[Q] broodlords, cost effective?

I've logged in as a first post to say that it hurts my soul whenever I see a high level zerg reveal BLs somehow and then, 2 minutes later, float them alone to an expo to target-fire a structure. I saw a game the other day where a zerg army was actually fighting even with a terran army (I KNOW, right?) and they had like 5-6 brood lords... ...firing at a PF under repair. The battle raged on for about a minute, and the zerg lost his army and shortly after, the brood lords, and then shortly after, the game.

It also makes me die a little inside when a zerg charges in with ~10 roaches, ~20 lings, and ~3 brood lords and thinks he's gonna win every battle he gets into regardless of how bad his position is.

Stop that.

They're not there to snipe buildings. You're thinking of mutas and occasionally banelings. There are exceptions, when the enemy doesn't have anti-air and you can fire from a position where they can't retaliate off the map or something. Ok, fine. Think "evil banshee" in that case, or void ray, or something like that.

They're not there to snipe workers. You're thinking of mutalisks and banelings again.
They're not there to tank. You're thinking of roaches. Also, don't say ultralisk or I will hurt you.

They are colossi that mess with the targeting priority of the A.I.
They are flying, constantly deployed siege tanks that never splash your own army.

They are there for the exact reason other people have said. You put them in the back of your army, and perhaps I should outline this point: with your army, and that's where the magic occurs. About 15 seconds into a battle where brood lords are firing into an army, you're going to notice that nearly everything on the ground is now either a broodling or dead. They do massive damage on initial hit- much like their roach friends, and their follow-up is not only a fast little dps unit that draws bullets like an electromagnet but it's also a huge positional advantage unit. Tanks will fire at the unit and splash allies. They block forward movement into your army, forcing the only option to be "retreat" which if you are good at all means "into your army." They eat attacks, letting everything else with range (You know, the hydras, roaches, and mutas) get literal free shots off.

If they make up more than a fourth of the food your army is comprised of, you're probably doing it wrong. If you are ever attacking with them alone, you are probably doing it wrong. It's actually easier to figure out how to use a brood lord if you look at how the other two races use their units.

Have you ever seen a protoss worth their salt march 6 naked colossi (side note: yes it is "colossi", not goddamn "coloxen" I don't care what the root of the word is, Zeratul himself says colossi during the campaign ("overmind level" intro scene) and that's called "Word of God") into an expo and not immediately lose the game? Probably not. There are exception games and situations, but generally throwing away 6 colossi for a command center ends with the protoss losing. That's why you don't see that. What you see is the colossi in with the rest of the army in a gigantic death ball. When they engage, what naturally happens? Well, the zealots charge in, the stalkers blink back if micro'd, and the colossi, since their pathing isn't interrupted by other units, usually end up waaaaaaaaaaaaaay in the back, lighting everything on fire including the doodads from range 9. Sounds good to me.

When a terran makes siege tanks, the units serve the same general purpose no matter where they are. They're there to blow things up from very far away. Hint- the only melee terran unit in the game (besides the predator from the campaign for fun zergy flavor and the firebats from Brood War) is the SCV and they most certainly have a right to complain when you send them in. In fact, terrans seem to excel at fighting battles several hundred yards from where they're standing don't they? If they should so happen to be at their home base, than an attacking army gets hit and goes "oh no, better not invade that." If the tanks are the ones invading, they get to happily blast away at far away targets like buildings and people while the rest of the army assumes a defensive stance- something terrans are very good at, please note- and yells "bring it!" Go ahead, walk into that defensive line that's actually firing at your stuff, and see if you're not quickly turned into a giant half-concave streak of red blood on the ground. Go watch the most recent Dreamhack Steel series final rounds, except watch them while repeating the phrase "The terran is attacking with his defense" and you're going to see it in a whole new light. That guy knows what's up.

