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I opened standard 14 pool 16 hatch, he does standard FFE, getting a fast +1 and +2 soon after, along with a timing push while researching blink.
I am working on a build that emphasize on mass amount of low-tier units with good upgrades, so let's focus on trying to help w/o deviating from that ideal.
I respond by taking fast 3rd, and pump drones until 8 minutes, and about then he pushes out.
He has fast +1 due to forge expand, and chronoboost. I really tried to match his upgrades with my own, but a combination of FF makes engagement very difficult.
http://drop.sc/41024
I asked him to play a few more games, in this game, I refined my build but when he pushes out, I still do not have the desired upgrade. Notice how low my resource is and how high his is. I am definitely staying on top of macro, yet the combination of FF and blink means i cannot flank at a desirable location.
http://drop.sc/41025
So we tried again, this time, I decided I cannot match his upgrades so I forgo that for better economy and a larger army. However, due to lack of upgrades I cannot engage effectively against the first push and proceed to lose.
http://drop.sc/41026
The general feeling of losing against a 4 gate, it is very momentum based. Where his army kept growing bigger while yours diminish and die. The difference between this and a 4 gate is while defending against a 4 gate, you are only defending natural, which is easier, and the production and macro off 2 base can easily overwhelm his 1 base.
3 base vs 7 gate is different in that a 2 base protoss vs a 3 base zerg is not nessesarily behind in economy. With very fast +1 zerg cannot trade army effeciently (compare to 2 base vs 4 gate, which you definitely can). The fast blink +2 follow up makes his army grows exponentially (akin to terran building up tank counts) while you are stuck in a lower tech.
Something that might helped:
1) creep spread. I feel this is one thing I can work on immediately, getting an extra queen earlier means I'll have a queen dedicated to spreading creeps.
2) spines? I cannot defend 3 base with spines though...
3) more roaches? Roaches are hard to manage economically, you will have to take gas to produce them, and that puts a strain on your economy, especially when you want to make many drones and the timing for taking gas (please tell me?) is tricky.
4) infestors? No way that can be out fast enough to stop the push.
I dislike hydras.
Some inputs will be great.
--evan
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bump, I guess this is pretty tough question cuz nobody answered ni 3 hours!
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Ya its hard to hold as a Zerg. However scouting it should not be difficult since overseers are cheaper and his AA wil be limited to a stalker and 2+ sentries. So it comes down to having a larger econ and thus making a larger army, or having better tech. Those are your two options. I would say ling infestor(tech) is your best chance of dealing with this push. And the sooner you engage the better it is for your lings. Like you said blink stalkers have a snowball effect, so he really shouldnt be competing for map control till he has 2-3 warp-ins, otherwise infestor/ling should own easily. With that being said, maybe a later 3rd and quick tech to infestors will work. After tech, then take your third? The thing about the thrid is that it is not really useful too early in the game because you cant benefit form the minerals till you saturate it. And the larva is still unused early on.
I agree its hard to hold, but here is another alternative. Jsut remeber to try to engage in the open.
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Alright, from a ~1480 masters zerg...
First replay:
- Kind of nitpicky, but it does make a big difference. When you saw the pylon go down, you should have had the queen made the second your pool finished. That extra larva is drones you're missing out on for a full ~30-40 seconds.
- Your evo chamber is way early. You dropped it at 5:00 when the earliest you're going to see DTs from a FFE is after 7 minutes. The standard time to drop the evo is 6:30 at the earliest. Again, nitpicky but FFE kind of puts you behind in econ to start with so every single drone matters untill you're up on 3 hatch 3 queens.
- On the previous point, I see instead what you're trying to do - really fast double upgrades before speed even. I really think that's a bad idea. You said you're trying to make a build that incorporates them for this specific build, but you're committing to these upgrades long before you know this build is coming. I'd highly suggest you not worry about upgrades so essentially and instead get speed right away, followed by melee +1 with the previous point's standard timing.
