EPTFor example, in the beginning (5min), zerg is the lower eco race until he has queen and more hatch. Zerg can produce more drone but he need to be wary that a timing push may come therefore, instead of eco boom, he need to make army or tech up to scout. Roughly 7min+, zerg still not the best eco race.
Attacking Where Your Opponent is Weakest - Page 6
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kimono38
Malaysia23 Posts
For example, in the beginning (5min), zerg is the lower eco race until he has queen and more hatch. Zerg can produce more drone but he need to be wary that a timing push may come therefore, instead of eco boom, he need to make army or tech up to scout. Roughly 7min+, zerg still not the best eco race. | ||
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Anomandaris
Afghanistan440 Posts
However the examples given by the OP are often bad, or even totally wrong. His examples show his ignorance of starcraft 2. I don't think this thread is useful at all imo. | ||
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Hattori_Hanzo
Singapore1229 Posts
Just not at the early game. As others have pointed out, the "early" destruction of the spawning pool by two early banshees does not damage the Zerg defender in any meaningful way due to the sufficient HP a spawning pool and defensive options available to the Zerg defender has. On the other hand, at the mid-game with both armies evenly tied in strength, the sudden destruction of the spawning pool can mean certain end to the Zerg defender. Why? Because both armies would have committed to a certain build, suddenly the opponent doesn't have to worry about lings or banelings for the next 65s. That will mean certain end. Thus any reasonable Zerg player would have to frantically defend his spawning pool, potentially making losing decisions in the process. | ||
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Escape
Canada306 Posts
On April 28 2011 14:25 Ryno00 wrote: I agree, and on that note, here is a resource that does do the topic justice: Day9's Starcraft Podcast for anyone not familiar these are essentially the Day9 Daily beta, auido-only podcasts where day9 reflects on some of the most core concepts to broodwar and RTS games in general. in fact they are so core that they still translate perfectly to SC2 except for the in-game examples. including an excellent dissection of abusing weaknesses and the concept of "sidestepping". i can highly reccomend listening to all of them, more than once if possible as they are very complex ideas that take a while to sink in. Thanks for this! It's a treasure trough. | ||
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Grubbegrabbn
Sweden174 Posts
On April 27 2011 17:05 han_han wrote: This was a nice read, but how can you stop a 4-gate with cloaked units??? Nah its not possible to stop it as such - its just that the appropriate response to a 4-gate (which is considered low-tech in the OP) is to tech up and gain an advantage. In this particular case, Banshees - even without cloak - will force a response that will stop the 4-gate in its tracks. Provided that the defender held off the initial attack ofc. Once cloak finishes the 4-gater must have an observer or cannons. While getting that, the terran will have built an expansion to get further ahead, this time economically. | ||
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Wolverick
Canada13 Posts
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TLurker
51 Posts
Two additional points I'd like to bring up are that upgrades need to be taken into account and so should mirror match-ups since these are unavoidable. I was really glad that when I opened this thread it wasn't completely lacking in substance which is something I half expected, and I was also happy to see input from higher level players and hope to see more. Currently the generalizations are so general that they aren't really useful and where it tries to be specific in breaking strategy down into 3 pillars and also the examples provided seem to need some evidence or tweaking to be more correct. | ||
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dave333
United States915 Posts
"A fast expansion sacrifices tech. So the best Terran response to a Protoss FE is cloaked Banshee. The best Zerg response to a Terran FE is a fast spire. The best Protoss response to a high econ Zerg is to move quickly to tier 3." This in particular. The best response to a terran FE is a fast spire? This is just bad info. If the terran does a greedy build like CC before rax, you're better options are either double expanding or if you want aggression, a pure baneling bust. Likewise, a protoss response to high econ zerg (aka greedy zerg) is to kill him. Teching to T3 is not going to do jack on one base. Banshees might be a good response to a toss FE, but a toss on his game will know the dangers of banshees, and will actively seek it out. Rest of it is pretty obvious if you have any sense of the game. | ||
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tskarzyn
United States516 Posts
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Saracen
