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I will be approaching this from the (gold league) terran standpoint, but all races are more than welcome to reply with their race's options.
The issue is, I am able to keep my minerals relatively low but once I max out my army (usually have ~70ish workers), I tend to prefer starving my opponent with just minor engagements with his army at his attempted expansions. However, since I am not losing my entire army I only need to build 20 units or so at a time. This causes my minerals to skyrocket and I cannot spend it fast enough. I feel as if there are things I should be doing that I am missing. For example, I usually hit this point when at 7-8 raxes 1-2 factories and 1 starport; while maxed should I build several additional raxes/factories/starports? If so, what numbers would you suggest? The reason I thought of the mass building production is for if occassions that our armies do fully engage, then I can recover and max-out more quickly.
What all other options do you believe to work in these situations? Please be as specific as you can.
My second and final question is when/if to sacrifice workers. I've seen many players do this and have never understood when to do this (I understand why but when would this be appropriate and when not?)
Thanks in advance for your participation!
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I think you should try preventing your opponent from getting a 4th/5th and constantly harass and poke his third. I think once youre max you are on a time limit to make a more late game army (ravens and whatnot). Being max and not doing anything with your army makes it weaker over time and when your opponent finally moves out he might have a stronger army and will just sweep yours clean.
You sacrifice your workers when you have enough orbitals to make up for it (like 5-6 on 4 bases). Since a maxed out terran will bank quite a bit of minerals, its good to spam orbitals since its a long time investment. If needed, you can also fly one of your macro orbital to a base and then spam mules and quickly mine it out. Also, a max out terran should have waaaay more raxes and at least 3 factories (assuming all 3 reactors and spamming 6 mines), and make more starport for ravens!
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As a Protoss player, when I get maxed I just keep expanding (w/o building more probes, obviously) and add a shit ton of production facilities, mostly warpgates. That way you can quickly reinforce after an engagement. Building plenty of static defense to secure your economy is also a very useful way to spend your resources (Terrans can't really do this, but you have planetary fortresses anyway). Another way to use your resources after maxed is to prepare a tech switch after the next engagement. Say, PvZ, I have a maxed stalker collosi army, I can use spare resources to build 4-5 stargates in the background and start to work on my air upgrades to make a big switch whenever I free up supply.
As for sacrificing workers, as a Protoss player you only really do that when you have a really big bank and you know the next 1 or 2 engagements will decide the game, or the map is getting mined out. Terran players just continuously build orbital commands with spare minerals and sacrifice workers proportionally (if I understand it correctly).
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Once you are maxed, it is a valid strategy to try to starve your opponent. Especially as a Terran, because it is so easy to lose your whole army because of mismicro.
I agree, you should keep some cushion, in case you need to remax, but never more than 1k minerals/1k gas.
So, in what order should you invest your money? In order of importance :
- Spend as much as possible in upgrades. Don't buy all of them, but it is valid to make sure you have 2 engineering bays and three armories
- Build Orbital commands. I can't stress how much this is useful. They allow you to make your advantage bigger, get rid of SCVs for a bigger army, give you precious scans, etc...
- Unlock the whole tech tree. Build your fusion core and ghost building, make sure you have at least one starport with tech lab, etc... Also, do the relevant research if you ever need to tech switch (ghost cloak, widow mines burrow research, etc...)
Then, but only then, as you said, it's time to invest on more production buildings.
- Go for insane numbers of buildings. Like, 16 rax, 6 factories, 6 starports. Don't hesitate to build them outside your main, because if you get countered, your opponent will have to destroy all of them before entering your main (where half of your production capacities are). Get a higher amount of tech labs than reactors, this will give you more flexibility (for example, for a BC tech switch)
- Rings of missile turrets and sensor towers.
If you are there, you have nearly won. Starving your opponent is a long process, so, to speed it up :
- Trade. Trade. Trade. Make drops with like, 4 medivacs with some tanks inside, and a raven to PDD the static defenses. Doesn't matter if you lose everything as long as you trade.
- At some point, because you are not innovation, your bank will explode (like, 5k/5k) you can start sending SCVs to their death because mules are much more efficient (you need at least 8 orbital commands to do it, remember, a mule is roughly worth 4 SCV, so 8 OC are worth 32 SCV. Don't sack too much!)
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Get upgrades, harass with drops/flanks, trade out supply inefficient units for supply efficient units, make orbitals, make planetary fortresses, more barracks/factories/starports. Priority from highest to lowest.
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As Terran(diam):
The first thing to do is make CCs which can become PF or OC as needed
1. Add orbitals 6 is good number
2. Add Production duh 
3. PFs and MTs
4. sac supply GRADUALLY so you don't get caught in transition. loosing a steady 10-20 supply at a time with drops is a good way to transtion into.....
i. vs P ghosts(nukes)
ii. vs T Sky Terran or Tanks
iii. vs zerg Ravens, BCs
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As terran you have to be careful with building too many production buildings. Yes it feels nice to instantly remax after one engagement, but after that remax you won't be able to afford the production. So basically you will have 2 max armies and if you don't win with those 2 max armies then you lose because you spent so many resources on those production buildings that are no longer of any use.
Zerg and protoss are different because of their macro mechanics. Protoss can afford to throw down 20 warp gates because they don't have to constantly produce out of those gates. They can instantly have an army whenever they so wish to warp in. For terran if you miss one or two production cycles you are in a lot of trouble. For zerg it's pretty self explanatory the importance of having extra larvae lying around.
As a gold player if you are able to max out with 70 workers you are in good shape. You shouldn't lose from that situation. Keep looking to make cost efficient trades. Don't be afraid to load up 4 medivac full of units and just drop them into opponents base. The important thing to try to do is make trades on your opponents side of the map so you do have time to reproduce because as mentioned in the previous paragraph, terran can't instantly have an army.
