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WARNING: LONG POST
Recently, I was fascinated upon reading Sun Tzu's Art of War, especially chapter 11, Nine Terrains, which I could really relate to with SC2. I was intrigued on how two thousand year old text was able to show the reason for terran's imba, and I believe that if we delve deep into the text, we are able to isolate the several key points that make TvZ so OP because of the particular the way that the Terran mechanic uses terrain.
(Btw, this is NOT a QQ thread but rather an objective view on terran imbalance with regard to Sun Tzu's military principles, hopefully upon reading the rest of this you will be able to see the bigger picture, that it's not just about terran's unit X being imba against zerg build Y and nerf it bla bla bla)
Firstly, what is terrain?
Terrain is not simply Terran with an "I" in it, and it is not just the "lie of the land". Terrain encompasses a much bigger picture than that, and can be broken down into 9 different types of terrain, which we will be discussing today.
(Note: With each type of terrain mentioned in Art of war, the definition is given in the first quote box, while the second is Sun Tzu's strategy on how to deal with that particular type of terrain. Anything in a quote box is from the book I have, everything else is me talking.)
1. When the feudal lords fight in their own territory, it is 'dispersive terrain'
In SC2 terms, the dispersive terrain is one's own base, or any other area that is manipulated by YOU to give YOU the advantage in ATTACKING.
For terran, it is their turtle; for zerg, it is MEANT to be their creep.
Sun Tzu's strat: On dispersive terrain do not engage the enemy
This is quite obvious especially against terran: you would never want to throw your forces against a turtle or wall. However the same cannot be said for Zerg. Although their dispersive terrain mechanism is meant to be creep, it gives no other obvious benefit (e.g. regen) apart from speed. This causes Terran to have clear advantage in dispersive terrain more than Zerg.
Note also that Terran creates dispersive terrain wherever they deploy tanks/bunkers, while Zerg has to spread their creep from a central location, which is much slower and less mobile.
In BW, Zerg could create dispersive terrain by using Dark Swarm, but since it was removed, another arm of the Zerg's limited arsenal has been cut off.
2. When they enter someone else's territory, but not deeply, it is 'light terrain'.
Light terrain can be defined as one's expo, ramp or static D range, i.e. not deep in the enemy's main.
Sun Tzu's strat: On light terrain do not stop.
This is all very well for Terran, as all they have to do is walk pass the Zerg's choke, while it is virtually impossible for Zerg to move past Terran's light terrain because of the wallin.
In terms of units, Terran has several early game units that can quite easily waltz pass the Zerg's light terrain area, while lings just fail against walls & bunks.
3. If when we occupy it, it will be advantageous to us while if they occupy it, it will be advantageous to them, it is 'contentious terrain'
This is defined as areas which can give either player profit or benefit, e.g. gold expos & Xel'Naga Watchtowers.
Sun Tzu's strat: On contentious terrain do not attack.
As mentioned before, Terrans can manipulate terrain to their advantage, especially by deploying tanks in those central contentious areas near watchtowers. However, the current map pool has these contentious terrains set as easily accessible areas, or travesible terrain (see point 4).
4. When we can go and they can also come, it is 'traversable terrain'
Continuing from before, traversable terrain is any area that is open and easily accessible. Traversable terrain is Zerg's bread and butter, as they need nice big spaces to perform good surrounds etc. However, as mentioned earlier Blizzard seems to have combined contentious terrain and traversable terrain in current ladder maps to create Xel'Naga Watchtowers and gold expos (notice how both are usually easily accessible?). This means death for any Zerg who attacks contentious terrain held by Terrans, despite the need for Zerg to attack in traversable terrain.
Sun Tzu strat: On traversable terrain do not allow your forces to become isolated
Terran manages to break this principle by allowing their forces to just chill near watchtowers/center of map and still come out on top because of the range of Terran units (i.e. siege tanks 13 range, vikings 9 range, massive sight given by watchtowers)
5. Focal terrain (not applicable in SC2, as it deals with alliances)
6. When one penetrates deeply into enemy territory, bypassing numerous cities, it is 'heavy terrain'
In SC2 terms, it is pushing/attacking deep into enemy base, bypassing many expos. Because of Zerg's lack of wallins, nearly any push from Terran can easily progress from light to heavy terrain. Besides that, Terran has a plethora of options to chose from when doing drops/pushes into the enemy base (e.g. MMM drop, ghost drop, thor drop, hellion drop, mass ravens etc.). Zerg, however, has only really 3 options: Doom drop, muta harass and Nydus, while all other pushes are not easy because of terran turtle. Muta and nydus is easily countered by terran, while doom drops, although sometimes successful, but failure in a doom drop will put the zerg behind in supply and larvae.
Sun Tzu's strat: On heavy terrain plunder for provisions.
Sun Tzu says this because ofter, when an army is deep in enemy territory, there will be no/little supply from the outside. Terran again breaks this principle with medivacs and SCVs, which heal and repair and army to full health extremely quickly. Zerg, however, have no such liberty, and can't even use queen transfusion properly because of their lack of ms outside of creep.
7. Where there are mountains and forests, ravines and defiles, wetlands and marshes, wherever the road is difficult to negotiate, it is 'entrapping terrain'.
Anywhere that slows an army down. For Zerg, it is evident especially for hydra roach armies that anywhere without creep is, relatively speaking, entrapping terrain. For hydras, off creep speed is so slow even with the upgrade that it is hard to get good surrounds with mass hydra.
Also, terran have the benefit of stimming that levels the playing field even on creep.
Sun Tzu's strat: On entrapping terrain, move through quickly.
Zerg's fungal growth ability is meant to create entrapping terrain for terran balls, but because every terran unit is ranged, they do not even have to move through quickly to continue attacking.
Besides that, marauders' concussive shells create entrapping terrain by slowing targets, another sign that terran are masters at terrain manipulation.
8. Where the entrance is constricted, the return is circuitous, and with a small number they can strike our masses, it is 'encircled terrain'.
The Terran turtle/wall literally SCREAMS encircled terrain. Wallin the ramp, put down some bunkers and turrets, deploy some tanks (which are the units implied in "small number they can strike our masses" with siege splash) and suddenly the terran's main becomes a virtual fortress of encircled terrain.
Sun Tzu's strat: On encircled terrain use strategy.
Zerg chokes are unable to create half-decent encircled terrain situations, and thus Terrans can scrap this advice of using strategy and simply 1a2a3a to victory. For Zerg, they really have to exert all their tactics and strategy just to break a choke with bling bombs, hydra/roach spread to reduce tank splash, muta sniping tanks/ghosts, infestor micro etc, while at the same time having to be the macro intensive race that Zerg is, or else Zerg will fall behind on eco.
9. Where if one fights with intensity he will survive but if he does not fight with intensity he will perish, it is 'fatal terrain'
Immediately my thoughts went to stim. What better way is there to "fight with intensity to survive" than stim?
Sun Tzu's strat: On fatal terrain engage the enemy.
For Terran this is logical: stim --> a-click.
For Zerg, they do not have any skills or abilities that swing DPS in their favour in the heat of battle, only mediocre ups. Even Protoss has guardian shield that lowers enemy DPS, increasing their own effective DPS.
Conclusion
Hopefully you are still alive after this lengthy, lengthy wall of text, but hopefully this has quite definitely CONFIRMED TvZ imbalance, that it is just not a matter of stronger units but the ability of Terran to manipulate the terrain to give them the advantage. Of course there are other issues with rushes, scouting and timings, but the main thing here is that Terran has the upper hand in any army clash as Zerg are unable to manipulate terrain anymore with the removal of Dark Swarm and the REAL Queen, as well as the current map pool which disfavors Zerg.
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I Will Likely Get a Warning but this post is just bad bad bad.
After the last patch TvZ is looking pretty balanced.
Looks like someone needs some lessons form MasterAsia imo
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Hypothesis: Terrain makes ZvT imbalanced because Terran can manipulate terrain very advantageously while zerg cannot.
Unbiased test: PvT with forcefields.
Result: PvT is not imba in favor of toss just because they can manipulate terrain at will.
Hypothesis disproved, Scientific method >> Sun Tzu.
But in a more direct tangent, your explanations are a giant stretch. "Intensity" = stim? No. That's just a unit mechanic. You have a giant confirmation bias here where you're reading Sun Tzu, thinking he's a military genius and then trying to pidgeonhole everything into his theories. You might be able to explain away some things with the art of war but it's so vague that it's very difficult to make non-trivial predictions with it (yes I have read it). Please set aside your availability heuristic and take a look at your analysis from a point of view which doesn't start with "I KNOW ZvT is imba and I KNOW I can explain it with Sun Tzu"
And before anyone starts poking at me, yes, I am ~1000 points in diamond, and I do play random and I'm not saying ZvT doesn't favor T at least in the effort department
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gg
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I finished rereading The Art of War about a month ago, working on a VoD series called SC2: The Art of War.
Been a little busy to finish the first ep, but it's near completion.
Glad to see someone else realized the similarities, however I don't believe it's limited or specific to Z & T, rather much can be applied to SC2 in general.
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As some say, if you have nothing good to say, do not say it at all.
I liked the post OP, but I do think that you are a tad biased. All in all though, the effort you put in shows.
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I think this is a solid post, and i love sun tzu so 2 gold stars 
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This kind of sounds like one of those palm readings or telepathy displays where people reach really hard to make everything sound relevant. Sun Tzu quotes are interesting to read, though.
