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Hey guys,
Low to Mid Diamond Terran here looking for some advice on how to handle this kind of play better. I made a significant mistake in the game, a misclick that made my orbital on my expo almost a minute late, but my macro was still at least somewhat above my opponent's here and I'm wondering where I should have looked for a window to attack.
I open reactor/techlab 2 rax. I scout and see the double gas, only 1 gate. Hang an SCV around a while, still don't see a tech structure, get greedy and get my scout killed by the chrono'd stalker.
Make the usual poke up the ramp before warp gate gets done, see 3 gate robo with 2 sentries with enough energy that I won't be able to get safely up the ramp before an immortal and a warp in come out, so I back up to the watchtower and expand at home. +1 attack is almost done at this time; he hasn't started ups yet.
At around 7:00, he still hasn't expanded, so I expect an all-in. I build 2 highground bunkers and wait. (This is when the misclick happens and I don't make my orbital).
At around 9:00, he still hasn't attacked, so I suspect he's seen that I've taken sufficient precautions and has decided to expand. I decide it's safe for me to move out to expand.
I scout again, see he has the expo, and scan a little later and see he's at +1, suspect double forge. I run into the front a couple of times, still don't see Colossus tech, and decide to move out with a drop when +2 is done. I am suspicious of no colossus, but figure that with the late expo, double forge, and a somewhat sentry heavy composition, he might have gone for blink/charge (which it turns out he did, except along with double forge ups and colossus tech) or straight into templar play. Having not seen any Colossus, I figure medivacs give me the most flexibility to drop/hit and be able to manuever with stim.
My drop gets intercepted because he has a well-placed pylon mid-map, and I get to the front and see he suddenly now has 3 colossus (wtf!) and 3/0/3. I choose a pretty bad spot to engage, but realistically I know the game is already over since my scouting reveals no colossus and thus I don't have vikings, and if I back up he'll just take the gold and I'll lose because I won't be able to safely move out a third.
I've been a big proponent that 2 rax is still viable, but this game made me feel like it's not. Because it's not at all reactive, sentry heavy openings just counter it and I feel like I never had another opening to do good damage, especially since I had to respect the immortal all-in from the protoss.
Any suggestions would be welcome, most specifically:
- How should I improve my scouting to attempt to find a window to attack?
- When is the proper time to try to take a third under these circumstances? I feel like I was overly cautious, and something like the 3 bunkers at my natural could have been a third, but especially on XNC I don't feel comfortable taking an early 3rd against the toss. Yes, if can set up a planetary at the third you are in a pretty commanding position, but this seems too dependent on toss not reacting properly to your build.
- Did I miss an obvious timing that I'm not seeing? I just can't find one where I could have done good damage.
Thanks! Here's the replay: http://drop.sc/67842
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Can anyone please watch the replay? Sorry for the bump but at least one point of view would be helpful.
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United States8476 Posts
This is a model OP for a help thread, so you deserve some help.
- You don't need an eng bay after 2 rax. You can afford to go 2 rax into cc into eng bay if you suspect dts.
- You should have some way to scout his expansion timing. This usually is an scv that pokes in and out. If you scout an expansion, you can tech much faster to medivacs safely and also not make that many bunkers.
- Your building order is very awkward. You go 2 rax into eng bay into cc into rax into fact into 4th rax into all 4 gas at once into armory into 5th rax into 2 starports into 6th/7th rax. To give you an idea, a standard 2 rax into expand build versus an expansion non-allin build from toss looks like this: 2 rax into cc into 2nd gas into eng bay into fact into starport into 3rd rax/3rd gas into 4th/5th rax into 4th gas into 3rd cc. You can only support 5 rax on 2 base and you had no reason to get 2 starports blind.
- Your build got very very delayed starport which resulted in late medivacs(no pressure or scouting opportunity) and delayed vikings. You also delay your first medivacs after your first starport finishes. As a result, your first pair of medivacs is about 5 whole minutes late, which is HUGE.
- You actually saw his robo bay but didn't react with vikings. If you get caught offguard by colossi tech, immediately add a 2nd starport and make vikings from 2 starports, the 2nd either having or not having a reactor depending on the situation.
- You have 2 in each gas at your natural for the entire game.
I'll also answer your specific questions:
- How should I improve my scouting to attempt to find a window to attack?
Between your 2 rax poke and around 10 minutes, you should be relying on individual marines and scvs to poke his natural. The only information you really need is his expansion timing. Around 10 minutes, your first pair of medivacs should pop out, but instead your pop out after 15 minutes. You should used medivacs to poke his army and drop. There is little he can do to retaliate unless you commit and by poking, you force him to show him your army composition. By dropping, you can scout his tech at the same time.
- When is the proper time to try to take a third under these circumstances? I feel like I was overly cautious, and something like the 3 bunkers at my natural could have been a third, but especially on XNC I don't feel comfortable taking an early 3rd against the toss. Yes, if can set up a planetary at the third you are in a pretty commanding position, but this seems too dependent on toss not reacting properly to your build.
