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Hi everyone, this is my first help thread
I'm a low level 300 platinum terran. I've been playing about 4 months and I play a variety of unit compositions, although I've been favoring mech-heavy recently. I'm not a very aggressive player for the most part and it usually leads me to have difficulty with Protoss mid to late game. My composition was primarily MMM&Ghost (midgame) with vikings (late game). My opponents composition was gateway&immortals (midgame) with colossi and void ray (late game)
This replay is TvP on Xel Naga Caverns. I open with what I think is a shoddy version of 2Rax marauder early pressure (with 1 proxy) into a Fast Expand. We both macro up, I attempt to engage with a big marauder-heavy bio ball with some ghosts, but good forcefield placements hold me off. I do one drop, and snipe his/her robo bay, I switch from medivac into double starport production of vikings. Around 193 supply (and 3base) I push on his/her third because I think their army is slightly out of position and I essentially get my army split in half and it gets melted away. I am ahead on upgrades during the engagement and slightly ahead on food.
Does anyone have general advice/thoughts on the
(1) 2Rax execution
(2) Midgame - Should I have tried to engage?
(3) Engaging P late game - Should I avoid those small "chokes"? If I do, how do I draw them out into the open ground?
(4) Everything else (good/bad, scouting, drops)
The game is ~28 minutes. Thanks in advance to anyone who watches.
http://sc2ranks.com/us/2499933/jliu
http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/169124-1v1-terran-protoss-xelnaga-caverns#rd:dna
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1. The 2 rax execution was decent. The entire time while you were microing, you forgot to build workers (this is huge) and additional buildings at home. Had you been constantly producing workers while fighting, you would have been far ahead going into the mid-game.
2. While the protoss sat on 2 bases with gateway units and void rays, while you had mmm and ghosts, if you had just managed to land a couple EMPs on their sentries you would have completely ripped him apart. So during the midgame, actively try to EMP their sentries, and if you do, engage.
3. Definitely avoid the chokes when engaging a late game protoss army. You need an amazing spread (concave) to be able to defeat a protoss 200/200 army including colossi, and once again, you should have tried to EMP their sentries before the engagement to avoid getting forcefielded. Also target fire their colossi with your vikings instead of the void rays.
You may try to go for a double nexus snipe to force him to attack you into a position where you have the advantage (open field, with a prepared concave). For example, do a drop in his main to draw his army there, while running up and sniping his third / fourth, and then just pull back again. If done successfully, the protoss might feel in need of attacking, as he will be a bit behind, thus exposing himself in a bad position.
4. Your macro seemed fine for your level. However, try to get a faster third / fourth base, and faster upgrades. Ideally you also wanna be more active with drops, but this can be quite difficult (multitasking) and I would rather focus on keeping your macro as good as possible.
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On April 27 2011 02:07 Dmn wrote:
1. The 2 rax execution was decent. The entire time while you were microing, you forgot to build workers (this is huge) and additional buildings at home. Had you been constantly producing workers while fighting, you would have been far ahead going into the mid-game.
2. While the protoss sat on 2 bases with gateway units and void rays, while you had mmm and ghosts, if you had just managed to land a couple EMPs on their sentries you would have completely ripped him apart. So during the midgame, actively try to EMP their sentries, and if you do, engage.
3. Definitely avoid the chokes when engaging a late game protoss army. You need an amazing spread (concave) to be able to defeat a protoss 200/200 army including colossi, and once again, you should have tried to EMP their sentries before the engagement to avoid getting forcefielded. Also target fire their colossi with your vikings instead of the void rays.
You may try to go for a double nexus snipe to force him to attack you into a position where you have the advantage (open field, with a prepared concave). For example, do a drop in his main to draw his army there, while running up and sniping his third / fourth, and then just pull back again. If done successfully, the protoss might feel in need of attacking, as he will be a bit behind, thus exposing himself in a bad position.
4. Your macro seemed fine for your level. However, try to get a faster third / fourth base, and faster upgrades. Ideally you also wanna be more active with drops, but this can be quite difficult (multitasking) and I would rather focus on keeping your macro as good as possible.
Thanks for the tips, esp. on emping the sentries. On maps like Xel-Naga where there aren't huge open spaces, would it be better to go for a more mech-heavy style? Especially since I'd have to have a good concave + space with bio?
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1) You actually were not ahead on upgrades. You were at 1/1 ground and 0/0 air, while the Protoss was at 2/1 ground and 1/0 air. It is absolutely essential that you keep getting upgrades throughout the game. If you were at 3/3 or even just 2/2, this battle could have gone a lot differently.
