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Heya TL. I've been wanting to do this for awhile. I love Zerg, and it crushes my spirit to see so few Zergs out there, and I feel it is because of one factor...
It is HARD to advance as a macro-oriented Zerg; much more so than Protoss or Terran, in my opinion
I've created this guide to help up and coming Zerg players who are interested in a macro-centric style improve. It is split up in pieces, so you can pick and choose parts to read, or read it as a whole, depending on what you want to take out of it. Leave me feedback and if I feel it deserves a spot in the guide, I'll do my best to edit it in. Thanks everyone, enjoy.
Introduction: My Beginnings as a Zerg Player
+ Show Spoiler +When I first bought Starcraft 2, I started installing it on my computer and started looking online for strategies so I could start crushing faces from the beginning. I discovered this wonderful site called TeamLiquid, and then I learned that there was a huge pro-scene around Starcraft: Brood War, and a fledgling scene. I learned about legends like XDS Grrr...,Boxer, iloveoov, Savior, NaDa, Flash, Jaedong, Bisu, JulyZerg, Fantasy, Stork, etc. Then I started learning about the American scene; players like NonY, IdrA, iNcontroL, Ret, and more, and these were the same players now playing Starcraft 2! I then learned about Day9, then about things like MLG Starcraft and GSL, and that's when I realized I had stumbled into a whole other world.
I started devouring VODs and didn't even play for days. I learned about all the races, and I wanted to be special, I wanted to play the race that was hard to play; I was going to play Zerg That was either the stupidest or the best decision I've made thus far in Starcraft2. Maybe a combination of the both. I learned all the stuff I'd thought about RTS's didn't apply in Starcraft It wasn't about the fight, it was about the economy. The goal of Zerg was to make a swath of drones and bury the other players face in economy. Me, being the suave baller I obviously was at the time, played my placement matches, and I was going to make allot of drones, and I was going to be in diamond. I knew it. I proceeded to lose 4/5 matches. I was crestfallen. I chalked it up to Zerg being underpowered, started playing Terran, and quickly laddered to platinum, winning about 85% of my games. I got to a point and said "You know what? This is bullshit, I'm better than almost any of these players, I'm going back to Zerg!". So I did, and I got smacked back down to bronze with a ton of drones in every game and almost no units. Once again, I said, "I guess Zerg is just underpowered, Protoss here I come!". I proceeded to ladder to platinum again, winning a little less than I did with Terran, but still the majority of my games (75%+) and once again, I said that I wasn't doing it anymore, I'm a good player, I can play Zerg, dammit!
So I sat down and played a ton of games, got knocked right back down to bronze, and instead of blaming it on imbalance, I said that I was going to figure out why I was losing. And I did. This guide is a result of that learning.
Goals
+ Show Spoiler +Why do you want to improve? It's important to know your goals before you begin. If your goal is to advance in the ladder as fast as possible, 6 pools and roach/ling all-ins will get you there much faster and in much less time. However, if you want to become the best player possible, doing these sort of rushes from the start doesn't make a whole lot of sense. At best it will lead to a small skill set of micro mechanics tooled to one very specific situation, and a very small subset of the game at large.
I aim to present an improvement method that will instead build your core skill sets so that you can carry those skills to the rest of your play. These skill sets result in players who are comfortable in all stages of the game; a player that is far more consistent. As the game develops more and more, these will be the players to dominate the field. Players that will do consistently well because they understand the game in a way that a player who hasn't developed these skills never could. Players like EGIdrA, IMMVP, IMNesTea, and more are consistently doing well throughout multiple seasons of the GSL using these same concepts.
STEP 1: Developing Skill Sets
Will a building ever be solid if it's foundations are weak? Of course not. Buildings, like players, are built from the ground up. The logical first step in improvement would be to make sure your foundations of core skill sets are strong. I have ordered the following into subsets that denote, in my opinion, the importance of each.
Developing Skill Sets: Mechanics
+ Show Spoiler +What do I mean by mechanics? By mechanics, I mean the different ways in which you control the game. This encompasses everything from using your keyboard and mouse, camera movement, and more. It makes no sense to go into playing the game without a good idea of how to control the game itself. I'll start with your hands, the beginning of your interaction with the game. One will be on the keyboard, one on the mouse. I would like you to face your dominant hand in front of you , palm facing you. If you are right handed, place your other hand on the left side of your right forearm and if you are left handed place your other hand on the right side of your left forearm. Now move your hand upward and you'll feel a bone that sticks outward slightly on your wrist. That is the bone that I generally will use as my pivot point for both my mouse and my keyboard. Place that bone on the table and pivot your hand. Notice how easy it is to make precise movement. Now move your arm up so that your forearm is your pivot and try to move around. Notice how much more movement is going on. By using this small bone on your wrist as your pivot point you can get the maximum effect with the minimal effort. Now I'll move on to the keyboard. One of the major goals you should have is to eliminate wasteful actions. To that end, I'd like you to press control-1 then a. What fingers did you use? Many people when using hot keys for the first time will press control with their thumb and the 1 key with their middle fingers, and the A with their pointer. Try doing this through 4 A. Notice how uncomfortable and awkward this becomes. You start bending your hand around sideways to hit your hot keys Rather, you should have your hand in the middle of the keyboard, so you can hit that control key with your pinky and the one with your ring or middle finger, moving up to using your pointer or thumb on the higher keys. Also, don't be afraid to move your hand around the keyboard. Notice how hard it is to press left control 0. Don't be afraid to move your hand to the right side of the keyboard and press that right control and 0, 9, or even 8 if that's more comfortable for you. The goal here is to eliminate wasteful actions and move in the most concise way possible. A big component of the keyboard is hot keys I'm going to present you with a rule you should NEVER break. Never click on something that you could build or do by pressing a key on the keyboard. If you don't know the hot key, mouse over the button to see what the hot key is, then press that key. In this way you begin training your mind what buttons go with what. I don't care if you're only pressing the button once in the entire game. When you upgrade ling speed, you better be pressing M to do so. By clicking on things that can be done with hot keys, you're removing your eyes from productive things on the screen, you're using up mouse movement that can be used for something productive. It's still all about removing wasteful actions. Let's talk about F keys for a second. I want you to open up Starcraft for a second, log in and do the following: Open up Menu, go to hot keys, click the global tab, and expand the Camera tab. Bind the Create Location 1 hot key to SHIFT F2, 2 to SHIFT F3, and so on. Now, what the F keys do is selects a certain location with your camera. If there's a location you need to move your camera to often, bind it to your F keys. For instance, I have my main as F2 every game. If I need to move back to that screen to place a building, then go back to whatever I was doing. The F keys are essential into helping you play more efficiently. Say you're looking at your mini-map and you notice a drop about to hit your third. It's very easy to select those drones, F2, click on a mineral patch. By doing this, all your drones are moving as fast as possible and you're minimizing casualties. Another great application are rally points. I always have my rallies as F5. In this way, you can find that screen, select your hatchery, and right click on the ground. By having a clear rally point system like this, you will lose far fewer units, as one button press will show you all the units that just popped out of their eggs. I can't tell you how many games I've lost because I had the units to defend but they were in some obscure location and I didn't remember or couldn't get to them in time. Now that we've over viewed hot keys and the F keys, I'd like to present some of the basics of creating a hot key setup. It's very important to have your own setup so that you can know exactly where everything is on your keyboard at all sets in time. Watch a particular pro player and I assure you that he will have the same general look every game (or at least every match up). I'll give you my hot key setup real fast. 1- Zerglings in ZvT and ZvZ, Roaches in ZvP 2- Banelings in ZvT, Roaches in ZvZ, Hydralisks in ZvP 3- Mutalisks in ZvT, Hydras or infestors in ZvZ, Corrupters in ZvP. 4- All my hatcheries in every match up 5 through 8 will generally be my queens, 5 being my main's queen, 6 my naturals, 7 my third, etc. My Creep queen is generally 8, but might be 9 if I build 4 hatchery queens if I feel I need them. 9- Important structure. Nydus worms, a building I'm producing an important upgrade from, etc. 0- Evolution chamber(s) The important thing here is this...Play around with hot keys until you find something you like and stick with it, and I mean religiously. Always hot key every unit and find out what works for you. In my mind, my army hot keys are like this 1-Front line unit 2-Front line Power unit 3-Power/Harassment unit The real power of a good hot key setup is you don't even need to think when you've figured it out. Every time I check at my rallies, I hot key every unit there, so whenever I'm in a stressful situation, I know exactly where everything is. I need to get all my lings back to my base? F2, 1, right click. I need my mutas back home quickly while macroing? 3 right click. Also, because you have your hot key setup, in those early stages of the game, you can cut down on the small little things you do every game. For instance, my scout drone is always 3, my scout overlord is always 2, my scout ling is always 1. This way I know I can always press a key and get to someplace I need my camera to be faster. Your have that ling outside his base and you hear the units under attack voice que? 11. You are now looking at the army that's shipping out to your base. Microing your scout drone and macroing back home? 55Sv, 66Sv, 33, micro, 4sdddddddd. That's all of one and a half seconds you were away from your scouting drone, but you're still getting your macro done and you're still efficiently scouting his base. I have my spawning pool as 9 so the second I have 100 gas, I can still be in his base microing that drone. 9M. Now lets talk about your mouse. It's important to be comfortable. Remember that pivot bone we were talking about earlier? We should be using that same bone for your mouse hand. I would suggest holding your mouse close to the end of the table. Another thing I'd suggest is turning off mouse acceleration. Mouse acceleration is horrible for play because it creates inconsistency with your mouse movements. Some OS's label this as “enhanced pointer precision”. Just Google turn off mouse acceleration Windows 7 (or whatever you use) and it will tell you how to turn it off. I recommend messing with sensitivities until you find something you're comfortable with and sticking with it and remember that number. I recommend you watch the following VOD from Day9: http://day9tv.blip.tv/file/4712303/
Developing Skill Sets: Macro Mechanics.
