When to expand as Protoss?

On March 24 2010 01:54 LF9 wrote:
Nah honestly, it really depends on the matchup and your opponent, what he is doing, etc. Expanding it harder to do in SC2 because of the cap on how many workers saturate your main field. In SC1, every worker you build at your main gave you a small advantage in amount of minerals gathered, and you could keep building workers until your expansion was up without wasting money because they still gave you a return. Now in SC2, maximum mining efficiency is reached much sooner at something like 2 workers per mineral patch, so if you keep making workers beyond this in anticipation of an expansion, you get NO return on the investment until the expansion goes up. The result of this change is that all workers you make beyond saturation are a sort of "investment" in your expansion, in that they give you no increase whatsoever in mining efficiency until the expansion is complete. I hope that makes sense.

This means that if you decide to expand, you have two options; (1) you can continue making workers beyond saturation, knowing that they won't earn you a single mineral until your expansion is up, and that every 50 minerals you spend on one of these workers is 50 minerals you can't spend on units, or (2) you can stop at saturation, make only units as you prepare to expand, throw down your expo, and then when it's done, make workers from scratch using both of your CC/Nex/Hatches.

In EITHER scenario, you are at a more severe disadvantage for expanding than you would be in SCBW because of the cap on mining. With option (1), you are at an even bigger disadvantage BEFORE you make the expansion and WHILE it is going up, because you are making extra workers too which means less units to defend yourself, but AFTER the expansion goes up, you will get a return on your investment a lot quicker than you would with option (2). Option (2), on the other hand, makes it a bit easier to defend your expansion while it goes up (remember you are still at a disadvantage because you shelled out 400 minerals) because you aren't spending money on extra workers that are useless for now, but once it goes up, it takes a while for you to feel the effects of the extra cash flow, and somewhere in this period you are probably going to get killed.

My advice is that if you are having trouble as Protoss, be patient. Patient in game and out of game. First, Protoss is having a little trouble early game at the moment, making it harder to defend vs rushes, harder to get the first expansion up, harder to do pretty much anything in the early parts of the game. Once economies kick in, Protoss does get a lot stronger because their higher tech units cost a LOT of money, but are very powerful, like ranged Colossus and Immortals. Be patient and do what you can until patch. But for now, the first thing you need to change about your game is to scout more. Every second of the game you should be trying to guess what your opponent is doing and what he is going to do. These should NOT be blind guesses. If you ever have no idea what units he has, how many he has, etc., then it was time to scout like 60 seconds ago. It's worth the money. Scouting will tell you if he has a lot of units or not, if he is preparing an attack or if he is trying to boom economy and defend, or if he is trying a sneaky tech. If you scout a lot more, it's like a maphack. And if you maphacked, you would ALWAYS know when to expand, wouldn't you? Trust me, even if that probe dies in 5 seconds to 6 speed Zerglings, it more than paid for itself because you now know that he has no expansion because you went by his natural on the way to his main, and you can guess that his army isn't massive because he only attacked you with 6 lings that had speed. Of course it could be a trick, but the assumption is that he researched speed with the purpose of hard anti-scouting in mind, and only built 6 lings because this is all he planned on using them for. From this, you can guess that he is doing some sort of tech; fast Roach, fast Muta, something like that. Not 100%, but it sure is narrowed down a lot; you know he isn't expanding, but you can't see exactly what. Now is not a good time to expand.

So after you start scouting more (keep trying to get probes in, and once you get to Robo, get an obs in there. I like 2; one to keep an eye on his base, and one to tail his army so I can react to what it does and where it goes) you will have a better idea of what he has on the field at any given time. The best time to expand is when you are pretty sure that if he attacked you, you would be able to successfully defend, and equally sure that if you tried to attack him, he would be able to defend as well. Before you expand, do one last preliminary scout run to make sure nothing is coming. An expansion is the single largest investment you can make in the entire game in terms of sheer mineral cost, so if you don't check out the situation before you expand you could be in a heap of trouble. His army will be 400 minerals larger than yours (in theory) and in the early stages of the game, this more than accounts for travel time. After you check to make sure it's safe, put the expansion down and decide what you want to do before it goes up. Some people like to move their army closer to the enemy and fake an attack, but I don't like doing this. This tricks them into thinking you are attacking rather than expanding, but with unintended consequences; he builds lots of units to respond, and if he realizes you are expanding, all the more units to crush you with. I prefer to hold my army back a bit and set ONLY enough up front to anti-scout, and try to keep him in the dark so he has to blindly guess whether you are teching to something, massing earlygame units, or expanding. Nothing costs more money than being in the dark, because then you need to prepare for all of the unknown.

