"It's So Easy!" achievement - Page 4

On September 16 2010 03:21 Anjuu wrote:
I just went back and finished this achievement last night. I thought it would take me several tries but it occurred to me to rely heavily on my Marines and Medics rather than Goliaths which for me was the key. While I used save/loads probably a bit more judiciously than I should have, here’s my basic strat (which I see I’m echoing many others on this thread. Also just as a FYI, I’m a silver level Zerg player so this may work best for folks of similar skill and background):

1. Early Stages: 6 Priorities
a. Prevent Capping (make good use of stim pack and FF on the probes)
b. Grow Economy (Makes lots of SCVs and keep the supply depots coming, I didn’t send SCVs with Goliath for repairs, but would repair once I was back at the base if possible)
c. Grow Army (Marines, Medics and a few Marauders—I also supplemented with mercenaries as they become available, also good for use in base defense. I initially used a Tech lab for medics and then about 3-4 cap attempts in, built my second barracks with a reactor (varies depending on when your economy starts to exceed your ability to pump out units. I found that things got a lot eaiser when I built a few more medics then I thought I needed, they really help, though I couldn’t tell you what the proper ratio would be).
d. Don’t worry about harnessing any Terazine gas yourself not even the two easy ones close to your base, it slows your econ down too much.(The notion is to focus on keeping them from capping and a strong enough econ to grow your army. It will get easier in the end)
e. Upgrade your infantry armor & weapons as you can
f. Defend (I found it help after the first couple capping expeditions to keep my initial Goliaths back at my base, they’re slow and awkward in the field, but they’ve a nice range for defense; also eventually a bunker and turrets. Another key thing I would do is after I would prevent a cap, I would then defeat the force there and retreat back towards my base or to the more centrally located area just north of your base. You can also snipe Protoss units camping alters, (look at your mini map, you’ll see some blue dots just chillin) though be careful, this may take you to the opposite side of the map from their next cap attempt.)

2. Mid-Game
a. Continue to prevent all of the above, but
b. Grow army to critical mass (As above, you should grow to a point where you need a second, and third RAX with reactor making nothing but marines. If my macro game was better you really could at this point have 4 or more barracks bumping out troops, but I found by this point, the game was all but won.)
c. Defeat base to the immediate north of your starting base. (Timing on this required I used a few save/loads so I didn’t do a push only to find once my forces were committed to that attack that the Protoss would start capping a new alter. Keeping a Reapers/Hellion force in reserve as I discuss below may be a way of doing both at the same time)
d. Build and moderately fortify your new expansion as well as start adding SCVs and additional refiners as needed. (I think I had one bunker and a few turrets—I thought I would need more but I only got one push against this base and those forces and the fact that this base is more centrally located and thus easier to reinforce were enough to hold them off and then defeat them).

3. Late-Game
a. Prevent any further capping attempts (For me, I think I only needed to prevent one more capping and controlling the center base really made it easy to get around.)
b. Continue to grow army I think in the end I was at 120-140 supply and had just built my 3rd RAX when I realized their attacks were actually getting weaker.
c. Start taking Terazine. (I would camp my army in spots that had 3 defendable alters, send SCVs to collect and just defended with my mob. I did that twice and then the last one I just sent an SCV to the closest alter from the starting position in the far SW and protected it with my defense force).
d. Checkmate!

Analysis and further commentary
I think this was a pretty solid strategy, unfortunately I did have to use save/load frequently as it really helped me with the timing for my pushes and it would help me not to push out when my base was about to be attacked (though I did this more because it was my first attempt and was really anticipating this to be harder than it worked out to be. Also, watch the mini-map, you can normally spot attacks coming).

I would consider a fast strike force of Reapers or Hellions as a few folks have mentioned. This secondary quick-strike force would make it easier to push out and attack the second base at your leisure without worrying about timing it right.

Another major consideration is you have to remember to work on micro until you take over the northern expansion. By this I mean, if you’re sending reinforcements or have them hotkeyed from your production buildings to join your main attack force, be careful that they don’t choose the shortest route through the defended enemy base until you have taken that base. This means you will need to pay attention to units as they get produced and make sure they are moving around the outside to join your force. Another bit of macro is to remember to use stim pack. I would use it a lot to get where I was going faster. Also a technique I used once and wished I would have done more of is depening on how close the probe was to capping the gas, I would have my units rally just shy of the alter for a few seconds. This would give my medics time to catch up, heal and make it so a second stim was safer.

I personally didn’t have siege tanks available but they would make things a lot easier for base defense and to overtake your future expo (‘The Dig’ was a pretty easy mission that next time I will most likely complete beforehand). Also, I don’t think I had upgraded my medics but it would most likely help as would making it so medics can be built from a reactor. I did however have fully upgraded marine, bunkers with 6 slots & nifty canons atop them, and war pigs and Hammer security forces—all of which I’d recommend for this strat, excepting perhaps the cannon atop the bunker, I’m not sure how well that works).

Good luck, I hope this helps. I think this is post #2 for me!