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sorry if my post was a little biased, but in regard to cold reading, are you saying that Sun Tzu wrote the art of war as a form of cold reading, that his principles can be applied in most situations? Cos that's what I think as well, but then I feel that the way he groups his thoughts and categorizes the elements of a battle quite completely, which is why I used Sun Tzu as a more all-encompassing approach.
As a side note, the 'cold readings' of Sun Tzu are probably the reason why Art of War is often used in business strategy 
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It feels to me as if you took each terrain type and only sought to examine how it must be an advantage for Terran. I don't think it is that simple. These principles apply to warfare in general, and thus to each race in the game. I liked your point about dispersive terrain and how dark swarm enabled Zerg to create such terrain anywhere. I had never really thought of it in those terms... I think every Zerg misses swarm dearly.
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On September 28 2010 15:02 Shusaku wrote:It feels to me as if you took each terrain type and only sought to examine how it must be an advantage for Terran. I don't think it is that simple. These principles apply to warfare in general, and thus to each race in the game. I liked your point about dispersive terrain and how dark swarm enabled Zerg to create such terrain anywhere. I had never really thought of it in those terms... I think every Zerg misses swarm dearly.
The fact that terrans got the rough equivalent of the skill in SC2 makes absolutely no sense at all.
Not sure what the hell the developers were thinking
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You can wall with Zerg.. Evo chambers and some crawlers. Heck you can even move crawlers to let forces in and out! 
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Great to see you working things out. Sun Tzu's works are fantastic, and can be applied to anything in life, much like Musashi's Book of Five Rings.
However, because of it's Taoist roots, one must keep in mind the taoist understanding of knowledge:
"Those who know the least speak loudest. Those who know the Tao say nothing, for they understand they know nothing."
I don't mean to be critical, for thinking in the abstract terms, as you have done, leads one to great philosophical insights. However, I agree with sikyon, that you may be thinking to strictly. If you pay too close attention to the trees, you may lose yourself in the forest.
Anyways, keep up the good work, but never settle for thinking you "know" something.
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On September 28 2010 15:02 Shusaku wrote:It feels to me as if you took each terrain type and only sought to examine how it must be an advantage for Terran. I don't think it is that simple. These principles apply to warfare in general, and thus to each race in the game. I liked your point about dispersive terrain and how dark swarm enabled Zerg to create such terrain anywhere. I had never really thought of it in those terms... I think every Zerg misses swarm dearly.
i agree with shusaku - the art of war is suppose to encompass the exactly that, the art of war.. and as such, these terrain types exists for each race. the differences are based on how these terrain types are used for each race is up to the general of that army.
how you apply these principles will in the end game show how good you are at controlling your army, and imba opinions show only your own mastery of one race over another.
i believe the art of war also teaches, or at least attempts to teach you to know yourself first. you note that the open space is where your units should move through quickly as they are most vulnerable. having stim doesn't eliminate this space, but rather is a way for MM to move through this space quickly. ling/roach speed and charge/blink are the zerg and protoss' answer to these respectively.
i think it would be better to use the art of war to improve your gameplay rather than focus on what is your perception of imba based on as one poster said "pigeonholing" the theories into your opinion
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Although I certainly applaud you to look for parallels, why does every person who has read Sun Tzu suddenly start seeing parallels in everything they see? Some person needs to right a strict interpretive text. Sun Tzu's domain only goes so far, and starcraft 2 is not one of them.
Sun Tzu is not everywhere. But illusions of pattern and parallel sure are.
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So, what does Sun Tzu say about macro mechanics?
I like his work as much as anyone, but it's philosophical principle and can't be applied mathematically to a problem as you have attempted. This, more than anything, just supports the concept that the maps are the main problem here.
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On September 28 2010 13:45 NoOdelZ wrote:
I finished rereading The Art of War about a month ago, working on a VoD series called SC2: The Art of War.
Been a little busy to finish the first ep, but it's near completion.
Glad to see someone else realized the similarities, however I don't believe it's limited or specific to Z & T, rather much can be applied to SC2 in general.
I would be very interested to watch this series and see how you have applied Sun Tzu's teachings to sc2 strategy. Some of the above tidbits are fun to read, but it was over-shadowed by the OP's ranting about balance....
To be able to identify/classify these terrain types as the various situations we encounter in the game can possibly allow me to play a little bit better, just from recognizing what situation I am in and how to take advantage of it.
Hope you will post a link in a new thread, look forward to it
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On September 28 2010 15:27 Calmwinds wrote:
Although I certainly applaud you to look for parallels, why does every person who has read Sun Tzu suddenly start seeing parallels in everything they see? Some person needs to right a strict interpretive text. Sun Tzu's domain only goes so far, and starcraft 2 is not one of them.
Sun Tzu is not everywhere. But illusions of pattern and parallel sure are.
wrong
the principles described by sun tzu apply to rts games including sc2
do you really think "attack where your opponent is weak", "only attack when you have an advantage", etc. have no relevance to sc2?
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does the op realize that sun tzu has the 5 elements to a war and the earth (the field of battle and terrain) is considered the least important?
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Here are some quotes from what he considers to always be the most important elements.
IV. TACTICAL DISPOSITIONS
1. Sun Tzu said: The good fighters of old first put
themselves beyond the possibility of defeat, and then
waited for an opportunity of defeating the enemy.
2. To secure ourselves against defeat lies in our
own hands, but the opportunity of defeating the enemy
is provided by the enemy himself.
3. Thus the good fighter is able to secure himself against defeat,
but cannot make certain of defeating the enemy.
4. Hence the saying: One may know how to conquer
without being able to do it.
5. Security against defeat implies defensive tactics;
ability to defeat the enemy means taking the offensive.
6. Standing on the defensive indicates insufficient
strength; attacking, a superabundance of strength.
7. The general who is skilled in defense hides in the
most secret recesses of the earth; he who is skilled in
attack flashes forth from the topmost heights of heaven.
Thus on the one hand we have ability to protect ourselves;
on the other, a victory that is complete.
8. To see victory only when it is within the ken
of the common herd is not the acme of excellence.
9. Neither is it the acme of excellence if you fight
and conquer and the whole Empire says, "Well done!"
10. To lift an autumn hair is no sign of great strength;
to see the sun and moon is no sign of sharp sight;
to hear the noise of thunder is no sign of a quick ear.
11. What the ancients called a clever fighter is
one who not only wins, but excels in winning with ease.
12. Hence his victories bring him neither reputation
for wisdom nor credit for courage.
13. He wins his battles by making no mistakes.
Making no mistakes is what establishes the certainty
of victory, for it means conquering an enemy that is
already defeated.
14. Hence the skillful fighter puts himself into
a position which makes defeat impossible, and does
not miss the moment for defeating the enemy.
15. Thus it is that in war the victorious strategist
only seeks battle after the victory has been won,
whereas he who is destined to defeat first fights
and afterwards looks for victory.
16. The consummate leader cultivates the moral law,
and strictly adheres to method and discipline; thus it is
in his power to control success.
17. In respect of military method, we have,
firstly, Measurement; secondly, Estimation of quantity;
thirdly, Calculation; fourthly, Balancing of chances;
fifthly, Victory.
18. Measurement owes its existence to Earth;
Estimation of quantity to Measurement; Calculation to
Estimation of quantity; Balancing of chances to Calculation;
and Victory to Balancing of chances.
19. A victorious army opposed to a routed one, is as
a pound's weight placed in the scale against a single grain.
20. The onrush of a conquering force is like the bursting
of pent-up waters into a chasm a thousand fathoms deep.
VI. WEAK POINTS AND STRONG
1. Sun Tzu said: Whoever is first in the field and
awaits the coming of the enemy, will be fresh for the fight;
whoever is second in the field and has to hasten to battle
will arrive exhausted.
2. Therefore the clever combatant imposes his will on
the enemy, but does not allow the enemy's will to be imposed on him.
3. By holding out advantages to him, he can cause the enemy
to approach of his own accord; or, by inflicting damage,
he can make it impossible for the enemy to draw near.
4. If the enemy is taking his ease, he can harass him;
if well supplied with food, he can starve him out;
if quietly encamped, he can force him to move.
5. Appear at points which the enemy must hasten to defend;
march swiftly to places where you are not expected.
6. An army may march great distances without distress,
if it marches through country where the enemy is not.
7. You can be sure of succeeding in your attacks
if you only attack places which are undefended.You can
ensure the safety of your defense if you only hold
positions that cannot be attacked.
8. Hence that general is skillful in attack whose
opponent does not know what to defend; and he is skillful
in defense whose opponent does not know what to attack.
9. O divine art of subtlety and secrecy! Through you
we learn to be invisible, through you inaudible;
and hence we can hold the enemy's fate in our hands.
10. You may advance and be absolutely irresistible,
if you make for the enemy's weak points; you may retire
and be safe from pursuit if your movements are more rapid
than those of the enemy.
11. If we wish to fight, the enemy can be forced
to an engagement even though he be sheltered behind a high
rampart and a deep ditch. All we need do is attack
some other place that he will be obliged to relieve.
12. If we do not wish to fight, we can prevent
the enemy from engaging us even though the lines
of our encampment be merely traced out on the ground.
All we need do is to throw something odd and unaccountable
in his way.
13. By discovering the enemy's dispositions and remaining
invisible ourselves, we can keep our forces concentrated,
while the enemy's must be divided.
