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infinity21
Canada6683 Posts
Note: Edited the article with feedback
This might all be common sense but I felt like writing it so I'm posting it anyway :p I hope people find it useful.
Introduction
A game of SC2 can be quite unpredictable, with the momentum shifting to one side in mere seconds. We often see that one player gains a slight lead just to throw it away due to bad decision making. This short article will attempt to discuss possible approaches to take when the game is favoured for one player. For the purpose of this article, we will assume that both players are equally skilled and the game is distinctly favoured for one player but not decisively so. That is, one player has a marginal lead.
How to determine if you are ahead or behind
At any point in the game, you should be choosing strategies that maximize your chances of winning. Being a game of incomplete information, knowing the current state of a game helps you make better choices. Let’s say you attacked with your initial army earlier and lost everything while doing minimal damage. If you don’t take this into consideration and follow this up immediately with another full-out frontal assault, then you have made a terrible decision. You were behind in army size so attacking was out of the question.
When trying to determine where you stand, you need to evaluate two variables: economy and army. Of course there are more variables in play (map control, tech, mobility, etc.) but they all boil down to economy and army in one way or another. Look at the number of bases and worker saturation for determining who is ahead in economy and the prior engagements for army. If you are ahead in either army or economy but not behind in the other, then you are ahead.
How to play when you are ahead
A wise Dan once said, when you are ahead, get more ahead. What this means is when you are ahead, get more ahead in economy. This means you should secure another base or increasing worker production. This economy lead will translate into an army lead in a few minutes. Basically, if you have the option of getting paid $10 now or $30 five minutes later, then always take the $30! Also, maximize your chances of winning by investing some of your lead into more defenses which shut down harassment play by your opponent. At higher levels of play, this move can be exploited (especially by Zergs) but for the majority of people who are reading this article, I would recommend doing so anyways.
Special note: In match-ups such as PvP, expanding is very risky so it is not recommended that you expand with a marginal lead. Instead, you can build a few more probes while launching the counterattack if you are not fully saturated.
How to play when you are behind
This is probably the more interesting topic for many people. When you lose your initial army, what do you do? Playing it safe and standard won’t cut it anymore. You need to get an advantage back by taking risks. I will analyze a few common routes people take in this situation.
1. Turtle in your base
Some people become too afraid to move out after they’ve lost some units and turtle until they max out or their opponent rams their army in. This relies on your opponent playing poorly and won’t win you many games against experienced players. You will hand over any chance you had at coming back if you turtle in your base.
Verdict: Not recommended
2. Expand (or build more workers)
One way to catch back up is to get an economic advantage or at least keep it even (since your opponent will likely expand himself). If you are 20 supply to 30 in army, that 10 supply difference becomes less significant when it’s 100 to 110. There are two variations to this method: hidden expansions and regular expansions. Since hidden expansions are harder to defend, they are more risky and should be used when you are too behind to just take a regular expansion. When you are expanding, you should avoid engaging your opponent’s army unless you are sure that you can come out ahead. Trading armies is not favourable for you at this point. Use small scale harassments to distract your opponent and buy time while you get your economy running. You can also tech to undetectable units (dt, banshee, burrowed blings, etc) to buy time. Zergs also have the option of droning hard in order to catch up in economy.
Verdict: Recommended
3. Go all-in
If you lose a bunch of workers to harass and you know that you are far behind in economy, you may choose to go all-in by attacking with everything you have. The chance of this working is slim but playing a standard game or trying to catch up in economy may be impossible at this point.
Verdict: Not recommended except in situation described above
4. Play aggressively
If you are not too far behind in army with a similar econ or even in army with a slightly worse econ, then you may choose to start playing very aggressively. Split up your army and gain small advantages in each battle to chip away at your opponent’s lead. This requires superior multitasking but it’s a good way to disrupt your opponent’s rhythm and force a mistake.
Verdict: Recommended
Conclusion
There isn’t a “right” way to play SC2. Many factors such as style, your opponent’s tendencies, or even your mood that day can influence the way you play. The only requirement is that you increase your chance of winning. The methods above are what I find works best for me. Some people may find that other methods works better for them.
Please let me know what you guys think! If you have other ways of playing when you are ahead or behind, feel free to post here for discussion.
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Awesome guide! I totally dig it.
As a zerg-buddy, when I get behind I usually try one of two things:
-Drone insanely. This is similar to taking an expansion in that it's risky and you might die, but you are not going to win if you keep going on the standard drone:army ratio that you might use. If your opponent slowly builds up his army instead of poking or focusing eco, then he might slowly lose his lead because of your economic powering.