+ Show Spoiler +Aside from mechanics themselves, macro is the most important skill you can posses in Starcraft. It is also one of the simplest skills to acquire. Good Macro means... 1) Keeping your minerals and gas low at all points in time unless saving it for something specific. 2) Not getting supply blocked 3) Spending larvae as soon as you can. Idle larvae above 2 is wasting larvae. 4) Spawning larvae the SECOND larvae pop Simple, huh? It's allot harder than 4 bullet points might suggest. For instance, 1 encompasses a wide verity of things. There is a HUGE difference between placing down your spawning pool at 200 minerals and 300 minerals. Think about it, if you're placing your spawning pool 100 minerals later, that’s about 30 seconds less that you have a queen (that could be 8 or so larvae, or 2 creep tumors!), that's 30 seconds you don't have lings scouting. 100 minerals might sound small, but it's not. Try to keep your money as close to 0 as possible unless you're saving for a building, or a round of larvae (a good example is pooling gas/minerals when your spire is close to finishing). One thing you'll see ALL THE TIME in the strategy forums is a player posting a replay, saying “What could I have done here?”, and having 2000 minerals or more when he lost. Think about that. 2000 minerals. If he's a Zerg player, that's what, 26 roaches? 20 mutalisks? How much better would that fight have went if you had those extra units? I don't care if you're a tactical genius, if you can't macro effectively, you will lose to player who has good macro almost every time. Until you can do this subconsciously, worrying about things like micro, gosu unit compositions, etc are COMPLETE wastes of time. I'm not say do something stupid, like making mass ling vs a colossus death ball, but worrying about getting having X percentage of roaches X percentage of hydras, etc is unimportant. It's much more important to just have as much shit as possible. I recommend you watch the following VODs that demonstrate good macro mechanics: http://day9tv.blip.tv/file/4782428/ http://day9tv.blip.tv/file/3732340/
Building Skill Sets: Multitasking
+ Show Spoiler +At the most basic level, multitasking is the ability to macro and do something else. Macro is more important, so obviously it gets the priority. If you cannot macro while doing something else, just 1 A your army. You will be much better off. However, when practicing, push your comfort zone, so when you're starting to feel comfortable macroing, spend more and more time looking at the mini map Watch a good player respond to drops. Most of the time before that first marine hits the ground the drones are already half way out of the base. Mini map awareness is one of the most key components of multitasking. It will soon become a subconscious reflex to look at the mini map, even if there's nothing at all going on. Then spend more and more time with the camera outside of your base. This is particularly important for Zerg players. You'll spend allot of your time watching that scouting overlord, or that scouting zergling. Eventually you'll be in your base for a very small amount of time each game.
One mistake I see allot of players make is looking at battles, even if they can't do shit about it. Watch a player like IdrA play from a first person perspective and see how much he's actually watching battles. Not very often. If he's paying attention to the battle at all, it's going to be to make sure the banelings are going to hit the right things, or that the corruptors are going to target those void rays first, etc, then he's somewhere else. He's back in his base vomiting larvae, he's looking at that scout overlord to see what reinforcements are coming, etc.
Some of the best examples of multitasking actually come from Terran players. Watch MVP, or Select, or qxc play. They've got multiple drops going on all the time across the map, they're macroing back home, they're expanding, they're trucking the middle. All at the same time.
Building Skill Sets: Micro Management
+ Show Spoiler +Perhaps the hardest of the core skill sets to develop, micro is the way you control your units. Good Micro requires allot. You need to be in your opponents head. You need to know what his aim is and react accordingly. Watch MarineKingPrime. As soon as those banelings start rolling he's already grabbing and splitting up his marines into small separated groups so he loses as few as possible. Watch IdrA. He'll be deadly accurate with his mutas, advancing just enough to pick off that siege tank without taking too many hits.
Micro requires a lot of practice and will give you relatively small advantages. That is why it is best to focus on improving your other skills first. Good Micro will come from instinctively knowing what to do on a subconscious level. You need to be able to grab that roach who just hit red health and immediately burrow him. You can't think about it, it needs to happen the second you see it.
When trying to improve micro management, I recommend watching a bunch of pro VODs and watching how they control their units, and imitate it. Think why you're controlling the unit in this way. Eventually it will become second nature.
Step 2: Strategy
+ Show Spoiler +So many people misunderstand what strategy really is. I'm going to give you a definition I feel is accurate when talking about Starcraft Strategy. Strategy is way you arrange spending your resources in order to accomplish a goal. It may seem ridiculous to crunch all of strategy up into one sentence, especially one so simple. But I am very comfortable with this assessment. If you want to expand earlier as a protoss, for a simple, easy to understand example, you might consider building sentries instead of stalkers in order to free up minerals to expand earlier. The same applies to Zerg I might want to get out mutalisks fast to gain map control and double expand. So I need to arrange my money in a way such that I can get those mutalisks at the right time, allowing me to double expand. Build Orders: How many times have you seen a player say something like this on the strategy forums? “Hey! I have this great build ZvP, blah, blah, blah, here it is. 15 gas 14 pool 18 Ling Speed 20 hatch 26 lair 32 Roach Warren …” Can you tell me the problem with this? Well, I'll tell you. This is just a list of numbers. This list of instructions is so specific, that a person who isn't intimately familiar with its goals will be lost. Why is he getting this stuff at this time? What if you get 2 gated? You might hold that push, but now you're lost in the build. I'm going to steal a definition off from day9 here. What is a build order, really? “A build order is an optimization of an idea.” This can be an idea in the largest or smallest possible sense. Your idea could be something as simple as “Zerg is really scary late game, I wonder if I can kill him before that larvae inject mechanic really starts working for him really well.” All of a sudden we have 4 gates, 2 rax bunker rushes, ling/bane, and any other possible all-in you can think of. Your idea could be something as big as “I want to get 4 bases with a roach/hydra/corrupter army with 2/2 and deny the protoss's third so he can't support voidray/colo. The steps in the build are just the key components of the build. An optimized build order is just how you would optimally arrange the key components. If you're playing a ZvP and your build has a relatively late lair, and all of a sudden you see your protoss opp on 1 base, 2 gas, and he's not chronoboosing his cyber, you probably need to push that lair timing up, because he's probably going to DT or Voidray rush you, in which case you'll need an overseer and hydras. What if your opp 2 gates you? Well, you'll probably want to delay your other stuff to pump out allot of lings. It's OK to push back everything to get those lings, because his economy is equally (if not more) delayed . He's still most likely going to be going for a third base and play some sort of voidray/gateway mix, if not the original void/colossus you were worried about in the first place. It's OK that you're going to be late getting this big 2/2 army to deny his third, because this early aggression is pushing back his third. A good player looks for ways to force his game down the same path, and rearranges the components of his play to make that path happen. If you get forced off your build in some way, such as banshee harassment kills some drones, you can keep your same timings by knowing when each thing happens relative to each other thing in your build, and realizing why each component is where it is at. If your build was designed around playing a standard protoss, and your opp 14 Nexus's, you can delay some of those defensive timings, because he's not going to be in any situation to push you for awhile. Power drones and maybe take a super fast third. I would recommend you check out this podcast: http://www.teamliquid.net/staff/SonuvBob/podcasts/Day[9]0010-NewLookAtBuilds.mp3
Step 3: Game Sense/Decision Making
+ Show Spoiler +This is a hard one to help players with, as the only thing I can tell you is to watch your replays. All of them. When you're playing, note specific things you did and why. I figured he was about to attack at this point so I started making lings. Go through that replay and be meticulous. Why did you think that attack was going to come. What tipped you off. Why was it a wrong assumption?
Do you ever watch a game from IdrA and he gets an overseer like 3 seconds before a banshee arrives at his mineral line? I remember when I was a new player I just thought that it was this magical sense he and some top level players had, that he was just playing, proclaimed “the time to get an overseer is here!” and it lined up perfectly. Well, he doesn't have some sort of magical sense, nor does anyone. It comes from a long process of review and reflection. He saw, or didn't see something from his opponent that told him that things weren't right, and deduced that most likely it was banshees. He was reviewing this timing when creating his build so that if there's a banshee rush, he can morph an overseer at that moment that lair finishes, it would be in time to save those drones, or he knew that if he scouted a banshee rush, he could squeak this little bit of extra minerals to get that evo/spore.
Do you remember fruitdealer from the GSL1? He had AMAZING game sense at the time. He always had just enough units to hold off pushes, and as a result, he had a raging economy, and buried his enemies in waves of enemies.
Zerg Specific Learning!
At the current state of the game, I feel the thing that limits Zerg success is this:
The Size of a mistake that will lose a Zerg a game is much smaller than a mistake that will lose a Terran or Protoss a game.
This is in no way belittling of Terran or Protoss, but it's true. Because of the nature of the the larvae system, a Zerg cannot continuously build drones and units. This means that as a Zerg payer interested in becoming the best player we possibly can be, we need to know when an attack is likely to come and we need to skate a thin line between droning and switching to units at the last possible second.
That being said, if you're looking for a place to start, find one proven build per match up, practice and find all the little timings. Play it until you can basically play subconsciously. Keep the following "rules" for Zerg play in mind.
Rule 1: When We Don't Have To Make A Unit, Make a Drone
+ Show Spoiler +The goal for Zerg is to get a raging economy, start pumping units, and being very aggressive, and drown him in your production. Why? Because your 200/200 army is much less efficient than a protoss or Terran maxed army. If you let him get to 200/200, and try to simply “out control” him, you're going to lose. You need to be in his face with waves of units, banking on the fact that you reinforce faster than him, and whittling away at him until he has nothing left.
Why is this hard? You're relying on the thinnest defenses for a long time. Make no misunderstanding; you will have a LOT of stupid looking losses. I can't tell you how many games I've lost because I made 8 drones and in the next second some big army popped out toward my base. What is the solution here? Watch those replays. Be critical. Why did I think I was safe. Why wasn't I. What did/could have I seen that would have cued me off?
Eventually you'll develop that same game sense I was talking about earlier. You'll figure out that if you see this, or don't see a command center when you're doing something (say, upgrading to your lair) then he's grouping up for an attack. You'll start making units, hold that push, then go right back to making drones.
Rule 2: Scouting
+ Show Spoiler +This ties directly into Rule 1. Your scouting tells you when you can and cannot make a drone. Once again, this ties directly into game knowledge as well. If you see a chronoboosted cybernetics core 3 minutes into the game, what is your first thought? It should be 4 gate. What if you see a 2 gas Terran early? I personally jump right to either banshees or blue flame hellion. If I see 2 rax 2 gas, I'm leaning toward banshees.
So what and when should you be scouting. As to when...ALL GAME LONG. Any intel is good intel. Lings are 25 minerals apiece. Is it worth 25 minerals to you to suicide a ling into your opps natural to get an idea of what he has, or where its positioned? It is to me. Is it worth it to you to suicide an overlord to see what type of tech he's going? It is to me. Zergs often complain about scouting, and I don't get it. We, as Zergs have the ability to scout across the entire map at the same time.
Overlords
Flying Farms! How cool is that? Not only do they fly, they drop creep, can drop, and can morph into overseers which can slow production, nullify cannons, delay upgrades, and scout very well. The problem is not enough people are using their overlords to their full advantage. I'll see so many Zergs send their first overlord somewhere across the map, and that’s it. I just don't get it. For the cost of 100 minerals, we get permanent vision (as long as the overlord stays alive) of an expo, and can spread creep to delay that expansion significantly, opening up a timing to do enough damage to deny that expo.
How many Zergs have you heard complain about scans and obs? I've heard a lot of people complain about the ease of protoss and Terran scouting, but for the cost of 100 minerals and 100 gas, I have like 30 fast scouts!With obs or scan, you can see your opps tech that's in 1 place, but with overlords, you're everywhere. Zergs should never get caught with their pants down by a drop.
Lings
For the cost of 50 minerals, we can occupy both xel'naga watchtowers. For an additional 25 we can have a ling right outside his base and know exactly when he leaves.
Drone scout
Just like any other race, we can drone scout, but how long can protoss or Terran keep their worker alive? Well, about until the first marine, stalker, or zergling pops out. A Zerg drone can stay alive until the Terran has about 4 marines, or the protoss has 2-3 stalkers with extractor canceling.