- You start making units around 8:45 to 9:00. Look at your drone count. It's still under 50 when it should be over 60 had the previous "nitpicky" rules been followed better. I cannot stress enough how a single supply block, mistiming on injects or building queens, or unused larva hurts you prior to the first push. Perhaps spend a little bit against the AI or something and try to have the correct number of drones at this time because it honestly is probably the most important part of the game.
-Your lair is pretty late (10:13). Had he not been going for a push you would be quite behind in tech.
- Despite ALL of this you still could have won the game. As he moved out he had a relatively small army, and you had around 50 lings. You need to be active with these lings. Attack on his side of the map, try to fake a commitment and make him burn forcefields. He had 4 total sentries. If you fake once or twice he'll waste at least some of his energy. Then go ahead and commit the next time on HIS side of the map. During this time you can be making another huge batch of lings such that when he gets on your side of the map, he's out of forcefield energy (or close to it, fake again if he'll buy it). A mass of lings would have shred through the mostly stalker ball he had.
- Additionally, as far as the macro goes, you need to give yourself a bigger supply cushion. You floated 1700 minerals in the fight. Partially because of lack of larva. If you're thinking he's going blink, you're correct that you need lots of lings. The reason you still see roach/ling is because of the larva constrictions. Roaches are far more larva efficient, mixing in some during a blink timing helps a lot. But more importantly, you need to give yourself a larger supply cushion. Getting capped there killed you.
I don't think that I'm going to do the other replays as this was fairly comprehensive I think, and should give you a bit better of an idea of how to approach this.
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So you're saying I basically miss macroed. Okay that sounds fair. So how to combat the fast +1 though? If he goes heavy zealot I guess I'll have to make banelings on demand?
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I watched just first game and you need spines and you need infestors. With just speedlings it's impossible to defend when he drops good FFs. Get like 4 spines to get time to get infestors, and maybe change your build a little bit so you can get infestors earlier.
But I am doing same style as well and it's very hard to defend 6-7 gate with it.
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I have to emphasize what Kreos.Z said, as I have a similar focus as you on my ZvP build and ran into the same problems as you. Metabolic boost and then +1 melee works very well. Maybe keep that early upgrade focus but go for a single evo chamber at first, I do +1 melee followed by +1 range, and once that is done and your eco really kicks in commit to the double evos.
The main problem I have while playing that style is that the minerals shoot up, and you don't have enough larva to spend it all on lings which is why you need roaches to have more punch come out of your larva pool.
If you want a general idea of comparison I get my gas around 3mn, get metabolic boost, take one or two drones off gas depending on if you want an earlier lair or not, time the evo chamber (at 50 gas if two on gas or 75 if one) to start +1 melee as soon as it finishes and go to lair with the next 100, build a roach warren as you go lair. Add a second gas at that point as well.
If you kept a single drone on gas the +1 melee will come after 9:30, so you'll have to stall, 2 drones on gas makes your economy a bit worse but makes it so you'll always have it in time.
I'd be interested in how you handle stargate play like this though since while I don't loose to 6 gates most of the time I have some troubles against stargates using this build.
Edit: as for spines you can't cover your 3 bases with them (expect maybe on antiga but he can always break the rocks) and infestors come too late unless you butcher your economy to get them in time.
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A couple refinements you could make:
1) balancing mineral saturation. In all 3 replays you have oversaturated and undersaturated bases. getting 16 on minerals everywhere will improve your mining efficiency.
2) creep spread. Pushing creep out your front door makes it harder to push in. The speed boost is really helpful. Your queens can come and fight/kite a bit too if you've covered your half of the map. Roaches on creep do ok against stalkers, off creep without speed they're worse off. Speedlings on creep are crazy, you can get on top of stalkers after a blink really quickly. It felt to me like you had too many queens, or not enough creep tumors. If you watch Stephano's stream at all, he does an amazing job of spreading creep most games. His macro hatch timings are aggressive, but he doesn't always get extra queens for the macro hatches.
3) try burrowed roaches? They're a good way to stall for time against a gateway-only push. Use a good amount of roaches to poke at his zealots, then burrow them when the FF ring goes up. Repeat as necessary, and you should be able to force a retreat or a more favorable engagement.
