EPTIts risky as hell and doesnt really get you ahead, but at least its a somewhat original play and leaps the game abit closer to t3 if you can pull it off. Thoughts?
Z v T: Current situation and comparison to BW - Page 28
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explicit
52 Posts
Its risky as hell and doesnt really get you ahead, but at least its a somewhat original play and leaps the game abit closer to t3 if you can pull it off. Thoughts? | ||
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beetlelisk
Poland2276 Posts
On August 16 2010 11:38 explicit wrote: So i just watched some ESL qualifier game with a zerg named CatZ vs a terran. Zerg opening was very unorthodox, teched straight to infestor pit with just 4 roaches after scouting the terran for any early pushes. When he had is first two infesters out, the terran had already matched his tech and gotten dual expos though and an early push would have killed the zerg i think. But infesters can hold off the early-ish bioball pushes with fungal growth it seems ( or at leas buy enough time to get units out). Its risky as hell and doesnt really get you ahead, but at least its a somewhat original play and leaps the game abit closer to t3 if you can pull it off. Thoughts? My thought is I'd like to see that game  | ||
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Phrost
United States4008 Posts
My biggest problem with Zerg in general right now is you're very very limited in what you can do early in the game. Before getting a lair you have access to a total of 6 units, three of which are the drone, overlord, and Queen. I'm fairly certain there is not much left to be explored with those 3 units so that leaves you with only 3 units you can build before making a lair (zergling, baneling, roach). There is not a lot of room for diversity when you only have 3 choices. My other big peeve is that Queens are built from the hatchery. When most players do their awesome pool/gas builds they have ~ 100 gas (or close to that) once the pool pops. This is 99% of the time spent on zergling speed and a Queen gets queued up. Once the queen is done then you have the option of getting a lair. Now I'm not really sure if you can pass up a Queen but it seems silly that you don't really have a good choice to get a faster lair. It's like as if the factory required an engineering bay as well as a barracks to build or the starport required an armory. The tech buildings would take so much longer to build and you really don't have a good way around it. I think that if Queens were build from larva rather than spawned from a hatchery it would alievate some of the early pressure to get a faster lair because you would have the option of getting a lair or getting an upgrade for your zerglings (or roaches if they want to move that to tier 1). This could lead to faster mutalisk harass or hydralisk play and force the other races to respond appropriately and I think that is a good idea because it will finally give Zerg the ability to really be aggressive early game without having to resort to a relatively terrible all-in or playing on the other players faults (bad wall-ins, etc). Right now it feels like Zerg can't really do anything that forces an enemy to respond in a way that would be different than another threatening thing that zerg could do. If Zerg threatens with lair tech the response from terran is just get more factories. Mech can pretty much deal with everything that a zerg player can do before hive, and with enough units in a small enough place they can still beat ultralisks and broodlords. Right now there is no real guessing game for the terran as to what he should do in any position because he is almost always in a dominant role. There is no real way for a zerg to be the agressor because of how the hard counters work that terran have and the ease of getting them. Terran can respond to mutalisks by building an armory, assuming they haven't already, and are pretty safe. That's in their normal tech path and isn't horribly expensive to make. Zerg buildings are expensive, easy to scout, and don't frequently fufill multiple purposes. I think zerg need another combat unit that can respond to the high damage dealers that protoss and terran have (colossus and thors) and be scary enough that it can force an opponent to deviate from their original plan. Another thing that really bothers me is that all of the stealth units besides the banshee got nerfed during the beta that I really think there would be more diversity if it was a threatening force again. Less time to tech to dark templar and faster burrowed roaches and infestors would make for interesting games where an opponent might have to spend more time or resources on a counter than now. | ||
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foo
Australia109 Posts
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sheaRZerg
United States613 Posts