Rule 3: Larvae are a resource!
+ Show Spoiler +I want all you up and coming Zergs to realize this...Larvae are a resource just as much as gas, minerals, or control are. Tie this in with rule # 1. If we have to defend, what are we going to defend with? You should be thinking in terms of larvae as much as mineral and gas. Consider this. 1 larvae makes 1 roach. How much damage can 5 roaches do to an incoming zealot attack? Certainly more than 5 larvae of zerglings would. This is the basis of a lot of early game logic for top level players. You'll see Zerg players go for a very fast roach warren in ZvZ. Why? Because 1 larvae worth of roaches is way better than 1 larvae worth of zerglings. This frees up larvae to get those drones moving.
Rule 4: If you reach 1000 minerals and you're not planning to spend it very quickly (like you're about to make 10 mutalisks as soon as larvae spawns), throw down a hatchery.
+ Show Spoiler +There's no good to be had by looking up at your money and noticing you have less than optimal macro and saying to yourself “oh well, I guess I need to macro better next game”. Throw down that hatchery! Fix your macro right now, then watch the replay and analyze WHY your money started getting high. Perhaps you were doing everything the way you wanted and using all your larvae and not missing larvae injects. That means that at the time when your money started pooling, you need to find a way to spend that money on things other than units. This is a good time to start doing things like upgrades, starting your upgrade toward hive, or expanding. Find out. This is where real strategy begins. I have extra money at this time while doing everything I need to, I will spend it by getting/doing X.
Rule 5: 200/200.
+ Show Spoiler +If you're at 200 supply and you don't have a damn good reason not to, go attack. If you're sitting back in your base at 200 supply, you're wasting larvae. The goal is to suicide units intelligently, taking out chunks of the opp army and using those extra larvae from larvae vomit to reinforce very quickly to overwhelm your opp. Your situation is only going to get worse the longer you stay at 200/200.
Dealing with “Cheese”
+ Show Spoiler +I'm not going to lie. This is still in (low) masters league my biggest barrier to success. A 4 gate is hard to stop at any level. Players like IdrA, Jinro, and some of the best players in the world lose to 4 gates, Void Ray Rushes, 2 rax bunker rushes, ling/bane, and every type of one base timing you can think of. One of the major things holding most people back is thinking about it as “cheese”. Sometimes these attacks are plain cheesy, and sometimes they're not. If he brings all the SCVs he has and marines (unfortunately, a player can bring 3-4 SCV's and transition out with dealing little to no damage), yeah that's really cheesy. If A player DT rushes is this cheese? Well, not really. Good toss players use DT's as a containment tool. If they notice you didn't prepare at all, yeah, they'll kill you, but if you have an overseer, they're going to bounce around stealing a kill here and there and keeping you in your base while he takes extra bases. Are cloaked banshees cheese? Well, no. He's using the unit to force you to build detection and be able to harass you and keep your economy in check until you get mutalisks out. It's all about trade offs. You're trading a large ground army for that early tech that will allow you to contain/harass him.
Now that we've dealt with that, how are we going to deal with one base timings? Well, you need to analyze your plays and figure out how you know it's a base timing attack. You need to realize what he could be doing, and respond. I'm not going to give you the times I use, because A) They're not perfect, and B) It's going to vary from league to league as players timing improves. A 4 gate might hit at 8:45 in bronze league, and 7:20 in masters. When you find out, start making units! I love drones, but right before a big attack is not the time to be making more.
Recommended Resources/VODs
+ Show Spoiler +
Thank you all. I hope this guide helps some people improve as Zerg, and lead to a positive experience for all you would be Zerg out there. + Show Spoiler +
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Wow, long post! Thanks for making  Probably won't read all of it because I'm not low-level, but haha it will be cool to refer friends to this.
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On February 20 2011 16:32 Yoshi Kirishima wrote:Wow, long post! Thanks for making Probably won't read all of it because I'm not low-level, but haha it will be cool to refer friends to this.
3rd shift, it makes you productive. lol
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It's clear you put quite a lot of work into this, it'll certainly help a lot of people trying to wrap their head around it all.
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Thanks for writing this Arisen. I really hope it will help me out.
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Man this is a terrific write up, well done sir! Recommending to a few of my newer friends asap!
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Good write-up, you should add a section on drone timings for countering various builds. They will be most useful for beginner zergs who will get steamrolled against 4gates, 3rax, etc.
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Great post!!!
Why there isn't anything like this for the Protoss?? 
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EXCELLENT, EXCELLENT EXCELLENT!
I am a zerg and on the verge of switching.
I was playing the day before yesterday and having trouble in my small Gold league, being all-ined/4gated/roach rushed/scv pushed/bunker rushed/ VR rushed.... all games and really felling bad. Then I played a couple of matches as Terran.
MAN. I DON'T EVEN KNOW HOTKEYS for Terran units and there I was, melting faces with Terran. How. The. Hell.
Up until this very post I was thinking to myself:
I'm going to switch of Zerg and come back once Blizzard put their shit together.
But maybe it is not that. But then again, it IS pretty unfair that zerg is THAT MUCH HARDER to play (ask Morrow, a hero amongst men, how hard it was. Took him some 5months of training to even begin to achieve something after a race switch) .
I think the extremely high and prohibitive entrance fee to the zerg race is what makes it seem underpowered (that and I still think it is a bit UP, but not anywhere of a big deal). So not many people zerg. Actually. A lot of people play zerg. But they are EITHER Bronze or Masters. Not much in between. Because I think you either can master larvae/queen, droning/army or you can't. Not much in between.
If I switched to Terran or Protoss I would probably be within Diamond or Master in less then a week. But I think I will take my time, train hard as a zerg and follow your footsteps.
Thank you very much.
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On February 20 2011 19:14 ApocAlypsE007 wrote:Great post!!! Why there isn't anything like this for the Protoss??
Most of the advice can be cross applied. Due to the unique aspects of zerg economy management, though, it is quite hard for a beginning player to advance with the correct mindset (get lots of drones) because you'll so often get caught with few units to defen. Conversely, as a protoss or terran you can build workers nonstop while making an army, eliminating the prime difficulty of novice zerg players.
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I thank you for the great post.
Although I fear it is too late. Sitting in the slums of silver as a Zerg that gets rolled over for making one too many waves of units is definitely not fun at all.
I may be switching to my favorite lore race, Protoss even though your post has the inspiration that could lead to many great Zergs rising up. I will continue to play Zerg until the end of the week I think and then make a judgment on if I shall keep playing them.
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this is exactly what i need! perfect timing as i switched to zerg yesterday ^_^
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Practice practice practice. There's no magic trick that will help you with macro, you've gotta have rhythm... for example, a timing when you inject (all hatches at once), when you produce overlords, and spreading creep. Keeping your minerals low early and mid game will help with better unit production, and using food cycling in the late game will in sure for a quick refill of supply if lost. All of this requires practice.. lots and lots of practice. Drone Drone Drone.
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Thanks for the positive feedback. Any suggestions on improvements or additional topics is appreciated. Thanks
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Excellent post, thanks.
As a low level Zerg player (up to Gold on US now, still Silver on SEA) I have been struggling with how to follow the commonly recommended improvement path for macro. The short version (always make workers, spend your minerals, don't get supply capped) isn't enough on its own for Zerg. Other races will automatically end up with a decent army if they follow this advice. We won't necessarily, since we can do it with just drones and queens if we like, so we need to decide how to balance drones and units. We can't just use a rule of thumb, since our ability to power economy in the right situation is one of the key advantages we have as macro Zerg players over other races, and we need to learn how to do it. So there is no way round it - we need to learn to scout and develop the game sense to know how much we can get away with. In the process we are likely to push it too far a lot of the time and give up a lot of cheap wins.
This guide does a nice job of filling in some of the gaps and explaining both why it's tougher for Zerg players to follow the "improve your macro" advice and what extra steps we need to take to make it work.
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one word: amazing!
will edit my post with more feedback when I've read through it all!
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i am a protoss player, is there a reason why you don't inject via minimap while having one control group for all queens?
for me it seems like the easiest Macromechanic of all, if you can get a synchronized ryhm in all hatches you don't even need to look at your base.
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On February 21 2011 07:46 freetgy wrote:
i am a protoss player, is there a reason why you don't inject via minimap while having one control group for all queens?
for me it seems like the easiest Macromechanic of all, if you can get a synchronized ryhm in all hatches you don't even need to look at your base.
Some players do, but it requires a high degree of precision and accuracy that is very easy to mess up. A few pixels off and you dont notice means you just lost 4 larvae. I personally feel, that especially for novice players, the risks far outweigh the rewards. Even among seasoned professionals, this method isn't the dominant setup.
If players would like to learn this way I would encourage them, but I'd advise caution, as it is much more difficult than simply looking back to your base for 1 second every 20 or so.
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I'll definitely be reading this. Currently a bronze Zerg, after tanking myself back down from Platinum. (I rushed every game and didn't have any skill to show for it, so I wanna start again. x.x)
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On February 21 2011 08:03 TheBlueBox wrote:
I'll definitely be reading this. Currently a bronze Zerg, after tanking myself back down from Platinum. (I rushed every game and didn't have any skill to show for it, so I wanna start again. x.x)
Good luck, I hope you do well.
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Nice guide!
I only think you should change one thing, and that is the "attack at 200/200" idea. It is sort of right, but in a lot of games it is good to turtle on 200/200 until you've build up a lot of larvae, and then attack. If you attack right at 200/200, you (probably) won't be able to rebuild your army. It is good to wait for a little bit, and make sure you attack on their side of the map so you can rebuild after the engagement.
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Awesome guide
While there's a lot of discussion about the different inject methods for zerg, I'm wondering how do people time their injects properly? I used to do the all hatch on one hotkey, all queens on another, and minimap inject but then I found I had problems timing the injects properly. I've since then switched to hotkeys for individual hatcheries. How does everyone else time the injects?
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On February 21 2011 12:44 b3serker wrote:Awesome guide While there's a lot of discussion about the different inject methods for zerg, I'm wondering how do people time their injects properly? I used to do the all hatch on one hotkey, all queens on another, and minimap inject but then I found I had problems timing the injects properly. I've since then switched to hotkeys for individual hatcheries. How does everyone else time the injects?
There are 2 preferred methods. Hotkeying queens and hotkeying hatches.
Hotkeying Queens:
All hatches on one hotkey. Each queen has her own hotkey. There are 2 ways to tell when your lavae injects have finished. When your larvae suddenly jump up by 4 (or 8, 12, 16, depending on how many queens you have), or when your queen has 25 energy.
Hotkeying Hatcheries.
All Queens on one hotkey. Each hatch has its own hotkey. There is a bar signifying larvae injects. When that bar disappears, you go to each hatchery, select your queen hotkey, and inject, then repeat.
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Thanks for the excellent post! You've produced a very well written article.
I'm a Gold level zerg, wanting to improve. Like everyone else (at least it seems like everyone) I feel like zerg requires so much more than than the other races to do well. I'm really struggling to improve my macro, and I hope that your tips help.