So using scouting to get some information, intuition to extrapolate from that information, and some knowledge of the game so you know what actually is viable, you will be able to tell when he is in a position to attack you and when you are relatively safe. Expanding doesn't always have to be done at a set time, though. It can be done after a successful attack, after a semi-successful harass, or during a standoff. It is always a good idea to consolidate your lead by expanding after getting an advantage in a battle but being unable to finish him off. A lot of this is basics, but it helps to go back to basics sometimes because things are confusing in a new game.

I can't stress it enough, though; as Protoss, BE CAREFUL with expanding. More often than not it will get you killed, because P has some trouble early game vs any number of things; Marine + SCV rush, Marines + Marauders, Speedling runbys, and Speedling into Muta. It's better to try something fairly aggressive to even the playing field out, and once you have the advantage, try to expand to solidify it. Expanding before gaining any kind of advantage is very dangerous as P in the current build, because P low tech units suck and P isn't powerful until it gets tech; you obviously can't defend, expand, econ boom, and tech at the same time, so you need to pick what will give you the most benefit. Expanding and booming will give you more money, but without tech, what are you going to spend it on? Crappy units? It doesn't matter if you have 5 Zealots or 15 Zealots, Roaches are still going to kill them, Mutas are still going to ignora them and rape your workers, and zerglings are still going to run around and by them unless they sit on a ramp forever. Basically you want to defend with early games units for dear life while you tech to something tough, then get your army together once your tech hits and attack, do some damage but don't get greedy, pull back with your advantage and your army intact, and THEN expand. Don't just sit there rallying units to your ramp for a few minutes and then decide to expand because you accidentally saved up 400 minerals by not spending your shit properly. I see so many people do this!

On March 24 2010 01:54 LF9 wrote:
Nah honestly, it really depends on the matchup and your opponent, what he is doing, etc. Expanding it harder to do in SC2 because of the cap on how many workers saturate your main field. In SC1, every worker you build at your main gave you a small advantage in amount of minerals gathered, and you could keep building workers until your expansion was up without wasting money because they still gave you a return. Now in SC2, maximum mining efficiency is reached much sooner at something like 2 workers per mineral patch, so if you keep making workers beyond this in anticipation of an expansion, you get NO return on the investment until the expansion goes up. The result of this change is that all workers you make beyond saturation are a sort of "investment" in your expansion, in that they give you no increase whatsoever in mining efficiency until the expansion is complete. I hope that makes sense.

This means that if you decide to expand, you have two options; (1) you can continue making workers beyond saturation, knowing that they won't earn you a single mineral until your expansion is up, and that every 50 minerals you spend on one of these workers is 50 minerals you can't spend on units, or (2) you can stop at saturation, make only units as you prepare to expand, throw down your expo, and then when it's done, make workers from scratch using both of your CC/Nex/Hatches.

In EITHER scenario, you are at a more severe disadvantage for expanding than you would be in SCBW because of the cap on mining. With option (1), you are at an even bigger disadvantage BEFORE you make the expansion and WHILE it is going up, because you are making extra workers too which means less units to defend yourself, but AFTER the expansion goes up, you will get a return on your investment a lot quicker than you would with option (2). Option (2), on the other hand, makes it a bit easier to defend your expansion while it goes up (remember you are still at a disadvantage because you shelled out 400 minerals) because you aren't spending money on extra workers that are useless for now, but once it goes up, it takes a while for you to feel the effects of the extra cash flow, and somewhere in this period you are probably going to get killed.

My advice is that if you are having trouble as Protoss, be patient. Patient in game and out of game. First, Protoss is having a little trouble early game at the moment, making it harder to defend vs rushes, harder to get the first expansion up, harder to do pretty much anything in the early parts of the game. Once economies kick in, Protoss does get a lot stronger because their higher tech units cost a LOT of money, but are very powerful, like ranged Colossus and Immortals. Be patient and do what you can until patch. But for now, the first thing you need to change about your game is to scout more. Every second of the game you should be trying to guess what your opponent is doing and what he is going to do. These should NOT be blind guesses. If you ever have no idea what units he has, how many he has, etc., then it was time to scout like 60 seconds ago. It's worth the money. Scouting will tell you if he has a lot of units or not, if he is preparing an attack or if he is trying to boom economy and defend, or if he is trying a sneaky tech. If you scout a lot more, it's like a maphack. And if you maphacked, you would ALWAYS know when to expand, wouldn't you? Trust me, even if that probe dies in 5 seconds to 6 speed Zerglings, it more than paid for itself because you now know that he has no expansion because you went by his natural on the way to his main, and you can guess that his army isn't massive because he only attacked you with 6 lings that had speed. Of course it could be a trick, but the assumption is that he researched speed with the purpose of hard anti-scouting in mind, and only built 6 lings because this is all he planned on using them for. From this, you can guess that he is doing some sort of tech; fast Roach, fast Muta, something like that. Not 100%, but it sure is narrowed down a lot; you know he isn't expanding, but you can't see exactly what. Now is not a good time to expand.

