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I've had some intermittent success using mutalisks against thors in smaller numbers, but the encounter is usually forced and I only really engage as an act of desperation. It just doesn't sit right with me that one mistake in micro (or just general lack of micro) could cost me 1000/1000+ resources worth of units in a split second. I'm guilty of not micro-ing battles as much as I should since I'm not good enough to micro and macro super well at the same time. Most of the time I just worry about army positioning and try to set up flanks... but after I a-move my groups, I'm mostly back to macro.
I just hate the feeling of a-moving my various groups in what looks to be a pretty-looking flank only to come back after 3-4 seconds of macroing to find all of my units have dissolved. I'm looking for an army that doesn't really require babying in terms of combat potential. I want to be able to set up for a nice surround/flank and a-move my way to victory while I make sure my macro doesn't fall behind.
I might be a bit too close-minded about my options but I want to make sure there really is no way to play this way before I take on the daunting task of re-learning macro habits in the midst of battle.
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yes i know exactly what you mean. almost impossible to go head on to terran mech. Late game, you really have to babysit your mutas. I do actually enjoy that to an extent. even just flying expansion to expansion, keeping the map control, and just in general threatening them is really enough. if you can kill the off the random techlab, depot or 5 workers here or there then fly away unscathed, its totally worth it. when your a-moving your troops in the flank, just have some spare mutas hanging out ready to blow up some mineral lines at the same time.
If the T has to spread out his forces to cover everything, you should win the front line;
Iif hes all at the front battle, he'll loose his base;
If he invested a million minerals into turrets, his sunken cost... find an unguarded factory or sneak behind and snipe some tanks in the battle. you should really embrace the "babystting mutas" aspect, you can really stress out the slow moving terran to no end.
Meanwhile be teching up to some heavily upgraded ultras/lings/blings. I dislike Broodlords vs T to be honest. So much tech and econ investment when all the t has to do is throw up a reactored starport and a few vikings make quick work of em. Plus must of your gas is going to mutas anyways, so you'd have to cut them.
I only wish the mutas would just calm down a little bit, or i just need to use hold position more. I watch so many of my replays and i realize that i loose one random unit almost every couple minutes..."oh look, shiny....."
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On August 10 2010 04:38 Mantikor wrote:
yes i know exactly what you mean. almost impossible to go head on to terran mech. Late game, you really have to babysit your mutas. I do actually enjoy that to an extent. even just flying expansion to expansion, keeping the map control, and just in general threatening them is really enough. if you can kill the off the random techlab, depot or 5 workers here or there then fly away unscathed, its totally worth it. when your a-moving your troops in the flank, just have some spare mutas hanging out ready to blow up some mineral lines at the same time.
If the T has to spread out his forces to cover everything, you should win the front line;
Iif hes all at the front battle, he'll loose his base;
If he invested a million minerals into turrets, his sunken cost... find an unguarded factory or sneak behind and snipe some tanks in the battle. you should really embrace the "babystting mutas" aspect, you can really stress out the slow moving terran to no end.
Meanwhile be teching up to some heavily upgraded ultras/lings/blings. I dislike Broodlords vs T to be honest. So much tech and econ investment when all the t has to do is throw up a reactored starport and a few vikings make quick work of em. Plus must of your gas is going to mutas anyways, so you'd have to cut them.
I only wish the mutas would just calm down a little bit, or i just need to use hold position more. I watch so many of my replays and i realize that i loose one random unit almost every couple minutes..."oh look, shiny....."
While using mutas effectively does require a lot of attention and micro, that's not what I'm referring to when I complain about mutas needing babysitting. While I am actively running around engaging in muta harrass, I can periodically click my mutas away and go back to my base for 2-3 seconds to macro and then focus my attention to mutas again. I don't mind doing this and this isn't what really kills me because I can avoid direct engagement with the terran's thors. What really bothers me is that when terran brings all of his forces for a big push I have to meet him in order to defend my expansions. It would be foolish to meet the entirety of his forces with only half of my army so I pull my mutas back to engage in this battle. It's during this battle where I'm forced to engage his thors that I'm weary of having a lot of mutalisks. People say that mutas can fight thors, but only with perfect spread. I think the amount of work needed to make 10+ mutalisks effective against 2+ thors is ridiculous. I'm trying to find a more cost and attention effective unit composition that won't get torn apart by thors if I happen to fail at perfectly splitting my mutas.
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This is what i do in the midgame
Vs Bio: Speedlings, blings and infestors with a dash of roaches or mutas depending on what i got earlier
Vs Mech: Roaches, speedlings, and infestors, and maybe mutas if they are thor lite.
Vs BioMech: Speedlings, blings, roaches, infestors, and maybe hydras for extra dps
Of course the army mixture is just half the fight, as how you engage the army is the key to winning or losing. Also, tier 1 and 2 units will not outright win you the game against a competent terran, as they can sit back and play defense even after you win a confrontation. Broodlords are the only unit that will allow you to break into a terran base, and it also depends on their viking count vs your corrupter count. Ultras are good at fighting the T's army, but not really for breaking in their base as they are really clumsy in tight spaces.
