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On September 05 2010 08:44 Barrin wrote:
The difference is that my way you completely deny them any possibility of a FE (or even moving out of their base too early for that matter). You spent a drone and a larva on that spine crawler too btw.
I understand that it delays my mining a little bit, but you guys seem to think that I just can't afford to pump all the zerglings you can potentially make when your second hatch comes up and still expect to flow through it (I just remembered you're supposed to have a second queen ready for the expansion when it comes up). I assure you you can completely stop drone production at 16 and go straight into mass 2hatch zerglings all-in and have plenty of money. Saying money is an issue for this build is exactly like saying having an army is an issue for the traditional build.
Two problems. The first part is that is the first circumstance. If you are denying an FE and the player knew about your "map control" with your lings, then he just made a poor decision. By seeing those lings, he should have recognized that he already had an economic advantage and gone for a tech advantage.
The second thing is that you have a false sense of an economy with that build. You will get a lot of minerals, but your economy is dead (or if not the all-in version, at least it's lower than what it could have been). You get minerals because zerglings are cheap. However, with so few drones, a transition to anything else will be much tougher. The biggest problem is that with so few drones you won't be able to saturate gas, and therefore instead of having a surge of 8+ mutalisks when your spire finishes, you will have a few. If you do saturate gas, then your mineral income will be lacking significantly.
You can catch up in the drone count, but you cannot catchup in lost mining time.
I have read your post, and yes I have thought about it. However, have you tested your build in YABOT to see at what time your build will have a fully saturated natural, 8 mutalisks, and 30 lings and compared it to someone like Idra's? It will be behind guaranteed due to the lost mining time. You just cannot get around the fact that at any moment in the game you will have theoretically a few less minerals for each ling built before drone which you could have switched around to drone before ling.
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On September 05 2010 08:44 Barrin wrote:
[By "etc" I assume you mean running them up the ramp momentarily to see what they built near it and grabbing all the watch towers. Yes, I do that.
That takes no more than 4 lings. If you scout up the ramp with any more (why not just use 1?) they will just be force fielded and picked off. 4 will pick off any T1 unit at a watch tower without a loss of a ling when properly microed.
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The thing that I really get from all of this is why everyone thinks Zerg is a "reactionary" race. You sit back, and you sit back. They have an army and you do not, therefore you have to react to their army. But when you get out extra lings early, YOU take the ball and you roll it around. You control the pace of the game. They are countering YOU which means you can counter their counter instead of simply countering.
The problem is that if you play like this then you are weaker then your enemy and you should be playing either terran or protoss instead of zerg. Zerg's main advantage is to be able to quickly make an army faster then the other race. Their disadvantage is that they need more economy to do it. You are sacrificing your economic advantage to do... what? Have the biggest army? That's nice, but it doesn't matter unless you are able to do something with it. And, 99% of the time, you aren't.
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I see Cella and sen not only build a roach warren, but also build a decent number of roaches - not in reaction to an incoming push, but just to poke around. A lot of the time, they end up being able to catch the T/P opponent unprepared to deal with that kind of aggression, just because it's not "standard". IMO that's the inherent strength to going against the traditional "power drones, power army" zerg mantra; that is, nobody expects you to have an army until they're on your ramp.
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This build is really good at getting you safely into the midgame, though with slightly less economy than others would. But getting safely into the midgame without dying to one base all-in 5 warpgate pushes, and so on, are things that a lot of zergs have been struggling with.
Something else is that making stuff at the last minute can easily screw you over.
If for some reason, when he pushes out, he has more stuff than you can handle with a single round of ling production, you are now dead. If for some reason, you dont have larva when he pushes out, you are dead.
Now you can probably scout better to know exactly how much stuff he has, but for a lot of players, thats pretty hard.
About the second one though, I have simply no idea how you can pull it off to always have available larva in case he pushes out, without actually wasting larva. From 2 bases, you can have a maximum of 4 stockpiled larva before they start being wasted. How the hell do you manage to have more than 4 larva at any given time without sitting on idle hatcheries, is a complete mystery to me. Thus this build is better suited for someone like me.