4) Evo chamber timing. With 3 on gas, to spend your next 100 on a +1 melee, throw your evolution chamber down when you have around 40-45 gas. For 150 for +1 armor, 90-95 is about right. Lair morph takes half as long as a +1, so if you want to keep the upgrades going, keep that in mind. In the first game the first one went down too early, then they both sat idle after lair :/
5) Larva efficiency? I like a spine or two, to stay safer while droning, so you don't need too many zerglings. With the aforementioned creep spread, you can push them out and claim more of the map.
Overall, I think it is possible to squeeze more of an army out of your builds while maintaining similar production capacity and income throughout the game.
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I face this and similare builds quite often, and I´m i really have to fuck up big time to loose against it. I´m around 1200 points in masters, so I´m not awsome but not bad either. Kreos.Z advice is good I think, but this is how I play it:
Scouting an ffe from toss I get my third as early as I can while still getting two queens as fast as economy allows. I dont take gas at all if he goes ffe. Put a ling in front of his base and check the entire map for a hidden probe with a few lings, scout extra carefully around your third and far away corners.
Drone pump like mad until 7-7.30, then get 3-4 extractors at the same time and sac overlord to find out what he is doing, get evo chamber and roachwarren at the same time, also around 7 minutes. You should see either mass gateways, sometimes with citadel, or stargate. React properly. Get speed as soon as you get 100 gas. If you see any kind of aggression I just pump roaches and speedlings. Start lair if you have the money, but roachspeed is not needed to defend, you should get lair though if gets lots of sentries but they usually wont.
If you defend you pretty much won the game.
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On October 06 2011 18:16 evanthebouncy! wrote:
So you're saying I basically miss macroed. Okay that sounds fair. So how to combat the fast +1 though? If he goes heavy zealot I guess I'll have to make banelings on demand?
You don't really need to worry about the fast +1. If he's doing a +1 6 gate, then you're going to have more roaches to deal with the zealots. If he's doing the blink timing he'll mostly be stalker sentry, so you have the heavier ling count. If during the blink push he reacts to the ling count, and instead starts producing zealots, then you've essentially forced him into a 1-2 minute late 6 gate, while you have a higher drone count than you normally would. Your response would to then be to make more roaches untill he switches back to making stalkers. Kind of like a 4 gate momentum fight, but you have a much better econ.
Edit: I guess it kind of sounds like I mean you should be using pure ling to hold any of these. That's not really what I'm advocating. You should always be using roach ling because it free's up larva to produce a large batch of whatever unit you need. You had 4 hatches with 4 queens, and a 5th one came up towards the end of the game. By mixing in 10-15 roaches that game, you free up a ton of larva.
Then, if you engaged him on his side of the map, he would be wasting his forcefields, and, seeing your roach count, would continue with stalker sentry. As long as you save those roaches (any engage you pull back when your speedlings die to conserve the roaches unless you can straight up finish him off), you can continue to pump mass speedlings and engaging him away from your base. By the time he finally pushes to your base (provided he didnt get overwhelmed prior, which if you have the econ for is very likely), he will at worst have pure stalker and no energy sentries, which will get eaten alive by your speedlings and remaining roaches.
The 6 gate +1 on the other hand should be handled the same way, except with a more roach heavy composition as you likely wont have the 4th macro hatch + queen, thus you'll be hurting a lot more on larva.
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I think the answer to the 9-10 min push as Zerg is just "to have stuff," as Day9 once pointed out in analyzing some games of Ret's. And Losira and Nestea backed this up by showing Burrow, Roachspeed, even upgrades are not as important as just having hordes of crap to throw at the Protoss mini-ball.
I personally use my gas for a middle-ish timed Ling speed, +1 attack, and Baneling Nest before Lair straight into +2. And when they try to timing push I have about 50 lings and a dozen Banelings. Just feint with lings 3-4 times, lose a few, build some more, and when the Sentries get a little low on energy, banelings take out Zealots, and Lings clean up.
