EPTSo suddenly that team is able to afford more units for themselves and they are able to concentrate their armies much more, while we have yet to take out that disconnected player's main. The problem is that the sharing of resources is instant and the alive players benefit immediately. This bypasses that 3 minute time limit in the beginning and so even though you're supposed to take out the disconnected player, it's actually really hard to take out that player. Particularly in random games where efforts can be uncoordinated.
Let's talk about 3v3! - Page 2
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loving it
Canada271 Posts
So suddenly that team is able to afford more units for themselves and they are able to concentrate their armies much more, while we have yet to take out that disconnected player's main. The problem is that the sharing of resources is instant and the alive players benefit immediately. This bypasses that 3 minute time limit in the beginning and so even though you're supposed to take out the disconnected player, it's actually really hard to take out that player. Particularly in random games where efforts can be uncoordinated. | ||
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fighter2_40
United States420 Posts
On two maps that you disliked, typhoon and citadel, we have the best records on. Typhoon if anyone is zerg they early double expand while terrans/ protoss hold the front with a bunker or so just to discourage a timing push. The zerg then can mass up so many mutas to completely contain the opponents in their base while the two other players are free to do whatever they wan't throughout the map. Toss players can also do strong pheonix plays on this map if there are any zerg / minimal terran. Citadel i found a timing push at around 6 minutes is most powerful and can instantly win the game 80% of the time. This push is strongest with two 4 gating toss players and a terran. The only thing that I encountered that can hold this was seige tanks on the ledge. | ||
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VATO_Gandair
United States232 Posts
After reading through a lot of this I'm starting to feel that a strong timing rush can be very effective. When should we back off after that initial attack? Is it better to take out one player and retreat or in the case of maps with shared bases continue pushing? When it comes to Monsoon, Arakan Citadel, and Typhon would it be much better to go air and turtle up the front? This impulsively seems to be a great idea for Typhon, but Monsoon and Arakan have multiple entry points that need to be defended on ground. Unlike Typhon these can't simply be sat on by all three armies. I feel they'd be more difficult to defend against a fast moving push because of the time it takes to reposition. Thanks fighter2_40 for that post about Typhon. That's one of our tough maps. | ||
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Conrose
437 Posts
On December 30 2010 22:59 VATO_Lucian wrote: The maps have been driving us crazy. Here's what I think about them. Monsoon is terrible. Monsoon's shared base layout means if one person gets broken the entire team is suddenly at risk. There is also only a single gold expansion on either side of the map. Being stuck with only two bases puts a very hard cap on the time you have to win and doesn't leave much room for doing anything. I feel very restricted and vulnerable playing on it. Monsoon is one of those maps I either love or hate depending on my partners... Or rather it's a map I hate when any of my partners is a zerg. This forces that side to either has ve one player sacrifice economy or army to prevent a domino effect loss or to go into early aggression. If all players on your team are Protoss or Terran, it's a lot more enjoyable. Lack of Expansions is also something that hurts zerg play on this map. Ulaan Depths has some similar problems. There's a main/nat for everyone then a single gold expo at the north and south sides of the map. The difference from monsoon is that the bases are separate and each player has a ramp to wall off at. Two of the ramps exit toward each other while the third is further away by itself. Individual bases are made only slightly safer by being solo with ramps. The issue with that is multi-army pushes against the isolated base being difficult to defend and reinforcing the attacked player is sometimes futile because of the unit advantage they have from their combined armies. It's pretty good still. Ulaan Depths is one I HATE because of that far off main being so difficult to assist unless it's Protoss that rushed Sentry tech. If it's Terran, his wall is usually sniped putting him behind in supply, tech and macro. If it's Zerg, well I've played this map as Zerg and I can tell you that more often than not, my main frequently ends up at the 2 or 7 o'clock expansion as a result of a 3x Rush that knocks out few if any drones simply because I transferred them over when my drone scouted the first push. Arakan Citadel is another shared base with two expos in it blocked with destructible rocks. There are many expansions on this map, two of which are golds, and an additional two are mineral-only golds. This map is good to play on except that the main base is very wide open and has a lot of avenues for drop or air play. Our losses are always due to air on this map because of the excessive ground distance AA units need to cover to defend the far corners of the base. There is also a large area behind for flyers to move out of reach of static defenses. Not such a big fan of this one due to all the aerial punishment. We don't know whether to try and get air units first ourselves or to build mass AA on ground. Arakan Citadel is in my opinion is the most fun 3v3 map of the lot. You have a bounty of available expansions, 