Also, another thing, is that players dont have equal skills (duh). Certain builds need different skills compared to others. I would say on most things, there is a skill requirement, and proably a skill cap too.
For example, if you are going 5 rax reaper against zerg, a requirement would be to know how to kite. Otherwise, you will just die.
For the "build all your shit at the last possible second" build, some requirements would be good macro, fast reaction time, good scouting, good knowledge of your opponent's builds, good micro (to hold it off with the bare minimum), and the mysterious ability to always have larva available.
Now lets say that you miss one of those skills. For example scouting. You dont scout very well, and so you never really know when your opponent is pushing out, and with what/how many units until he is already outside his natural. Then going for the "build all your shit at the last possible second" style is quite dumb. You will get destroyed repeatedly. "work on your scouting then!" you say. Sure. But whats the point of doing it in a build where you will lose all the time because of your scouting? You could go for something slightly different, and still be working on your scouting, but also winning games at the same time. Much more enjoyable.
There is really not much point in using a build that has a skill requirement that you dont have. It will most often just cause you to lose repeatedly, and become frustrated.
And at last, Id like to take a look at one huge assumption that people have been making all thread long: The fact that the best thing for zerg is to have barely enough units to hold off an attack, and all the rest as drone, because you cant make up for lost mining time.
To a certain extent, thats true. However, I think it fails to account for a few other factors. For example, the fact that the more units you have, the less you lose. For example, if you have 10 marines attacking you, and you make the lowest amount of lings you possibly can to counter that.
If its the lowest amount possible, then you will lose almost all of them. But if you have more units, then you also lose less units.
For example, against 10 marines attacking you, you can probably hold it off with 15 lings. But if you have 20 lings, and 5 roaches, instead of having 15 lings, you will end up losing a much smaller amount of lings. Thus, by having more units than the smallest possible amount, you saved yourself money, larva, and time.
If you a protoss for example attacks you, and expands at the same time. If you have the bare amount of units, you can hold off his attack, and probably be ahead in economy. But if you have more units, and instead of just barely holding off his attack, you completely crush it, and then counterattack, and deny his expo... Well that puts you in quite a fantastic shape too.
Now if you can pull off the drone only defense, making units at the last defense, and feel safe about it, and enjoy the passive laid back macro style from that, I see no reason at all to switch to a different build. Move along.
But if you enjoy playing a little more aggressive, if you want to crush his push instead of just stop it, or if you just cant pull off the drone till the last moment defense style, then you should at least consider playing something else, that will allow you to have more fun, or win more, or both.
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I guess we all basically agree now. Though there are three things I would like to add. First of all, instead of switching your build due to mechanics you don't have, I think you should just do a build that you like that's very powerful and keep on doing it until you're good at it. Of course you'll have a lot of mistakes. Hell, since I've switched to Zerg I've gotten roflstomped a few times for forgetting to spawn larvae. However, I use it as a learning experience and am instead just improving my macro to become a more solid player. I'm not going to go "well, this build will get me into the midgame easier, therefore I'll do it". Instead I'm going "this build will get me into a solid midgame with a good economy. Some of the top players are able to stop a ton of all-ins with it with relative ease. It's possible to do, so I will learn it".
Secondly, by the time the confrontation happens, your army should be about the size it would have been if you were playing aggressive. I think some of the best things to show is are some BW PvZs since I cannot think off the top of my head of a great replay of doing this, but speedlings can help you stall a push. I know Idra will play with the speedlings and if an all-in is coming, will get a lot of roaches out just in time by stalling with lings. I think Sen has been doing that a lot too. Game one of Cella vs Lz (I think it was Lz) showed that too vs some early reapers. That gets you to win battles pretty one sidedly and have the economy, but it's tough to pull off and if you mess up you can lose your expo before everything pops.