Keep swarmin'!
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Ugghh, talk about a bummer. I started experimenting with new Protoss builds trying to get away from the normal 4 Gate routine, and I started losing a lot. To the point where I just lost focus, and now I'm "reclassified" to rank Gold from Platinum. From being rank 1 in Platinum at one time to now Gold. Man I'm pretty bummed.
So now I'm thinking about switching to Zerg, just for a change of pace. And I need help. And then I stumbled upon this thread. Just wanted to say thanks, I know it took a lot of effort to write this guide but it will go to good use. Thanks again and wish me luck.
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On February 21 2011 14:03 fatty77 wrote:
Ugghh, talk about a bummer. I started experimenting with new Protoss builds trying to get away from the normal 4 Gate routine, and I started losing a lot. To the point where I just lost focus, and now I'm "reclassified" to rank Gold from Platinum. From being rank 1 in Platinum at one time to now Gold. Man I'm pretty bummed.
So now I'm thinking about switching to Zerg, just for a change of pace. And I need help. And then I stumbled upon this thread. Just wanted to say thanks, I know it took a lot of effort to write this guide but it will go to good use. Thanks again and wish me luck.
Good Luck.
And if by hard work you mean I needed to kill 2 hours while it was slow at work, you are correct. lol
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I only skipped through the post since i'm at work, but this typo made me laugh: "[...]and buried his enemies in waves of enemies."
I'll definatly read that post when i'm home, it looks like quite solid advice. Well done.
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I have recently come to an understanding of what is required for the 3rd base, and how to get that up and saturated with a minimum amount of units and a max amount of drones. I think the key is to spend your money on key upgrades, that let you be safe enough to get the 3rd. By spending money on upgrades you free more larva for drones. As well as making your eventual army even stronger.
The key upgrades in ZvP is burrow, which prevents any kind of push without an observer, and with speedlings and roaches you can kill any thing the protoss can send before colosi making you safe to get the 3rd and drone. Same is true for ZvT, where the key upgrade is banelings speed, (or infester energy upgrade), once you get that, there is very little a terran can do untill he gets large numbers of tanks, which lets you get the 3rd and drone up.
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this was a great post, but I worry a bit that it continues to advance the idea that Zerg is "harder" to play than "ezmode Protoss and Terran", when it isn't the case. That may not have been the intention in the post, but several key paragraphs have that overall tone to them.
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On February 21 2011 17:40 Dhalphir wrote:
this was a great post, but I worry a bit that it continues to advance the idea that Zerg is "harder" to play than "ezmode Protoss and Terran", when it isn't the case. That may not have been the intention in the post, but several key paragraphs have that overall tone to them.
I completely and wholeheartedly disagree. I'm guessing you read this...
"It is HARD to advance as a macro-oriented Zerg; much more so than Protoss or Terran, in my opinion"
and got offended because you play protoss or terran. Notice I said it's hard to advance as zerg, not that it's super easy to play Terran or Protoss. Let's check out some more paragraphs that have this same theme...
The Size of a mistake that will lose a Zerg a game is much smaller than a mistake that will lose a Terran or Protoss a game...This is in no way belittling of Terran or Protoss, but it's true. Because of the nature of the the larvae system, a Zerg cannot continuously build drones and units. This means that as a Zerg payer interested in becoming the best player we possibly can be, we need to know when an attack is likely to come and we need to skate a thin line between droning and switching to units at the last possible second. "
That's about it. I'm sorry if you're offended, but this is a truth from my experience playing all three races through (at least) platinum. You can get amazingly far as protoss or terran by just making workers consistantly, making units consitantly, and having a logical unit mix. As zerg players, we don't have the luxuary of a command center or gateway.
That isn't to say there aren't great advantages to the larvae system, but finding that line between droning and units is what makes it hard to get zerg to a decent level, and that needs to be stated for frustrated players struggling to break into zerg. This is the reason starting zerg is hard. Once you understand why, and really set out to fix it, you're going to improve so much faster. In no point in my writeup did I say Terran or Protoss are ezmode (by the way, using quotes implies it was in the text, which it was not). I'm sorry if you were offended, but there's really no reason to be.
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I actually play both Protoss and Zerg, and I constantly am faced on all sides with people claiming that Zerg is so much harder to play (and sometimes in turn also claiming that protoss and terran are easy), but it just isn't.
The only real mechanic that Zerg has to deal with that Protoss and Terran don't is the dynamic between making drones and making units, and I'll grant you thats a pretty tricky thing to grasp.
But you get advantages to make up for that, and all of the other aspects of Zerg have equally difficult counterparts in the other races, up to and including larvae inject.
EDIT: I don't mean this as an attack on your post, and I know YOU didn't mean that Zerg is overall so much harder to play, but it seems like the people who are dumb enough to think that to begin with are going to seize on your post as evidence. You can't do anything about that, of course.
I don't know. It just irritates me. Its like Zerg players don't want to get better and overcome the problems they have, and just blame everything on Zerg being sooo weak.
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You missed one thing, you forgot to define what is a "macro-centric" zerg. As far as I know every player on starcraft is a macro player, you can't play starcraft without managing your base. Second good macro is subjective, even though you state good macro is keeping your resources low and spending up larva and not getting supply blocked, this is true to an extent. But resources are more like options, if you keep your resources low you have limited options, the longer time you take to spend your resources you save your options, and you can make a better expenditure into your larva if you have more scouting information and therefore know what to spend your larva on. So I think both your statements on resources and that idle larvae is wasting larvae is misleading. Take the simplest case. 8pool. Players will keep 3 larva to produce 6 lings, this is clear they're saving the resource for an early timed attack. You mention larvae as a resource at the end of your guide but preach the opposite in the beginning highly contradictory.
Next, when you say place your spawning pool at 200 minerals or 300 minerals, you're missing the point. It's not the resources that is the issue. It's the timing. By ignoring the effect of timing it also misleads players. If you've watched FPVODs of progamers in SCBW, in later stages of the game its okay to hover over thousands of minerals, it just means they have options in addition to the resources they have locked in to what they have scouted, they will sometimes float minerals and gas then throw down 4 factories for a timed attack, even cutting workers. If you lock in all your options, and you realise they weren't worth it then you're screwed. Of course if you lock in resources earlier you gain timing opportunities, and if you keep your options you lose these timings opportunities, but they aren't "wasted" the resources are still there to use, they just lose on certain timings but gain when you use them especially with increased scouting info to make better decision. I suppose timing is an important part of macromanagement and not just limited to economy. I think following your guide people can become better for sure, but they'll become better with some warped concepts. I mean can you really claim that worrying about micro, unit compositions, positioning, movement and usage of army in general is a waste of time? I think if low level players think like that they'll lose an important part of starcraft, infact the strategical things often change games more so at higher levels but it is still important at lower levels. I've seen time and time again shit players who can build an army, but have no clue how to use them that I can obliterate them with a lesser army. They just park their army rallied to some spot infront of their base, no clue when to attack or what units to build, then I will have fun with them with drops or mutalisks, or just win with a counter army with better micro. I mean you claim its hard to develop and gives you small advantage but this is blatantly misleading. Micro is fundamental in starcraft and most of the time separates winning and losing. Strategy is really complex, and unless you're a strategical genius mastermind it's hard to pin down everything. I don't think there can be a general guide about micromanagement or strategy that's for sure, you'll need experience and genius to manuever and build units that take advantage of certain terrain, and to pull off favourable engagements. To be honest even at the highest levels of the game, there are many players who lack timing and judgement, when watching as an observer at least on the same level as say Flash in SCBW.
I think your strategy section makes sense but then you talk about zerg making units at the last possible second. Doesn't this contradict your strategy paragraphs? You claim strategy is about arranging expenditure of resources to accomplish a goal, yes I know this statement is oversimplified but that's not the issue here. You also claim you have to keep your resources very low at all times and use all larvae. Then how can you now claim to switch to units at the last possible time, if you had exhausted all your options by spending resources and using up all larvae. Simply put, you missed an entire important section in the analysis macromanagement, and simply focused on resources where here timing would be more important. It is ONLY AFTER you scout( or know from experience/probabilities) the opponent's timings and what he is doing then you spend on workers or units. If hes pushing out with mass bioball at 6:30, you can setup lings to backstab him ahead of time, and have a complete defense against his army, rather than scraping whatever unit you can at the last second, and possibly losing drones in the process. I also have to mention that you can think of workers as an investment for more resources in the future at the expense of short term timings, and it takes a while for them to payoff since they cost you 1 supply and gather 5 minerals at a time while costing 50, so a timing attack makes you vulnerable because while you've sunk the supply and resources in a drone, it takes a while for them recoup their cost. I think you're right in many aspects yet in your own guide you're undermining yourself, saying things in reverse order. I give this guide a 3/10 because it is a guide focused on helping improving zergs by means of teaching concepts. Yet the concepts aren't expressed in a logical order, it has contradictions and the understanding is very limited, glossing over important parts of the game(not even mentioning maps) and only giving some VERY basic points.
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On February 21 2011 20:27 blue001 wrote:
You missed one thing, you forgot to define what is a "macro-centric" zerg. As far as I know every player on starcraft is a macro player, you can't play starcraft without managing your base. Second good macro is subjective, even though you state good macro is keeping your resources low and spending up larva and not getting supply blocked, this is true to an extent. But resources are more like options, if you keep your resources low you have limited options, the longer time you take to spend your resources you save your options, and you can make a better expenditure into your larva if you have more scouting information and therefore know what to spend your larva on. So I think both your statements on resources and that idle larvae is wasting larvae is misleading. Take the simplest case. 8pool. Players will keep 3 larva to produce 6 lings, this is clear they're saving the resource for an early timed attack. You mention larvae as a resource at the end of your guide but preach the opposite in the beginning highly contradictory.
Next, when you say place your spawning pool at 200 minerals or 300 minerals, you're missing the point. It's not the resources that is the issue. It's the timing. By ignoring the effect of timing it also misleads players. If you've watched FPVODs of progamers in SCBW, in later stages of the game its okay to hover over thousands of minerals, it just means they have options in addition to the resources they have locked in to what they have scouted, they will sometimes float minerals and gas then throw down 4 factories for a timed attack, even cutting workers. If you lock in all your options, and you realise they weren't worth it then you're screwed. Of course if you lock in resources earlier you gain timing opportunities, and if you keep your options you lose these timings opportunities, but they aren't "wasted" the resources are still there to use, they just lose on certain timings but gain when you use them especially with increased scouting info to make better decision. I suppose timing is an important part of macromanagement and not just limited to economy. I think following your guide people can become better for sure, but they'll become better with some warped concepts. I mean can you really claim that worrying about micro, unit compositions, positioning, movement and usage of army in general is a waste of time? I think if low level players think like that they'll lose an important part of starcraft, infact the strategical things often change games more so at higher levels but it is still important at lower levels. I've seen time and time again shit players who can build an army, but have no clue how to use them that I can obliterate them with a lesser army. They just park their army rallied to some spot infront of their base, no clue when to attack or what units to build, then I will have fun with them with drops or mutalisks, or just win with a counter army with better micro. I mean you claim its hard to develop and gives you small advantage but this is blatantly misleading. Micro is fundamental in starcraft and most of the time separates winning and losing. Strategy is really complex, and unless you're a strategical genius mastermind it's hard to pin down everything. I don't think there can be a general guide about micromanagement or strategy that's for sure, you'll need experience and genius to manuever and build units that take advantage of certain terrain, and to pull off favourable engagements. To be honest even at the highest levels of the game, there are many players who lack timing and judgement, when watching as an observer at least on the same level as say Flash in SCBW.