14. We can form a single united body, while the
enemy must split up into fractions. Hence there will
be a whole pitted against separate parts of a whole,
which means that we shall be many to the enemy's few.
15. And if we are able thus to attack an inferior force
with a superior one, our opponents will be in dire straits.
16. The spot where we intend to fight must not be
made known; for then the enemy will have to prepare
against a possible attack at several different points;
and his forces being thus distributed in many directions,
the numbers we shall have to face at any given point will
be proportionately few.
17. For should the enemy strengthen his van,
he will weaken his rear; should he strengthen his rear,
he will weaken his van; should he strengthen his left,
he will weaken his right; should he strengthen his right,
he will weaken his left. If he sends reinforcements everywhere,
he will everywhere be weak.
18. Numerical weakness comes from having to prepare
against possible attacks; numerical strength, from compelling
our adversary to make these preparations against us.
19. Knowing the place and the time of the coming battle,
we may concentrate from the greatest distances in order
to fight.
20. But if neither time nor place be known,
then the left wing will be impotent to succor the right,
the right equally impotent to succor the left, the van
unable to relieve the rear, or the rear to support the van.
How much more so if the furthest portions of the army are
anything under a hundred LI apart, and even the nearest
are separated by several LI!
21. Though according to my estimate the soldiers
of Yueh exceed our own in number, that shall advantage
them nothing in the matter of victory. I say then
that victory can be achieved.
22. Though the enemy be stronger in numbers, we may
prevent him from fighting. Scheme so as to discover
his plans and the likelihood of their success.
23. Rouse him, and learn the principle of his
activity or inactivity. Force him to reveal himself,
so as to find out his vulnerable spots.
24. Carefully compare the opposing army with your own,
so that you may know where strength is superabundant
and where it is deficient.
25. In making tactical dispositions, the highest pitch
you can attain is to conceal them; conceal your dispositions,
and you will be safe from the prying of the subtlest spies,
from the machinations of the wisest brains.
26. How victory may be produced for them out of the enemy's
own tactics--that is what the multitude cannot comprehend.
27. All men can see the tactics whereby I conquer,
but what none can see is the strategy out of which victory
is evolved.
28. Do not repeat the tactics which have gained
you one victory, but let your methods be regulated
by the infinite variety of circumstances.
29. Military tactics are like unto water; for water in its
natural course runs away from high places and hastens downwards.
30. So in war, the way is to avoid what is strong
and to strike at what is weak.
31. Water shapes its course according to the nature
of the ground over which it flows; the soldier works
out his victory in relation to the foe whom he is facing.
32. Therefore, just as water retains no constant shape,
so in warfare there are no constant conditions.
33. He who can modify his tactics in relation to his
opponent and thereby succeed in winning, may be called
a heaven-born captain.
34. The five elements (water, fire, wood, metal, earth)
are not always equally predominant; the four seasons make
way for each other in turn. There are short days and long;
the moon has its periods of waning and waxing.
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On September 28 2010 15:12 squintz wrote:You can wall with Zerg.. Evo chambers and some crawlers. Heck you can even move crawlers to let forces in and out!
crawler's can't wall off though.
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someone has a lotta time on their hands... =)
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Post was well written and thought out. Don't let the people that slam your opinions affect you. People will always have opinions , when people bash on sun tzu or you for that matter keep in mind; what have they written? What games have they developed? What countries have they run? Enjoyed your post. don't let the mud slingers dampen your writing/reading/gameplay.
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On September 28 2010 16:45 Persev wrote:
Post was well written and thought out. Don't let the people that slam your opinions affect you. People will always have opinions , when people bash on sun tzu or you for that matter keep in mind; what have they written? What games have they developed? What countries have they run? Enjoyed your post. don't let the mud slingers dampen your writing/reading/gameplay.
Yeah, but what was 'ol Tzu's Diamond rating?
The art of war has been slung around quite a few times with SC1, and now I guess it's time to look at SC2.
But so early in the life of the game. I think It'll do us more good to look at the mule and the marauder etc...
New maps can alter the balance of the game significantly, but that won't happen for a long time. Also, as any mapmaker will tell you, balancing a map for all three races while attempting to alter it in the favour of one of them is about as hard as balancing the game itself.
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I liked the OP. Sums up some of the problems present in zvt. Two of the points are especially strong to me.
Dispersive Terrain:
Terran walloffs vs creep. Its redundant for a zerg to try an attack into the terrans main during the late early game and all the way to late game really. Furthermore, it is redundant in the early game as well since a failed push basically means you'll lose due to lack of econ.
However the creep that ought to give zerg a giant advantage is negated by stimpack, hellion kite, superfast and mobile reapers owning zerglings. That, and then its fairly easy for a terran to push back the zergs creep by just scan -> pop the creep tumors with very little effort, the tumors the zerg has spent a lot of attention into spreading.
Heavy Terrain: The OP's point holds here as well. Medivacs and repairing SCV's vs nothing.
Good post, keep it coming
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On September 28 2010 14:04 Ruthless wrote:
cold reading
LOL
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pretty good point with swarm actually.
That's one of the few zerg's ability for map zoning which is oh so important.
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Give me back my Swarm and lurkers back plz k thx
ps Liked the post it was a nice read and defiantly addresses what i think the biggest problem for zerg now and thats map pool
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It's called the Art of War for a reason. Sun Tzu's book has always been right to an extend (kind of like Nostradamus' apocalytic stuffs). But I have to agree that your theorycraft is a little sketchy, and in AoW, earth element is the weakest element of all too. Take some for example
1st terrain: Of course that throwing your unit into a wall is stupid, but using unit mobility (higher than earth element,such as muta, nydus worm), you can engage T with minimum lost. Same case with 2nd terrain, I think you have some confuse between these two. Normally in Chinese ancient wars, this is meant to talk about the main lord's city and its outpost, countryside.
3rd, 4th terrain: it's meant for any races, since the terrain is neutral, whoever has access on it will gain advantage, and if other decides to take it place, they need to prepare to lose a significant army, whether it's Z or T. It can be in the form of watchtower, neutral cliffs, rivers,....
6th terrain: what Sun Tzu means is you have to attack the enemy supply to cripple their economy (supply, mineral, gas), it doesn't matter if that's a significant blow or not. T is better than other races because its superior bio medivac drop, but that's just it, they don't have the capability (not enough medivac) to do a death blow. In the other hand, if a Z drop ultralisk, or nydus worm into a T base, the lost is more devastated (ultra can hit any buildings and splash, nydus worm move all zerg units, not just drop 8, 16, 24 units)
7th terrain: your point on this one is way way off. It's meant to talk about terrain, not unit mobility itself. This terrain examples are ramp, bushes,... anywhere...
and so on...
That's what i think though.
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On September 28 2010 15:27 Acritter wrote:
So, what does Sun Tzu say about macro mechanics?
I like his work as much as anyone, but it's philosophical principle and can't be applied mathematically to a problem as you have attempted. This, more than anything, just supports the concept that the maps are the main problem here.
This!
You can find wisdom anywhere with a little flexible interpretation (not that Sun Tzu is stupid - he's just not applicable in sc2). Religion anyone?
Regarding the actual balance I think we need to give the patch a few more weeks or months before coming to any conclusions.
And yes, maps are crazy. No open space in the middle and lots of backdoors/ledges around naturals and mains. Why?
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I can do a writeup of the exact same points Sun Tzu makes to prove how Z has the advantage against everything. This is biased and absurd.
If Sun Tzu played Starcraft, well, he'd probably suck for a lot of games, because it really isn't exactly like war at all. But he'd be looking for specific ways to win with whichever race he's using, because that's what strategists are supposed to do. They look for ways to win, not ways to excuse their failure.
Sun Tzu would tell you to learn some Zerg first. Know thyself.
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On September 28 2010 13:41 metaldragon wrote:
I Will Likely Get a Warning but this post is just bad bad bad.
After the last patch TvZ is looking pretty balanced.
Looks like someone needs some lessons form MasterAsia imo
All the $200 Zerg Challenged showed me was that Terran can be much more flexible and creative with their openings. In the end (and over the long term [eg 10 matches]), the better player will prevail (ie Masterasia). Terrans seem to have an advantage mainly in their opening flexibility (and are punished less for their mistakes), but when one player's fundamentals are better, it really shows.
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yo squintz you're wrong on both accounts. 1 zerg only has like 3 ranged units none of which have greater range than a marine (except for hydras but they suck). 2 spines do not block units. (you have no idea how many times I had to revise this to avoid being warned for verbal abuse. please post relevant accurate information)
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I really must shun any arguement that calls the game "broken" or "imbalanced" because blaming one's failure on the game's mechanics merely shows a lack of effective understanding of the game mechanics.
Now if you want to say it's not perfect I will agree with you absolutely, it's impossible for everything to be absolutely perfect in every regard! Blizzard will always be patching always be tweaking and always be altering as long as this game is kept online! This won't stop until the game is again replaced by SCIII!
To call the game absolutely broken is absurd and I would say go back and play your game again, learn your army. Make like Henry V and walk amongst your troops, find out their abilities, their skills, their strengths and their weaknesses. You will never stop learning you will always find something new for as long as you are playing your game and reviewing your replays properly as you should. You can never play a game where you don't find a mistake you made, when you do you fail as a commander. You should always find something you did wrong and always make certain you find something you need to improve, ALWAYS.