Thirdly, about how many lings are you talking about? I know it's pretty standard to make 4-6, so with your safe build I was assuming you were doing something like 12 early lings.
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This is something as an 800+ diamond Zerg player I have just recently started analyzing -- larvae.
Should Zerg builds be so fine tuned that it comes down to the 20th larvae - build a drone, 21st larvae - build a sling, 22nd larvae -- build a drone?
Also, I'm coming to the realization that spine crawlers are worthless. I've done a lot better defending early pushes with a large number of lings.
Zerg is also very positional race. Protoss and Terran are more efficient when in a ball form. Zerg is better when they surround the enemy. This is why I don't like spine crawlers, because it forces the Zerg to fight at the spine crawler, which may put the Zerg player at a disadvantage on certain maps, such as those that have giant holes in the ground near the natural (Xel'Nage and Kulas) that the enemy can use to effectively cut off one side of a surround.
Zerg players can't surround at these locations. And in fact, there are few locations on any map where Zerg can fully engulf an army.
So, when you start to theorize how to defend an early expansion, take into consideration that the best way you will defeat an early push is by surrounding the enemy player. Why not, then, make a couple more slings so that when the early push comes, it takes fewer larvae to get to that critical mass number for surrounding early pushes.
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I do just about the same build up until the lave after zergling speed--
10 Scout
14 extract (with the 14th built drone)
14 Pool
14/15 drone
15/overlord
16/drone
Queen
19---1 pack of zerglings (clear expo of bunker scv/probe)
THEN ZERGLING SPEED
20Drone
(Pull drones off gas starting at 92)
Send both Zergling and Drone pack to Expand (or if timing is off because of gas steal or something, just pull one from the line)
Expand
19 - 2nd Queen
19-Overlord
20- Drone
From here I react (if I already havn't -i.e. 2gate reapers) on what my opponent is doing. If I see 4gate, well.. the timing for that is 1:30 after the expansiobn finishes. I will transfer 11 drones, 3 will become spines. Until I scout the Warp gates are completed, I drone hard. During the transfer I put 3 drones back on gas and once I reach 100, I lair tech and drop an extractor. If I am facing terran I baneling nest 1/4 the way through lair so I will have the gas needed for both Baneling speed, and the infestation pit.
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On September 05 2010 11:56 rackdude wrote:
First of all, instead of switching your build due to mechanics you don't have, I think you should just do a build that you like that's very powerful and keep on doing it until you're good at it. Of course you'll have a lot of mistakes. Hell, since I've switched to Zerg I've gotten roflstomped a few times for forgetting to spawn larvae. However, I use it as a learning experience and am instead just improving my macro to become a more solid player. I'm not going to go "well, this build will get me into the midgame easier, therefore I'll do it". Instead I'm going "this build will get me into a solid midgame with a good economy. Some of the top players are able to stop a ton of all-ins with it with relative ease. It's possible to do, so I will learn it".
If you can do that, and you like it, theres not reason for you not to try repeatedly to make a build work.
