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A lot of people keep saying, exploit immobility, Baneling, worms, drops, bust etc. etc.. All those points have been nullified. In my opinion we have to find practice partners and create the atmosphere and try something it works. I am going to theory craft right now I think this might be viable but I'm not sure. Okay so this is the setting you are on 4 bases he is on one or two walled off. You've reached 200 supply, at this point the Zerg should get every tech building and get a unit composition that has a hard counter. Make a few more hatches and a few more queens, power all your hatches to their max number of larva which is 20 I believe, around 8 hatcheries 8 x 20 = 160 larva, Now you attack with your unit composition be it mass Roach, Muta Ling bling, mass ling bling etc. etc. with all your extra tech structures you can quickly remake your army but remake it with a completely different composition and they should be moving out since you wasted your army, if not your primary army should have done some damage and your second also. Now just keep spawning larva at all times with your queens and remaking your army. With your attacks you could attack all their vikings with hydras, all their turrets with a drop busted their wall, now you just adapt to the damage you've done. With 3 bases fully saturated you have about 120 drones, so you might have to send them to their death and actually get a 200/200 army.
As for the people saying, the Zerg has to out macro their opponent or that's their game style. It might be but it shouldn't be the only thing that is viable, and the enemy shouldn't be able to make us play a certain style because it's the only one that works. In reality I'm in between feelings, because it's like any game if you give a game 5 years to evolve with no changes in balance it will become a different game, most likely 10 times harder for the person who hasn't played for 5 years. So I don't want to say it's balanced bad so much as I want to say it's ahead of it's time or Zerg is lagging behind.
Now I've been thinking about skill that may make the zerg more swarmy, some may be OP some might be UP but it's just off the top of my head.
A Hive tech research that makes Drones cost 0 food,
A Hive tech research that gives the Infestor or Overseer able to infest large amounts of units under 15-20% hp into inferior versions that:
a) On death turn into broodlings
b) get moved to your main cluster to heal, and you are able to extract primitive more dumbed downed units of that type at your hive. In theory you're larva will be able to -morph into changelings that can morph into the primitive version of the captured units, Overseers can still drop changelings that can scout or become the primitive units.
c) infest other units to become slower, or infested like them or a variety of other things.
d) move 20-50 infested units into a building such as a barracks, essentially making it a ticking time bomb once it hit's the right amount of infested units.
A Hive tech research that make Hydras and roaches become 1 food and a lot weaker but, on death they become 1-3 broodlings, or on death their blood forms a small pool of regeneration that slowly becomes creep, also heals your units standing over it, or a form of moon well.
A Hive tech that enables all units to move while burrowed.
-Laggy
p.s sorry about the long post , trying to pass time while the 2 hour game daily finishes buffering
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On August 04 2010 07:46 Pokedude1013 wrote:
Come again? They cost 100/100
My bad.
On August 04 2010 07:46 Pokedude1013 wrote:300/300 to transform all my supply depots into dropships, I don't really mind
I think you are really used to being walled of with a few tanks defending. Zerg doesn't have that sense of security.
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Just a comment on the Day9 daily 157.
The zerg player should have busted earlier, he really didn't gain anything by waiting. Also, there is no good reason to use corruptors against vikings rather than mutas that I can see. The 20-25 corruptors he had could have been mutas and would have destroyed the vikings but then been able to kill siege tanks as well.
In that game the zerg player just needed to be more aggressive I think, I did notice a few supply depots off on the edges of the base (for LOS) that could have been picked off. Also, having a bunch of mutas means you can split them in half and, usually, a Terran will move most of his marines as a bunch so he will only be in 1 place (and you retreat from that place while doing damage in another). Turrets become less of an issue if you are running bunches of 15+ mutas (just kill them off in a hit or two). If you force thors that usually means less expanding, thors have big problems with surrounds and the Terran player can't spread out the tanks like he did in that game while using thors for anti air (because unlike vikings the thors can't respond to protect the other end of a tank like like the vikings do).
Note that mutas limiting line of sight (by killing off anything isolated and forcing the Terran to stack everything on his Thors/vikings) should theoretically make nydus more viable, but I have yet to make that work, so it's really just theory for now.
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On August 04 2010 10:19 crucial99 wrote:
The problem is that Zerg's advantage just doesn't exist. This idea of "quick reinforcement" is just null except for in 40 minute games.
In the rest of the games, that take 10-20 minutes, my units cost money just like yours. Being able to make more of them at once isn't an advantage when you're bottlenecked by resources, not larva.
Actually I have found that in base hatch(es) and spamming zerglings does allow this reinforcement to work to our advantage. The one thing I found over beta was that speedlings will kill almost anything cost for cost, especially with a couple banelings to break walls. I also found that constant pressure drives Terran and Toss players nuts because they aren't used to being reactive.
This doesn't solve the problem but might be something to explore a little more (I have seen very little to do with in base hatcheries or mass zerglings in pro games). Notably given the 2 pop cost of roaches, those 20 early roaches could be 80 zerglings ready to run in which leaves way more gas for tech and gas heavy units (mutas, ultras, broodlords, infestors).