-Go for interesting tactics or use tech. If you're behind, one way you can catch back up is to get a couple of sweet plays off. For instance, I go for burrowed banelings v. T, drops/nydus v Protoss, zerglings burrowed where they want to expand, random stuff like that. Those little tiny things can bring you ever closer to your opponent. Obviously, these take more hand-speed and awareness and a bit of luck, but hey: you're already behind.
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Applies to both being behind and ahead; tech up.
When you're behind - failed 4 gate attempt so what do you do? go DTs and hope that they don't have detection. This is usually after an all-in fails.
Ahead: You defend off a 4gate with 3gate robo, or bunkered marines, go Cloaked banshees/dts.. obviously situational but it would catch them with their pants down so to speak
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As a zerg, I find it extremely hard to play from behind, especially if the opponent recognizes it and applies constant pressure. Think thewind vs lyn, where theres is basically a constant stream of units coming at you that require every single unit to barely hold off which makes anything but use every single larva on units impossible.
If pressure is not applied, droning hard feels like the best way to play. However, not making units when youre behind feels very dangerous because of that feeling that he might kill you at any time.
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bad post, does not deserve blue highlighted poster status 
the other thing is doing drops (especially when ur terran) sidetracks your opponent from attacking you head-on so if you do this while expo-ing, your weakness is usually covered until you benefit from your expo.
Applies whether or not you're behind but especially gamechanging when you can't find a way to secure a much needed expo to put you back into the game.
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United States17042 Posts
hrm, I suppose that tech counts in the "army" type, but I usually count it in a second catagory, as you can convert Tech leads into army leads and/or econ leads separably (this especially counts with regards to dark templar, Mutalisks, and tech switches).
Great writeup though ^^
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On March 01 2011 05:07 Antimage wrote:bad post, does not deserve blue highlighted poster status the other thing is doing drops (especially when ur terran) sidetracks your opponent from attacking you head-on so if you do this while expo-ing, your weakness is usually covered until you benefit from your expo. Applies whether or not you're behind but especially gamechanging when you can't find a way to secure a much needed expo to put you back into the game.
Or something like cloaked banshee/DT harass if it's still early game.
Little things like killing a few workers here and there will add up in the grand scheme of things the longer the game goes on.
I don't know if anyone is the same way, but I find I play best when I'm clinging to life and need to play smart to stay in the game. In this state of mind, my harass is always at its peak.
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infinity21
Canada6683 Posts
I do agree that tech can be considered as its own category. I'll expand on it when I get home.
On March 01 2011 05:07 Antimage wrote:bad post, does not deserve blue highlighted poster status the other thing is doing drops (especially when ur terran) sidetracks your opponent from attacking you head-on so if you do this while expo-ing, your weakness is usually covered until you benefit from your expo. Applies whether or not you're behind but especially gamechanging when you can't find a way to secure a much needed expo to put you back into the game.
Play nice Victor :p
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United States7483 Posts
How to play when you are ahead
A wise Dan once said, when you are ahead, get more ahead. What this means is when you are ahead, get more ahead in economy. This means you should secure another base while continuing worker production. This economy lead will translate into an army lead in a few minutes. Basically, if you have the option of getting paid $10 now or $30 five minutes later, then always take the $30! Also, maximize your chances of winning by investing some of your lead into more defenses which shut down harassment play by your opponent. At higher levels of play, this move can be exploited (especially by Zergs) but for the majority of people who are reading this article, I would recommend doing so anyways.
Getting more ahead can include anything from harassing to keep an advantage, to hammering a specific location, to teching. Getting more ahead is just any type of play that will almost certainly NOT lose you the game, and will get you into a better position after you're done with it. It's about doing something safe, not necessarily something econ focused.
Yeah, most of the time it'll be easiest and safest to just expand, but if you're already on 3 bases for example, but have been sticking with low tech units, it might be a great time to bust out the BC's.
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When you are ahead, play as safe as possible, when you are behind, take risks.
The "when you are ahead, get more ahead" mantra only really applies because usually, getting more ahead is the safest thing to do (compared to for example trying to win straight away)
But playing safe takes precedence. If you are ahead, and taking another expo would be risky for example, then dont do it to try and get more ahead.