For others though, trying to make a build work that simply doesnt work yet for you, where you lose repeatedly again and again and again and again... Will cause a huge amount of frustration. It will cause epic whine and QQ on the forums. It will cause players to switch race to terran -_-
Trying to improve while winning 60% of the games is just infinitely more satisfying for some people than trying to improve while winning 20% of the time. And in some cases, the fact that you dont end up nerdraging as much, or blaming it on imbalance, will let you improve faster too 
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On September 05 2010 23:27 morimacil wrote:Show nested quote +On September 05 2010 11:56 rackdude wrote:
First of all, instead of switching your build due to mechanics you don't have, I think you should just do a build that you like that's very powerful and keep on doing it until you're good at it. Of course you'll have a lot of mistakes. Hell, since I've switched to Zerg I've gotten roflstomped a few times for forgetting to spawn larvae. However, I use it as a learning experience and am instead just improving my macro to become a more solid player. I'm not going to go "well, this build will get me into the midgame easier, therefore I'll do it". Instead I'm going "this build will get me into a solid midgame with a good economy. Some of the top players are able to stop a ton of all-ins with it with relative ease. It's possible to do, so I will learn it". If you can do that, and you like it, theres not reason for you not to try repeatedly to make a build work. For others though, trying to make a build work that simply doesnt work yet for you, where you lose repeatedly again and again and again and again... Will cause a huge amount of frustration. It will cause epic whine and QQ on the forums. It will cause players to switch race to terran -_- Trying to improve while winning 60% of the games is just infinitely more satisfying for some people than trying to improve while winning 20% of the time. And in some cases, the fact that you dont end up nerdraging as much, or blaming it on imbalance, will let you improve faster too
I see it more as, you lose about 45% of the time, but your losses are really stupid and you blame yourself because you know what you did wrong. I watch the replay and go "silly me, I saw two gasses but didn't get a group of speedlings/roach!". In this style, there is no imbalance, you just mess up. I like knowing the game is up to me .
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On September 05 2010 12:30 Barrin wrote:Show nested quote +I guess we all basically agree now. Though there are three things I would like to add. First of all, instead of switching your build due to mechanics you don't have, I think you should just do a build that you like that's very powerful and keep on doing it until you're good at it. Of course you'll have a lot of mistakes. Hell, since I've switched to Zerg I've gotten roflstomped a few times for forgetting to spawn larvae. However, I use it as a learning experience and am instead just improving my macro to become a more solid player. I'm not going to go "well, this build will get me into the midgame easier, therefore I'll do it". Instead I'm going "this build will get me into a solid midgame with a good economy. Some of the top players are able to stop a ton of all-ins with it with relative ease. It's possible to do, so I will learn it". Well I'm no Idra but my macro and mechanics are actually my strong point Of course everyone would say this but I'm actually a lot better than what im ranked @ like 700 diamond or w/e. I'm still goin up dozens of points every few hour session I play. Just haven't been grinding a lot, I'm under 100 1v1 games post-release (almost 1000 if you consider 2v2 3v3 4v4 and UMS though :D) Show nested quote +Secondly, by the time the confrontation happens, your army should be about the size it would have been if you were playing aggressive. Nope  Show nested quote +I know Idra will play with the speedlings and if an all-in is coming, will get a lot of roaches out just in time by stalling with lings. I think Sen has been doing that a lot too. Game one of Cella vs Lz (I think it was Lz) showed that too vs some early reapers. That gets you to win battles pretty one sidedly and have the economy, but it's tough to pull off and if you mess up you can lose your expo before everything pops. I really do the same thing except I don't use roaches I just have a shitload of zerglings. My zergling micro is actually very good. In the beta I cheesed hundreds of times (in team games) using an 11drone speedling where I just had a retarded amount of speedlings at X time and I would just stomp all of my opponent's mining. I'm pretty sure my zergling micro is gosu status. The worst confrontation I ever had against a 5reaper when I did mass speedlings it was a nearly dead even fight I pushed him all the way to his base and his reaper and a half ran home crying. I really don't like using roaches to defend against reapers slings move at almost the same speed as sreapers off of creep. yes I know they can kite. But trust me I always have enough zerglings to still surround them even while taking heavy losses myself. Yes roaches do a lot better vs reapers while on creep. So do zerglings. Show nested quote +Thirdly, about how many lings are you talking about? I know it's pretty standard to make 4-6, so with your safe build I was assuming you were doing something like 12 early lings I have been starting with 6-8 (8 most recently, but 6 is fine). Right there I am totally safe and can pump 5-7 drones then I make a bunch more zerglings and im safe for another few minutes where things start to get really ambiguous. It's all about what I think they're making at that point really. I guess you could say that the main difference is that after I pump another 5-7 drones after my first 6-8 zerglings, I pump out another 10+ zerglings just for insurance. This timing is right before the earliest terran balls come.