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On August 15 2013 07:14 CecilSunkure wrote:
Get upgrades, harass with drops/flanks, trade out supply inefficient units for supply efficient units, make orbitals, make planetary fortresses, more barracks/factories/starports. Priority from highest to lowest.
While I agree with this list, I feel that a gold level player like OP would prefer a safer route, where "harass with drops/flanks, trade out supply inefficient units for supply efficient units" are put on the bottom of the list.
I mean, yes, Innovation nearly never build stupid amounts of production buildings, just because he has the multitasking to trade his units all the time. At most he builds a bunch of OCs.
But handling a terran army is a delicate process, that's why I suggest the safer route.
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As a protoss (diamond), right when I hit max, i throw down as many gateways as my money allows, sometimes this brings me up well over 20 gates.
I also send packs of zealots and dts all over the map for a few reasons:
1. they're cheap and good with 3/3. i generally use them to kill bases and workers because at this level when you're maxed, you'll be floating with some minerals and workers won't be the biggest thing on your mind
2. the opponent is probably maxed too so it's harder for them to respond, especially if they're toss
3. keeps the opponent from attacking your base
expand, even if i don't have enough workers to capitolize on them
chuck down like 5 or so stargates and get air upgrades to fast transition into skytoss when necessary
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,Against toss and zerg I dont recommend trying to starve them passively then win a big fight. Toss can build ridiculously stupid armies off of just 2 base, zerg remax harder and faster than anyone. Letting either of them bank can get ugly. When I max I prefer trading almost constantly in a sustained battle across the map to drain their banks. Once theyre broke I muster the survivors for the final assault. Its more choking them out than starving them, but the end result is the same: they run out of resources to fight.
Aggressively trading has the benefit of inducing mistakes, as well as diminishing zergs ability to make sudden mass tech switches because they wont have the larvae banked even if they have money. Its important to keep toss from assembling his deathball, his units do not work as well split apart.
Against T if he has lots of tanks Ill try and air switch to make them dead supply, so the trading also serves the purpose of freeing up supply for a tech switch lategame.
And of course, throw down ridiculous production, wherever it is convenient.
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Well you have a lot of options:
1.) Get a turret ring around your bases. If you are maxed, you can´t rely on your reinforcement to stop drops like medivacs/warpprism or mutas without turrets.
2.) Get additional production building. Since you can support 3 per base the magic number on 3 bases in tvp for example is 8 barracks and 1 starport. If you are maxed and on 4+ bases I would suggest getting 2-3 additional barracks and 1 additional starport and/or one addtional factory (total of 3 against zerg or terran if you go marine-tank or marine-mine). Don´t overextent with more production buildings, as you will loose your money faster than you can imagine after a big fight.
3.) Use drops to keep trading armies and adjust your composition to match the composition of your opponents like getting a lot of ghosts in TvP and getting marauders against ultras/roaches in tvz.
4.) Build additional orbitals and planetaries to protect the attack paths to your bases for counter attacks. For each additional oc you can trade 5-6 scvs as you´ll hardly ever be able to secure 2 bases when your 1-3 have been mined out, you need to land an orbital and land 8 mules there to quickly mine minerals until your opponents finds the base and decides to attack it.
5.) Get upgrades turret range building armor and factory upgrades.
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great tips so far in this thread, but i would like to stress:
trade units for their harvesters, make them remake harvesters, having to not redrone/probe/scv lets you focus more on what you're producing in units
mass raxes. i cannot stress this enough, even pro players go up to 25 raxes in those weird passive games
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lol what? I have yet to ever see a pro player make 25 raxes. Never in my life. Even half of that with reactors is a bit much.
You have to be very careful when trading army for workers in late game max army scenarios because your opponent, like you, is looking to sac some workers as well to make their army stronger.
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On August 17 2013 15:18 c0sm0naut wrote:
great tips so far in this thread, but i would like to stress:
trade units for their harvesters, make them remake harvesters, having to not redrone/probe/scv lets you focus more on what you're producing in units
mass raxes. i cannot stress this enough, even pro players go up to 25 raxes in those weird passive games
I´ve never seen any pro going up to 25 barracks in a altegame. The highest number I can recall was something between 12-15.
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build A lot of orbits, then try to poke around and sac the units that you don't want in a cost efficient way.
say if you are against protoss and he is colossus heavy, you can do double drops with marines and just kill their tech, while trying to deny their 4th and 5th if possible.
basically you can either win a big fight and roll over him or just try to contain him and starve him out and defend that one last final push that he is gonna do
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On August 15 2013 06:28 TheFlash wrote:
I will be approaching this from the (gold league) terran standpoint, but all races are more than welcome to reply with their race's options.
The issue is, I am able to keep my minerals relatively low but once I max out my army (usually have ~70ish workers), I tend to prefer starving my opponent with just minor engagements with his army at his attempted expansions. However, since I am not losing my entire army I only need to build 20 units or so at a time. This causes my minerals to skyrocket and I cannot spend it fast enough. I feel as if there are things I should be doing that I am missing. For example, I usually hit this point when at 7-8 raxes 1-2 factories and 1 starport; while maxed should I build several additional raxes/factories/starports? If so, what numbers would you suggest? The reason I thought of the mass building production is for if occassions that our armies do fully engage, then I can recover and max-out more quickly.
What all other options do you believe to work in these situations? Please be as specific as you can.
My second and final question is when/if to sacrifice workers. I've seen many players do this and have never understood when to do this (I understand why but when would this be appropriate and when not?)
Thanks in advance for your participation!
![[image loading]](http://media.tumblr.com/4821796ae91de295ea01dcad34bc3f87/tumblr_inline_mp21qqqodR1qz4rgp.gif)
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