In BW ling tight walling was an exception rather than the rule in competitive maps. I was wondering how much difference it would make to the match up if some unwallible maps were added to the map pool. It certainly isn't a solution to all of zergs problems, but I think it might at least address some issues. 1) It would open up the possibility for more early pressure, especially from early pool openings 2) It would negate some of the numerous T openings which are currently viable, namely those requiring immediate tech with minimal defensive units. (In the same way that straight up mech play was difficult on certain maps in BW). If a T cant rely on a handful of buildings (which he/she is going to build anyways), early defensive units must be made at the expense of an early Factory and Starport. 3) This is more of opinion: but I thought the ability to the fear in opponents with early speedlings was an entertaining aspect of playing Z in BW. (Although I would still miss the muta stacking and speed hydras TT). And I hear it is quite satisfying to fend off as a T with a marine and some scvs as well. At least part of the game could be more fun for Z. I do not know if blizzard provided a means to make terrain unwallible. If not, perhaps a neutral creep tumor at the ramp/choke could serve the same purpose, and would allow for the harass window to be closed by a fast enough orbital command. Ultimately, I must agree that changes to Zerg and Terran units is the only way to really to truly fix the problems outlined by OP. | ||
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1a2a3a4aterran
Denmark30 Posts
5.th zerg in US means absolute rite? LOL and btw, 100% balance dosent exsist , kktksbai User was warned for this post | ||
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Yttrasil
Sweden651 Posts
On August 16 2010 12:30 sheaRZerg wrote: I apologize if this has been brought up before, but I hadn't seen much discussion of it (I cant claim to have read even most of the TvZ threads recently however) In BW ling tight walling was an exception rather than the rule in competitive maps. I was wondering how much difference it would make to the match up if some unwallible maps were added to the map pool. It certainly isn't a solution to all of zergs problems, but I think it might at least address some issues. 1) It would open up the possibility for more early pressure, especially from early pool openings 2) It would negate some of the numerous T openings which are currently viable, namely those requiring immediate tech with minimal defensive units. (In the same way that straight up mech play was difficult on certain maps in BW). If a T cant rely on a handful of buildings (which he/she is going to build anyways), early defensive units must be made at the expense of an early Factory and Starport. 3) This is more of opinion: but I thought the ability to the fear in opponents with early speedlings was an entertaining aspect of playing Z in BW. (Although I would still miss the muta stacking and speed hydras TT). And I hear it is quite satisfying to fend off as a T with a marine and some scvs as well. At least part of the game could be more fun for Z. I do not know if blizzard provided a means to make terrain unwallible. If not, perhaps a neutral creep tumor at the ramp/choke could serve the same purpose, and would allow for the harass window to be closed by a fast enough orbital command. Ultimately, I must agree that changes to Zerg and Terran units is the only way to really to truly fix the problems outlined by OP. Just want to respond to this as a Zerg player and not a very bad one at that that always goes for mass ling in the start vs many players. Anyhow it is not really relevant but making maps unwallable would mean basically 100% wins for me IF I don't get 2 gate proxied by a very good toss. I agree with the original post with the rest just wanted to say that this is absolutely not an option as 2 hatch speedlings basically beat any other build there is if there is no wall... It would be even more unfair than some of the T strats that are out there at the moment :D Edit: To add it would make all the other races reactionary and totally flip the whole metagame of having to even be a little responsive as zerg early-early mid game. | ||
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Logo
United States7542 Posts
I then realized that spawn larva doesn't really compound into a rolling advantage. It's almost just a a 1 time cost savings on a hatchery. 1 Hatchery is .0667 larvae/sec (1 larva every 15 seconds) 1 Queen is .1 larvae/sec (4 larva every 40 seconds) So 3 Hatcheries (900 minerals) is the same effectiveness as 2 queens (300 minerals). Or to put it another way 1 Queen is 1.5x th effectiveness of a 2nd hatchery. So mineral wise queens save you 300 minerals over making another hatchery. Of course there are a few other factors. One is the fact that hatcheries build 2x as slow (50s vs 100). Then there's the fact that queen's only theoretically have a .1 larva/sec rate, each energy they build up past 25 or each tumor they drop actually lowers that. Overall it's a little tricky to put a value on queens vs more hatcheries. But it does seem like it's a very 1 shot deal for the most part. You make a queen and you save a bunch of minerals by not having to build more in base hatcheries. But when you look at this in context compared to BW it seems... fishy. In comparison to broodwar, Zerg are saving 300 minerals for every queen they add to a hatchery. Of course you can't add a queen to a hatchery that you don't have so the result is a little more complicated. 