So after you start scouting more (keep trying to get probes in, and once you get to Robo, get an obs in there. I like 2; one to keep an eye on his base, and one to tail his army so I can react to what it does and where it goes) you will have a better idea of what he has on the field at any given time. The best time to expand is when you are pretty sure that if he attacked you, you would be able to successfully defend, and equally sure that if you tried to attack him, he would be able to defend as well. Before you expand, do one last preliminary scout run to make sure nothing is coming. An expansion is the single largest investment you can make in the entire game in terms of sheer mineral cost, so if you don't check out the situation before you expand you could be in a heap of trouble. His army will be 400 minerals larger than yours (in theory) and in the early stages of the game, this more than accounts for travel time. After you check to make sure it's safe, put the expansion down and decide what you want to do before it goes up. Some people like to move their army closer to the enemy and fake an attack, but I don't like doing this. This tricks them into thinking you are attacking rather than expanding, but with unintended consequences; he builds lots of units to respond, and if he realizes you are expanding, all the more units to crush you with. I prefer to hold my army back a bit and set ONLY enough up front to anti-scout, and try to keep him in the dark so he has to blindly guess whether you are teching to something, massing earlygame units, or expanding. Nothing costs more money than being in the dark, because then you need to prepare for all of the unknown.

So using scouting to get some information, intuition to extrapolate from that information, and some knowledge of the game so you know what actually is viable, you will be able to tell when he is in a position to attack you and when you are relatively safe. Expanding doesn't always have to be done at a set time, though. It can be done after a successful attack, after a semi-successful harass, or during a standoff. It is always a good idea to consolidate your lead by expanding after getting an advantage in a battle but being unable to finish him off. A lot of this is basics, but it helps to go back to basics sometimes because things are confusing in a new game.

I can't stress it enough, though; as Protoss, BE CAREFUL with expanding. More often than not it will get you killed, because P has some trouble early game vs any number of things; Marine + SCV rush, Marines + Marauders, Speedling runbys, and Speedling into Muta. It's better to try something fairly aggressive to even the playing field out, and once you have the advantage, try to expand to solidify it. Expanding before gaining any kind of advantage is very dangerous as P in the current build, because P low tech units suck and P isn't powerful until it gets tech; you obviously can't defend, expand, econ boom, and tech at the same time, so you need to pick what will give you the most benefit. Expanding and booming will give you more money, but without tech, what are you going to spend it on? Crappy units? It doesn't matter if you have 5 Zealots or 15 Zealots, Roaches are still going to kill them, Mutas are still going to ignora them and rape your workers, and zerglings are still going to run around and by them unless they sit on a ramp forever. Basically you want to defend with early games units for dear life while you tech to something tough, then get your army together once your tech hits and attack, do some damage but don't get greedy, pull back with your advantage and your army intact, and THEN expand. Don't just sit there rallying units to your ramp for a few minutes and then decide to expand because you accidentally saved up 400 minerals by not spending your shit properly. I see so many people do this!

On March 24 2010 12:26 s2pid_loser wrote:


can you summarize this or bullet point the main ideas? i dont wanna read all of that
id rather just type gg

On March 24 2010 15:56 cartoon]x wrote:
vs. zerg I've seen some people opening with 2 gates zealots and then creating sort of a wall in front of their natural then transitioning into forge cannons. cannons have longer range then roaches so if you place the cannon right the roaches can't hit them. vs. terran i thik it's more of a midgame / advantage thing. vs. protoss i dont think an expand is typical unless it's a pretty big map.

On March 24 2010 01:54 LF9 wrote:
Now in SC2, maximum mining efficiency is reached much sooner at something like 2 workers per mineral patch, so if you keep making workers beyond this in anticipation of an expansion, you get NO return on the investment until the expansion goes up. The result of this change is that all workers you make beyond saturation are a sort of "investment" in your expansion, in that they give you no increase whatsoever in mining efficiency until the expansion is complete. I hope that makes sense.