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On August 04 2010 12:42 Sixes wrote:
Actually I have found that in base hatch(es) and spamming zerglings does allow this reinforcement to work to our advantage. The one thing I found over beta was that speedlings will kill almost anything cost for cost, especially with a couple banelings to break walls. I also found that constant pressure drives Terran and Toss players nuts because they aren't used to being reactive.
This doesn't solve the problem but might be something to explore a little more (I have seen very little to do with in base hatcheries or mass zerglings in pro games). Notably given the 2 pop cost of roaches, those 20 early roaches could be 80 zerglings ready to run in which leaves way more gas for tech and gas heavy units (mutas, ultras, broodlords, infestors).
This is something I thought of last night after a loosing streak of like 10 games.
But why do we want/need to make a in base hatch when going mass zerglings?
For your zerglings to be the most effective they need a surround and if opponent pushes to your choke then its less then ideal circumstance to attack his army. Even with a few spines there both P and T can drop them quickly and you can't engage him in the choke cause a surround there is impossible. If they then get into your base its very easy to hug a wall and go for the mineral line again surround is not gonna happen.
His army having a perfect concave killing off your 1-2 spines at nat is on the other hand exactly what you want when attacking with zerglings, he is perfectly spread out at that point.
So getting that hatch at your natural simply seems to be a better solution.
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On August 04 2010 19:12 Izzachar wrote:Show nested quote +On August 04 2010 12:42 Sixes wrote:
Actually I have found that in base hatch(es) and spamming zerglings does allow this reinforcement to work to our advantage. The one thing I found over beta was that speedlings will kill almost anything cost for cost, especially with a couple banelings to break walls. I also found that constant pressure drives Terran and Toss players nuts because they aren't used to being reactive.
This doesn't solve the problem but might be something to explore a little more (I have seen very little to do with in base hatcheries or mass zerglings in pro games). Notably given the 2 pop cost of roaches, those 20 early roaches could be 80 zerglings ready to run in which leaves way more gas for tech and gas heavy units (mutas, ultras, broodlords, infestors). This is something I thought of last night after a loosing streak of like 10 games. But why do we want/need to make a in base hatch when going mass zerglings? For your zerglings to be the most effective they need a surround and if opponent pushes to your choke then its less then ideal circumstance to attack his army. Even with a few spines there both P and T can drop them quickly and you can't engage him in the choke cause a surround there is impossible. If they then get into your base its very easy to hug a wall and go for the mineral line again surround is not gonna happen. His army having a perfect concave killing off your 1-2 spines at nat is on the other hand exactly what you want when attacking with zerglings, he is perfectly spread out at that point. So getting that hatch at your natural simply seems to be a better solution.
Actually I meant in base hatch(es) as well as expands.
It could be my macro (I do occasionally miss a spawn larva timing) but I find when going for mass ling, 2-3 hatches for 2-3 expands just isn't enough. So I throw down a hatch or two extra. If you already run an extra couple queens (generally a good idea) you can start spamming larvae on the new hatch as well.
The main reason why I do this though is not because of my macro but because if I see thors/tank coming, I can choose to make my next 1000 minerals either 10 mutas or 40 lings (and keep the gas for later) to fix my composition on the fly.
Being able to build and rebuild mass ling on short notice just requires more larvae per resources than any other unit so I add one or two in base hatches on top of my normal expanding pattern. The timing of the in base hatch is usually just when I make mass muta and can't seem to get rid of minerals fast enough. I often end up dropping a third and an in base hatch in the main (while building up a ton of mutas).
Mass mutas take care of vikings very nicely, speedlings do take care of thors for cost (the thing is people rarely have the 120 zerglings for 6 thors) and banelings are the lovely rolly pollies of death against marines. In sufficient numbers zerglings also do decently against almost anything Terran has on the ground. Look at some pro replays (the most shocking example being the day9 daily 157) and just think "how many lings banelings and mutas could that be?". In that daily the player has 20 ish corruptors (that's 20 mutas and 40 zerglings), 6 ultras (12 more mutas and 24 more zerglings) 30 roaches (that's 30 banelings and 30 zerglings) 4 infestors (another 6 mutas) and some lings.
Now imagine for a second a spread out Terran (because he has 4 bases) and you sitting on 38 mutas. The guy's infrastructure and econ would just get ended. He needs 4 thors or 30 marines to stop your mutas, and you move massively faster than he does. The clever part is that pushing the zerg base, while generally a good idea, means running into the 94 lings and 30 banelings (with mutas in support quite quickly).
My point being that defending the counter can be done in the middle of the map rather than the home choke and lings are amazingly cost effective against anything Terran that isn't entrenched.
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Thats a fair point but investing in another hatchery and queen is 500minerals. Having 2 extra is 1k minerals you cant spend on army.
I do love speedlings and when you upgrade melee attack they melt things like crazy.
I'm loosing all games lately anyway so might as well experiment with this
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On August 04 2010 21:17 Izzachar wrote:
Thats a fair point but investing in another hatchery and queen is 500minerals. Having 2 extra is 1k minerals you cant spend on army.
I do love speedlings and when you upgrade melee attack they melt things like crazy.