When a terran makes ravens or a protoss makes high templar or even some zerg make infestors, what are they trying to do? They are trying to use an infinitely renewing resource- unit energy- to deal damage. A raven can drop turrets which are stationary and armor plated marines, they can deploy (hunter) seeker missiles which, if not noticed, make large explosions of red mist, and they can deploy point defense drones which confuse (or rather flat out stop) incoming attacks and allow moments of "free fire" from allied forces. A high templar casts feedback, which stops all other energy units dead (literally sometimes), and they cast storm which, if not reacted to, kills you near immediately. And then, when they have no energy, they can turn into archons. Archons may not be the best unit in the game, but unlike high templar, raven, and infestors they possess an attack and significant life. As hilarious as it would be, you can't click a button on an infestor and have it explode into 2 roaches. And infestors cast fungal growth- which allows for surrounds and delays- and they cast neural parasite which results in the best confusion ever- you get a free unit that probably kills some of their army off, and then their army probably kills the unit. Talk about a wasted shot! Plus, infested terrans are sort of an "instant reinforce- just add water" sort of unit that, if you ever actually give them a chance and look at their stats, don't do too badly against armored units. In particular, toss a few at some unprotected buildings. They'll usually wreck it before they despawn if allowed to stand there and fire.

Use that "energy logic" on a brood lord now. What do they do? They basically spawn little mini-zerglings. For free. Constantly. Without energy. You can't feedback them and stop them. They're big ole' armored fellows, and the moment they swing, they deal massive damage. They're not dropping turrets you can destroy immediately. You can't "dodge" it like a storm or a missile. You have two choices once a brood lord fires at you- one, you can stand there and shoot the broodlings like a tool or two- you can run (backwards.) And this happens constantly. Every swing, over and over. Contrast to a carrier, which do the same thing but in mid-air (so guess what? they're not blocking forward movement) and which require money to create and then replace the interceptors (last I checked, broodlings were free.)

When a zerg makes brood lords, the units serve as a kind of "swarming aid." In the most ideal sense, how does zerg win games? Generally they make a lot of stuff, and all of that stuff hits the enemy either all at once (swarming them, which is where you get the title "the swarm") or in such a pattern that the defender can't be everywhere at once and loses ground from the sides until eventually either a key support structure is accidentally lost or a position occurs where the zerg gets to land a proverbial chess "checkmate" surround/swarm as outlined earlier (Starcraft is chess at warp speed- Day[9].) In both cases, the zerg has done what? They have confused the enemy somehow, they have surrounded them somehow, they have taken a good fighting arc, they have split the army and outnumbered them, or they have surprised them.

A brood lord is the best unit, in my opinion, you could ever have during a fight with zerg. What a brood lord does is usually demolish the unit it strikes (high initial strike damage) and then creates a situation where the unit is surrounded and more easily swarmed (broodlings) and then the victim throws attacks at a unit (broodlings) that cost you nothing (confusion.) This unit encompasses everything but subtlety into it's design, it is the quintessential zerg unit. For the BW players, remember the queens had an ability that would blow a unit up and turn them into broodlings? Boy, doesn't that sound familiar? Yes, except like all the other races the Zerg have evolved too. The queens are now putting their skills into the hatcheries, and the Lords- the Kings if you will, since "brood king" sounds kinda stupid- are now doing what the queens used to do, but better. They went from doing that with energy- which was already good- to doing it for free, which is even better.

It is there to swarm your enemy. When your army attacks from 3 sides into the protoss deathball, about 10 seconds in what happens is the broodlings get almost all auto-fire'd down by the protoss but the zerg has now completely swarmed the protoss in a circle, oval, or jacked up venn-diagram of death, nearly negating the collosi and their "arc demolishing" attack completely. When the zerg army suddenly outranges the terran's siege tanks, the terran is scrambled into an offensive position where they must attempt to reach in and counteract this unit or lose their greatest strength- their defensive stances. A zerg can react to this, and after 20 seconds of their 60 marines "exploding into broodlings" 6 at a time, the battle is over because the rest of the zerg army has been wailing away at them this entire time.