2 safe (Albeit slow expansions). The Mains can be walled off by 2 players effectively to secure all 3 bases + the 2 expansions (So having a Zerg player on your team doesn't royally screw you over). Ranged Units can further assist the chokepoints with high ground advantage with great ease. The downside though is as you say, Due to the nature of the geography itself, it does favor an air heavy mid and late game, and wall scaling units and drops are very powerful throughout the match... this means reapers, Colossi, Blink Stalkers, MMM, etc... Muta Harass is notorious against the In-Base expansions even if you set up a bunch of static AA simply because the Zerg being able to hide behind his team mates walls can safely rush to Muta Tech (He'll still make lings if only for breaking down the rocks but this makes them available for defense as well) Quicksand is awesome, but I can see where a lot of people would dislike it. It's extremely small and doesn't quite have enough naturals for all players involved. There are three gold expos close to each other in the center. Games on this map are very chaotic and fast paced. A lot of early rushes seem to occur. It's laid out like a pizza with destructible rocks connecting the slices near the crust. Things happen very quickly on here, but that's how I like to play anyway so it suits me rather well. I'll agree with you on this one, Quicksand makes me smile regardless of what race I play. While the rush distances are small, so are the reinforcing distances so in the time it takes for your opponents to half way finish breaking your wall as protoss or Terran, your team mates will easily come in from behind and crush them from both sides. If you're Zerg, throw up a fast pair of crawlers and grab yourself some early Roaches to try to hold your choke. If you are terran... PF a Gold gives you a good shot at transitioning into 2 base play where Protoss really stand no chance at securing an expo before mid-game. The nature of this map lends itself well to 1 Base plays, and the Protoss being at a serious disadvantage when it comes to securing an expansion typically play the most aggressive with 1 Base Fast Blink Stalkers + Colossi builds which really abuse this map. Every time I've played this map and a Zerg partner didn't auto-GG because a few lings and marines showed up at his main at the 5-6 minute mark, it's been a fun game. Bio Lab is another map I really enjoy. Separate mains with shared naturals and two ramps leading up. The mains can be walled with two buildings and by combining armies and defense the naturals can be held easily. There's a fistfull of expansions on this map as well which includes two golds. Similar to Arakan Citadel air is very powerful on this map because of the paths between the different mains. This is another one I've always enjoyed since like in Quicksand, Rushing one player usually results in your armies being caught in unfavorable positioning from behind by the partners... we're talking about a concave on both ends, while Fast Expanding before macroing up an army is also tremendously risky due to the nature of the Natural Expos area. The two golds are VERY risky since the expos themselves are on the bad end of the high ground advantage, while the 4 other Expos, while difficult, aren't impossible to defend due to high ground and the thin ramp leading to them from the naturals plateau. Granted the way the entrances are choked on this map makes Air play really powever, most notably against Protoss who walled up since even if they left room for units to squeese by, it's usually only Terran Marines and Zerg Hydras that will get through... and by the time they get through Mutas and VRs can move for about 5 seconds and not have to worry about being hit for another 20 seconds. Frontier is another map I like. There are plentiful expansions including two islands and two golds. Mains are separate and have two ramps leading up to each one. It's difficult to defend early pressure on this map because of the two ramps. Each main is also susceptible to drops because the minerals sit a good distance back from their opposite edge. Frontier: I love it. It's hard to keep track of all the expansions, and if scouted, it's not too hard to defend any but the island expansions. Reinforcing any one main doesn't take forever since the central main can be pathed through. There is just so much you can do on this map that it just doesn't get old... I mean, 3 Mains per side with 5 Natural Expo sites, one of which is gold and one of which is very secure. Many games I've played on this map resulted in T3 Macro plays with a lot of micro to abuse terrain or unit abilities. Air isn't grotesquely favored like on other turtle maps. Siege units have a lot of places to be placed, scouting is incredibly important due to the number of avenues you can push through. If there is a map I can call "Fast Based Macro" favored... this is it... and I love it. Colony 426 is another map I enjoy like quicksand, It typically plays fast and is relatively short. The mains are separate and strewn about the map with two in the middle. I like how the mains are split it and dislike it at the same time. It's easy for a combined army to catch another by itself and ruin it. There's three ground attack channels and the middle player's bases are vulnerable to air. Colony 426... I'll be honest, I hate this map. I hate how split all the mains are since it places heavy favor on 3v1ing the first player with rush builds and then 3v2ing the surviving players. I've never seen a game on this map go otherwise. Dig Site I like a lot. It has expansions, separate mains, and is pretty big in the. I've got no complains about it and play my best on it. I wish I had more to say, but it's hard to identify what makes it play so well for me. I HATE Dig Site... but