I'm loosing all games lately anyway so might as well experiment with this
Actually just 300, I usually have an extra queen or two around for anti air and creep, by this point they can go back to spawning.
Test it at some point if you like, very few things survive a giant swarm of lings (and the few things that do, like well positioned staggered siege tanks and mass hellions get destroyed by mutas). The other nice thing about mass muta is that you can break wall ins with them, when you hit 20-30 mutas they will eat through any front door in seconds letting the lings swarm in (and while you are there get any siege tanks present). The Terran player usually reacts to muta by putting up turrets and mass marines and the like so probably does not have 2-3 bunkers on the front door.
edit:edited previous post in a big way.
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Ah I see what you mean now.
Lets see if I can manage through the early game to actually test this out in full =)
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As an option to break the 200/200 issues, has anyone ever tried using spine crawlers as supplementary late game army... zero food. 200 hp... sounds like a cheap decent tank to me
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this is very true. I play X all the time in SC2, and I never EVER attack a fully defended terran base. I just scout macro and expand the creep. I always wait for a terran to unseige, or a protoss to take his collosi off of the high ground, before doing any aggressive move. However, with superior flanks, nice positioning, and some nice neural parasites, I can take down an enemies force in seconds with extremely minimal losses. While zerg can't push late game, they can counter any push.
...Until planetary fortresses can be lifted off.(never? I certainly hope so...)
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On August 04 2010 21:52 Trainrunnef wrote:
As an option to break the 200/200 issues, has anyone ever tried using spine crawlers as supplementary late game army... zero food. 200 hp... sounds like a cheap decent tank to me
It worked good untill they nerfed the time they need to bury.
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On August 04 2010 22:06 Batch wrote:Show nested quote +On August 04 2010 21:52 Trainrunnef wrote:
As an option to break the 200/200 issues, has anyone ever tried using spine crawlers as supplementary late game army... zero food. 200 hp... sounds like a cheap decent tank to me
It worked good untill they nerfed the time they need to bury.
Yeah ^^this. The spine crawlers will die before they can get buried, or they'll get buried and won't be in range of anything. Plus you're sacrificing economy to build spine crawlers from drones, so it's more than just 100 minerals.
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well if you can do a few 5-6 spine crawlers they really take the attention away from the rest of your army yeah they will probably die quickly but they will also give you maybe 5 to 10 secs of free damage. I haven't tested it at all, went from toss to random and havent gotten zerg yet.
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On August 04 2010 22:14 Trainrunnef wrote:
well if you can do a few 5-6 spine crawlers they really take the attention away from the rest of your army yeah they will probably die quickly but they will also give you maybe 5 to 10 secs of free damage. I haven't tested it at all, went from toss to random and havent gotten zerg yet.
Instead of those 5-6 spine crawlers you could have 30-36 zerglings to make some damage. If at 200 then I still believe that suiciding 30 zerglings into an enemy expansion and then quickly rebuild them does more damage than the free damage recieved when the 5-6 spine crawlers are taking some damage. If resourced where unlimited then it might be a good idea to go offensive with mass spine crawlers.
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On August 04 2010 22:14 Trainrunnef wrote:
well if you can do a few 5-6 spine crawlers they really take the attention away from the rest of your army yeah they will probably die quickly but they will also give you maybe 5 to 10 secs of free damage. I haven't tested it at all, went from toss to random and havent gotten zerg yet.
Instead of those 5-6 spine crawlers you could have 30-36 zerglings to make some damage. If at 200 then I still believe that suiciding 30 zerglings into an enemy expansion and then quickly rebuild them does more damage than the free damage recieved when the 5-6 spine crawlers are taking some damage. If resourced where unlimited then it might be a good idea to go offensive with mass spine crawlers.
your forgetting that this is happening at 200 food so 30 more zerglings are impossible
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Spine Crawlers work only on creep and take 12 seconds to burrow. Now before coming up with weird strats, take a moment and imagine how much damage those 6+ Collosi would be able to do in 12 seconds...
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Spine Crawlers work only on creep and take 12 seconds to burrow. Now before coming up with weird strats, take a moment and imagine how much damage those 6+ Collosi would be able to do in 12 seconds...
again its not about the crawlers doing damage its about them forcing the enemy to pay attention to something other than your broodlords and hydras while they take down your spine crawlers you can at the very least take down one of those collosi at no damage to your real army. cause lets face it. that spine crawler you built 3 mins into the game to fend off a rush really isn't doing anything useful 20 mins later... might as well make it work.
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If Terran turtles and I'm Protoss my only option is to harass or expand as well(or eventually go carriers). In fact I think it is harder to bust a 200/200 turtle with Protoss than with Zerg. At least Zerg has ultralisks and can do some tricky things with infestors. Colossus can't do much if vikings are around and HT melt to tank fire before they can do much in a choke battle.
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I find it a bit odd that in the "Massable, Swarm army" only 1 unit costs exactly 1 supply. The Drone.
Lings/blings = 0.5 supply
Everything else 2+ supply.
I too am struggling as zerg.
I honestly don't know how IdrA does it to be honest. Props to him doing so well so consistently.
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EPT
