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I'm not sure if this or the strategy forum is the right place for this thread, but I'm thinking this might be to broad of a topic for the strategy forum.
There has been much talk about macro/micro, build orders and counters to specific builds or unit compositions. But not so much talk about something equally fundamental, but somewhat less tangible: The strengths of each race. How each race should be played to its fullest potential, how they should try to direct the flow of the game for their benefit and which game paths to try to avoid.
I'm going to focus on discussing strengths instead of weaknesses so that it will not turn into a balance discussion, as there are already lots of those threads.
-Zerg
Best mobility
Best map awareness due to overlords and creep tumors
Fastest possible economy growth. Hatcheries are cheap and they have the ability to solely focus on worker production
Fastest race to mass reinforce with
Easiest race to change army compositions with, thus best reactive race
-Protoss
Strongest late-game army composition, or "ball"
Fastest small scale reinforcements with warp gates
Great ability to affect various game timings
Great specialized units, or specific unit counters.
Non-committing attacks. Easy to retreat a losing attack, due to force fields
-Terran
Very effective attacks with a small set of units, i.e. m&m drops
Longest ranged unit, siege tank
Best static defense. Planetary fortress, bunkers and siege tanks
Best race to fortify a position with
Arguably the largest number of viable openings or builds.
Feel free to add.
Some general questions withing the scope of this thread:
1. How should a game progress ideally for each match up?
2. What type of each game should a specific race try to avoid?
3. What is the main goals of each race in the early game/mid game/late game?
4. How should each race try to play when from behind?
5. How should each race capitalize on their advantage when they are ahead?
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Haha I "agree" with all this but it's SUPER well known  te Brady games strategy guide states all of that in similar wording  although the forcefield=fast retreat was one I hadnt thought of.
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I suggest retooling this thread to fit strategy, more like "IF YOU ARE PLAYING THIS RACE, MAKE SURE YOU ARE ABUSING THESE ADVANTAGES!!"
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I'm sorry but I absolutely hate these kinds of lists. There is no purpose to them, all that they do is confuse people who do not have a solid understanding of the game. It is a list for the sake of making a list.
None of these are hard and fast rules in every situation. Zerg can be very mobile, but if the protoss opponent goes for phoenixes and zerg responds with hydras, Zerg is completely immobile. Terran may be effective with small sets of units and drops, but Zerg can do the same thing with ling runbys or Protoss DT harass.
When you type out lists like this it is as though you are trying to make the races look like different fighters in a fighter game (EG The bulky slow but powerful guy, the agile quick but weak fighter, the all round balanced fighter, etc). when in reality the game does not work in such a set in stone manner.
Some general questions withing the scope of this thread:
1. How should a game progress ideally for each match up?
2. What type of each game should a specific race try to avoid?
3. What is the main goals of each race in the early game/mid game/late game?
4. How should each race try to play when from behind?
5. How should each race capitalize on their advantage when they are ahead?
These questions are also terrible for the same reason. Look at #2, that is completely build and situation specific. A terran going MM might want a fast action packed slug fest but a match later he might be meching and turtling, slowly taking expansions until he is maxed. A zerg might want to drone up as much as possible or he might want to be hyper aggressive with roaches and try to cripple his opponent. It is simply too stylistic a question to properly answer.
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Even if races have different strengths, they also have different playstyles. There's no real point in trying to categorize each race's ideal goals and positions, as each different style can completely change the feel and usage of the race. For example, does MarineKing resemble NaDa? Or IdrA, Zenith? Every player will add his own flavor to the race, therefore I think you can't answer any of your questions with an absolute answer.
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In brood war a simplistic break down of the races was.
Protoss: Quality > Quantity
Terran: Synergy
Zerg: Quantity > Quality.
Unfortunately Sc2 doesn't particularly operate like this. The lines between Protoss and Terran characteristics are particularly blurred. The division between the racial aspects, was something that gave each race is own flavor in bw.
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Based on that list I should switch to zerg. ><
Whats scary is they are all real advantages O.o
Never really saw zerg that way before.
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Seeing as Terran is the race I play most, there are some things I would like to add.
Terran have the best harassment possibilities with medivacs, between almost always being readily availible, blue flame hellions ripping apart workers, banshee, and reapers, it is almost impossible to protect multiple bases from even half of these. That being said, you cannot forget to talk about the mechanics of mules, larva inject, and chronoboost,
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In my mind its easier to split it up differently. Trying to label all the strengths and weaknesses of each race seems too complicated. When thinking of the differences in the races I feel that each race is fairly similar but there are obvious differences. I usually only consider 3 for each one.
Protoss: chrono boost, extensive tech tree, warp in
Zerg: larva, creep, production
Terran: mules, wide variety of upgradeable stationary defenses, easily accessible and efficient harass
The way i have to try and understand the game with my fragile mind is that each race can execute any style of strategy as long as they keep these ideas in mind. Obviously the strategy has to be sound. This is what i tell myself at least
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On February 04 2011 14:49 Cyanocyst wrote:
In brood war a simplistic break down of the races was.