it's got nothing to do with the map layout and everything to do with the fact that I always get stuck with mouth breathers for partners on this map. The most recent example was I cannon Rush-Contained the two terran bases at the bottom of the map and told my partners to use their rush built attack units to attack the isolated protoss player before one of the Terrans could tech tanks and slowly demolish my wall of Cannons... they instead stayed inside their bases with all their units to defend themselves from the "Inevitable Rush" for a full 15 minutes. The time before that, Me and a Terran player were about to throw down our first SDs when we noticed no movement whatsoever from our partner. We proceeded to send our workers on the task of demolishing our own bases, then waypointing them to attack the 3rd player's base before dropping from the match. Typhon is a map I feel is very well made on paper, but somehow seems to fall short in actual use. Shared mains and naturals in a very wide open area with a wide ramp at the front and a path behind covered with destructible rocks. The distance between naturals from the two halves is very short by air. Air harass and drops are particularly effective here. There's a handful of expansions at the bottom including two islands, but it's difficult to expand to them when under pressure because your entire base is connected as one giant blob that's hard to step away from safely. It's so big that covering ground distance from one side to another to defend a multi directional push makes it a real headache. I actually really enjoy Typhon, although yes it is one of those maps that favors air, there are enough ground approaches and short drop distances make ground heavier armies effective as well. The large size of the bases and the naturals plateau makes hidden tech plays viable as well. In one match I had 4 Academies hidden away throughout the main and wasn't caught by observers or a couple of scans until after I had already dropped all 4 Nukes on whole stacks of supplies for each player, scouted a player going for Mass VR play, and destroyed over 40 workers. Triple same race teams? Race combinations are completely lost on me. My first reaction was to say TPZ and take one of everything then call it "good", However after playing a while I've noticed that triple of the same race is powerful in that it lets you use all possible tech paths. Protoss can have one person go mass gateway units, another mass stargate, and another handles robo tech. Terran get bioball, mech, and air. Zerg get well... zerg seem to always be able to spawn whatever is most convenient at the time due to how larva works so they just get really scary when in massed. I think that's more psychological than anything. Infestor baneling muta harass roach hyrdra is something I saw once. normally that series of words should never be together. Triple zerg also lends to a nasty early triple 6 pool to try and get someone out very early then someone gets banes and the other go into spire/hydra/roach. I've personally found that all same race teams tend to be on the weak side. 3x Zerg usually means 3x 6-Pool though to be honest... and 3x Zerg gets wrecked by just one Protoss Opponent pumping out a few Sentries before mid-game. 3x Terran gets wrecked if there is one Zerg player who pumps out a grotesquely large number of Banelings early and relying on their partners to finish the non-wall buildings off while microing the banes against any other early bio units. 3x Protoss is crippled by one Terran teching ghosts or one Zerg teching Infestors. One of everything is what we happened to play today. We've generally been playing whatever race we want and changing around occasionally. We're having a difficult time splitting up the tech when being different races. In a one of everything setup the easiest long-range attack to get is terran tanks. Collosi and Broodlords take much longer to get. Terran and Protoss seem to have the easier to obtain anti-air units with the viking and phoenix. Zerg and protoss seem to dominate ground to ground with speedlings and zealots. Lings can contain units until the slower zealots can catch up and put on the hurt. Medivacs work well with gateway units because they can heal zealots and templar. combined with guardian shield it's very strong. Works great with roach/hydra or zerg air too. We haven't done too much experimenting with cross race unit comps, but we're working on that. The one of Everything set up is strong on some maps, but as I've mentioned above, the Zerg player can be a liability on a number of maps. Generally they are great at shared bases (Arakan Citadel especially)and are generally written off if they spawn on an isolated base, and have to struggle with their own glaring weakness on maps with few or very risky expansion options or play to their strengths on maps with short reinforcement or rush distances. A Zerg who starts creep spread early on Quicksand is dangerous like you wouldn't believe! If you are going to play with Zerg in your team, have him practice his Speedling/Infestor Micro for those maps that zerg ache on, it really makes a huge difference if they can manage Speedling/Infestor on one base.