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My personal preferences when you're playing behind as P:
PvP: All-in. Your 4 gate attack fails, you should just fall back to your base and play catch up right? No - don't make any more probes, just rebuild your army and attack again. Usually at this point your opponent is chronoing probes and teching up thinking that they just held off your attack, but it's actually possible for you to build an even bigger army and overpower him on the 2nd or 3rd attempt. Turtling works too sometimes - sit in your base, tech up to colossus, and hope that he expands and doesn't tech as fast as you. Regardless, what doesn't work in this match up is expanding. It's hard enough to expand when you're even - expanding when you're behind is instant loss.
PvZ: Expand. Your 6 gate fails miserably, the Zerg is now comfortably ahead of you in both bases and army size. Should you try to to claw your way back with aggression and warp prism harass? No, protoss harass sucks and you want to avoid creep at all cost and save every unit you can. Just defend and try to expand with many cannons/sentries, and aim for the 200/200 deathball. It doesn't matter if the Zerg has 6 bases, they don't have anything that can kill protoss deathball.
PvT: Aggression. You can't turtle against a terran, and expansions get shut down way too easily by drops. Your solution is to put the pressure on the Terran so that you force him to defend instead of attacking. If he attacks, counter into his nat/main. Use warp prisms. Do anything to keep the pressure off of you while you rebuild, tech up, and/or expand.
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in my view this post is kind of stupid because of serveral reasons:
first of all, if you have an advantage and both players will do exaktly what you told them, the ahead player will lose his advantage.
ill explain this point even more:
lets say you are in a 2 base vs 2 base situation and kill 1 base. if you expand you advantage will weaken if your enemy expand because 2vs1 base is better than 3vs2 base.
if your enemy does a strong push, your chances of dieing or loosing an advantage is quite high, since you shouldnt have that big of an army advantage AND invested in an expansion
so what ever you do your advantage will weaken.
in general the idea of using being ahead to get more ahead is quite stupid, since you will win if you just keep your advantage.
if you are ahead, you want to use your advantage to ceep it, since if you have a big advantage now and try to keep this advantage, you will also have it in 5 minutes. getting an even bigger advantage is just a risk a good player can take, but most players mustnt, since having a nice advantage is enough to win you the game somewhen. but if you try to expand your advantage too hard there is a high chance of loosing your advantage.
actually when you are already ahead in ecco, you should not try to get more ecco, or you will most probably die.
in most cases its better to be save than sorry.
eg. if you killed an expo and you are in a 2 base vs 1 base situation, getting a 3rd will get you killed.
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On March 01 2011 05:44 OoOo wrote:
in my view this post is kind of stupid because of serveral reasons:
first of all, if you have an advantage and both players will do exaktly what you told them, the ahead player will lose his advantage.
ill explain this point even more:
lets say you are in a 2 base vs 2 base situation and kill 1 base. if you expand you advantage will weaken if your enemy expand because 2vs1 base is better than 3vs2 base.
if your enemy does a strong push, your chances of dieing or loosing an advantage is quite high, since you shouldnt have that big of an army advantage AND invested in an expansion
so what ever you do your advantage will weaken.
in general the idea of using being ahead to get more ahead is quite stupid, since you will win if you just keep your advantage.
if you are ahead, you want to use your advantage to ceep it, since if you have a big advantage now and try to keep this advantage, you will also have it in 5 minutes. getting an even bigger advantage is just a risk a good player can take, but most players mustnt, since having a nice advantage is enough to win you the game somewhen. but if you try to expand your advantage too hard there is a high chance of loosing your advantage.
actually when you are already ahead in ecco, you should not try to get more ecco, or you will most probably die.
in most cases its better to be save than sorry.
eg. if you killed an expo and you are in a 2 base vs 1 base situation, getting a 3rd will get you killed.
Do you honestly have a clue to what your talking about?
Taking the expo allows you to macro up even harder, leading to a bigger army. And since you are ahead, your opponent can't push out.
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After my failed attack/FE I always use my defenders advantage at my ramp and tech to something (usually muta, colossus and banshees respectively - i'm random). If it's a little later in the game then I'll expand to the gold/random base at the other end of the map.
When I'm ahead.... I'm never ahead who am I kidding.
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infinity21
Canada6683 Posts
@Anihc:
That's a good point about PvP. If it's a 1 base vs 1 base situation, then you would need a decisive lead in order to expand. I am a terran player so the only way to get ahead in econ in all my matchups is to expand. I will add notes about low econ games.
@OoOo:
For the purpose of this article, we will assume that both players are equally skilled and the game is distinctly favoured for one player but not decisively so.