I guess what I am really trying to say is that ZvT seems similar to BW in that you use your tier 1 and 2 units to hold off pushes till you can get and support your tier 3 units which will allow you to win the game. However,sometimes it may not be possible to even stop their midgame push if they time it right, which is where a lack of a darkswarm-esque spell really hurts, and the only real option is to try and drop and nydus them and pray you do enough damage or distract them long enough to get your tier 3 units.
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On August 10 2010 06:51 ariK wrote:
I guess what I am really trying to say is that ZvT seems similar to BW in that you use your tier 1 and 2 units to hold off pushes till you can get and support your tier 3 units which will allow you to win the game.
Not really. BW Z could still push a lot of agression - stacked mutas was very very deadly because of their resistance to marines and other D. Z could also make really strong use of Lurkers to put pressure on T and force him to move his troops. Z also had a lot better luck attacking siege tanks with zerglings due to the bad AI and slow refire rate, as well as the lack of Hellions.
So I guess what I'm saying is that T had a lot to fear leading up to the endgame - in SC2 T really has nothing to fear until Z gets T3 up with 3+ bases.
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On August 10 2010 05:33 deverlight wrote:Show nested quote +On August 10 2010 04:38 Mantikor wrote:
yes i know exactly what you mean. almost impossible to go head on to terran mech. Late game, you really have to babysit your mutas. I do actually enjoy that to an extent. even just flying expansion to expansion, keeping the map control, and just in general threatening them is really enough. if you can kill the off the random techlab, depot or 5 workers here or there then fly away unscathed, its totally worth it. when your a-moving your troops in the flank, just have some spare mutas hanging out ready to blow up some mineral lines at the same time.
If the T has to spread out his forces to cover everything, you should win the front line;
Iif hes all at the front battle, he'll loose his base;
If he invested a million minerals into turrets, his sunken cost... find an unguarded factory or sneak behind and snipe some tanks in the battle. you should really embrace the "babystting mutas" aspect, you can really stress out the slow moving terran to no end.
Meanwhile be teching up to some heavily upgraded ultras/lings/blings. I dislike Broodlords vs T to be honest. So much tech and econ investment when all the t has to do is throw up a reactored starport and a few vikings make quick work of em. Plus must of your gas is going to mutas anyways, so you'd have to cut them.
I only wish the mutas would just calm down a little bit, or i just need to use hold position more. I watch so many of my replays and i realize that i loose one random unit almost every couple minutes..."oh look, shiny....." While using mutas effectively does require a lot of attention and micro, that's not what I'm referring to when I complain about mutas needing babysitting. While I am actively running around engaging in muta harrass, I can periodically click my mutas away and go back to my base for 2-3 seconds to macro and then focus my attention to mutas again. I don't mind doing this and this isn't what really kills me because I can avoid direct engagement with the terran's thors. What really bothers me is that when terran brings all of his forces for a big push I have to meet him in order to defend my expansions. It would be foolish to meet the entirety of his forces with only half of my army so I pull my mutas back to engage in this battle. It's during this battle where I'm forced to engage his thors that I'm weary of having a lot of mutalisks. People say that mutas can fight thors, but only with perfect spread. I think the amount of work needed to make 10+ mutalisks effective against 2+ thors is ridiculous. I'm trying to find a more cost and attention effective unit composition that won't get torn apart by thors if I happen to fail at perfectly splitting my mutas.
Yea, i think we are on the same page with the mutas, if its 10mutas vs 2 thors, your right, you really have to micro them right to work. throw in a handful of lings for that fight and you got a win. You will still loose some mutas ofc, but those thors arn't cheap either.
If its a big fight in the front... It might be to the point where you just cant win, Have to bank on your harass being sucessful enough to have slowed his production down until you can have some upgraded ling ultra in his face. That and if its at your door, and you have a nice cliff on his flank, try to get some sneaky neural parasites from the high ground. It almost feels like there is a point of no return with terran mech, once they reach a certian amount of units, there is no standard 200/200 zerg army that can beat it. You just cant let them get to that point.
Thats all I can think of tbh. theres a reason theres a million ZvT threads, shit is hard lol.
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Still haven't gotten any real discussion on this so... bringing it up again.
What does everyone feel best complements ultralisks against various terran armies? The BW ideology was that ultras would tank damage while the real damage dealers were cracklings. I don't really feel like that mentality is valid anymore in SC2 since lings feel really weak and so many different things splash that lings don't really survive even with ultralisks tanking damage.