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Sun Tzu is common sense, basically putting an entertaining spin on knowledge you already process, fooling you into the notion that you are actually learning something.
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Art of War was written when people fought with pikes and swords and blunt weapons and some primitive forms of missile weapons. The art of war is not practical if, say, one side has ICBMs and F22s, and the other side has waterguns. For example, the side with ICBMs and F22s can be aggressive in any terrain, while the side with waterguns should give up all terrain and find another planet to live on.
Of course this is a hyperbole, but I'm just saying, this stuff is applicable when the two sides have the same tools.
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I've got a couple of notes:
First of all, I'm not entirely sure I agree that you can make an argument that creep is supposed to define dispersive terrain for Zerg. If anything, the location of the main having a choke (the only entrance is encircling terrain), being on higher elevation and easier to reinforce (closer to hatcheries) makes it dispersive terrain regardless of creep coverage for Zerg. If you made the argument that anywhere creep covers the map is light terrain in Zerg's favor, I'd be inclined to agree.
You say that Terran "creates" dispersive or light terrain due to sieged tanks and/or bunkers. Then, you go on to say that they break the principles of contentious and traversable terrain due to tank range being 13 (sieged, obviously). Well, in that case, the terrain isn't contentious or traversable anymore.
I also disagree slightly that gold expos should be considered contentious without mention of other expansion locations. They're just expansions that are harder to defend than your natural. The yield is irrelevant for tactical purposes. If you're making the argument that any expansion besides your natural (which should be considered light terrain for both races due to defensibility and chokes) is contentious, then I'd be more inclined to agree.
Watchtowers should be considered contentious terrain because they provide sight/benefit to either race. I disagree that you call it traversable terrain in the map pool because there is a definite benefit to being near a watchtower than being anywhere else in open space on the map, even as Zerg.
All other terrain on the map is traversable. Due to the speed of most Zerg units, I'd say that Terran (and not Zerg) are most vulnerable to becoming isolated/surrounded. That is, of course, unless the tanks are sieged and the terrain is no longer traversable.
As for "heavy terrain," this just sounds like Sun Tzu's description of harassment. It's basically saying if you're going to bypass defenses to harass, don't get carried away and commit -- just plunder, don't try to conquer. Using doom drops and nyduses in this situation is obviously a bad idea. Using limited drops to snipe SCVs or structures or even harassing with mutalisks is a much better idea. You listed a bunch of Terran harass options -- none of what you listed costs Terran nothing and is capable of finishing an opponent off. I don't see a problem here.
Entrapping terrain doesn't occur naturally in SC2. If you're talking about abilities that create it, fungal growth is perfectly devastating. Marines can't move through quickly enough to dodge banelings in these cases and lose. I still feel like this is a hard concept to cross over into SC2 where all terrain on the map has uniform speed except in rare circumstances.
I also feel like you don't understand the encircled terrain very well. Sun Tzu advises to "use strategy," i.e., bypass the unfavorable wall-off or choke. If you're talking about baneling busts you're missing half the point -- the ramp creates the bottleneck that gives Terran the advantage. Just because you're able to knock down some of the impediments and road blocks he puts there doesn't mean you've bypassed the choke. Sun Tzu is telling you to use drops, harassment or diversions.
Reaper rushes in the beginning of the game is a good example of fatal terrain. If perfectly micro'ed, the roaches and zerglings will just eat damage from reapers without hitting back. Why keep engaging? Because if they don't, Zerg loses the natural hatchery and loses the game. It's better to take hits on the roaches and lose a few than lose the game.
Personally, I see how a lot of these concepts can carry over and a lot of them overlap, but I can't see how they can be manipulated into discerning a definite advantage for T. For almost all these points, you credit T with having the superior mastery over that type of terrain without considering how Zerg can use it equally well. Your biggest gripe seems to be with siege tanks and other high range units creating artificial zones of dispersive and encircling terrain, which admittedly Zerg doesn't have an answer to. (EDIT: by this, I meant that Zerg can't create the same kinds of dispersive and encircling terrain, not that they don't have methods to bypass it) They do have benefits that allow them to bypass those kill-zones to do some damage, but perhaps it's not a sufficient enough advantage to bring them on par with what Terran can do.
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This is supposed to be a joke, right? I mean, he can't be serious?
For every line in the OP it gets sillier and sillier.
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You misinterpret a lot of Sun Tzu's tactics.
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I can see that you like wasting time, and you would also like to waste other's time with forced connections that you were inspired to make from spelling similarities of terran and terrain. but I stopped reading when you are going to talk about terran imba and that was the second sentence.
jk, I skimmed your quotes and connections, but its just garbage.
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On September 28 2010 13:44 sikyon wrote:
Hypothesis: Terrain makes ZvT imbalanced because Terran can manipulate terrain very advantageously while zerg cannot.
Unbiased test: PvT with forcefields.
Result: PvT is not imba in favor of toss just because they can manipulate terrain at will.
Hypothesis disproved, Scientific method >> Sun Tzu.
But in a more direct tangent, your explanations are a giant stretch. "Intensity" = stim? No. That's just a unit mechanic. You have a giant confirmation bias here where you're reading Sun Tzu, thinking he's a military genius and then trying to pidgeonhole everything into his theories. You might be able to explain away some things with the art of war but it's so vague that it's very difficult to make non-trivial predictions with it (yes I have read it). Please set aside your availability heuristic and take a look at your analysis from a point of view which doesn't start with "I KNOW ZvT is imba and I KNOW I can explain it with Sun Tzu"
And before anyone starts poking at me, yes, I am ~1000 points in diamond, and I do play random and I'm not saying ZvT doesn't favor T at least in the effort department
Force fields create encircled terrain at will. That's one of eight points where Protoss has dominance in any matchup, the other seven show Protoss no advantages. In TvZ, Terran has a huge advantage in all eight sections. Compare the two. Hypothesis not disproved, your logic is just flawed.
You make a nice connection, but I think it's a little faulty. I'll talk about contentious terrain. Unlike human warfare, it's a lot easier for Zerg to take contentious terrain than you're making it out to be. If a Terran were to secure his main by turtling, there's no way he could hold contentious terrain. The T's army would be spread apart, giving the Z free unit kills and map control to take the contentious terrain that isn't being guarded. In this case, as a Z I would gladly trade a few units for his because I will already be on 3 bases to his 2, and whittling down his army to slow his push = good thing.
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Exathor,
I enjoyed your post and I appreciate its thoroughness. I'm also of the opinion that you are forcing too much data into the general theory that TvZ is imbalanced. I agree, imbalances exist, but in hammering on this assumption in your application of Sun Tzu's categorizing of space, you overlook a number of the ways in which Zerg characteristics, much like those of Terran, can take advantage of the terrains of SC2.
To retune to one of Toxigen's points from page 2 of this thread, strategy is the means through which a player uses different types of space to his or her advantage. I'm okay with letting Blizzard know about the specifics of imbalance. But in the meantime, don't let space dictate your play. I lose to Zerg who find ways to use space to their advantage. And given the newness of the creep tumor and overlord vomit, I'm not sure that Zerg have fully explored methods to capitalize on space through the spread of creep. I'm eager to see how experimentation with creep shapes the T is imba discussion in the future. It seems to me that overlord creep vomiting is a form of creating dispersive terrain that does not require a centralized location (you claim that Zerg can't create dispersive terrain without a centralized location).
Furthermore, lost in the discussion of TvZ imbalance is the question of how to use space to mount a successful attack on your opponent. Imo, the Zerg that I beat tend to play much to linearly. Attack me at two or three points at once or flank my main army with lings and run me onto high ground into your ultralisks. I will want to be on high ground for the space advantage, but if your ultras are lying in wait, you'll burn me. In other words, our gameplay is conditioned by space, but we then react to and use that space in creative ways.
I always feel anxious moving my army onto creep. And while sieged tanks might claim portions of your creep as "contentious" terrain, I will have to move them. Much as I have to commit mental energy and micro into pushing the tanks, the burden is on Z players to take advantage of this moment and attack when I am unsieged (when the terrain is less "contentious").
Again, I believe in the imbalances, but I repeatedly win games against Zerg who fail to attack in creative manners and who fail to harass enough to unnerve me. Over the last two months, I have seen repeated critique of the ease of Terran drops. Other races have drop potential as well. And when, as a T, I drop, I am rarely attempting to end the game right there with my drop. As Toxigen points out, drops are often part of a larger strategy of diversion. I find that the best Zs I play against are, in fact, savvy at the art of war to the extent that they are creatively attacking me.
People claim that Terran is all 1a2a3a and, in the same breath, accuse us of easily dropping on three locations at once. Attacking three locations at once takes strategic spatial thinking and multitasking micro. I often drop on one or two locations when the game stakes are already high and I'm scanning to gauge the position of your mutas and the defenses of your bases. Maybe you see the drops as easy or op; but note that I am dropping your main in combination with a 1a2a3a on your expo. From my perspective, this isn't simple. Rather, I am exploiting a hole in your "dispersive" space (the undefended back of your base and your preoccupation with the location of my main army on your creep) to cause some devastation. Similarly, when a Z flanks my main army with lings, hits my expo with muta harass, and then capitalizes on my confusion to run blings and lings up my ramp, the territorial advantage I might have had has been compromised.
The application of Sun Tzu makes sense to me; thanks for your efforts. But the burden on players is to exploit and find limitations in their opponent's relationships to space. Even Z can achieve this in a TvZ if they are playing against me.