I think your strategy section makes sense but then you talk about zerg making units at the last possible second. Doesn't this contradict your strategy paragraphs? You claim strategy is about arranging expenditure of resources to accomplish a goal, yes I know this statement is oversimplified but that's not the issue here. You also claim you have to keep your resources very low at all times and use all larvae. Then how can you now claim to switch to units at the last possible time, if you had exhausted all your options by spending resources and using up all larvae. Simply put, you missed an entire important section in the analysis macromanagement, and simply focused on resources where here timing would be more important. It is ONLY AFTER you scout( or know from experience/probabilities) the opponent's timings and what he is doing then you spend on workers or units. If hes pushing out with mass bioball at 6:30, you can setup lings to backstab him ahead of time, and have a complete defense against his army, rather than scraping whatever unit you can at the last second, and possibly losing drones in the process. I also have to mention that you can think of workers as an investment for more resources in the future at the expense of short term timings, and it takes a while for them to payoff since they cost you 1 supply and gather 5 minerals at a time while costing 50, so a timing attack makes you vulnerable because while you've sunk the supply and resources in a drone, it takes a while for them recoup their cost. I think you're right in many aspects yet in your own guide you're undermining yourself, saying things in reverse order. I give this guide a 3/10 because it is a guide focused on helping improving zergs by means of teaching concepts. Yet the concepts aren't expressed in a logical order, it has contradictions and the understanding is very limited, glossing over important parts of the game(not even mentioning maps) and only giving some VERY basic points.
You're missing so many of the points of the post. Let's take a look at some of the points.
statements on resources and that idle larvae is wasting larvae is misleading. I say very specifically that floating above 2 larvae is a waste of larvae. If you have 3 or more for 15 (ingame) seconds, you just killed 1 potential larvae. One more larvae will not spawn out of that hatchery untill you have 2 or less larvae. Also, this is to be taken into context with the larvae is a resource. Notice I said keep your resources as close to 0 as possible unless "you have a damn good reason not to". I'd say that saving for those 3 lings is a damn good reason.
Next you say that by saying place the spawning pool at exactly 200 minerals, i'm ignoring timing, which I'm not. I don't care when you time your spawning pool. 6-200 pool. When you decide to put down your spawning pool, you should do it in the most precise, efficient manner possible. If my spawning pool timing was 15, or after I put guys in gas, or whatever, my money should be at 200 when I place it. I don't see how you can argue this. Planning on throwing down a gas and pool at the same time, therefore you'd need 225? Well, you could place that gas earlier and not effect your pool timing at all, which is more efficient. Hatch and pool at the same time? Wasteful. Why bank 500 when you could have placed one earlier and got the benefit from that tech earlier without effecting the other tech?
You later say that you'll see BW pros bank several thousand minerals to place 4 factories at the same time for a timing attack, which is wrong. The only time you'd ever see 4 factories being placed at the same time was after maxed for some big reinforcement (because they can no longer constantly spend on units/SCV's), and even then, probably not. Why? Because by waiting to get to that couple thousand, they're missing time they could have had those factories done. Before they're maxxed, they're killing potential units. If you're planning a 4 fact timing attack, whats the use at saving to plant them all at the same time? There isn't one. You can place the first factory when you have the gas for it and start pumping out units while placing the second, and so on.
You claim that developing your micro mechanics is key because you can drop or use mutalisks with a "lesser" army and still win. Remember the scouting paragraph? Overlords should be everywhere( especially around your base). If the player is looking at his minimap like he should, all he has to do is move his lings around where your dropship is headed and keep macroing, or if he sees those mutalisks, he just has to move his hydras, or whatever his anti-air is over there and you can't do much damage. I'm not saying that micromanagement isn't important here, but your premise is just flawed. The point of micromanagement isn't to win with a lesser army, its to maximize the effect of your army, which should be just as big as his. If you could get 3 more kills out of microing your hydras a bit better or have 15 more units because you were paying attention to your macro, which would you do? I can tell you I'll take those 15 more units every time. The point where good micromanagement becomes more important is when there is little to differentiate each player by terms of macromanagement. Will you EVER see Jaedong having that beautiful mutalisk micro while he's floating 800 minerals off 2 base? no. Why? He can get some extra kills, but later he's going to get steamrolled because his opp just has more stuff.
You claim that by spending our resources as we get them we're going to get suprised by a bunch of units and lose immediatley. Yep, and I have no problem with that. Why? Because we're going to suffer a BUNCH of stupid losses like that (which I pointed out already in the guide) and eventually, you're going to develop into a player like IdrA who is going to have that "magical" sense of when to build what stuff because you've been steamrolled like this so many times. You're going to be scouting and..
drone...drone...drone..."he's chronoboosting his cybernetics core"...ling...ling...ling...
By suffering these stupid loses, you're going to develop the game sense to allow you to know when an attack is probably coming way before it does. It's not like your scouting drone is going to get there and the next second you're going to have 4 zealots on your ramp. You're going to be spending your money, scout something that you know from experience is something aggressive, and then from then on you're going to start making units until you're satisfied, then keep making drones.
I know your heart is in the right place, but many of these concerns are untrue, or just not something I think a low level player needs to concern himself with to the same degree. No one is every going to say controlling your units properly is not important, but ask MarineKingPrime, probably one of the best micro players out there right now, if he'd rather micro a bit more and save 3 more marines or get 10 more marines, the answer's still going to be obvious. Eeking out a little bit more efficiency is good, but not at the cost of letting your macro slip and miss out on potential units. I'm not saying do something stupid like 1A a ton of marines into a 200/200 army of banelings, but micromanagement and unit control are FAR less important to a players development than just having more stuff.
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"You later say that you'll see BW pros bank several thousand minerals to place 4 factories at the same time for a timing attack, which is wrong. The only time you'd ever see 4 factories being placed at the same time was after maxed for some big reinforcement (because they can no longer constantly spend on units/SCV's), and even then, probably not. Why? Because by waiting to get to that couple thousand, they're missing time they could have had those factories done. Before they're maxxed, they're killing..."
Ehhh technically he is right. I mean Bisu and Flash were known to have a great macro sense. Bisu was known to throw down 5 gateways before he expanded so that way when the expo was running he could immediately pump units out, unlike the traditional method of expo then laying down production facilities. Obviously this is risky and you do need good intel.
So on to your guide:
bronze zerg and my god this is a nice read. I use to be a Terran player but switched because of it being somewhat a boring class and I hated the Protoss mechanic. I honestly didn't like zerg in sc1, but you know what I give it a try and my god the best choice. However I can't help but feel zerg is a bit UP since the mechanic is much MUCH less forgiving than the other two races.
When I finally learned about the concept of "droning" up or making army units, and with some of Idra's vids, I have to say it is a very interesting race and it makes you appreciate the game's creativity, too bad Blizzard is falling apart :/
Question: What would you say is a good way to scout as zerg. I mean terran has scan and protoss has a unit that specializes in this, very cheap too. Zerg, however, doesn't have the most reliable way. Drones can't get through so that leaves either scouting from harassing,like mutas, or suiciding ovies. Should I consider suiciding ovies since it seems it is more cost efficient than the scan (one scan=one mule that can mine 240/270 minerals, zerg ovie scouting cost=200)? (its 200 cause I am assuming you need to replace that lost ovie for the supply) but then by losing ovies periodically you would have to compensate your gameplay getting more ovies to not be supply capped...
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zerg ovie scouting cost=200)? (its 200 cause I am assuming you need to replace that lost ovie for the supply) but then by losing ovies periodically you would have to compensate your gameplay getting more ovies to not be supply capped...
I heard in a video with IdrA that he likes to get overlord speed right after lair and even if you don't get it it is still essential to use overlords to scout.
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dude just practice your macro
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Nice post dude, very helpful on Zerg game mechanics and general tweaking
I actually bind all of my injecting queens onto the hotkey right before my first hatch key (this is a BW habit), and I use the minimap to inject. I actually hotkey the drones from the newest expansion onto 0, in case of harass, but I guess it's up to the player, huh?
I'd have to say, did you actually go from Bronze, to Plat, to Bronze, to Plat, and then back to Plat again? You sir, know what the hell perseverance actually means
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Dealing with all the crazy shit T and P can throw at you is definitely the hardest part of learning to be good at Zerg. You have to be able to survive:
Hellion drop
Marine drop
Tank on cliff drop (haha who am I kidding, this one is too hard for me, I just t-down LT)
Banshees
2rax Marine/SCV allin
Marine/Tank push
4-gate
void ray rush
phoenix rush
DTs
before you can even GET to a macro game. Most of these rushes go off before I get my second base saturated. So it's a matter of finding a basic build that can be adapted to whatever you have scouted, and having your cards set up properly in case the shit hits the fan. Which it will in a good 70% of games, because nobody decent is going to just sit back and let you power drones.
The thing that I have found to be most effective against a lot of these cheese (especially from Terran) is to put a Spore Crawler in each mineral line, every game, no matter what. You should be getting an Evo Chamber anyway so it's only 300 minerals to protect both your mineral lines from air attacks. Even if your opponent doesn't engage the Spore directly, it takes away their positional advantage and forces them to position their air units over the inside of your base, where they can be attacked, instead of endlessly poking you from the edge of your cliff/mineral line. I can't tell you the number of games that I would have lost if it weren't for that hero Spore.
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One key thing to remember about learning to be a solid macro player is that when people say that its more important to macro than micro they are not joking or saying it for the sake of it. It really is true.
Lets say you have 2 roaches engaging 6-7 marines. With some pretty good micro (retreating the hurt one, etc), you might manage to snipe 3-4 marines without losing a roach. Under normal a-move cirucmstances, you might kill that many but lose both roaches. Or you would just retreat and not kill any of them. With the micro, you've squeezed extra resources out of them. But how many production cycles did you miss while furiously microing those two units?
I can't remember which pro said it, but in a furious micro battle you might eke out an extra few hundred minerals worth of value out of your army, only to go back to base and find you've floated a thousand minerals during the fight and your production buildings were sitting idle.
If you can do beastly micro while macroing well, by all means, do it. But thats something that even the pros have to work hard at, and I doubt you can multitask like that as well as you think you can, so given that you largely have to choose one or the other, macro always comes first.