1 Base + 1 Queen = 2.5 Hatcheries (300 savings) 2 Bases + 2 Queens = 5 Hatcheries (600 savings) 3 Bases + 3 Queens = 7.5 Hatcheries (900 savings) 4 Bases + 4 Queens = 10 Hatcheries (1200 savings) As you can see, really over building additional hatcheries you're looking at maybe a 1200 savings by using queens (+ some grey area influence due to differences in build time and the burst of larva vs a steady stream). Overall this seems like only a moderate improvement in economy in comparison to what Terrans get especially. I'm not trying to bash the MULE or anything as I don't really find it problematic, but bear with me for a second. Each mule is 270 extra mined resoucres straight up. Sure the resources don't come from thin air, but they do come out as a bonus. This is a rippling forward bonus, the longer the game goes on the more these MULES add up. Meanwhile what happens on the zerg end? They still are only saving the same 300 resources over building additional hatcheries. So what I think is a problem is that the Zerg's economy is relatively unchanged from BW. They save some additional resources by not having to build additional hatcheries, but it's a one time effect. Meanwhile the Terran's macro mechanic compounds and continuously gets better. The longer the game the MORE you get from that investment into MULES vs an investment into other areas because mules bring you straight up resources vs increased production capabilities and MULES super saturate bases. Think about it even from the supply drop standpoint (because it's easier to work out). Each supply drop from an orbital command saves 100 resources flat out so the more times you get to use the oribtal command the more resources you save. Meanwhile with Queens you're not continuously saving resources, you just save on the initial investment. Protoss, which I haven't talked about, are kinda in a weird area. They don't save with their mechanic, but they indirectly do by having more stuff sooner. I don't really know how to break that down though. The other important thing about mules is they're 0 pop. While a Zerg eventually has to stop making workers to have a sizable army a Terran can use their macro mechanic indefinitely regardless of their current population. Anyways this is getting long so I wanted to tie it all together. As I've shown here Zerg's macro advantage starts 'strong', but gets weaker as the game goes on. The macro mechanic provides boosts to economy by saving resources initially, but then doesn't really provide an actual benefit over additional hatcheries. It would seem that with the way spawn larva works it's not very much of an improvement to the zerg race (at least not with how much work it is to keep up) compared to the benefit gained by MULES. Likewise it makes this odd situation. Zerg are too weak early game to do anything aggressive. That's just fact pretty much, zerg can only baneling bust or roach threaten a wall-in and neither option is very successful. Meanwhile as the game goes longer and zerg's units lose increasing amounts of cost effectiveness zerg also loses economic advantage. The resources saved by queens is soon drowned out and without good macro the queens eventually become less effective than additional hatcheries at producing larvae. Meanwhile the orbital command and MULES continue to build more and more advantage in economy. This only changes course again very late game when the amount of minerals available begins to dwindle. Anyways I'm not really trying to blame anything here, but I really just wanted to break down some of what the Queens are and are not. The most important thing I think is just realizing that queens end up being just a more cost efficient way to get the effects of an additional hatch (with some other trade-offs included) and the advantage of having them available becomes progressively worse as the game goes on while the other race's macro mechanics become progressively generate more value as the game goes on. It seems like the savings would be extremely useful if they brought zerg some early game momentum. The problem is with the current setup zerg don't have any potential to actually capitalize on the initial savings in a way that doesn't gimp them for the later game. I suppose the TLDR is that Zerg's economy is relatively unchanged from BW while terran's got straight up better and that longer = better for MULES up until the Terran isn't able to take additional bases to mine while longer = worse for Spawn Larva because the savings become less significant as the game goes on. | ||
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monitor
United States2408 Posts
Here are each of the macro mechanics right now: 1. Terran gets more minerals per trip, don't need workers (mules) 2. Protoss gets more workers (chrono boost) 3. Zerg gets more workers (inject larvae) Zerg and Protoss's macro mechanics overlap. It could be kinda fun to see an entirely new macro mechanic for Zerg that doesn't overlap with Protoss. Here are some new macro mechanics ideas (removing inject larvae): 1. make mining distance shorter (closer drop off point or speed up mine time) 2. hatchery can neural parasite a mineral patch (auto mining sort of) I know this is absurd and probably come with a million unbalances, but it would be fun to remake Zerg's macro mechanic entirely | ||