And when a zerg does run out of regular army after the attack, having just looked back after re-injecting all their hatcheries, they laugh, remake their entire army in one production cycle, re-support the brood lords, and outnumber the defenses that are coming back 5-6 at a time.

It hurts my pride as a zergling when I see someone make 3-4 brood lords, fly them out of position to snipe a unit or two, and then lose half of them to vikings. God... dammit. Play protoss and go colossi a few times. Play terran and make tanks. Then come back and play zerg, and make brood lords. Do you remember when you took those 3 colossi, marched them into the enemy mineral line, and watched them die to corruptors? No? Good. Don't do that with your brood lords then. And for god's sake, don't do them on less than 3 bases unless you actually know what you're doing. By the time you get them out they comprise half your army (which is oftentimes more than a fourth) and you can't very well swarm an enemy that outnumbers you, now can you? I mean they're actually not too bad at supporting the calamity that is a "zerg defense" much like how tanks do it. And hell, even if you do break even, you still lose. Zerg units are designed to lose straight up, short of a surround. Please learn that before throwing 50 brood lords at X whatever in Unit Tester and declaring they suck because they didn't win. If your instinct was to do this to "test" the brood lords, then you honestly don't know how to use them. When 50 brood lords fire at something in a ball or against a wall, not every broodling gets to play a role. You shouldn't have that many to begin with.

Besides, the transition should be easy. There's a 99.9% (lol) chance you went mutas for harass. You have the spire. You might have an upgrade for the mutas. You probably focused on upgrades for zerglings/banelings too. Just get the greater spire. Transforming the spire doesn't stop you from making mutalisks or corruptors the way creating a reactor halts production at that terran facility. Ah ha. Didn't think of it like that eh?

Brood lords work with any upgrade except maybe air armor. High air damage? Great, units explode more easily on hit. Melee attack? Swarm them fast, you're getting free zerglings with every volley. Melee armor? The A.I. will fire at the wrong unit for that much longer. All of those help with either outnumbering, or confusing, the enemy. Remember that battle I talked about in the first paragraph? I wonder how that would have turned out if the 5-6 brood lords were actually participating in the fight against the army. If the fight was close to begin with, the introduction of five brood lords would have made it horribly one sided for the zerg. And then the zerg, after smashing the army, could have just rolled the PF with their entire unopposed army. I don't care how many scvs are repairing it when there are 15 roaches, 3 brood lords, and for some reason a 4 hp hydralisk firing at it.

"Cost effectiveness" is not a term you should even be using in this game because the effectiveness of any army unit here is solely reliant on the grey matter roughly 8 inches in front of the monitor. A marine's "cost effectiveness" becomes 0 when you walk them into a siege line and watch them burst into blood. A single void ray could have a cost effectiveness nearing infinity if, by it's use perhaps by rush against a no-AA player, it single-handedly wins the game for you. Every battle in this game is situational somehow. Brood lords become "cost efficient" when they fire a bazillion volleys into an army while you flank and wipe them out, and they suck hard when you have them fire at some structure while your army which is missing 20 food gets killed in the straight up brawl nearby. You don't even have to micro them, for god's sake. This is probably the one zerg unit you're supposed to 1-a. All they're supposed to do is sit in back and catapult zerglings at people, you're free to micro everything else as needed and lord knows you have to if you want the the other 3/4 of your zerglings to do something besides dry hump each other or perform the "spiral dance" when they attack. Good god, I don't even know why I've gone into so much detail about this. This isn't a hard unit to use. Just... put them in the army. That's it. It's not that hard. They handle like dynamite loaded cement trucks for a reason. Just drive them at things and the A.I. suddenly becomes your best friend.

If you went for brood lords and lost, and are wondering why the brood lords didn't "win you the game," maybe you need to rewatch the replay right now and see if you're actually playing like a zerg or an infested terran.