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From my observations, mass ultras seem to suffer a little from diminishing returns. They're so big that if you have more than a few they just all get stuck on each other and a lot seem to die before they do much of anything. I'm thinking, engage first with just a few broodlords and speedlings to grind the T push to a halt, and if he has tanks force them to damage his own units with splash. Then just flank with 3-4 ultras for clean up, as they're actually surprisingly fast when not getting stuck on things.
My other thought stems from the strength of T's push is its diversity, they can come at you with so many different types of units it can be really hard to deal with, so why not counter this by just getting a lot of unit diversity yourself. First attack with speedlings, then roaches to soak up damage and ultras to deal it, with banelings if there are lots of marines, and hydras have the one of the highest base dps of any unit in the game so could work well if you have creep(they're probably too slow to work without) and if you're able to cover them with roaches they could be quite effective. A big advantage of zerg after all is to be able to get as many of each type of unit they like as long as they have the tech, and most zerg buildings are really quite cheap, so why not just get them all(eventually)? Are there any glaring holes in my reasoning?
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On August 10 2010 14:23 brad drac wrote:
From my observations, mass ultras seem to suffer a little from diminishing returns. They're so big that if you have more than a few they just all get stuck on each other and a lot seem to die before they do much of anything. I'm thinking, engage first with just a few broodlords and speedlings to grind the T push to a halt, and if he has tanks force them to damage his own units with splash. Then just flank with 3-4 ultras for clean up, as they're actually surprisingly fast when not getting stuck on things.
My other thought stems from the strength of T's push is its diversity, they can come at you with so many different types of units it can be really hard to deal with, so why not counter this by just getting a lot of unit diversity yourself. First attack with speedlings, then roaches to soak up damage and ultras to deal it, with banelings if there are lots of marines, and hydras have the one of the highest base dps of any unit in the game so could work well if you have creep(they're probably too slow to work without) and if you're able to cover them with roaches they could be quite effective. A big advantage of zerg after all is to be able to get as many of each type of unit they like as long as they have the tech, and most zerg buildings are really quite cheap, so why not just get them all(eventually)? Are there any glaring holes in my reasoning?
You make a valid point except I think the biggest issue comes in the timing. If you split the map half and half and fight the terran, then you may have enough time and resources to add this diversity to your army, but it seems like the most troublesome terran pushes come right around the same time as your hive tech hits. Without being able to fight off this push, which already has the variety included, you'll never be able to incorporate two different hive tech units into your army. It really comes down to ultralisks or broodlords for what you want your hive tech unit to be at least until you can secure 4-5 bases and aren't gas starved or dead. If you try to pursue ultralisk and broodlord tech at the same time, chances are you'll find yourself with too few of either to save you against the terran army rolling through your expansions.
Also I feel like zerg units generally need to be a little bit more abundant to reach "critical mass" and actually become effective. The addition of 2-3 thors to a terran army effectively makes it immune to air whereas 2-3 ultras or 2-3 broodlords seems to have much less impact. Because of this zerg armies usually don't have the luxury of having more than one type of "gas" unit. It'd be difficult to incorporate a lot of hydras with hive tech units due to the gas limitation.
If zergs could survive that initial big army push and take the game later into the late-game, I feel like your suggestion would be a lot more viable being able to mix in tons of different units to counteract his variety.
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deverlight: That's why I suggested only getting a few of each. Mo ultras, mo problems and you don't actually need to have that many broodlords assuming speedling support to have their desired effect of just immobilising the terran ball and tanking damage. Thors really don't do very good damage against broodlords, and they'll never even target them unless the T manually focuses, in which case you have a good bit of time to micro them back out of range and the broodlings previously fired + speedlings will keep doing their thing. It's just a case of instead of getting 7 ultras, you get 4 ultras and 3 broodlords. You can always make a crapton of spinecrawlers to support too.
As for hydras, I think 6-8 would probably be optimal for what I was talking about. Any more than that and it'll be difficult to get them all attacking when you want them to, and would probably be too expensive for such a fragile unit. As long as they don't engage too early and take all the damage, it could add some real punch to the zerg force that doesn't otherwise have many high dps units. I think you could get away with skimping on mutas to free up some gas, just make 3-4 all game and just make damn sure to keep them alive for map control, only making more if T contests your air dominance. Seeing as turrets and thors shut down muta harass anyway, 4 mutas = 8 hydras. Ultimately, all you need to do is wipe out the terran ball even if you lose every one of your units doing so. Once you manage that, zerg will be able to macro up a force much faster than terran can hope to, and all it'll take is half a dozen banelings and you should be able to overrun their main with speedlings.
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I personally just stick with ling/ultra/infestor and add corruptors if I see banshees or catlebruisers. Usually I just get as many ultras as I can with a few infestors, then I'm broke on gas and just spam that z button! I feel with micro ultras are really strong, it's getting to the point where you can just swarm himn with lings and ultras again and again that's difficult. Bein faster in reproducing an army is like the biggest advantage zerg has imo, but it's very costly.
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EPT