All sounds good (though the 10+ lings could be cut if you see an FE or something of the like, but with the popularity of 1 base play it works fine) except your dislike of roaches. Download the Cella vs Lz Showmatch series of replays and you will see why. Roaches aren't great massed, but they have great synergy with lings. The main problem with roaches is that they are kited, but with lings in play, stalkers and marauders won't be running away for long since every second they do is another hit by the lings (not to mention they will just get trapped). I was against roaches but after seeing how just a dash, maybe 3 roaches, just thrown in when you see a rush can help immensely. Massed? No, that takes too much gas. Just a few to shoot from behind the lings and tank zealots? Yes, with nice surrounds I really think this is the most cost effective early game army.
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Ok, so if I can always defend early push with minimal zergling force then your build is worse, right?
What about map control, with 4-6 zerglings you can have full map control most of the time.
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On September 05 2010 14:10 immor7a1 wrote:
So, when you start to theorize how to defend an early expansion, take into consideration that the best way you will defeat an early push is by surrounding the enemy player. Why not, then, make a couple more slings so that when the early push comes, it takes fewer larvae to get to that critical mass number for surrounding early pushes.
I think this basically is the summary of whats going on in this thread. The thing about zerg reactionary play style is that, they will either build units reacting to a attack, however if the attacker/defender comes out even losses, the zerg will lose due to lack of larvae to rein while the attacker's reinforcement is constant(zerg armies are relatively weaker vs the other races at the same food supply).
So basically, a zerg will have 1,or maybe 2 rounds of effective reinforcement(Injections). however he WILL run out of larvae,while the opponent is pushing him down with his own reinforcement which are constant & steady compared to zerg's burst-like style of reinforcement.
EDIT:- forgot my own opinion.
I think this should be the style zergs should play instead of the current style where a zerg early AND midgame is its deadzone, and everyone will try to end the zerg at those stages to prevent the zerg from getting his endgame which are just amazing(ultralisks & GGlords). every race's meta game vs a zerg is to waste his larvae by forcing him to lose units & drones, and the OP has made the point where if he has more units,he actually loses LESS larvae and most likely lesser drones, which is a great way to play.
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I think I'll be doing this on close maps like DQ. People telling me to wait untl the push comes then start making lings then upgrading them to blings is just wat... by then the only thing left in my expo is creep dissolving.
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On September 06 2010 00:24 Alpina wrote:
Ok, so if I can always defend early push with minimal zergling force then your build is worse, right?
Im not really sure if one is strictly worse than the other.Different would be more appropriate imo.
In one style, youare trying to get 2 fully saturated bases, barely hold off the big push, and take a third.
In the other style, you are trying to get 2 decently saturated based, crush his push, and deny his expo.
In both cases, you would be ahead of your opponent, if it works. Either 3 bases vs 2, or 2 bases vs 1.
In 3 base vs 2, you also have more workers, but in both cases you should be ahead on onconomy, if everything goes well.
I think that after that, what is the best most 100% optimal build would depend a lot on the map, and your opponent.
On a small map, with a short rush distance, and a wide open hard to defend natural, making units to defend a bit faster, is going to be good, because a small rush distance makes it harder to make them all at the last moment. Also, the harder to defend natural makes it harder to hold off with few units. And then your opponent's natural being wide open makes it easier for you to deny it.
If the naturals are easy to defend though, then denying it from your opponent is going to be hard, and a lot of your extra units would be useless. So having a lot of drones instead would be a good thing.
And about the few extra lings early on being completely incredibly useless: Its true they wont be incredibly useful until the push comes around, but you can still kill proxy stargates, destructible rocks, statues, and so on with them. They will be most useful when your opponent does move out though.
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morimacil -->
I agree with you. ZvX is very situational and you should not have universal start for everything.
If you see reapers, 2 gate, ton of rax early on of course you gonna make much more units. but most of time it just does not worth.
Ok so enemy walls himself with canons and you gonna pump lings, right? lol
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EPT