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what does yer ole chap Sun Tzu have to say in regarding terrain, about Zerg's Nydus Worm?
...particularly when Terrans Forces are sieged up in a contain infront of your base... ways away from defending they're own?
With your logic, does burrow become overpowered or else, moreso units that can burrow while moving?
Having a speed advantage with a majority of your army... even more so with creep spread surely provide some terrain advantage as well?
Can a book based on real' life war situations seriously put in the same reference with a futurisitc sci-fi based VIDEO-Game?
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(Btw, this is NOT a QQ thread but rather an objective view on terran imbalance with regard to Sun Tzu's military principles, hopefully upon reading the rest of this you will be able to see the bigger picture, that it's not just about terran's unit X being imba against zerg build Y and nerf it bla bla bla)
how is anything in your post even remotely close to objective?
do you even know what the term objective means?
this post reminds of when artosis made his "map balance" post where he claimed to be objective then spent 10 mins explaining why EVERY map sucks for zerg and owns for terran.
I can just see you patting yourself on the back after writing that massive wall of text and feeling so proud and so smart for what you had come up with. Well, you shouldnt be proud. You've said a ton of stuff that was said in fucking phase 2 beta 3 million times and isnt even nearly as relevant since the patch changes, then you attached sun tzu quotes to those things and thought it made you a genius.
pointless thread is pointless.
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On September 28 2010 15:27 Calmwinds wrote:
Although I certainly applaud you to look for parallels, why does every person who has read Sun Tzu suddenly start seeing parallels in everything they see? Some person needs to right a strict interpretive text. Sun Tzu's domain only goes so far, and starcraft 2 is not one of them.
Sun Tzu is not everywhere. But illusions of pattern and parallel sure are.
Most pro SC teams require their players to read The Art of War, by the way.
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I'm sure there can be some parallel's of Sun Tzu and RTS games, but the difference in real life war strategy and RTS seem too many to count. It's cool to compare though, just limited I would imagine.
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This post is so ... silly. You go every point and then say, how can I make terran look imbalanced here? You could easily rewrite that post and make it look like terran is having a hard time.
You could have made an ok point but you insisting on finding terran imbalance in every line of the quoted text. It's hilarious how you say this is an objective view while saying it is imbalanced in the same line.
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Isn't this post sort of like going through one completely unrelated text to Starcraft and then trying to apply it based on how you see fit?
Like if I was to go through Hannibal of Cartage's readings, I could easily find that Zerg is overpowered. This is because Hannibal loved to use tactics where units would be surrounded/ambushed, and Zerg seems to be pretty good at that compared to other civs.
Same deal with the blitzkreig, you get roaches/hydras to weaken an enemy's defences/create some holes and then send a mass of zerglings in to finish the job. Terran can't do a blitzkrieg because all their units are pretty much the same speed.
You can interpret a lot of things a lot of different ways. While the post is entertaining, it should maybe be in general forums rather than strategy forums as it doesn't actually say anything and it's a lot about interpretation rather than actual facts. :\
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Don't get all those criticism, I found the read really interesting. gj.
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There has always been a Starcraft fascination with Sunzi--Superdanielman probably overall spent a few hours talking about The Art of War during commentary.
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On September 28 2010 15:27 Acritter wrote:
So, what does Sun Tzu say about macro mechanics?
I like his work as much as anyone, but it's philosophical principle and can't be applied mathematically to a problem as you have attempted. This, more than anything, just supports the concept that the maps are the main problem here.
Using proxy pylons are better than reinforcing from your main.
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On September 29 2010 06:04 MicroJFox wrote:
The art of war is not practical if, say, one side has Blue Fire and Siege tanks and Giant Robots, while the other side has green waterguns and dogs. For example, the side with Blue Fire and Siege tanks and Giant Robots can be aggressive in any terrain, while the side with waterguns should give up all terrain and find another planet to live on.
Of course this is a hyperbole, but I'm just saying, this stuff is applicable when the two sides have the same tools.
Just a quick fix to keep that post relevant
Still im a strong believer the maps favor terrans creative play while limiting zergs.(ie: Easy wall offs, attack paths tend to be clumped and easy to prevent surrounds, and way to much high ground low ground with an easy to defend ramp or no ramp for zerg to use.)
This brings me to point 2 terran medivacs negate any of this territory strategy because again they create whatever or wherever they are into an advantage with medivacs.(THOR DROP ON LT  )
Get some of these iccup maps imo they really change the dynamic of some mu's
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Interesting post and as a Zerg player I have to agree, but I would like to see a non-biased version. Taking this book and applying it to all races and strategies would be an awesome idea instead of just limiting it to TvZ.
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Okay this Very shaky interpretation of my favorite book is forcing me to do a conversion of the entire Art of war into SC2 for every race. And so the project begins.
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Has the op ever considered that he blew analogies out of proportion. Even stating 4 different kinds of drops for terran while only stating 1 for zerg is ridiculous. You do not have to drop your whole army into the enemys base as your only option to drop. Not true.
Also some things from Sun Tzu can only be brought over in painful analogies.
One of the more accented parts were about spies and morale if I remember correctly.
Tell me how to bribe hostile spies and how to simulate the strong fighting spirit created by being surrounded with no way out into starcraft 2 and I may buy into the whole "Art of War applies to all RTS aspects" thing.
So long.
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i remember thinking things similar to what you are thinking a long time ago before sc2 beta and made my build focus on getting an observer out ASAP in accordance to how sun tzu finds intelligence and spys extremely important.
btw i think you are misinterpreting some of what sun tzu is trying to say for example:
"On heavy terrain plunder for provisions."
Yes you understand that you won't be able to supply/reinforce the army easily. But the quote tells you to plunder for provisions meaning to rob the person of their supplies and make them your own putting less stress on your country. Basically in starcraft 2 terms, deal as much damage to the other player's economy while using that time to expand. That's what it means.
Where if one fights with intensity he will survive but if he does not fight with intensity he will perish, it is 'fatal terrain'
This does not apply to starcraft 2. it pretty much talks about the mentality of the army when in a situation where they cannot escape. In real life, soldiers that are forced to fight in order to survive will become a much more potent force then if it were in a situation where they will run away. As if 1 soldier was equivalent to 3 other soldiers because they are in such a desperate situation, a human (like an animal) would do anything to live showing no fear in their eyes. Instead they only show a fierce desire to live. If you were to compare stim to something, compare it to steroids.
Your personal opinions are leading you to misinterpret what sun tzu is trying to talk about.
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An interesting read for sure! I haven't read Sun Tzu's art of war..but...this text was written (as a previous poster had said) many years ago, back when people had primitive weapons.
So working under the assumption that the way you plugged in Terrans op'ness in regards to their ability to manipulate the terrain was flawless and indisputable..that still would leave a glaring hole in this analysis...
We have air units..Terrain bypassed or disregarded completely.
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On September 28 2010 13:44 sikyon wrote:
...
You have a giant confirmation bias here where you're reading Sun Tzu, thinking he's a military genius and then trying to pidgeonhole everything into his theories. You might be able to explain away some things with the art of war but it's so vague that it's very difficult to make non-trivial predictions with it (yes I have read it). Please set aside your availability heuristic and take a look at your analysis from a point of view which doesn't start with "I KNOW ZvT is imba and I KNOW I can explain it with Sun Tzu"
It's true.
But Sun Tzu is a great source of insight. However, one should not ask "Is Sun Tzu right? If so, why?" One should ask, "why did Sun Tzu say that?" Seek the thought process, not the thought.
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While I agree with the mob in this case, I really don't think the OP should be burned at the cross like this. Man, you guys are pretty vicious.
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I expected this to be an interesting read but was instead disgusted by a clear confirmation bias.
The most appalling example is point 9, where "intensity" is attributed to stim. Way too literal of an interpretation of intensity. So is the opposite of fighting with intensity a zerg's fungal growth? By that logic the zerg will always have the upper hand by making fatal terrain readily available.
Belongs in the blog section, and definitely don't pat yourself on the back with such an ego-driven comment like "quite definitely CONFIRMED TvZ imbalance."
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On September 28 2010 15:27 Acritter wrote:
So, what does Sun Tzu say about macro mechanics?
I'm pretty sure he said that if you're a noob, all you have to do is just build a whole bunch of shit, don't worry about micro, and then you can a-move and just fucking kill him.
or maybe that was Day9 Tzu...
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First, The Sun-Tzu hate in this thread is disappointing.
This writing has withstood the test of time better than the bible without asking or demanding faith from its readers. Claiming that The Art of War has no relevance to modern combat, or more importantly conflict (loose term) in any area of life is like saying that there is no relevance to the Bible's lessons or that it doesn't have any.
Second, the OP.
Obviously massive bias as others have mentioned. TL netizens (I am merely a forum lurker), you should be disappointed by its lack of attempt to be productive. Proving or saying that Zerg is OP does nothing for the players. Send those opinions to Blizzard.
Even so, when I read the Sun Tzu lines, I was still inspired. For example:
"On traversable terrain do not allow your forces to become isolated"
This makes me think, how can I make this happen to my opponent? When a terran is turtling a xel'naga, can I cut off his lines of reinforcement and surround (thus isolating), before swooping in for the kill? What units would be most effective at taking map control of select areas like their retreat to their base?