United States5139 Posts
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firehand101
Australia3152 Posts
On April 28 2011 23:17 Wolverick wrote: eumm I wouldn't kill the spawning pool, all drones are still mining like crazy and queens are vomiting larva, zerg could make 5 spawning pool and still laugh that your banshee were worthless but you have to remember, zerg cannot make ANYTHING without the spawning pool. It is their most vital structure, and if you are able to snipe this, they cannot make drones, or any kind of unit. If you were harassing early game, and managed to snipe the queen with your banshees so they didn't die, and take out the spawning pool, there is literally nothing the zerg can do if that was their only tech building. They can't even make another queen for anti air! Mod Edit: Nope. User was temp banned from Strategy Forum for this post | ||
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Johnny_Vegas
United States239 Posts
To someone new to baseball, it would appear to be all about throwing, catching, and hitting a ball. An experienced player would understand there is much more to it than that. Such is the problem with your 3 pillars, it is a colossal oversimplification. As many have pointed out, it is in fact unusable, as it rests on many false assumptions. Experience is the best teacher, and experience tells us its better to kill the drones. Why? Because after we kill a lot of drones, we discover that we tend to win games. Experience has also shown us that we tend to lose games when we waste time focusing down a cheap and highly durable evo chamber only to be chased away by Queens. You are ignoring very important concepts such as incremental damage and targets of opportunity. One of the reasons workers are targeted with such high priority is killing them can be an easy way to inflict damage due to their low health. Not only that, you don't have to kill ALL the workers to do damage, every one you kill helps. Compare that with killing a Lair. If you don't finish off all 2000 health, you've done zero damage. To go for high health targets like that takes a judgement call based on accurately assessing the game situation at hand, and cannot be summed up with your 3 pillars. A proper analysis would take someone with extreme knowledge, months to write, and a more accurate title would be something like "The 142 pillars". | ||
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EliteAzn
United States661 Posts
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Guppers
United States94 Posts
that's a terrible place to keep your treasure, I may have a spare trove for you  My thoughts on this post: I think that the OP brings up a facet of the game which is perhaps not spoken about enough in the terms of the OP (the pillar system of looking at it). I like the idea of a thread exploring this further (some people have already added great posts to clarify) but so far it's mostly bitching about the banshee example, holy cow people in case you haven't been paying attention for the love of god do not under any circumstances target the spawning pool! so in an attempt to get this thread to a better place I have a few questions to ask to the better players (my own input would probably be ignorant) 1) We've established that the game is too complicated to be simplified in a general model as outlined by the OP. However what is the simplest model that we COULD come up with that gives a flowchart of how to make decisions based off of the tech/army/econ pillar idea? 2) If the idea is indeed to complicated to even attempt to create such a flow chart, then specifically what are the nuances that make it impossible follow such rules, if we can understand why it can't be THAT simple then we can start to take the complicated stuff and at least make it as simple as possible. 3) what are the normal "obvious" examples that would support the OP (or our new model if we found one) so that you could show a less informed player how the idea basically works? 4) what are some correct decisions following this kind of model that might seem counterintuitive on the surface (for example if the OPs banshee example WAS correct then that would be a case of "holy cow i didn't know I should do that instead") i hope this is a sufficient contribution to the thread, i really feel there should be another discussion thread about this that focuses on producing a way of thinking rather than focusing on some bad examples to a good idea. | ||
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Amarkov
United States131 Posts