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deleted post. responding to post i misread -_-
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Great work however I think you may be giving zerg users a little too much credit. I'm a Zerg player (not a great one by all means. Plat) and I find it hard believe you could go from plat terran to bronze playing as zerg. I do agree that Zerg is harder to play however that "thin line" we are skating on is really not as thin as you make it sound. You dont have to play perfect to advance in the ladder as zerg.. I am living proof of that. You shouldn't think of Zerg as the macro race and then going into a game focusing on pumping out as many drones as possible. Thinking like that and also thinking that Zerg is the underpowered race isnt going to help you going into a game. You need to have confidence; each race stands a chance against any other race. Without confidence you will have already lost in your mind before anything has even happened yet. Everyone thinks Zerg has to be miles ahead of their opponent to even stand a chance, and thats why they lose.
I'm sure many people including myself can benefit from your post, but remember that if you dont have faith in your race then you already lost.
One last comment id like to say here that Zerg shouldnt be thought of as the "macro race" though they are easy to macro as any race can focus on the macro game. Zerg is the race with the most adaptability
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I do understand that macro is the most important thing to improve for sub-Diamond players, but that's a content-free statement unless you define what you mean by macro. I have seen definitions from "always make workers, never get supply capped, keep minerals/gas low" all the way up to "everything that isn't microing units during battles."
Neither of those definitions is all that useful for a beginning Zerg player. You can macro perfectly under the first definition making just queens, drones and overlords up to 200/200 (good luck reaching Diamond that way) and it doesn't address the question of drones vs. units at all. Under the second definition all you are basically saying is "focus on everything but micro" which is accurate but largely useless. It's like saying something is not an elephant - it might be true, but it doesn't tell you very much.
The main point I took from the OP was that figuring out what your opponent is doing and reacting appropriately to it is a fundamental part of macro-oriented Zerg play, from Bronze on up. Learning to macro properly as Zerg means learning how to do it. Other races can postpone learning it until low-mid Diamond, as the 'diamond on stalkers and 1a' thread proves. We can't, or we'll be stuck in Bronze/Silver forever, either losing to mid-game pushes through overdroning or overproducing units for no reason except paranoia.
I do try to follow the minimalist worker/supply/minerals advice above and it has helped me. I've just always felt like it misses something, and I think my point above (scouting and reacting to the opponent) may be the missing piece of the puzzle. I could be wrong, of course. If anyone disagrees (maybe this is one of those things, like micro, that I should wait on until I'm Diamond and can start learning to play the game for real) then I'd love to hear your reasons - but if you tell me to "just macro" then please give me a definition for it that addresses my points in the second paragraph.
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On February 22 2011 09:33 heroyi wrote:
Question: What would you say is a good way to scout as zerg. I mean terran has scan and protoss has a unit that specializes in this, very cheap too. Zerg, however, doesn't have the most reliable way. Drones can't get through so that leaves either scouting from harassing,like mutas, or suiciding ovies. Should I consider suiciding ovies since it seems it is more cost efficient than the scan (one scan=one mule that can mine 240/270 minerals, zerg ovie scouting cost=200)? (its 200 cause I am assuming you need to replace that lost ovie for the supply) but then by losing ovies periodically you would have to compensate your gameplay getting more ovies to not be supply capped...
Overlords and lings. I think overlord speed and metabolic boost are the two most important upgrades to get for a zerg army in the long term, and will be the best 200/200 you've ever spent. I spread overlords all around my base to spot drops, put one at each expo, and have a few outside his base if possible (if I'm not going muta and they're going phoenix or something, you don't want overlords over there). If I really need to see inside his base I spend 50/100 to make it an overseer and swoop around his base. Unless he has a lot of units or cannons in his base, you're going to make it out because overseers are so fast. In fact one thing I'm working on is getting a 3-4 overseer hitsquad going for continuous scouting/contaminate mid-lategame. If you have overlord speed and an overseer or two, nothing he has in his base should be out of your view, and you can seriously mess with his production with contaminate, and I don't know why we don't see squads of overseers more from gifted high level players like IdrA, Nestea, or Ret. The gas expenditure is quite large to get more than a few per match, but I'm playing around with making it work.
Lings of course are the ultimate army spotting tool, and can quickly run anywhere on the map, and are a great unit to be able to crank out to reinforce if you get rid of units like colossus (assuming they're not really zealot heavy) in ZvP, and of course are standard in ZvT.
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On February 22 2011 11:31 KarboZ wrote:
Great work however I think you may be giving zerg users a little too much credit. I'm a Zerg player (not a great one by all means. Plat) and I find it hard believe you could go from plat terran to bronze playing as zerg. I do agree that Zerg is harder to play however that "thin line" we are skating on is really not as thin as you make it sound. You dont have to play perfect to advance in the ladder as zerg.. I am living proof of that. You shouldn't think of Zerg as the macro race and then going into a game focusing on pumping out as many drones as possible. Thinking like that and also thinking that Zerg is the underpowered race isnt going to help you going into a game. You need to have confidence; each race stands a chance against any other race. Without confidence you will have already lost in your mind before anything has even happened yet. Everyone thinks Zerg has to be miles ahead of their opponent to even stand a chance, and thats why they lose.
I'm sure many people including myself can benefit from your post, but remember that if you dont have faith in your race then you already lost.
One last comment id like to say here that Zerg shouldnt be thought of as the "macro race" though they are easy to macro as any race can focus on the macro game. Zerg is the race with the most adaptability
I feel like if that line isn't as thin as I make it out in the OP, then you're not playing up to zerg's econ potential. Watch allot of IdrA games, especially ZvP and ZvZ (zergs are quite agressive once mutas are out in ZvT). I can't tell you how many games I've watched of his and I thought he was going to lose straight up really early, but those roaches pop into position like 2 seconds before banelings are trying to knock down his natural. If you're trying to play like that, that line is quite thin indeed, and I feel like players who skate it at that level will have much more success long term than a player who plays more safely, getting more units or earlier units than he really needs.
Also, I by no means ever said zerg was underpowered. Certainly they're very fragile early, but are quite strong late game.
Also, as to going from plat to silver twice, I don't know what to say other than it happened. Maybe its just the ladder brackets I was in, but most players were very agressive, and 4 gates and bunker rushes (5 rax reaper when I started) were quite common, and I just lost so many games with 2 lings and ton of drones.
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First, I'd like to say that I am in love with Zerg. Bronze.
I've played a grand total of 12 1v1 games so far, but I have chosen this game as my number one game and will play it a lot more.
Hot keys are still fairly sketchy and my apm is really low but I'm going to practice my hot keys and standardize them eventually.
Thanks for your post this really helps not only a zerg but every single other player.
I like that most of what Day9 said on his newbie Macro Hotkeys, apm video was said here with a lot of zerg specific stuff thrown in and the ideas expanded. It really helps that I'm not getting any kind of mixed message.
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On February 22 2011 12:43 Arisen wrote:Show nested quote +On February 22 2011 09:33 heroyi wrote:
Question: What would you say is a good way to scout as zerg. I mean terran has scan and protoss has a unit that specializes in this, very cheap too. Zerg, however, doesn't have the most reliable way. Drones can't get through so that leaves either scouting from harassing,like mutas, or suiciding ovies. Should I consider suiciding ovies since it seems it is more cost efficient than the scan (one scan=one mule that can mine 240/270 minerals, zerg ovie scouting cost=200)? (its 200 cause I am assuming you need to replace that lost ovie for the supply) but then by losing ovies periodically you would have to compensate your gameplay getting more ovies to not be supply capped... Overlords and lings. I think overlord speed and metabolic boost are the two most important upgrades to get for a zerg army in the long term, and will be the best 200/200 you've ever spent. I spread overlords all around my base to spot drops, put one at each expo, and have a few outside his base if possible (if I'm not going muta and they're going phoenix or something, you don't want overlords over there). If I really need to see inside his base I spend 50/100 to make it an overseer and swoop around his base. Unless he has a lot of units or cannons in his base, you're going to make it out because overseers are so fast. In fact one thing I'm working on is getting a 3-4 overseer hitsquad going for continuous scouting/contaminate mid-lategame. If you have overlord speed and an overseer or two, nothing he has in his base should be out of your view, and you can seriously mess with his production with contaminate, and I don't know why we don't see squads of overseers more from gifted high level players like IdrA, Nestea, or Ret. The gas expenditure is quite large to get more than a few per match, but I'm playing around with making it work. Lings of course are the ultimate army spotting tool, and can quickly run anywhere on the map, and are a great unit to be able to crank out to reinforce if you get rid of units like colossus (assuming they're not really zealot heavy) in ZvP, and of course are standard in ZvT.
hrmmm...I never really considered about overseers...I have never used their ability nor really know anything about them except "oh opponent might get some gay cloak unit, better make a overseer just in case."
Are they are really that fast that you can use to scout? I will have to consider using them more then even though they are quite costly :/
Also, I failed to mention that my main concern was getting the early scouting (around beginning of mid game). For terran or protoss is not a big deal since you have access to intel whenever you want (scan/observer). I am concerned with zerg because I, although I could be wrong, feel that by the time lair and ovie speed is finished then it will be late (or very close to) to scouting out what tech tree the opponent goes (i.e banshee rush, HT or colossi etc...). How does one proceed to get such "reading" on his opponent BEFORE lair tech (assume opponent has walled off) and before the opponent can proceed to rush with whatever path he chose?
BTW I do use ovie speed to scout and it is nice. The nice fat health with a speed upgrade can get you an adequate amount of intel before the opponent reacts (also there is that small chance he/she will overreact and think it is a small drop lol). However, it does get quite costly to be constantly replacing them...
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On February 22 2011 14:04 heroyi wrote:Show nested quote +On February 22 2011 12:43 Arisen wrote:On February 22 2011 09:33 heroyi wrote:
Question: What would you say is a good way to scout as zerg. I mean terran has scan and protoss has a unit that specializes in this, very cheap too. Zerg, however, doesn't have the most reliable way. Drones can't get through so that leaves either scouting from harassing,like mutas, or suiciding ovies. Should I consider suiciding ovies since it seems it is more cost efficient than the scan (one scan=one mule that can mine 240/270 minerals, zerg ovie scouting cost=200)? (its 200 cause I am assuming you need to replace that lost ovie for the supply) but then by losing ovies periodically you would have to compensate your gameplay getting more ovies to not be supply capped... Overlords and lings. I think overlord speed and metabolic boost are the two most important upgrades to get for a zerg army in the long term, and will be the best 200/200 you've ever spent. I spread overlords all around my base to spot drops, put one at each expo, and have a few outside his base if possible (if I'm not going muta and they're going phoenix or something, you don't want overlords over there). If I really need to see inside his base I spend 50/100 to make it an overseer and swoop around his base. Unless he has a lot of units or cannons in his base, you're going to make it out because overseers are so fast. In fact one thing I'm working on is getting a 3-4 overseer hitsquad going for continuous scouting/contaminate mid-lategame. If you have overlord speed and an overseer or two, nothing he has in his base should be out of your view, and you can seriously mess with his production with contaminate, and I don't know why we don't see squads of overseers more from gifted high level players like IdrA, Nestea, or Ret. The gas expenditure is quite large to get more than a few per match, but I'm playing around with making it work. Lings of course are the ultimate army spotting tool, and can quickly run anywhere on the map, and are a great unit to be able to crank out to reinforce if you get rid of units like colossus (assuming they're not really zealot heavy) in ZvP, and of course are standard in ZvT. hrmmm...I never really considered about overseers...I have never used their ability nor really know anything about them except "oh opponent might get some gay cloak unit, better make a overseer just in case." Are they are really that fast that you can use to scout? I will have to consider using them more then even though they are quite costly :/ Also, I failed to mention that my main concern was getting the early scouting (around beginning of mid game). For terran or protoss is not a big deal since you have access to intel whenever you want (scan/observer). I am concerned with zerg because I, although I could be wrong, feel that by the time lair and ovie speed is finished then it will be late (or very close to) to scouting out what tech tree the opponent goes (i.e banshee rush, HT or colossi etc...). How does one proceed to get such "reading" on his opponent BEFORE lair tech (assume opponent has walled off) and before the opponent can proceed to rush with whatever path he chose? BTW I do use ovie speed to scout and it is nice. The nice fat health with a speed upgrade can get you an adequate amount of intel before the opponent reacts (also there is that small chance he/she will overreact and think it is a small drop lol). However, it does get quite costly to be constantly replacing them...