First the OP acts like a xel'naga tower is merely traversible terrain - it isn't - and then doesn't bother to try to put the idea into practice, merely stating it is impossible to break an isolated terran.
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On September 29 2010 10:43 eLiE wrote:Show nested quote +On September 28 2010 15:27 Acritter wrote:
So, what does Sun Tzu say about macro mechanics? I'm pretty sure he said that if you're a noob, all you have to do is just build a whole bunch of shit, don't worry about micro, and then you can a-move and just fucking kill him. or maybe that was Day9 Tzu...
Day9 ftw
But I think Sun Tzu also said it, with other words.
If the internet is right, it goes like this:
It is the rule in war, if our forces are ten
to the enemy's one, to surround him; if five to one,
to attack him; if twice as numerous, to divide our army
into two.
Of course, it is implied that all equations are based on power rather than numbers, which was a given circumstance in china around his time. Armies consisted of trained soldiers generally no army being significantly stronger than another in equal numbers.
Another thing I found in this online version is this:
We may distinguish six kinds of terrain,
to wit: (1) Accessible ground; (2) entangling ground;
(3) temporizing ground; (4) narrow passes; (5) precipitous
heights; (6) positions at a great distance from the enemy.
The part quoted in op is actually 2 chapters later and (at least in my source) called nine situations. It must be some sort of alternate words in chinese for the concept we call terrain.
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On September 29 2010 10:06 PrinceXizor wrote:
Okay this Very shaky interpretation of my favorite book is forcing me to do a conversion of the entire Art of war into SC2 for every race. And so the project begins.
Part one in blogs. I tried to be an unbiased as possible, I'll update parts in blogs and make a thread when i finish all of the parts. note: i'm using only parts that i've been confident in making the jump from ancient chinese warfare -> space battles with aliens.
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Sometimes I wish SC1's release date was somewhere in late 2010. ( Yes I said SC1 )
So that way I could stop hearing shitty examples of races "Losing" something from SC1.
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You misinterpret several things (I am a great fan of Sun Tzu):
Light terrain:
It is land which is under (only) light control of the enemy, meaning, as long as you stay on the move, your army cannot be trapped.
Contentious terrain: gold expos do not fit; rather, it is an area that is advantageous to THE ARMY occupying it (in terms of combat, sustainment); such as high ground.
(Xel'Naga do fit in such as they give better sight and thus improve ranged weapon use for T, easier surrounds Z.)
Starcraft has no equivalent for unit support; in real life, unit capacity decreases without support. Therefore "heavy terrain" is only relevant in such it is an area under control of the enemy, being trapped is a substantial risk.
Harassment (as someone noted) is not relevant in this context, as it does not comprise your (main) army.
I get the impression, what the OP really wants to say is: TvZ is imba! And then goes and tries to bend Sun Tzu (unconciously) to underline this. :-)
Certainly, Blizzard's current maps favor T as open ground is rare, compared to SCBW's (more evolved) maps.
Try to adapt. Yes, T's units are all ranged, fungal growth does not help much....as long as you engage their immobilized, but still ranged forces. Thought of ignoring them, and going for on of their bases instead?
FG further increases your already superior mobility.
Use your production flexibility. T currently would counter most of your ground army? The next production rounds, only get air. T struggles to get an airforce? Put all your larvae into ground units - thus create (relative, unit-counter-wise) superiority.
The T camps? Expand and get only workers in the next round, allowing you to create superior numbers to match his better position.
With good information, and having the initiative, P and T really have a hard time to keep up with this kind of flexibility.
And: use your fast production capacity. The T's army is a slightly stronger? Engage it, trade a part of his army for yours, and crush the remainder with your next wave, before his reinforcements arrive.
(Warning: you need a good feel for this, at which point your losses are higher than his)
Good luck, broodling :-)
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On September 29 2010 11:30 Mataza wrote:
Day9 ftw
But I think Sun Tzu also said it, with other words.
If the internet is right, it goes like this:
It is the rule in war, if our forces are ten
to the enemy's one, to surround him; if five to one,
to attack him; if twice as numerous, to divide our army
into two.
Unfortunately, this is a historical mistranslation. More modern translations read
It is the rule in war, if ten times the enemy's strength, surround them; if five times, attack them; if double, be able to divide them; if equal,engage them; if fewer, be able to evade them; if weaker, be able to avoid them.
(I.e., divide HIS army when only outnumbering him 2:1)
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On the whole reinforcing an army in enemy territory bit, you could nydus queens to your army to heal them, just a thought might balance out that part of the terrain matchup.
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Wow this was an amusing read! Not only because of the wierd errenous paralells born of the same rage I feel on this matchup, but because of the ones that were completely utterly correct and inspiring.
Saying it has nothing to do with SC2 is bullshit, this is a strategy warfare game, he writes about exactly that and has become famous because he made his stuff generic (it applies to many things while staying completely logically true) like csfield says, it's moronic to say "attack where your oppenent is weak" does not apply to this game.
You can pull paralells into any matchup or actually even any different game, so it's not specifically this that makes T imba. You just misinterpited(sp?) some bullet points.
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Trying to healing frail Z units in battle..not worth trying. Macro instead, Z units are cheap.
Healing outside battle using queens and nydus....not useful again, Z army is so mobile, walk back home instead.
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On September 29 2010 10:06 PrinceXizor wrote:
Okay this Very shaky interpretation of my favorite book is forcing me to do a conversion of the entire Art of war into SC2 for every race. And so the project begins.
Don't you find Clausewitz more relevant? Or at least more straightforward in his portrayals of concepts?
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OP think more about his other advice, like baiting him into attack (make your apparently weakest positions your strongest and vice versa). Tzu's advice on terrain is only 1/5 or less of the book. Army composition and battlefield maneuvering have similar parallels to Sun Tzu. I suggest you read them.
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21. If he is secure at all points, be prepared for him. If
he is in superior strength, evade him.
22. If your opponent is of choleric temper, seek to
irritate him. Pretend to be weak, that he may grow arrogant.
[Wang Tzu, quoted by Tu Yu, says that the good tactician plays with his adversary as a cat plays with a mouse, first feigning weakness and immobility, and then suddenly pouncing upon him.]
23. If he is taking his ease, give him no rest.
Keep Pressure on your opponent.
If the terran has his army away from home, do some ling harass.
Keep your units around the map in flanking positions.
If your opponent sieges, run away and wait for him to unsiege in order to engage.
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Man, it'd be totally kickass if Sun Tzu was alive and he did dailies like Day9 does, but only about micro.
Just imagine it. It would be hilarious.
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With all due respect, I think many people here are not interpreting Sun Tzu correctly. The Art of War contains many principles that have stood the test of time (that's why it's still taught in U.S. business school and military academies today). It also has advice which is clearly specific to ancient era warfare and can be more or less disregarded. So it's important, especially with the translation barrier, to be rigorous about which is which, and not to let our metaphors get too imaginative.
Unfortunately, OP's analysis of Sun Tzu's "nine grounds" is grossly out of line with the intended meaning of the text. This is not based on my personal opinion, but on the work of later Chinese military philosophers, and of modern translators and Sun Tzu scholars. In order below:
+ Show Spoiler +(1) "Dispersive ground" is not supposed to be your home base. It is ground in which the local warlords are in conflict. Sun Tzu advises not to fight on dispersive ground, because soldiers recruited there are likely to have local interests and may not be reliable in battle. This has nothing to do with SC2, at least not that I can see.
(2) "Light ground" does have an application to SC2, but it is not your ramp or your expo, or any physical location on the map (this is why "grounds" is a better translation than "terrains"--we're not talking about physical spaces so much as we're talking about situations that arise). Rather, light ground occurs when you have penetrated into your opponent's space, but not deeply, and the soldiers "can all get back easily." This strikes me as analogous to a harass, e.g. with mutas or reapers. Sun Tzu's advice is simply, "On light ground do not stop," which applies nicely.
(3) "Contentious ground" does certainly imply a watchtower, choke point, or gold mineral patch, as OP says. However, how that translates to terran imba is beyond me. Any race can take and fortify contentious ground. Sun Tzu's cryptic advice not to attack on contentious ground is clarified by a response from contemporary General Cao Cao, who said, "It is not advantageous to attack an enemy on a ground of contention; what is advantageous is to get there first." That should be sound advice for contentious ground in SC2.
(4) "Traversable ground" is space where one may come and go easily, which in Sun Tzu's time meant largely that there was a system of maintained roads. His instruction, in Thomas Cleary's translation, is "let there be no cutting off of trafficked ground." This is explained in contemporary commentary as a precaution against destroying roads, which may need to be used later to transport supplies. Not very applicable to SC2.
(5) "Focal ground" or "intersecting ground," which the OP writes off as being about alliances, is actually ground in which geographical or strategic arteries intersect. The centers of many maps (e.g. delta quadrant) are clearly intersecting ground. Sun Tzu's advice on intersecting ground is to "form communications," presumably meaning to establish alliances. I think however that it's not a big stretch to interpret "form communications" as keeping a large active recon ring around the intersecting ground. If you're fortifying the center of a big map, it's clearly important to have strong map control and recon.
(6) "Heavy ground" is when you've penetrated deep into enemy territory. The critical difference between heavy ground and light ground (articulated by the generals who campaigned with Sun Tzu) is how easily one can retreat form it. Heavy ground, which occurs when you use a large immobile force (e.g. tanks and thors) to push far into an enemy base, is very difficult to retreat from. Sun Tzu's advice on heavy ground is to "plunder" supplies, because it will be difficult to supply an entrenched army. That's not really applicable to SC2. However, with a little interpretive license we can probably say that "plunder supplies" means focus on destroying production facilities and economy.