There are the obvious places where the OP's generalizations fail. The correct protoss response to a terran FE is a slightly later expansion, and the correct protoss response to a heavily droning zerg is not 1 base colossus. But you can explain these away without too much effort using the same basic model, so they don't constitute a particularly strong argument. The issue is that in some cases it just straight out doesn't work. For example, take ZvP. There are two reasonable responses zerg has to a forge FE: they can either mass an army and attempt a bust, or they can take very quick thirds to try and regain an econ advantage. Neither of these make any sense within this three pillars framework; the protoss dropped a nexus at 16 for huge economy, and he's building cannons for a huge army. The response you would predict from this theory (rushing tech and ignoring economy) simply does not work in the slightest. Starcraft is in some sense "about" army, econ, and tech advantages, sure. But that doesn't mean that you can usefully consider army, econ, and tech as independent and discrete things, where correct play only depends on which thing X build maximizes. | ||
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_Search_
Canada180 Posts
The games I played illustrate that the correct target for a Terran doing a tech build (i.e., Cloaked Banshee) is to target tech structures, not economy. | ||
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Superpower
Australia212 Posts
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Saracen
United States5139 Posts
On May 01 2011 08:43 _Search_ wrote: Just edited the OP, giving replays outlining the Banshee v Zerg example. The games I played illustrate that the correct target for a Terran doing a tech build (i.e., Cloaked Banshee) is to target tech structures, not economy. I'm sorry, but the reason you won in the replays was because Zerg kept suiciding his anti-air and failed to get enough gas for enough mutas, not because you targeted tech structures. No matter how many drones he has, and no matter how much tech he has, of course he's not going to be able to deal with 6 banshees and 6 vikings if he just has 3 mutas and 3 queens. Killing his spawning pool made no difference at all. And I think in all but one of the games, you didn't even kill the spire the first time through. Similarly, the reason you lost the game where you killed so many drones is that you went for the same strategy but your opponent actually responded correctly, meaning he had an appropriate gas timing and didn't suicide his early mutas (you'll notice that he's the only one who didn't continue to harass your base once he saw the vikings). The bottom line is: in the games you won, you won because your opponents suicided their anti-air defense and didn't keep on producing it. In the game you lost, you lost because your opponent didn't suicide his anti-air defense and actually responded approriately. It had nothing to do with you killing a spawning pool. If you don't mind, I'd like you to play against me in any scenario, it doesn't even have to be the banshee vs Zerg example. I'll show you why you are wrong. | ||
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Ydriel
Italy516 Posts
Quite an interesting read, looks at a facet of the game that isn't often spoke of. Day9 went on to mention it in a Daily (can't remember the name atm), but he didn't quite delve into it. In fact, I agree with the "kill the tech" decision in the banshee example: taking away a Spawning Pool prevents Queens to be built, Zergling and hence Banelings, locking the Z with his econ, giving you map control, etc. Or if they have a Spire, taking that down, considering the time it takes to remake. Then again, I guess it depends on the circumstances. What I disagree with, though, is your black-and-white description at the races. You are right, for example, that Terran's strongest point is his tech, but that doesn't mean that they can't play on the other 2 pillars. The 6 rax rine build for Terran, that have been used against both Z and P, even if it seemingly plays against Terran's strength, is pretty good. Why? Because for a Z or P it can be hard to scout and hit when they're weak. There are econ based builds for the 3 races, and they do work, same as army and tech based builds. FE builds for P work quite well, allowing their better econ to get a good-sized army and tech, booming into the mid-game. I know you're not implying to limit each race's choice to his strongest point, just saying that different builds work for different reasons, be it access to map control, or being quite difficult to scout (and hence defend without the appropriate counter). Not trying to downgrade the post or anything though, just trying to add my 5 cent. Will be definitely something I'll keep in mind to improve my game play. | ||
Whitewing
United States7483 Posts
Since games are won through an advantage in either army, tech, or economy, and advantages increase exponentially, it's crucial to learn to attack your opponent where they are weakest. I want to point out how important it is to think things out in general, and not just follow any single maxim like this one blindly. Yes, it is a great idea to hit the weak point most of the time, however, various strategies and plans don't revolve around this, and it's not because they're bad. If you army is stronger than your enemy's strongest point, then it can be rewarding to hammer their strong point. If you are expanding along a certain path, it is generally good to attack along that path, even if your enemy is weaker elsewhere. The gist is: make sure to think about it. | ||
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