picture.
The Zerg macro issue lies in 2 things:
- Because the Zerg produced all their units out of 1 building, they can tech switch instantly. This ability used to be one of the Swarm's main characteristics in SC1, but as SC2 introduced the hard counter system, it is now far more deadly.
- The Larva injection mechanism. The real problem I guess. The combination of the Zerg tech-switch with the unrealistic amount of units that can be poured out of 3-4 hatcheries.
In BW, there usually were a combination of OP spells/units/characteristics which balanced themselves. For instance, darkswarm + lurkers/lings usually was the only way to pass through a line of mm while, on the other hand, irradiate(/siege tanks) enabled Terrans to kill a lot of Zerg units for free thus keep up with their macro.
[ ![[image loading]](http://www.gosugamers.net/starcraft/images/screens/TruevMajor3.jpg)
Any Terran losing carelessly too many science vessels and tanks would usually get swarmed in the 5 next minutes.
As for the Protoss, it was pretty much the same thing, except with HT and storm. In other words, any Protoss losing his HT carelessly was usually overwhelmed in the next 5 minutes as well.
What changed with SC2 is that, while Zerg macro got even better and scarier, the possibility for the other races to counter this inherent strength almost vanished.
Storm, HSM, siege tanks.. are nothing compared to what they were in SC1. + Show Spoiler +Colossi don't replace HT in SC2, as the Zerg now have the corrupter which seems to have been specifically designed to focus and destroy them, thus not allowing them to survive as long as the HT in SC1.
In fact, and more interistingly, they were as good at the beginning of the BETA but got all nerfed as soon as some players complained about them.
This is why Protoss and Terran now have to rely on quick timing pushes, unscouted harass... all of which have also been nerfed by Blizzard.
The issue is that while all these nerfs were done, the Zerg macro, which is the real and profund reason behind all these all-in types of play, has been left untouched.
All this leads us to 4 possible scenario:
1). Blizzard is methodic. They are first balancing the early game, before changing out the late game.
2). Blizzard believes that if the T and P have a 50% chance of beating Zerg before late game, the game is balanced. From a pure statistical point of view this is not wrong, however I guess that a lot of ex starcraft 1 players would feel outraged by such an idea. It is clear that the best and most memorable Starcraft 1 games are usually the longest ones.
3). Blizzard thinks that the expansions might balance things out so evening out the players race distribution is currently as much if not more important than achieving perfect balance.
I know they denied this, but just because one company responsible denied it doesn't mean that it's not in the head of a large part of their design and balance teams.
4). Blizzard is incompetent balance-wise. This idea might sounds harsch but as an ex-War3 player who listened with attention every single one of their declarations on balance, I don't think we can conclude that there's no way this couldn't be true to a certain degree.
Post your thoughts on this.
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thanks for the info... I think would zerg lacks late game are units that do area of damage sorta of things like fungal growth. fungal growth is good but not sufficient when huge armies in late game start coming at you. like youve stated, in BW there were lurkers and dark swarm, lurkers for their area of damage (splash). i think alot of this comes into play in FFAs where everyone turtles and techs to the highest and attacking at supply cap. obviously, the toss with the mothership/ colossus wins. or the terran with mass thors/seige tanks. Why do they win? splash damage. just my two cents. oh i forgot, ultras. but lets be realistic, they are not cost efficient as colossus with lance upgrade assuming the armies fighting are at same costs.
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So Zerg is allways a favorit in the late game, i didnt know that .....
From now on im just gona go for early roaches, make tons of spinecrawler and just 1 base my way to the late game, or in a other word, victory.
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totally agree with you, i was saying this even in early beta inject larvae and unlimited larvaes at hatchery are retarded and should be tweaked
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Zerg has always been the best race to be honest, and now that every single early game harass is taken out of the game they absolutely take no skill at all. I just think Blizzard is incompetent at balancing, and before SC2 WAR3 and WOW were a good example of it.
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On October 20 2010 21:47 Grack wrote:
totally agree with you, i was saying this even in early beta inject larva and unlimited larvaes at hatchery are retarded and should be tweaked
it's limited to 19.
http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/Larvae
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Yes, if you turtle in your base and just sit there and let a zerg macro uninterrupted and don't snipe expos / utilize your early and mid game advantage. OF COURSE you are going to get rolled in the late game.
This is not because the zerg late game units are too strong, or because zerg's macro mechanic is unfair. It is because you did not implement a strategy designed to counter the strengths of the zerg race. After all, this is what Starcraft is all about. If you play right into the hands of the strengths of your opponents race, of course you will lose. Try harassing and sniping expansions and generally forcing confrontation earlier in the game, when your army is stronger than the zerg's army. etc.
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That's just the way it is. Zerg has always been weaker at the start, stronger in the late game. That's why people always try to rush strong Zerg opponents, because they know they will be in trouble late game. Look at the MLG, Huk cannon rushed Idra twice!
Also, the larva thing is a double edged sword. When a zerg player has enough drones, their unit production is off the charts. But when they lose tons of drones, it directly affects their ability to produce units. I think it's fantastic mechanic, and it makes zerg so much different from the other two races (T and P are relatively similar).
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Russian Federation145 Posts
TvZ is almost balanced. Terran has a fair chance at beating ultralisks with thor marauder. The problem is that zerg takes map control with speedlings, takes map control with roaches, takes map control with mutalisks and terran can't divide his army and use terran mobility as an advantage because mutalisks will clean up any medics and get an instant surround on creep on any split up armies. Zergs also have vision of the whole map due to floating overlords - can't build vikings to destroy them because mutalisks will break them.
PvZ is a whole different story. Protoss really struggles against zerg in the late game and really struggles with taking any sort of expansions against 4 range roaches.