(7) "Entrapping ground" is mountains, forests, and swamps. It is distinct because it is impossible to build any fortifications there, and so Sun Tzu advises any army to keep moving as quickly as possible, rather than risk being forced to defend in a spot where they can't fortify. Since there's almost nowhere in SC2 where you can't build, this isn't very applicable.
(8) "Encircled ground" is, as OP said, any situation where a small number of well-situated units can take out a large force if it maneuvers carelessly. However, Sun Tzu's advice is not, "On encircled ground, a-move and the bitch and moan about imba." What Sun Tzu does say is, "On surrounded ground make plans," and Cao Cao adds, "Bring surprise tactics into play." This is in fact great advice for zerg against a terran turtle. If the front is turtled, don't push the front. Use surprise tactics--nydus, drops, etc--to punish the terran's static position.
(9) "Fatal ground" occurs when units have no possibility to retreat alive, and only a slim possibility to live if they stand and fight. For Sun Tzu and other Chinese military philosophers, the distinctive thing about dying ground is that soldiers will be more motivated to fight if they have no chance to retreat, and so Ancient Chinese generals would intentionally put troops on dying ground in order to make them fight with more resolve. (See Chen Hao: "Put them on dying ground, and then they will live.") In SC2, all this really means is that if your units are screwed, you should do as much damage as possible, rather than trying to kite away when it's obviously hopeless. Stim is one micro tool that helps with that, but there are plenty of others.
The biggest misinterpretation, though, is in trying to use Sun Tzu's principles to demonstrate race imba. Sun Tzu wasn't writing about situations predesigned to be as equal as possible. He was writing about how to handle a multitude of situations that could occur in real conflict. I believe, as others have said, that if Sun Tzu was alive today he would advise you to study the matchup more and work harder to exploit terran weaknesses. Also, if you're going to read the Art of War with SC2 in mind, I recommend chapter 3 as a great place to start, especially for ZvT. It is all about the philosophy of how to defeat someone without ever being forced to confront them on their own terms. Other responses below.
Re PrinceXizor, + Show Spoiler +Where does Sun Tzu state that terrain is the least important of the five elements of war? I believe what you're referring to are Sun Tzu's five factors to be assessed before engaging in battle. In the text, he presents them in this order: the Way, the weather, the terrain, the leadership, and discipline. However, he never says one is more or less important than the others. I think a good general is supposed to assess all five factors, no matter what. Unfortunately, these five factors don't have an obviously useful application to SC2.
Re SageJTN, + Show Spoiler +Sun Tzu has not withstood the test of time better than the Judeo-Christian Bible. Yeah, it's amazing that we still read a 2,500-year-old treatise on military philosophy that was originally carved into planks of bamboo. But the Bible remains by far the most published book in human history, and probably altered the course of Western history more than any other single document. Unfortunately, the Art of War doesn't quite live up to that standard.
Re Mataza, + Show Spoiler +you are correct, translating the nine situations in Chapter 11 as "nine terrains" is misleading and also confuses them with the terrains discussed two chapters prior. "Nine situations" is fine, personally I prefer Cleary's "nine grounds." The point is that we're discussing situations that arise in relation to geographical terrain--not just the terrain itself.
Re gREIFOCs, + Show Spoiler +I actually find Clauswitz unbearably dense and cryptic, and have never been able to apply his work to anything in real life. I'd be very interested to hear how you apply Clauswitz to SC2. Maybe there is something in his work that I'm not seeing.
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This is great stuff man. But I have to say [like most of the previous posters] that there are way too many other factors that are involved in SC2. Someone mentioned macro. Someone else probably stated the fact that SC2 is a game fought with pixels and precise human control rather than the control of real human beings and warriors.
Regarding the ideas that Sun Tzu brings up about the usage of terrains: GREAT! It has tons of effect on how a battle SHOULD and will end up if said situations present themselves. And I think 90% of the time [even in an RTS] they will, but we've got to realize that we are dealing with advanced technology being put into the mix. I'm sure if Sun Tzu had in his arsenal forcefield, broodlings, big fruit overlords that he would revise a lot of what he says.
Once again great post, but this is quite a ways away from ever proving, even in the slightest, the imba of terran. (not saying that we are or aren't =D)
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eeeeeeeehhhhhh
couple things
criticism first then support.
1. While this post is in regards to both strategy (Sun Tzu) and Starcraft 2. It is not a Starcraft 2 strategy thread and thus doesn't really belong in the SC2 strat section. You are not asking for help dealing with a situation nor are you informing people on how to deal with a situation.
2. You can only apply certain facets of the AoW to Starcraft. While much of Sun Tzu's masterpiece is still relevant to this day. The book was ultimately written for legions of soldiers whose main modes of transport were by foot and horses. Armies for whom, morale, transportable supply, disease, obedience, and control. Starcraft units don't need to bring their supplies with them, they are not traveling for hundreds of miles. They will not flee when outnumbered, and they will never disobey their commander. I am not saying that this invalidates all of your arguements, but it must be taken into consideration.
3. You are looking at a terran players ability to use terrain to their advantage as an imbalance, but it has not occured to you that it may just be a racial trait. Yes terrans can take better advantage of chokes both defensively and offensively, however, they have disadvantages as well. You can immediately make 14 hydralisks upon completion of the hydralisk den, it will take the terran player much much longer to build 14 ghosts upon completing an academy, or 14 medivacs off of a stargate even with a reactor.
While it is easy for terrans to defend from a still position, with each additional base they take, it is harder and harder for them to spread their defensive forces and still keep all of the bases secure.
Your creep allows you to move units quickly from one base to another. It is also easier for you on multiple bases, to replenish your army. If you and a terran player both wipe eachother's armies out, you will be able to pull 21 hydras out in the time that they can make 1 siege tank, 4 marines, 2 marauders, and two medivacs. You can make 42 hydras 60 seconds later.
Terran still has some imbalances, but they are not the ones you think. Their T1 units are very powerful for their costs. 2 marines can beat a hydralisk in a fight without any upgrades. This is because during the early game terrans have to dedicate their SCV's to producing thier production buildings. As a result a terran's early push will have less money worth of units in it and therefore they need that efficiency. Later on however, the T player can mass infantry units and use that efficiency to destroy other players unless they have aoe. Their units still need to be balanced a bit to take care of those 1.5 timing pushes, but other than that they only have a few questionable air units.
I appreciate your plight and admire your relating AoW to SC2. This post is insightful and intelliegent. However, it is not a strategy post and it is now a valid reason to explain imba. If you believe that terrans are imba because their terrain advantages are better than other races advantages, that is different. But arguing imba just because a race has advantages that you do not is not accurate.
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very interesting opening post
same could easily applied to zvp imbalance
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If you have not seen Cool in the GSL on Gom TV, it is a must see. I play protoss but fruit dealer is amazing with his zerg play.
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On September 28 2010 13:44 sikyon wrote:
Hypothesis: Terrain makes ZvT imbalanced because Terran can manipulate terrain very advantageously while zerg cannot.
Unbiased test: PvT with forcefields.
Result: PvT is not imba in favor of toss just because they can manipulate terrain at will.
Hypothesis disproved, Scientific method >> Sun Tzu.
But in a more direct tangent, your explanations are a giant stretch. "Intensity" = stim? No. That's just a unit mechanic. You have a giant confirmation bias here where you're reading Sun Tzu, thinking he's a military genius and then trying to pidgeonhole everything into his theories. You might be able to explain away some things with the art of war but it's so vague that it's very difficult to make non-trivial predictions with it (yes I have read it). Please set aside your availability heuristic and take a look at your analysis from a point of view which doesn't start with "I KNOW ZvT is imba and I KNOW I can explain it with Sun Tzu"
And before anyone starts poking at me, yes, I am ~1000 points in diamond, and I do play random and I'm not saying ZvT doesn't favor T at least in the effort department
Wouldn't this be more true if your result line said
"result: PvT is not imba in favor of toss because both sides can manipulate terrain, it is balanced"?
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i really gotta read this book, sounds really good. on another note i really like what you did with this post (im a zerg player) it makes complete sense. I really like it.
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Here is how one way zerg is advantageous in ZVT based on Sun Tzu
"You may advance and be absolutely irresistible, if you make for the enemy weak points; you may retire and be safe from pursuit if your movements are more rapids than those of the enemy"
Zerg being faster than than Terran and retreat.
Terran is not OP if you know how to beat them
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Sun Tzu is absolutly required reading if you want to be able to do well in any war game. Though the text was written for primarily ground armies, with out the modern mechanized troop transports, air power, or rapid mobilization like you see with modern military forces, many of his tenants still apply to modern warfare.
This is true to strategy games as well. You would be wise to understand him.
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"You may find yourself in a situation where you have marauders. In this situation press t, then a, and click on the other color. You may advance yon Thor at any time, because it makes for a great immortal tool against both airborne creatures and landborn alike. In any situation where the enemy can threaten yon army, or threaten yon slaves, train the immortal Thor and send it to their ranks. If at any time you are flanked or attacked from multiple sides, it is important to not forget yon tanks need deploying. Bear down on the button 'e' and the enemy is now on completely fatal ground. Use your thors to advance on the colors on the map always and don't forget they are immortal as long as you use the auto-repair (chapter 1). Enemy settlements can be dealed with by thor. If at any time yon thor can not pass through a cliff use yon medevac, then use thor to thor the entrance so the thor can thor the entrenched enemy position. This is a great oppertunity to use yon thor to /dance to strike fear into yon enemies"
And then 300 pages on how to use Thors.
