The PiG Daily - Thinking critically about SC - Page 6

Spotters! Unit outside their base
Try to react quickly to see their army - if we miss it, send another unit out
We want to assess their force!

Is it Scary?

If not - just continue build as normal.


Once we see a scary attack coming there’s a few things we need to focus on, and they’re not what you might expect!

1 : Supply! Ovies/pylons/depots
You’re going to be busy microing a fight soon! You won’t have time to remember to build depots, nows a good time to build extra to make sure we don’t get blocked
Many players freak out and just try to spam units - and as the enemy hits, they’re already supply blocked!
You’ll often lose some supply buildings in an attack!

2: Build more units
Simple enough
Start those units building immediately! Prioritise production of units over tech, upgrades or more workers.

3. Defensive positioning
Ensure you hold the best position possible
Usually the top of a ramp
Units pre-spread in a concave for bonus points!
Units ready for SPECIAL maneuvers
Eg. In TvP if we see stalkers coming across the map we have to be safe from a blink in the main so we keep our army between our bases so it can react both directions

Examples:

Every army is different and wants to use positioning differently

Zerg surround - BUILD LOTS OF OVIES WHEN SEE MOVEOUT → game vs seeker





Replay of PVZ HOLD

Now we’ll look at a very different use of positioning - and “sim-city” as protoss to defend a roach-ravager-ling all-in.

PvZ defending a ravager ling with simcity. - BUILD LOTS OF PYLONS WHEN you SEE the attack
Focus just on building units constantly
More gateways + more pylons (pylons are food AND defence AND a prime target in attack so they will die even more often)

4. Macro cycle
3 is part of this - but make sure once you prioritise those units you spend any other money you have to continue workers, tech, upgrades or whatever else you need in your build.
You’ll be busy microing a battle soon so will neglect your macro for a while, best to soften the missed macro now!

SUPER EARLY or sneaky RUSHES - Worker pulls

Sometimes a rush is so sneaky, or hits so early that you don’t realise it’s coming early enough to be ready. Often pulling workers can be the difference between winning or losing!
Many famous pro matches have been won with worker pulls!

Pro tips!
Drone-drill
Hold-position micro



On the note of pulling workers - let’s take a look at one of the most famous and ridiculous moments where an AGGRESSIVE worker pull mattered.

This brings us to the point of RANGED units and ranged advantage. If you have a ranged advantage, or you both have a primarily ranged army - then suddenly hiding behind your buildings can actually do more harm than good! In this case Stardust is caught in a choke next to his nexus where the blocking terrain and buildings actually obstructs his ability to establish a concave or battle-line - and so his units can’t all reach the enemy
HOLD KEY POSITIONS instead of simcity
Concave matters more than anything!



ELFI vs STARDUST:

Use them like any other melee unit - try to engage at the same time as everything else and get a good surround/surface area for them to fight!

Cannon Rush

I see people asking about this from all races so let’s go over the key points:

They need to build a pylon - and only THEN can they get cannons.
In certain spots, the cannons are unbeatable
SO DON’T let them get up!!
Pull a decent handful of workers immediately and attack the pylon
Bonus pts for blocking the best cannon positions
VISUALISE the dirtiest spot a cannon could go and hold position or patrol a worker on that spot

Blink all-ins: #31 - Aggressive Blink-prism PvZ - Keeping the zerg in check!


Similar opening to what Neeb showed at austin/Tours - harstem used it vs Elazer in our first What If? Wednesday
Early glaive adept pressure to do damage and force lots of units as well as scout what zergs up to
Blink follow-up to be flexible vs mutas, strong vs roaches, banes and hydras (pre-lurker)
Style aims to push and limit/hurt zerg before lurkers/mutas
This is an important part of pvz scouting/keeping zerg honest - built in pushes to punish, force safety and scout at the same time

You often won’t kill zerg before, but you can put the hurt on and then head down the regular counter-paths.

Vs mutas
Kill em
If you can’t
Cannons
Split up stalkers
Double stargate + fleet beacon IF they keep building them

Vs Lurker
Disruptors!
Use your army, esp FF to keep him back.
Similar to slowing down a seige tank push you just kind of stay in his face


What about vs mass lingbane styles?
Once you realise they aren’t going for any roach/hydra tech you can just drop lots of gates and do an archon-adept push to usually kill these players. Or you can just push with blink and use FF to nullify the lingbane

Actually can be very strong vs this using FF and large adept warpins once the armies are smaller



neeb/harstem’s 2-immortal push:

3-immortal push follow-up with 7+ gates
Puck replays

Personally I love doing a 4-immortal push

HSC Drogo vs Snute
https://www.twitch.tv/taketv/v/74058031 - 7 hrs 13 minutes

^7 hours 26 minutes - holding counterattack with his delayed double robo style - just sentries and stalkers

Beginner Basics - Learning to Scout

Playing vs Hard AI (aggressive)

Stage 0 - Recognising a rush:

it’s usually good as all 3 races to send an early worker scout to see where your opponent spawned and spot any super early rushes. You don’t need to react unless you see an early rush, otherwise you just come home and continue your build. This will help you getting used to looking at your opponent's base and recognising the most basic scouting tells. Experienced players might say this isn’t necessary - but that’s because at their level they can still hold the rushes without seeing it until the last second.