When faced with a wall early game before overlord speed is out, just sacrifice an overlord. It sucks that you lose a farm for it, but you need to, plain and simple if you don't know what he's doing. People will say anywhere from 4:30 to 5:45 is a good time, but you need to know what you're looking for and figure out timings, rather than just sticking to a rule of thumb. Most times, you can get most of the info to make an informed decision with your scouting drone. If you're worried about a banshee rush and you kept your drone alive a decent amount of time, if he wasn't on 2 gas, it's very delayed. If he's on 2 gas, 2/3 rax all ins are less of a threat (although you can't rule them out). If you're worried about 4 gate, if he's on 2 gas, in my experience, it's less likely he'll 4 gate. It all comes down to analysis of your replays to figure out what you're afraid of, and making timings for yourself based on that. These timings will change as you rank up higher and higher, as players will (generally) have much better timings in the higher leagues.
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Awesome guide man! Thanks for putting in the effort on this guide, I'm a macro zerg and have a thing or two extra to think about in my games now.
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This is very helpful, thank you man.
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On February 23 2011 14:08 Maynarde wrote:
Awesome guide man! Thanks for putting in the effort on this guide, I'm a macro zerg and have a thing or two extra to think about in my games now.
glad to hear it's helping people
On an unrelated note, constructive criticism of things to add would be great for anyone who spots something that would be useful.
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Cool guide, I hate the terranezmode overtone, but I'll let it slide 
You should add replays that are noteworthy. As good as your guide is, visual learning for for SCII is just always going to be superior. I think replays of quick expansions holding off various all in's with a written analysis is the highest value an aspiring zerg player can absorb.
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Woops fail reading comp is fail.
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On February 24 2011 15:07 manicshock wrote:
Tbh, I don't think zerg is too difficult if you get into the rhythm. I'm a terran player, who decided to take zerg as my off race (because it was touted as the difficult race). The main problem is mostly I don't play nearly as often as zerg. My first ZvP I knew the general things but it was just way different. It reminded me of when I tried variations away from 3 rax and it just felt entirely new. I can see where people come from when they say zerg's the hardest, but it isn't nearly as overwhelmingly difficult as people seem to make it if you have the basic skillset and mindset to do it.
My original point: maybe you just weren't cut out to be zerg or you simply didn't have a basic skillset at all and winged it as terran/protoss against really bad people? 99% of my terran till diamond was micro. I'd perfect my BO to a point AKA try to avoid supply blocks and push at 7 minutes then micro them into oblivion basically. But then I reached a point in my games where it was closer to BO loss and learn new strats. I learned zerg around the same time and been playing at maybe a plat level for a while.
Thanks for you undoubtedly sterling advice, but I don't see how this applies at all (I'm questioning if this is a troll)
As always, any helpful feedback is appreciated.
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Woops fail reading comp is fail.
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On February 25 2011 11:04 manicshock wrote:
You say zerg's hard, I tell you it's difficult but no where near to the point that OP stressed when he struggled. Maybe he had a hard time with zerg because he just started as zerg, but I never had any problems I guess because I became a decent player as terran first. Which is where basic skillsets come in. The whole "Zomg zerg impossible to play" is bull as far as I'm concerned, it just takes focus and hotkeys.
Noone said zerg is impossible to play? That's the whole point of the guide...
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there is no way in hell you went from platinum terran to bronze zerg then back to platinum protoss to bronze zerg ... i just dont see how anyone who managed to make it to platinum can tank all the way down to bronze just by changing races... do u realize how long it takes to tank down a league?? my god. Other than that good thread i just find this hard to believe the whole tanking business.
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Really well written and helpful. I actually didn't know about the F keys being location specific hotkeys. I'll try that with the rally now. I actually used to be a high gold zerg player and barely able to pull my stuff together to keep that position. Then I realized how poor my gameplay was and I started working on my macro real hard. Dropped down to low silver and I'm working my way back up.
I think something worth noting about zerg battles is the importance of surrounding your opponent. You always hear casters, coaches, etc talking about "getting a nice surround". It is extremely important for the zerg to do this. Zerg armies are much weaker (well... just less efficient) than the other armies. So fight like a small and mobile army. Striking surgically and flanking opponents is key to Zerg army micro. Tanks unseiged and marines too far ahead? Punish them with a swarm of lings from behind. Drop a couple of roaches in the main with overlords or throw down a nydus (often I feel that scream is more intimidating than any army). His whole army pushing with no defense left in his base? Send 10 lings to kill some SCVs and Probes. I find crashing my army into any other race's army head on usually ends up in a loss.
Also another thing I've found important is while my army may be very fast and capable of counter attacking, don't. It usually just puts you behind. A patient zerg is a happy zerg.
The zerg army is scrappy, not necessarily powerful and the race is very hard to learn/master. Once I got this in my head, my gameplay significantly improved.
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I'm just going to tell you a small secret that is a helpful tip. If you want to be a macro player. Here is the key. LARVAE / DRONES / MAXING OUT ARMY AS FAST AS YOU FReAKING CAN. the MOMENT YOU ARE MAXED. ****KEY MOMENT WEN YOU ARE MAXED AND HAVE ENOUGH LARVAE TO REMAX QUICKLY AND A GOOD ENOUGH INCOME TO TO DO SO*** YOU SHOULD ATACK AND IMEADIATELY REMAX.
a good tactic is expand anytime you have 300 extra mins and no larvae to spend on drones or units. also expand everytime you are atacking with a maxed army. and remax while its dying. there are a lot more tips i could give but i think the best tip for any low level player is if you are capable of hitting the 200/200 food mark much faster than your opponent then you now have your macro down. Now its time to worry about unit compositions and build orders.
ANOTHER thing early - mid game WHEN I SAY learn to MAX your ARMY as fast as you can REMEMBER you can MAKE DRONES AND UNITS AT SAME TIME I like to make half drone half units all game unless im atacking if im atacking thats wen i am remaxing all units. there is more to this but this is helpful enough for lower end players to break into plat or diamond.
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Good Read
If you want my advice, just play brood war for a good month, and try to get to D playing standard zerg, when you come back, you will be Masters.
The skills in Sc2 that are optional in lower leagues were mandatory in any league in Brood War.
You will be forced to play better and when you hit Sc2, you will be able to have control of the mechanics very easily.
This is golden for zergs just starting out. <3
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Great post, I have been playing SC2 for about a week, but have been watching pro games since MLG DC, I know i'm Better than alot of the players im playing against but 1 base timing attacks almost always kill me, hopefully I can get back up to gold and keep getting better(i got demoted to silver last night)
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Long but I forced myself to read it! Thanks a lot!
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On February 26 2011 10:14 Twaxter wrote:Good Read If you want my advice, just play brood war for a good month, and try to get to D playing standard zerg, when you come back, you will be Masters. The skills in Sc2 that are optional in lower leagues were mandatory in any league in Brood War. You will be forced to play better and when you hit Sc2, you will be able to have control of the mechanics very easily. This is golden for zergs just starting out. <3
Well, if you create an iCCup account, to be fair, you're already at D
I think this is helpful, in a way, as it will punish you for having poor mechanics around the D-C range, and really punish you above that. Yes, you'll learn allot of the economic focused RTS basics by playing BW. However, BW and Starcraft 2 should be viewed, IMO, totally different games from a player perspective. I use BW references allot to pound my points home, I realize, but the sheer difference in BW zerg and SC2 zerg makes it something like a totally different race. In my opinion, you'll get more out of playing SC2 for practice than BW. BW has nothing to simulate queen's larvae inject which is probably one of the main problems facing new zergs. Also, you're learning a whole other system of hatchery management where you only had 1 larvae per (?) seconds per hatchery, and (theoretically) you'd never have more than one larvae per hatch after the first few minutes of the game, so resources flowed completely differently.
While I completely support anyone playing BW because it's a great game, practicing BW zerg to get good at SC2 zerg doesn't make the most sense to me, as, in my mind, they're apples and oranges.
Thanks for the suggestion, and if anyone wants to try this, more power to you, I just feel you'll get more out of your practice time by playing SC2 than BW
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Awesome guide, a really nice read. I got a question though, what are the main differences between the mentality of a zerg player and a protoss/terran player?
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Great thread, im coming in kind of late but i did want to give my 2 cents on one thing.
Hotkey setup is largely preference but the undisputable most effecient way to hot key your queens is by having all of the queens on one hotkey, and then changing the base camera function from the backspace key to something more accessible... i like to use shift + space as mine.
So basically when i inject this is all that happens: (for 3 bases lets say)
I hit my queen hotkey button once ( 6 ) - 1 key press total
I hold shift and press V - 2 key presses total
I press space once and click on my hatch, while continuing to hold shift - 4 key presses total
I repeat this for the other 2 hatches - 8 key presses total
With the OP's method, this happens:
hit each queen hotkey twice, then press v and click ( 4 key presses per hatch )
repeated for 3 hatches, this is 12 key presses.
Another point is that with my method, I can inject 3 bases in under 2 seconds once my queens are selected and i press v i just have to alternate space and click for each base.
Also this way you can support an unlimited number of bases without having to have 4+ different hotkeys for your queens.
Sorry if this is slightly off topic, but I really feel like this way is undeniably more efficient than using any other method so if you are just building habits it may be a good one to use
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Really nice thread! So much work... i will send my friends in here for some awesome zerg knowledge!
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More zergs need to see this
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Way to bolster our race, Arisen! Thanks for such an insightful, well thought-out, organized post. I'm also glad you gave up on the "Zerg is underpowered" concept, I think it's just harder/ more fun. You present wonderful commentaries on the powerful aspects of the zerg meta-game!
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i'm sure alot of the stuff mentioned here are things that high zergs r struggling or striving to improve or perfect. definitely not just meant for low level zergs.
awesome post =)
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I bookmarked this page since I don't have time to read it all right now, but I am definitely going to.
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That's a very intresting read Arisen, I agreed with alot of your opening arguments and I also struggle alot with playing as Zerg on the ladder.