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On September 30 2010 09:43 Shigia wrote:
Here is how one way zerg is advantageous in ZVT based on Sun Tzu
"You may advance and be absolutely irresistible, if you make for the enemy weak points; you may retire and be safe from pursuit if your movements are more rapids than those of the enemy"
Zerg being faster than than Terran and retreat.
Terran is not OP if you know how to beat them
Because terran is slower than zerg right?
Cmon bro... T bio and hellions and air are all ridiculously mobile. The only mobile units zerg have are speedlings and mutas. Roach and banelings to a lesser extent, but those aren't really harass units. If you want to use them you need to commit an entire force.
If T couldn't put up a PF and 3 turrets and sit back with a glass of lemonade in a lawn chair then sure, Z could utilize harass power. However, no amount of lings will break a PF, and mutas are so bad vs turrets + repair now that you'd have to commit 20 mutas to even get a harass off. That's not a good investment.
Zerg mobility matters a hell of a lot more in ZvP, where lings can be useful and the P army is much slower and not capable of such harass like medivac drops.
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I like this post, I myself have read the art of war a couple of times as well as the "mastering the art of war" by liu ji and zhuge liang. What you wrote is all very fine and dandy however as most people who've read the art of war should know, everything should not be taken literary as Sun tzu is very elusive. Im not going to explain in detail of what I mean I do however recommend you to read some of Chang yu's comments on the subject (he describes different interpretations of his work).
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OP uses metaphors between SC2 and sun tsu to come to specious conclusions regarding balance... interesting read but completely fallacious in the end, unfortunately.
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I"ll be honest, I stopped reading when you said that creep speed wasn't really a bonus. If Creep wasn't worth it, you wouldn't see the players at the highest levels spreading it as well as they do. Instead, good creep spread is part of the hallmark of a superior Zerg.
Creep Speed is Stim movement speed, with no health cost, let's put it that way. There's a reason ling speed, baneling speed, and roach speed are all *critical* upgrades for their respective units.
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The teachings of Sun-Tzu are relevant because strategy is bound to no time. When people speak about weapons and technology they are mostly referring to tactics used in the battlefield not strategy.
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I like it and I find many of the points valid. but you are not giving enough credits to zerg's mobility and quick reinforcement ability.
Many of these strategies apply to army of mostly equal ability (weaponry, mobility, etc), but SC has 3 different races that have totally different attributes, which makes it really hard to compared directly like "apples to apples".
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It would be interesting if someone takes one of our ladder maps, label the different parts of it the terrain identified by sun tzu, and then watch lots of replays of people playing on that map and seeing if they see the patterns and solutions observed by sun tzu.
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@DeBurd
Kudos for actually doing some research. I disagree on the whole Bible part mainly because I don't like organised religion, the Bible has way too many contradictions and the Art of War is more of an intelligent read. Also as I am Chinese it has influenced me, my culture and pretty much all of the East much more than the Bible.
@OP
The way you read the Art of War and then applying it straight away is the equivalent of someone reading every unit and spell description from liquidpedia and then analysis pro games accurately. It just doesn't happen. Add on the fact that Chinese is so hard to translate given all its idioms and cultural references and the archaic nature of the text certainly doesn't help.
The reason why the Art of War is so successful in being adapted into business and modern military strategies is the word ADAPTED. The book gives the ability to analysis a specific situation and then react to it. It doesn't say "if an army is 10x your own, you are totally fucked" it will tell you not to engage directly. If you learn some Chinese history ( and you should because it's fucking awesome) there are so many cases where a commander follows written strategy books blindly and get their asses owned . The book shouldn't be applied to a general case like all ZvT. It should be applied when you are actually playing a ZvT and asking how to proceed now that I have this race and the opponent has that race. This leads on to perhaps the most famous quote from the Art of War:
So it is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you can win a hundred battles without a single loss.
If you only know yourself, but not your opponent, you may win or may lose.
If you know neither yourself nor your enemy, you will always endanger yourself.
This could be used to explain why Idra lose to Lotze the second match of GSL where Lotze knew that Idra knew that Lotze praticed a robo build. He knew that reaction Idra will have if he saw a robo and so he faked one to secure his win.
Now if we must apply to 9 situations to SC then really there is not much new that people haven't already thought of or done. Most of them are actually basic concepts when it comes to SC and most of what the Art of War suggests are pretty obvious actions. I would like to say this is my adaptation/interpretation of the Art of War for SC and use it to explain why Sun Tzu advices the different actions for the various situation. Now I prefer situation because these situations are not fixed geographic locations but something that could change i.e. when a Terran wall off has been breached it no longer functions as a wall but changes to a small choke.
1. Dispersive ground - it's pretty much just your base where you have quite a significant advantage i.e. You have home advantage at your base because there is less travel distance, maybe some defense structures, your army is usually well positioned and your harvesters can come help in emergency (perhaps not so good an advantage for the last one). With so many advantages it's obvious under most circumstances that you don't go attack it.
2. Light ground - it's pretty much just the area where you can poke at your opponent without losing much. Of course you want to keep moving in this situations. You wouldn't run your lings up a ramp to scout and then leave them there to die or leave your army near the enemy for no reason and giving them time to flank you.
3. Contentious ground - While a gold expo does grant an economic advantage if you can get it running, it doesn't normally give you an tactical advantage and lots of games are lost when someone gets too greedy and can't defend the gold. A more appropriate example would be high ground and most SC players who have never read the Art of War all know not to engage that unless they have vision.
4. Traversable ground - This one the OP really got it wrong. This is places where both sides can move freely. While it may read like it is anywhere with open space it will no longer be the case if a Terran has sieged some tanks or when Zerg establishes map control with mutas. A more subtle example is when say a Protoss opponent gets an observer and basically has map hack of your army and he can freely move about knowing he won't meet your army while you have to expect danger at every turn. The advice the Art of War gives about not getting isolated is because your army can meet your enemy at anytime and if you have a small force meeting their entire army....you will probably lose your small force.
5. Focal ground - This does apply although you have to adapt the meaning. The original text describes it as a place where you have access to/control of the rest of the empire and the advice is to make alliances. My interpretation is when you are in a situation of map control and the advice is to expand as making alliances in RL gives you extra resources like expanding in SC.
6. Heavy ground - This is probably the least applicable of the 9 situations. The original text describes when you are deep in enemy territory and have no steady supply of food to harvest the enemy's crops which will sustains you and weakens your enemy. While there are times when expansions are bypassed or when you have difficulty getting reinforcement there is no SC situations where you can 'feed' off your opponent's resources (wish we had engineers and silos from C&C).
7. Entrapping ground - While the text mentions terrain that will generally slow an army down it probably refers to the many tactics that have been employed in these areas such as archers above ravines or burning of mountains with whole armies in it (isn't Chinese history wonderful). So with that it can be interpreted as situations where you are trying to pass through a vulnerable place. So perhaps trying to get up an ramp that might be force fielded could be considered entrapping ground. The advice then remains the same as moving through quickly.
8. Encircled ground - Couldn't really tell how the OP interpreted this but traditionally it's a situation such as when a fortress guards the one road through the mountain and it would take months to go around the mountain. In these situations the enemy often send out small cavalry forces, with the help of downward momentum, charge the footmen and deal massive damage before retreating back to the fortress. This is SC could be a siege line with drops to harrass, colossus walking up and down cliffs with army at the front to guard it or muta harass with spine crawlers and ground army defending the base.
9. Fatal ground - This is actually written more about morale, another reason why ground is a bad translations. A famous example is the Battle of Jingxing where the commander forced his smaller army to be backed up against the river with no hope to escape and the end up winning through ferocity. Now this clearly does not translate into stim. It translate into simple human nature. When you do a drop and your medivac gets killed you just let your units do as much damage as possible. When the enemy pushes to kill your base you try to kill him off and if you don't you die.
The Art of War is extremely robust that is why it is used in so many different ways. The core of the book is about analyzing yourself, your opponent, your army, their army, positions, situations etc etc. It maybe ancient but it has so much use and the whole book actually looks into a lot more aspects than position such as discipline and morale. The hardest part is interpreting the information rather than following it's advice and that is why lots of people read it and few master it.
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A lot of what SunTzu is written under the premise that battlefield friction exists. Which is essentially the deterioration of performance of troups because of (amoung other things), fear, broken communication, etc. RTS games don't have this really.. DoW has fear...
In SC2 your troups do exactly what you tell them to do instantly. Not to poo on your thread, it's well written.
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Actually, surprise attacks, or multiple engagements can strike fear or at the very least frustrate your enemy into making a mistake (i.e broken communication). The infester terror achievement clearly marks the idea of striking fear into your enemy.
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....................And here I thought terran is OP zerg because of many harassing build order like hellions, reapers, cloak banshee, drop ship +marines, marauder, thor, and abusing cliff with drop ship. Apparently terrain+ terran is what make terran OP. The art of wall book is nice but I don't think it fits for sc2. Don't get me wrong it's great in real life. Even generals now a day use them as their philosophy.
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EPT