The 'ahead' that I'm talking about is when you win a battle with a handful of units left or when you drop, kill 10 scvs for a few marines, then run with the rest. These leads are not decisive enough to win you games.
Destroying an expansion in a 2 base vs 2 base situation is decisive. Go ahead and win the game.
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It's important to distinguish between an econ advantage and an army advantage.
If you are both even in econ (i.e. nobody lost workers yet) and you just won a battle decisively to get the army advantage: use your army to expand and gain an econ advantage. This is the most common scenario of being ahead, so it is what's meant by "if you're ahead, get more ahead".
If you are behind in econ and ahead in army (i.e. the other guy killed 20 workers but lost 10 military units in the process and you're both on the same number of bases): counter attack immediately.
If you are ahead in both econ and army (i.e. you killed his army and an expo): you need to build static defenses protecting your workers, check for hidden expos, and get detection.
If you are ahead in econ and behind in army: get ready to scout for and defend against an all-in.
btw how's your tvp mech build coming along?
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infinity21
Canada6683 Posts
Yup, those are all very rational decisions based on what you know about the game.
I scrapped the mech build lmao. I'm doing a reactor rax opening now which seems to be safe vs most cheese as it's very marine focused.
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If I'm solidly ahead, like I force a stop on a FE, then I actually go for a hidden gold base, and start spreading creep NON-STOP. Like I will literally creep into his base (giggity).
Slight off topic, but Isn't it kinda not fair that Zerg has none of this one-trick pony gimmicks like Protoss and Terran? I mean, burrowed roach movement I GUESS, but that'd be shot down very quickly, I feel, because you can see the movement. Moving infestors to spawn infested Terrans or shoot out fungal growth is kind of the same. Is a baneling bust the same thing? I feel that that is too week and can be easily stopped, as well
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On March 01 2011 05:51 Bonkerz wrote:Show nested quote +On March 01 2011 05:44 OoOo wrote:
in my view this post is kind of stupid because of serveral reasons:
first of all, if you have an advantage and both players will do exaktly what you told them, the ahead player will lose his advantage.
ill explain this point even more:
lets say you are in a 2 base vs 2 base situation and kill 1 base. if you expand you advantage will weaken if your enemy expand because 2vs1 base is better than 3vs2 base.
if your enemy does a strong push, your chances of dieing or loosing an advantage is quite high, since you shouldnt have that big of an army advantage AND invested in an expansion
so what ever you do your advantage will weaken.
in general the idea of using being ahead to get more ahead is quite stupid, since you will win if you just keep your advantage.
if you are ahead, you want to use your advantage to ceep it, since if you have a big advantage now and try to keep this advantage, you will also have it in 5 minutes. getting an even bigger advantage is just a risk a good player can take, but most players mustnt, since having a nice advantage is enough to win you the game somewhen. but if you try to expand your advantage too hard there is a high chance of loosing your advantage.
actually when you are already ahead in ecco, you should not try to get more ecco, or you will most probably die.
in most cases its better to be save than sorry.
eg. if you killed an expo and you are in a 2 base vs 1 base situation, getting a 3rd will get you killed.
Do you honestly have a clue to what your talking about? Taking the expo allows you to macro up even harder, leading to a bigger army. And since you are ahead, your opponent can't push out.
It depends on how far ahead you are and mentioned in the OP expanding in PvP is incredibly risky move to pull even when you have an advantage. The mentality of BW said expand when you get an advantage; in BW if 2 gate rushed Z and killed his natural hatch I could expo and win with cannons no proble; if I do that in SC2 a roach or bling or speedling-all in can slaughter you. As in all situations, I think its important to always scout. In PvZ, if obviously you can't kill but you have a good advantage, I think teching is actually the best way to exploit your advantage i.e. doing something like teching to pheonix or VR if your 2 gate stopped or delayed an expo for awhile. Your right in the sense your opponent can't move out for awhile, but he may attempt an all-in shortly, which you could be very weak against after the money you sunk into an expo.
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what I personally find more important than expand is delaying my opponents expansion!
So many people think that "getting ahead in macro" refers to producing more workers than him and expanding faster.
HOWEVER if you stop being agressive at this point, he might just do the same, especially if he is good at scouting.
So what will happen is that the both od you have about the same eco, you have slight army advantage.
That can be lost easily by a bad position or running into a few sieged tanks etc etc.
So what you want to do is macro up, build less production buildings, focus on eco AND prevent him from taking another base for as long as you can.
That will get you truly ahead. You should really mention, delaying bases.
GL HF
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EPT