Honestly, you don't need to overthink it. Make a tight build geared towards whatever midgame you'd like, don't build more than 50ish drones before you have an idea of what they are doing, and just throw stuff at them without getting FF'd out of any base. I took a lot of time trying to be clever before I quit and just massed up when I scouted 6-7 gates.
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You say you dislike Hydras, but you do not give any reason.
Hydras are supposed to be the best against all gateway units.
Just a thought....
<3
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On October 07 2011 02:39 FungalLove wrote:
You say you dislike Hydras, but you do not give any reason.
Hydras are supposed to be the best against all gateway units.
Just a thought....
<3
Hydras are actually not very good against blink stalker sentry, they are good against regular gateway armies. Additionally, any time you go hydra, you're risking the chance of straight up dying to a collossus push. The only time that hydras are really effective is doing an early hydra doom drop/nydus rally all in. If you rush to hydra off of two base, yes you could arguably hold a 6 gate +1 comfortably, but why do taht when you could hold it off three base with roach ling and more drones?
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The answer is spine crawlers, spine crawlers, spine crawlers, the more spines you build, the more drones you can build, once you have 3 base up safely and he over commits and CANNOT attack you due to the amount of spines you have at your nat and 3rd, he will be forced to pull back and get his own 3rd or all in and lose, I do this every ZvP, 3hatch with 1-1 speedlings and spine crawlers into muta, if he goes stargate I obviously don't go air but rather roach hydra infestor( I really don't like this build) then transition accordingly.
Of course there is other ways to play but I always prefer the defensive style especially in ZvP, focus on stopping you're opponents attack and playing defensively untill you are on 3-4 base, I would tell you to build roaches, but I honestly don't even build roaches in ZvP that often because of stargate. and colossi, and even immortals...
My favorite is just going 1-1 speedlings, plenty of queens, and spinecrawlers, get your 3rd up and saturated then start macroing into a speedling baneling mutalisk army in ZvP, very very strong, then transition accordingly into T3.
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On October 06 2011 18:16 evanthebouncy! wrote:
So you're saying I basically miss macroed. Okay that sounds fair. So how to combat the fast +1 though? If he goes heavy zealot I guess I'll have to make banelings on demand?
You can go for +1 carapace when your evolution bay finishes if you desire. +1 carapace helps both lings and roaches. Then you just start melee or missle attack +1 and carapace +2 when the lair finishes.
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In the first replay, you go fast upgrades then try to hold him off using ling only for far too long. Your transition to baneling was late and you were only mining off 1 gas at that point. You did an okay job delaying him, forcing him to waste force fields, but by the time the banelings were finally out he was already at your ramp, so only 1 more round of forcefields were needed by him to stop you. Between his base and yours, you can classify the map into a series of chokes and open areas. With ling bane, you try to engage in the open areas, whereas with sentry/stalker, he wants to fight in the chokes. If you started your baneling nest earlier, you could've gotten banelings before he got through the last open area, which might have made the build more viable.
In the second game, you went roach/ling, which is considered a bit more standard. It's certainly more robust than ling/bane, since force fields aren't quite as decisive. The problem here was after making a few roaches, you reinforced with ling only. Meanwhile, you were mining out of 4 gases. Economically speaking, gathering gas but not spending it is not wise, and like before, going pure ling only isn't an ideal composition. I think if you had 2-3 gases, spending all the gas on roaches then remaining minerals on lings, you should be able to hold that as you had more economy.
In the third game, you skip the upgrades which make your mass ling strategy much less effective. Your baneling nest is at a good timing, but you neglect to mine more than 1 gas, so you can't make very many. In addition, you lose a bunch of units (including most of your banelings) when they are ambushed at the watchtower. No upgrades + losing units for free probably did you in here.
I think the key thing for you is managing the gas timings. On one hand, going low gas high mineral is great for growing your economy, because on 3 hatch with queens, your ability to drone is limited by how many minerals you have available. However, on the other hand it is nice to have some tech/gas units available for defending these types of timings, so you will have to get some gas at some point. Just as a point of reference, I noted that Dimaga took 2 gases at 32 food in a game on the same map vs a similar protoss build. He then went evo + roach warren, and just overwhelmed his opponent because he had an economic advantage already from all the droning.