[quote]Rushing or tech'ing is a question we never know the answer to usually. Should we attack with two armies while the other techs? Doing a triple rush with ZZT speedling, baneling, marine has performed well. However defensive macro play with the same comp was also strong. Most of our losses are due to the other team pooling all their of their armies and then slamming one of us into nothingness then using their then-overwhelming numbers to kill the remaining two armies without difficulty due to numbers superiority. It feels difficult to get back into a 3v3 game because there's more enemy players to worry about sniping your base during the rebuild. In 1v1 and 2v2 it's easier to cover a rebuild, but in 3v3 and 4v4 it just takes one member of their team to take it out leaving a fair size behind still. [quote] My favored approach has been one player using a moderately safe rush build, another using a more mid-game Macro oriented build while the third does a tech rush. The player using the Rush build can poke the opposing bases and possibly scout pooled units, if its not to our liking, the tech rusher and the mid-game player can both adjust accordingly and usually get something out in time to out-do the opposing rush. If the rusher can get a free kill (Not often) or cripple one of the players, woot. With the Terrans getting out Stim/Shield Marines and Tanks has been pretty good for mid game while mass Thors if they are the tech rusher has proven quite solid. For Protoss, I've found that 3Gate Robo is solid for the mid-game player while 2Gate Blink Stalker/Colossi or Phoenix VR... or this one time I went Phoenix/Colossi are pretty good Tech rush builds. A Zerg player who is allowed to tech into BLs or Ultras often wins the game, while Mass Muta is pretty strong on the large shared bases maps. | ||
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Conrose
437 Posts
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Apprentice
United States52 Posts
However, for obvious reasons, I rarely play team random. Maybe we could create a community for regular prearranged teams. I don't know how many could be interested, but there could be a few... | ||
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quillian
United States318 Posts
As day[9] says, strats that are "all in" in 1v1 are really reasonable in 2v2 and 3v3, because you a) can gang up, making rushes stronger, and b) can expand after fairly "all in" plays and still expect to have time to recover and tech up. Instead of thinking "whats the minimum I need to defend against 1 person rushing?" and macroing hard, you have to think "what do I need to survive a 3 on 1 rush long enough to give my allies a chance to macro or do damage." With all this in mind, the best strats IMO are ones that use 3 rushes with similar timings, followed by an expansion, tech, and another timing push at 2nd tier. For instance, in a TZP team, if z goes 7 roach rush, terran goes 2 rax marines, and protoss goes 4 gate, all 3 attacks will hit about the same time. You put pressure on one person, then expand and tech up. I think the strategic depth of 3's is far greater than 1's if you have a co-ordinated team. However, because few top level players dedicate a lot of time to it, it isn't nearly as well understood or standardized. The greater complexity makes it almost impossible to master, so lots of players just write it off entirely. | ||
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-miDnight-
Taiwan455 Posts
Most of the 3v3 map zerg can't take their 3rd or even 2nd. Some of the map naturals is about 2 miles from the main. And if one team decide to do 6 pool x3, there is the auto lost specially with zerg. | ||
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Battousai13
United States638 Posts
In 3's, it's pretty hard to secure your natural unless your push was successful. Getting your third is next to impossible. Your first push should cripple or take out one of the opponents. Also, never underestimate the power of harass. | ||
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Twitch89
Canada24 Posts
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VATO_Gandair
United States232 Posts
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Conrose
437 Posts
On January 03 2011 13:34 VATO_Lucian wrote: A couple of the above posts really highlight another problem. Some of the maps don't have room for expanding and it forces two base play. Also mentioned was zerg having nowhere to expand to and having played zerg myself I really feel that restriction. I'm not used to managing two-base plays and only two-base plays. I'm usually looking for the next step to take, but when there isn't one I get kinda lost. Can anyone offer some insight on what my goal would be instead of "find a third"? Quicksand more or less forces zerg into 1 base play unless you get luck with the map positions. | ||
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Galaxy77
Hong Kong256 Posts
Most games just tend to be massing units early game with a very well timed attack into 1 player cripples them to the point where they cant recover. Then one of your allies techs whilst you continue to pressure the other 2. Once your ally has teched and has the relevant tech structure (spire is probably the best tech structure for team games) you and your other ally can then pool him all your resources, this typically provides the killing blow to win you the game. | ||
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kckkryptonite
1126 Posts
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Lobotomist
United States1541 Posts
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Alphasquad
Austria505 Posts
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VATO_Gandair
United States232 Posts
Breaking air was just so troublesome. Especially when they got BM and took the islands to just stand there and waste five minutes of our time for me to spawn mutas/corruptors in large enough quantity to go take those out. Having to kill off hydras for supply sucked because I hate wasting larva like that. | ||
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DeathCards_AUS
Australia5 Posts
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StarN
United States2587 Posts
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TyrantPotato
Australia1541 Posts
"im rushing to brood lords protect me" | ||
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