Protoss: Quality > Quantity
Terran: Synergy
Zerg: Quantity > Quality.
Unfortunately Sc2 doesn't particularly operate like this. The lines between Protoss and Terran characteristics are particularly blurred. The division between the racial aspects, was something that gave each race is own flavor in bw.
Yeah, that's what I always thought. Protoss had quality but expensive and hard to replenish armies. Terrans had units that didn't do too well on their own, but compliment each other units very well (much more so than other races in my opinion). While Zerg had lots of cheap, expendable and easily replaceable minions.
Things have sort of changed now though with the new macro mechanics.
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The way I see it, one of the advantages of zerg is that they are for the most part, fairly fast moving, and have the cheapest scouts bar hallucinations. Because of this they can cheaply have eyes nearly anywhere, allowing them to fight almost guerrilla style. Using speedling scouts, mutalisk harassment, proxy or offensive nydus worms, and the occasional drive by mauling on a straggler, zerg can cut away at an entrenched enemy and force them to move when they do not want to. Which is good when that enemy is a terran tank line. Personally, I feel this is a necessity, as we are all deeply aware of how well zerg armies do as the aggressor in a straight fight with an equal enemy army.
To paraphrase Brill said as played by Gene Hackmen, "Turn your weaknesses into strengths. If your weak and hes strong, hes slow and your mobile. You are hidden and he is exposed."
Then again, I am a rather low level player.
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I would say the "point" of zerg is to overwhelm your opponent. I say this because the changes they made between SC1 and SC2 are most evident in the queen and larva change... doubling the amount of units you can have.
The "point" of Protoss is really strong timing attacks. The changes between SC1 and SC2 are the pylon warping in, warp prism, the "bunker busting" unit known as the immortal
The "point" of Terran is harassment and controlling the point of engagement. Large numbers of medivacs allows for a lot of attacks in different places. Also, bunker salvage, sensor towers, the now more powerful turrets, planetary fortresses all seem to indicate that terran is supposed to know how the enemy is moving and is supposed to create the perfect position
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To answer the question of how you should play from behind (as protoss) If your one 1 base or can FF an area for an extended period of time you can sort of play from behind, but other than chronoboosting probes as much as possible you can't really make 20 drones or call down mules, therefore you should have some kind of plan that suits your for playing behind. Personally, I rely on my scouting abilities to not get behind, but if I do get behind I go into a mode of over scouting to know when attacks are comming so that I can warp in a cannon or units if I need.
Oh, and also protoss is timing pushed based :D
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I was gonna post that these are all strikingly blatant and probably doesn't need a whole thread about it....
but I do think a lot of people have "forgotten" these generalities of the game and who knows, maybe someone will an epiphany after reading this. Probably not, but it doesn't hurt.
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One thing from the OP im not completely sold on, correct me if im wrong but the strength of a max army. wouldn't Terran mech surely be stronger than protoss' in those numbers?
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On February 04 2011 16:45 Lord Graves wrote:
"Turn your weaknesses into strengths. If your weak and hes strong, hes slow and your mobile. You are hidden and he is exposed."
Sorry to pop your hero-bubble, but that was Sun-Tzu who said that first
Unfortunately i agree with much of what was said, though i completely DISAGREE with any race looking to avoid certain types of games. Some of my absolute favourite games have been getting pylon/ebay blocked hard as zerg and deciding to do some very aggressive onebase play, a game that zerg "should typically avoid" according to "common knowledge"
this common knowledge crap needs to be straight thrown out the window. Until it does, we are going to see a very limited amount of actual innovative play (i.e. catz, kiwikaki, jinro's mech).
Ffs... experiment!!! evolve the metagame!
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On February 04 2011 18:23 wheelchairs wrote:
One thing from the OP im not completely sold on, correct me if im wrong but the strength of a max army. wouldn't Terran mech surely be stronger than protoss' in those numbers?
I don't think so. I agree that a maxed army is the following in terms of strength: P>T>Z
that of course all depends of how gas heavy an army is. perhaps in a situation where Protoss attacks heavily fortified Terran army it evens out but.. hard to theorycraft. Will stick to above but it all depends..
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Before void damage buff Terran max vs protoss max was much more even but now I feel protoss has a slight edge but it comes down to control. If you manage to emp the mothership it can change a lot
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Zerg:
- Ability to Stack Production Cycles via larva
Protoss:
- Ability to chose the Unit that is needed via Warp-In on the fly.
Terran:
- very cost efficient units
- straight forward techtree
- Early Detection
- better Position in Basetrades due to flying Buildings
- Good (cheap) Scouting Ablities (Scan, Reaper, Buildings)
- Best Defense (Repair!)
- mineral heavy units.
- Mostly ranged Units
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EPT