If you want to stay mineral heavy you'll need to find a way to spend it. Lings only cost 50 minerals per larva, and eventually you'll have extra minerals if you're fully satured on 3 base with 4 hatches. You can spend the extra on spines, take all your gases at once so you transition into tech (i.e. Spanishiwa build), etc. It's up to you.
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First, you need to take your gasses faster. Once Zerg gets up to a full 2 base saturation (or 40 drone on mineral), you need to have all 4 gasses up and running or you will have a HUGE surplus of minerals. However, if you are going a ling/baneling/roach style, I think getting the appropriate upgrades and drop tech is extremely important. Your macro hatch timing was good, just because of the style of the build (making many low cost units).
To hold off a 6/7 gate, you will either need:
1) a metric ass ton of upgraded lings
2) ling/baneling with speed and DROPS
3) ling/roach
Most 6/7 gates will hit with +1 attacks and usually +1 armour, so getting those early upgrades definitely helps. Your evo chambers were a bit early in the first replay, since you didn't upgrade at that time and you won't need the spores either. I personally don't like to use only lings against 6/7 gate, just because forcefields can ruin your day against any competent player. Having baneling drops in the big encounter (first game) would have won you the game just because he didn't have blink or colossus, which are essential to fighting drop banelings. Ling/roach is also a very common and effective way of stopping 6 gate because forcefields don't completely paralyze roaches like they do to lings. As well, roaches are less affected by +1 attack upgrade, just because they won't die in 2 hits and render themselves completely useless. I really like your style of late lair, but if you want to do that, you need to have roaches and you need to expand more as well. If you focused only on macro in those games, I'm sure you would have won 
On October 07 2011 11:53 zylog wrote:
In the second game, you went roach/ling, which is considered a bit more standard. It's certainly more robust than ling/bane, since force fields aren't quite as decisive. The problem here was after making a few roaches, you reinforced with ling only. Meanwhile, you were mining out of 4 gases. Economically speaking, gathering gas but not spending it is not wise, and like before, going pure ling only isn't an ideal composition. I think if you had 2-3 gases, spending all the gas on roaches then remaining minerals on lings, you should be able to hold that as you had more economy.
I agree strongly when zylog said you should spend all your gas and minerals on roaches, then the rest on lings. Roaches are generally much stronger than lings cost wise and larvae wise, so you should usually favor them over lings unless you are reinforcing an attack or "countering" a unit comp (eg, all stalkers).
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On October 07 2011 02:39 FungalLove wrote:
You say you dislike Hydras, but you do not give any reason.
Hydras are supposed to be the best against all gateway units.
Just a thought....
<3
Usually by the time you get hydras, unless you rush them against 2 base-timing, blink or charge is nearly completed or already completed.
Upgraded gateway units will make mincemeat out of hydralisks, to say nothing of the colossi that you'll also see typically by that time.
That's why all the wins with hydralisks are 2-base timings early in the mid-game, whereas those later mid-game roach/hydra compositions get wrecked.
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Your macro slipped a little. There is no reason not to have ~60 drones at 8:00 if you're not being attacked, and those extra drones makes such a huge difference. It's also crucial not to mis injects while he's attacking, you were having money over that could have been army units.
Don't commit to attacking him by his pylon in the middle unless you're sure you can snipe his worker+pylon. You'll want to avoid choke points as much as possible, especially near the watch towers if he controls them. The ideal position to attack him is when he's close, but not so close that he can forcefield of a ramp.
Poke his front at ~7:00 if he's crono boosting warp tech and/or forge upgrade, you should suspect an early push and there's nothing wrong with placing a few spines as a precautionary measure. Move them to a spot between your 2nd and 3rd when your creep is up.
Your main mistake that cost you take game: Always back of whenever possible when he's walled of with force fields and try to avoid fighting losing battles, it's better to preserve your units until you can trade units somewhat equally. This is especially true if you make mostly lings. If you're going roach, get burrow asap to be able to wait out the force fields and get your creep spread on early to be able to bait force fields and mitigate blink kiting.
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EPT