Very early pool
No buildings in their base (Proxy!)
No expansion
Pretty simple!

Three Stages of learning to scout

Stage 1 - Map control/vision and basic compositional choices

You always should aim to have vision:
Outside your base
Oh no he’s moving in to attack!
Outside their base
Oh no he’s moving out with a possible attack!
On the edges of the map coming towards your base
Here comes a drop!’
At each of their potential new bases
Oh he’s taking another base
Also assessing the army to compare - Is this a scary army right now? If not continue as normal and try to re-establish map control.
If it IS SCARY then react hard to try and defend the incoming attack
Keeping track of their number of bases - if they aren’t expanding as fast as most players, you should expect a higher chance of aggression. You don’t need to panic or freak out, but just try to keep track of how many bases your opponent is at - and only ever go about half to 1 full base of workers ahead before focusing on pure army.

Getting used to watching your minimap is also key to using this info
When you first start out you just go through the motions of having that vision, even though you don’t always notice it spotting an attack coming
You get better over time!

SCOUT THE COMPOSITION
You can also throw in a unit sacrifice at the front to spy what their unit composition is. You’ll also see this whenever they move on the map. Other options are scans, drops, overseers, observers or prisms to scout their army.
At this stage you don’t care about the base so much, it’s all about recognising their army so you can adjust your composition if needed.
You might have a solid composition and gameplan that progresses well and you never need to respond to their composition.
Don’t get hung up on REACTING to everything you see compositionally.
^Common rookie mistake is trying to REACT to everything because they’ve heard that SC is all about so many minute reactions and adaptations.
But it’s not usually compositional. It’s more about timing. We’ll talk more about timing in future - but it’s more about how much someone’s committing to get certain units at certain points, assessed in the context of their economy/tech committment
At this stage just focus on having the right sort of units to deal with their stuff


Stage 2 - Scouting their base and understanding responses

General categorisations
Signs of greed, signs of aggression
COMPLETELY INSANE BUILDS that are unfamiliar - suddenly become decipherable when we use this method

Terran
Greed
CCs/hatch/nexus
Ebays/armouries/forges
Lots of addons
Lots of tech paths
Robo + Sg + Twilight
Lurker den + infestation + spire

Aggression
Lack of the above
Lots of production with no addons pumping units
Fighting stuff popping out of eggs
Low drone saturation





POLT VS HYDRA SEJONG

How to assess the situation:

However if we see a really clear set of tells:

No addons on barracks or starport → Just producing constantly Aggression
No 3rd base = Aggression
No ebays = Aggression

Ok shit this is really clear → he’s all-inning, build lots of stuff to defend, we just need to survive! Only really 1 option vs all-ins … build stuff and survive!


No 3rd base = sign of aggression
Ebays = sign of greed
Lots of addons = signs of greed

What if ALL signs of greed?
Invest everything into units and try to kill him soon!
Punish his short-term lack of units
OR invest even more into economy, and be EVEN greedier than he is to get ahead in the longer game!
Taking advantage of his inability to punish you.


2xgreed, 1x aggression.

^Overall → This guy is playing more for the later stages than trying to kill me right now. Continue as normal. No strict reaction.

^Don’t need such fine degrees of reactions, your STANDARD PLAY should be pretty well set up for all the middle of the road stuff!

Stage 3 - Understanding exactly how your opponents races work, being familiar with the build-orders and knowing all of the timings

VR EXAMPLE - a 1-base massing of VR is very diff to 3-base massing VR
Vs one it’s just get up the response to hold on, he’s got no economy, this is a rush!
Just 1.5 base drones and things that shoot up!
But vs a 3-base VR there’s WAY more of them, and more flexibility to transition into other units. Suddenly they could add storm very easily to counter your marines or hydras, you might need to invest in higher tech units like liberators, infestors, vipers or static defence.


PvT - 1-base widow mine drop/marine can hit at 4:00
ZvT - 4:40 hellbat timing
ZvP 4:40 7 adept glaive timing
TvZ 4:30 nydus timing
TvP 5:20 glaive adept prism timing