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billyX333
United States1360 Posts
On August 16 2010 09:40 skYfiVe wrote: Terran players such as silver, select, stalife, or whoever have just popped out of nowhere.. in the last couple weeks. I agree and you couldve named hundreds of terrans who are 1k+ and completely unknown but no.. not smi.stalife aka stalife[light]..he definitely didnt pop out of no where he has been sc playing for a long time | ||
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sandroba
Canada4998 Posts
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Iggyhopper
United States259 Posts
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Logo
United States7542 Posts
On August 16 2010 13:25 sandroba wrote: Your calculations an d your logic are flawed. Building a queen also saves up a drone and a larva vs the hatchery, while it does tie up the hatchery building it, and in late game it gets stronger as you can have unlimited larvae in your hatcheries to instantly rebuild your army way faster (unless the opponent has a LOT of producing structures, but even then queens are way more cost effective) than other races. The main discussion is not about the macro mechanics, but about the units that zerg have their disposal early game make them very predictable and easily counterable by terran, forcing them to stay on defensive and not giving them the freedom necessary to the zerg to get an economical advantage to abuse said macro mechanic late game. So it's 350 saved vs 300, my mistake. That doesn't change the fact that the savings becomes less significant as the game rolls forward UNTIL the very late game where like you said you can have stockpiled larvae. Really this is entirely my experience too. If the game goes late you have this period where the enemy Terran is extremely potent with a strong period of economy. Then it starts to swing back to the zerg's favor because they've stockpiled minerals and larvae and mining out is more of a real concern. Anyways my point of the macro mechanic has more to do with units anyways. Clearly the Terran's economy has gained ground on the Zerg's in SC2 compared to broodwar. Yet at the same time it'd appear that the Zerg's army has also lost ground to the Terran's BW army. It just seems like if you're going to equalize the economies more (which is fine) you need to compensate. | ||
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crimsonsentinel
United States179 Posts
On August 16 2010 11:38 explicit wrote: So i just watched some ESL qualifier game with a zerg named CatZ vs a terran. Zerg opening was very unorthodox, teched straight to infestor pit with just 4 roaches after scouting the terran for any early pushes. When he had is first two infesters out, the terran had already matched his tech and gotten dual expos though and an early push would have killed the zerg i think. But infesters can hold off the early-ish bioball pushes with fungal growth it seems ( or at leas buy enough time to get units out). Its risky as hell and doesnt really get you ahead, but at least its a somewhat original play and leaps the game abit closer to t3 if you can pull it off. Thoughts? CatZ is a well known member of root gaming, and he's known for going for kinda cheesy all-in style moves. That infestor play is nice, but easily scouted out and once terran knows what to look for and how to scout it it'll get shut down easily with a couple turrets. | ||
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Uhh Negative
United States1090 Posts
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monitor
United States2408 Posts
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Logo
United States7542 Posts
On August 16 2010 13:35 crimsonsentinel wrote: CatZ is a well known member of root gaming, and he's known for going for kinda cheesy all-in style moves. That infestor play is nice, but easily scouted out and once terran knows what to look for and how to scout it it'll get shut down easily with a couple turrets. Even so going for infestors first is pretty nice against Terran. They're the closest thing Zerg has to a defensive unit and they do so quite well vs a large amount of Terran's army. The don't kill anything like the defensive units of other races (well unhealed marines they'll kill), but they're good at buying time or softening up targets. | ||
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fantomex
United States313 Posts
Zerg need more options in the early game. | ||
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TheRealPaciFist
United States1049 Posts
Edit: would hydralisks fix zerg early game problems vs terrans? And would it imba zerg against toss? | ||
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Licmyobelisk
Philippines3682 Posts
Terran reapers are ridiculous in early game, it forces zerg to go for more zerglings therefore killing it's economy. There's this build whom I called the "chupancho build" with which you push with 2 or 1 thors, 4 scvs to repair, 2 hellions 4 marines and it's pretty unstoppable when your opponent goes 13 pool without a 15th drone hatchery. | ||
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