I will take your rules and pointers in mind next time I practice!
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Wow this is a great guide for a player like me. I'm personally very stubborn about always trying to play a macro game, and I usually lose because. There just seems to be so many players at the lower levels who just want to rush or all-in their way to the top.
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I have just switched to zerg, great post. I like your point about overlords ... very true. I'd forgotten the corruption day 9 episode .. that was pretty damn funny.
One thing you didn't mention is creep spread from tumors and queens.
One thing that i hadn't noticed whilst playing random 4v4 (I was P 1v1) is that you can use an active tumor to spread creep. I have read a lot about sc2 but have never seen that stated - I noticed by watching streams of people. I was using 2-3 queens to spread creep when really you just need a queen to start the spread. Given that creep gives vision (and slows down armies who want to kill it) its hugely important imo.
Maybe worth an include?
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This is a great post. Respectfully, Arisen, I don't see a note specifically saying it is adapted from Day[9]'s VOD? I know you include it as a link at the bottom of the mechanics section, but my memory leads me to think at least the Mechanics section is a word for word transcript of his VOD. If it is, I'm sure Day[9] doesn't mind but perhaps you could preface your post with the VOD link and giving more direct credit?
Not trying to downplay your thread -- there is plenty of added value in transcribing his VODs as well as your own analysis.
Edit: Apologies if this starts a flame war, but...I've found a significant amount of content that seems like a direct transcript from Day[9]'s VOD(s). Why didn't you mention this in your intro? I specifically remember him saying this section:
One mistake I see allot of players make is looking at battles, even if they can't do shit about it. Watch a player like IdrA play from a first person perspective and see how much he's actually watching battles. Not very often.
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On May 07 2011 06:27 MrHavix wrote:This is a great post. Respectfully, Arisen, I don't see a note specifically saying it is adapted from Day[9]'s VOD? I know you include it as a link at the bottom of the mechanics section, but my memory leads me to think at least the Mechanics section is a word for word transcript of his VOD. If it is, I'm sure Day[9] doesn't mind but perhaps you could preface your post with the VOD link and giving more direct credit? Not trying to downplay your thread -- there is plenty of added value in transcribing his VODs as well as your own analysis. Edit: Apologies if this starts a flame war, but...I've found a significant amount of content that seems like a direct transcript from Day[9]'s VOD(s). Why didn't you mention this in your intro? I specifically remember him saying this section: Show nested quote +One mistake I see allot of players make is looking at battles, even if they can't do shit about it. Watch a player like IdrA play from a first person perspective and see how much he's actually watching battles. Not very often.
It won't start a flame war, but that's pretty much common knowledge. That statement is definitely not day9's intellectual property. He just relays the same information in a way that makes sense to a beginner. All good players know to look away from the battle when the micro is done and I think it would be a shame to deprive the readers of this thread who may not have seen every day9 video of that information.
While I think the OP is fundamentally wrong on alot of the suggestions that its harder to play macro zerg than macro toss or terran or that zergs are allowed fewer mistakes (I find this to be exactly backwards to be honest), you have to give him credit for at least trying to help people and providing correct information on a forum where little "zerglings" (my word for sub-masters zerg players) are looking for help.
All the races are very unforgiving. This GAME is very unforgiving. Zerg doesn't have a monopoly on difficulty, they are just another race, where if you put enough time in, you will understand them and play well in your matchups. Its really no different. I play at masters level at all 3 races, but main protoss. Player matters more than race.
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How do u feel about the pros/cons of
1-3 army, 4+ macro
vs
1-4 army, 5+ macro
I see ~1/2 the pros doing each :/ always thought MORE control groups would give u better control...?
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On May 07 2011 07:29 Malpractice.248 wrote:
How do u feel about the pros/cons of
1-3 army, 4+ macro
vs
1-4 army, 5+ macro
I see ~1/2 the pros doing each :/ always thought MORE control groups would give u better control...?
If you see a need for an extra army tab go for it. The point of a hotkey setup is something personal to you, that you can use to it's full potential. If you're the kind of player who loves army control and gaining advantages in that way, and could see a way to better his army control with an extra hotkey, you should absolutely try it out. Tyler talks about this in a recent SotG where he binds his buildings to some outlandish shit (robotics to z, etc), but it works for him, and that's all that should matter; what works for you.
Cheers.
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Does anyone have good build orders for each matchup that yo ucould practice over and over and preferbly flowcharts as well so you hav ea good gameplan?
I've looked around but most are outdated unfortunately, the flowcharts.
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On March 26 2011 00:45 MrJargon wrote:
I bookmarked this page since I don't have time to read it all right now, but I am definitely going to.
Likewise. I will reference this later. Thanks for the post!
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I just find it so very hard with playing zerg. I am a silver player in SEA but only because I won against a silver zerg by chance using protoss (completely no clue why I was protoss, guess someone switched it while i went to toilet).
The big big difficulty with zerg is that you have to make sure you spent your larva correctly.
Many times, in smaller maps where I managed to hold off early aggression after I FE, I started pumping drones to recover the loss in drone counts since I have a handful of speedlings.
Then after a while, another attack and I have no larva to build anymore and have to give up my natural.
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Thanks for taking the time to write all this up! I wish I had this when I was learning Zerg. A lot of the advice here can apply to other races as well not just Zerg.
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Great post Arisen. You really simplify how Zerg should be played and it makes a lot of sense. Hopefully upon review of your post I can gear out of gold league. Thank you so much for your effort in writing this post.
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GREAT Guide. Very informative to me, thanks a lot :DD
I'm gonna take a lot away from this, thanks again :D
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Flying Farms! How cool is that? Not only do they fly, they drop creep, can drop, and can morph into overseers which can slow production, nullify cannons, delay upgrades, and scout very well.
wait what? overseers nullify cannons?
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On August 03 2011 11:32 mrgoldenbrown wrote:Show nested quote +Flying Farms! How cool is that? Not only do they fly, they drop creep, can drop, and can morph into overseers which can slow production, nullify cannons, delay upgrades, and scout very well. wait what? overseers nullify cannons?
i dont think they can
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Excelletn guide and keep up the good work.
Thank you for the help
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Interesting post with a lot of good points that I agree with. My biggest argument is I think an aggressive style of zerg (IE Drone-timing attack-drone-timing attack) style of zerg is the best way to improve Thanks for the post!
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Nice post! shame i know (as in aware, trying to improve) all of those points and still in bronze :-(
I hate cheese and trying to be good at macro 1st, will i ever make it out of bronze??
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I stopped reading after you said you wanted to be special so you rolled the hardest race, because not only is the zerg race being harder to play than the others a myth believed only by self-important zerg players, but also because I think if someone wants to try and accomplish something and feel good about themselves on a video game they should be aiming to become one of the best players and win tournaments and make something out of their time spent on the game, otherwise it's just a really, really fun hobby.
I play random at master level, and no one race is harder or easier than the others. They all have some retarded easy things they can do to get up to masters, but most of what gets you into Master league is simply being able to macro efficiently. If you hit all your injects and use all your larvae as they become available, for instance, chances are you will already be breaking into masters MMR. I'm not lying this is actually the truth. Scouting, unit compositions, timings, etc, all that is important don't get me wrong, but if you just always have more stuff than your opponent then you will always be ahead, and the windows in which you can punish your opponent or get more ahead by using the tools given to you will become more apparent. With protoss and terran, to get into masters mmr it's the same thing. Almost never stop building workers and macro up a huge army. If zerg is about the flank and counter attack "micro", then terran is about the stim stutter step, drop and protoss is the retreat and forcefield micro, because every race can appreciate having a concave and and pre place units before fights. In fact zerg, imo, is probably the least micro intensive race in the game much of the time, nestea might agree with me.
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I´ve played all races to Diamond, and Zerg to masters. I still regularly play all 3 races, and Zerg is definitely not the hardest race to play for me. Infact, succeeding in Diamond as Terran was much more difficult than as Zerg, I struggled not to be demoted at times. Terran is the hardest race for ME. Stating Zerg is the hardest race as some kind of universal truth is ridiculous and it devalues the rest of the post.
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On November 17 2011 14:03 TangSC wrote:Interesting post with a lot of good points that I agree with. My biggest argument is I think an aggressive style of zerg (IE Drone-timing attack-drone-timing attack) style of zerg is the best way to improve Thanks for the post!
I agree on this! I've been fiddling around with roach timings in ZvZ lately, and trying to improve those timings boosted my mechanics and general comfort on being aggressive a lot! I feel like aggression is one of the, if not the best way to improve quickly. if you have a plan to execute ASAP, you'll notice how slow you are actually playing.
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Nice guide!
For the zerg-hardest-race flamers: keep in mind that the OP is from February, and then that opinion was a bit more accepted I think (maybe ppl still listened to Idra, what do I know? ). So take that more as a piece of sc2 cultural history from the times where PvZ was dominated by 4 gate rushes, and when MVP > all was a widely accepted fact.
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Race balance crying has and will always be bad manner.
If someone loses a game, they should change what they're doing somewhere, rather than demand it be changed for them, implying they can't do wrong.
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this thread is old.
Zerg was up back then.
nice guide:D
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Lol a lot of this came from that one Day9 Newbie Tuesday >.<
Great write-up though!
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Just switched to Zerg (maybe this time I can actually convince myself to just SWITCH), and your guide will help SO sososo much. I'm amazed at how relevant it is and how relevant it will always be. Great read, great write, and I'm glad you wrote this Arisen. Thanks.
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This is all really cool, but I wanted to point out that:
If you're at 200 supply and you don't have a damn good reason not to, go attack. If you're sitting back in your base at 200 supply, you're wasting larvae. The goal is to suicide units intelligently, taking out chunks of the opp army and using those extra larvae from larvae vomit to reinforce very quickly to overwhelm your opp. Your situation is only going to get worse the longer you stay at 200/200.
Is not sound advice, a Zerg can lose an edge and possibly the game for attacking just because he's 200/200 and has no reason not to. If you have an army and want to use it, make it the opponents problem that he has to deal with on YOUR terms by forcing a reaction out of him. Say expanding 3 times for the gas, and forcing him to move out or let you get free T3.
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V nice writeup! the learning curve for sc2 is pretty steep and getting sound advice like this is always helpful. im going to give my zerg laddering another shot!
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I love this thread. Thank you so much for this guide. This is will always be my reference.
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Have had this thread bookmarked for a long time.
Arisen, with your blessing, I'll turn it into an article on Liquipedia!
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Ty man rly helpfull
<3 Zerg <3
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I'm trying to work on my zerg macro and move away from the usual hard aggro builds I've been doing. Is the OP still a fairly good guide to use with the game in the current state it is?
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On May 31 2012 11:20 lavit2099 wrote:
I'm trying to work on my zerg macro and move away from the usual hard aggro builds I've been doing. Is the OP still a fairly good guide to use with the game in the current state it is?
Yeah, why not. Its not like its much build orders or specific metagame stuff in this as far as I can tell from reading through it fast. If you are looking for builds and stuff then the mrbitter vods he refers to are a bit outdated now, but still good learing if you havent watched it yet..
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EPT