TvP has the problem you described. Terran just can't win against colossus ht, or carrier mothership. Nerf. Nerf. Nerf.
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Can't protoss keep up with zerg macro? The ability to spawn units "up front" instead of through production queue means tech switches are less powerful against them. I am not a protoss player though.
For the time being I agree terran is at a disadvantage in the longer macro games, but I believe it's just a matter of getting used to. So far terran has been way too focused on the early game, maybe we will see some sick map control techniques developing.
In the mean time I'm playing zerg 
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um. high templar are just as capable of surviving to fight another day. ravens don't fulfil the same roles in the terran army- sci vessels were assassins, ravens are more like defilers in effect- buffing/debuffing/supporting an army.
I think half the problem is toss- even super high level toss- are being idiots with their HT's, getting like one storm off with each and then losing them needlessly. It continually makes me weep to watch GSL and MLG matches were super high level toss lose three or four temps with every engagement. If they even saved half of them they'd end up with ten or twelve temps- at which point your pretty much autowin in the current metagame.
There's no reason why the old standbys of a speed shuttle picking up depleted templar and ferrying them to saftey once they've expended their energy, or just storming then immediately rallying back to your base can't work.
Terran has perhaps more of an issue, against zerg at least, since ghosts are the real 'sci vessel' equivalent with snipe. again, very mobile units that can be medivaced out or stealthed to live to fight another day. A critical mass of ghosts is almost impossible to break, they're tough, versatile and shut down just about every composition zerg has. The problem is terrans never let their count hit more than 5, they just throw down a couple of snipes or an EMP and then lose them.
When BW esque caster micro evolves in SC2, we'll see a lot more of the dynamics you're suggesting
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On October 20 2010 21:53 TheDrill wrote:
TvZ is almost balanced. Terran has a fair chance at beating ultralisks with thor marauder. The problem is that zerg takes map control with speedlings, takes map control with roaches, takes map control with mutalisks and terran can't divide his army and use terran mobility as an advantage because mutalisks will clean up any medics and get an instant surround on creep on any split up armies. Zergs also have vision of the whole map due to floating overlords - can't build vikings to destroy them because mutalisks will break them.
wait how is this balanced ???
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Zerg macro got better in SC2, but so did Terran and Protoss. Your 4 "blizzard scenarios" have little to no support arguement. How can you guys take this thread seriously when the op says "Blizzard is incompetent balance-wise"?... This is another terran qq thread. nothing more.
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On October 20 2010 21:44 Neverever wrote:
So Zerg is allways a favorit in the late game, i didnt know that .....
From now on im just gona go for early roaches, make tons of spinecrawler and just 1 base my way to the late game, or in a other word, victory.
Is your post supposed to be idiotic? It's not about how easy it is to get to the late game. It's about the fact that once you do get into the late game with you know, a proper amount of bases (ie. 3) you will likely win. And the point is that if Blizzard keeps nerfing the early game without regard to the late game there will be trouble.
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lategame zerg is actually much weaker than Toss, unless you don't get out a huge number of Ultras or Mutas, which is very difficult to do.
Terran's strategies always relied on applying heavy pressure to the Zerg early on and therefore in some way negating the Zergs Lategame Macro-power and now that this is much harder to achieve very early on, Terran seems to struggle a lot in the Lategame.
I don't just wanna say "Terran just needs to play differently" etc. but the patch really isn't out for for such a long time and Terran seems to be playing very similar to before the patch, not really abusing Terran's Macro- and Lategame and really not using all of the Units in Terrans arsenal, like the Raven, Ghost etc.
If Terran start turtelling a lot and expand with Tanks, PF's, Turrets, Thor's etc. Instead of moving out and getting raped by Speedling+Baneling+Mutas or early Roach-Pressure or by trying to do some gimmicky Banshee or 1-base/early harrass-based play and instead try to move their early-game harrass a bit into the midgame with Drops, they could do much better IMHO.
I mean: After such a big patch, you can't expect to do exactly the same thing and still be successful with it.
I've personally seen/played lots of games where the Terran almost could keep up with the Zergs expansions in the Lategame, just by abusing PF's and strong Terran defense instead of trying to push out, so I think it's definitely possible to beat Zerg in the Lategame as Terran, just push out with a very strong Mech-army and keep Zerg's Expansion/drone-count under control with Drops.
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This thread is interesting but there is no evidence in what OP said.
I've seen top level players playing ZvT macro games and does not seem like zerg late game is OP.
On October 20 2010 21:50 iG.ClouD wrote:
Zerg has always been the best race to be honest, and now that every single early game harass is taken out of the game they absolutely take no skill at all. I just think Blizzard is incompetent at balancing, and before SC2 WAR3 and WOW were a good example of it.
So much nonsense here. What the hell you just said, did you even read what you write?
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I don't want to detract from the point you're trying to make, but I think that, for T players at least, early bio aggression would help shut down the dominance of late-game Z macro. However, the reason you don't see more of this is the lack of any real T counter to the baneling. In a game full of hard counters, the baneling simply demolishes any sort of bio play from T even without fungal growth, and there isn't any unit that you can incorporate into a bio army to hard-counter the banelings. Tanks just won't get off enough shots to do the job (cost for cost), and no good Z will a-move his banelings into your Thors when he can move-command them into your bio before attacking.
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Its not imba, zerg lategame only becomes unstoppable if you let them play passively and drone to their hearts desire, the solution is to force them to make units by pressuring often.
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I think Zerg lacks counters to P and T end game. Stopping a 200/200 push from P and T is hard and there are few maps where you have time to first lose an army and then rebuild it in time to mobilize.
I think you are as wrong as can be.
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