2) Although you were slightly ahead on army count, you left a good amount at home. I counted 10 marauders. Considering that this was 1/4th of your marauder count, that's quite a lot. This also hurt your engagement.
3) After you lost your initial medivacs in the drop, you didn't produce anymore. They reduce a lot of the incoming DPS and allow you to stim more freely, you should have definitely reproduced them.
4) Both of you invested money on defense. He built a lot of cannons there, and you set up a sort of turret line in the middle. Colossi outrange turrets, so I'm not sure how good of an idea this was. But there's no point in doing this if you're planning on attack away from it. This was essentially 900 minerals down the drain. This money could have been spent on a 4th, getting more production, or upgrades.
5) When you engage the protoss army, it appears that you are literally a moving into it. Granted you got off a few emps in the middle of the fight, but the force fields were already going down and your army was already melting. You also never stimmed your bio.
That being said, what really killed you was how you engaged at the end. So here's what I focus on when I'm planning on engaging the protoss army:
a) Protoss army position awareness. If you are unaware of where his army is, you can very easily get caught off guard and lose everything. When I feel that it's heading into the late game, I make it a point of keeping a marine at what would be major highways of the map. In this game you had fairly good map control, so it wouldn't be difficult to narrow it down to that his army is in his base somewhere. If you are planning on engaging, you need to either stim a marine and run in to get a feel for where his army is, or throw down some scans. If he's in a defensive position, don't attack into it unless you're very comfortable and confident in your ability to do step b while attacking. Instead, attack where he isn't, while preparing to engage his army with a superior position when he shows up.
b) Pre-emptively set up a concave and/or flank. The colossus sentry composition is designed to get as few of your units as attacking as possible during the engagement, and then to deal sick AOE damage to what is attacking. Setting up a concave not only reduces the effectiveness of sentries by making it difficult to forcefield, but it unclumps your army, reducing the effectiveness of the colossi AOE as well. Flanking is the same. This is why part a is so important, because you can't set up a good engagement if you don't know where you're going to be engaging.
c) Pre-emptive EMPS. You want to EMP his army BEFORE the two of you engage. Getting ghost cloak can be useful for this. Position your ghosts between your army and his, and try to emp the sentry clumps (or templar clumps if hes going for that tech). You may have to lead your shots if hes coming right at you, hence EMP a little bit ahead of where his sentries are going.
Then, once the battle is going down, stim, kite zealots if you can, and make sure your vikings are focus firing the colossi one at a time. Just select the vikings and shift right click each colossus.
This won't guarantee that you'll dominate the fight, but you should definitely get a lot more out of your army if you follow these steps.
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I'm just a platinum Terran myself, but I will share what I saw anyways.
-As mentioned above, macro could have been sharper. If your harrass makes you stop building workers, you're harrassing yourself as much as you are him.
-Upgrades are hugely important to a bio army. IIRC, you went past the 13 minute mark without stim, and your army was only 1/1 at the big engagement (which was 20+ minutes in!). I'm not sure when combat shield went down. If you're going to go bio-heavy, I think you should drop a second engineering bay and pump upgrades out quickly. Also, be sure to start stim before going past 3 rax.
-Vikings don't counter colossus just by floating above your army. They need to focus down the colossus ASAP. I'm guessing you know this and it was just a micro slip, but this should be a priority, especially when you're the one attacking. In this engagement, you could have moved your Vikings around to the NW side of his base and they would have been in great shape to start pounding on his colos when he responded to your push.
-Engagement selection seemed poor. His army isn't really out of position if it's sitting at his natural on Xel'Naga. As you saw, it just doesn't take him that long to move over. And walking down that ramp into that tight spot is just suicide. You're probably better off containing him to those 3 bases and fighting him when he tries to get the gold or one of the side bases.
Primarily I would say:
1. Don't miss so many workers
2. Upgrade much faster
3. Be more scared off colossus, which means don't engage in colossus-friendly areas and make sure your vikings are well-positioned to bring them down faster.
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wow thanks to everyone for the good advice.
On April 27 2011 02:28 dig wrote:
5) When you engage the protoss army, it appears that you are literally a moving into it. Granted you got off a few emps in the middle of the fight, but the force fields were already going down and your army was already melting. You also never stimmed your bio.
in the case that I do have a concave on the enagagement, should i still just attack-move into it?
sometimes I see terran progamers (e.g. select) microing a portion of their army to flank and snipe the colossi. Is it worth it to try doing that if I already have vikings? how much should i target fire the high priority units?
...didn't know that bit on the turret range either, good to know.
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EPT