If you had gotten your medivacs, scouted him properly, and gotten the proper counter units(vikings) in sufficient numbers, you can begin your 3rd cc very early, even around 12-13 minutes. You don't have to float it over though. In that situation where he has a later 2nd nexus than your 2nd cc and is going double forge, it's very safe for you to take a 3rd, just not with the unit composition you had.
- Did I miss an obvious timing that I'm not seeing? I just can't find one where I could have done good damage.
Not especially. I didn't watch the replay carefully for this, but I don't think so.
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This was extremely helpful Monk, thank you. The reason I went extra rax was to protect against the immortal all-in, and I've died several times due to investing 350/250 into a useless factory/starport/reactor on top of the expo and extra probes, so I usually add in extra production first instead of teching. Is it safe to stay on 2 rax against a suspected immortal all-in? I've read that at least you want to add in the 3rd rax, but maybe this is wrong, or maybe it was just adding the 4th rax instead of the earlier port that got me in trouble.
I've never seen a toss expand at this timing before, so I was caught off guard. But I'll attempt to refine my scouting mechanisms to make another poke in at 8:00 between the 7:00 and 9:00 timings so it doesn't happen again. Then I can react appropriately with either faster medivacs or dropping a 3rd.
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Just did a quick watch. I don't think there's anything wrong with going 2-Rax on such a small map. The decisions you make in the early game are all very good. Single marine up the ramp, backing-up, taking an in-base expo, bunkering up when you don't know what they are going and then moving down to take an expansion when you marine scouts his expo.
There are a couple things you need to work on, but the biggest error -- by this I mean what you might have done differently in this particular game rather than the set of things you should change and improve going forward -- comes when you scan at 14:00 and get a look at his army. His army (15 chargelots, 3 sentries, 5 stalkers, 2 immortals @ 1/1) seems a little bit light; you are right he's going double upgrades, but this is rarely done on just gateway immortal (and if so, you should be scouting to see if he's taking lots of other bases). So he will be getting splash, and you need to know what kind; it's worth it to go ahead and scan his main. I'm not advocating you to go scan happy -- the points NrGMonk makes about using medivac pressure as an incidental form of scouting is the better option -- but I am more so making a point about how you might have adjusted in this particular game to stay on pace. If he was going high templar, you need to get down a ghost academy immediately and if he's going colossus, you need to be building Vikings from both starports. Had you done this at this timing, you would have continued to be ahead (since it seems you were out-macroing your opponent a bit). You will sometimes see people drop a single marine and have it stim to run around the main just to get a decent scout.
Other observations:
- You don't contest the watch towers; this gives you less map vision and less time to arrange a defensive position if he does happen to be moving out.
- When you scout him taking an expansion, I don't think it's necessary to throw down 3 bunkers. Stim is completed and very good against his initial gateway army.
- You went a very fast engineering bay and +1, which gives you a good lead in upgrades; but then you don't follow up in time with an appropriate armory and second e-bay to keep on pace with the upgrades. If you are going to prioritize your first +1 over getting a factory and then medivacs, then I think it's important to keep on going with it. You will have some good timings to hit with +1 or +1/+1 or +2/+2 if you do so.
- NrGMonk's points about how to better optimize your build are all on point; heed them.
- Your factory finishes at 9 minutes but you don't start a Starport until 13 minutes; that's 4 minutes of idle time. Your first set of medivacs start don't arrive until 16 minutes, which is quite late in the game. There are a number of attacks your opponent could have made, and not having medivacs out early enough both to actively heal and also to passively gain energy is inefficient. Without earlier medivacs its hard to pressure since each stim really hurts. All of this is explained in detail by NrGMonk.
- When you do move out with your drop and are spotted by a pylon, I don't think it's a good idea to continue the drop; you should take out the pylon, back up and wait. Otherwise you are just gambling on your opponent making a mistake.
- In general your macro is ahead of your opponents and decent. But, if you are interested in continuing to improve I would have liked to see you take a third and continue making SCVs.
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United States8476 Posts
I recommend the extra rax to protect against immortal allin. On any other map with a thinner choke, you can float your 2nd cc to your natural and defend with 3+ bunkers and a 3rd rax. However, on xelnaga, where your choke is huge, it's not at all possible to hold your natural vs this allin, so it's better to stay in your base. Even against an immortal allin, however, your starport was extremely late. If you do indeed suspect an immortal all-in on xelnaga, you should take your 2nd gas asap while teching to starport ASAP while being safe. If he pokes up your ramp with an immortal allin and decides to forcefield you in, you can't do anything about it until medivacs. If he expands behind it and you haven't started a factory, you will end up behind. Again though, with good scouting of his natural, you can rule out immortal allin.
I also edited my post to include answering the original questions you had.
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Firstly I have to say I'm not a terran player, but I'll try to help anyway.
Here are a few points I have for you regarding the game and your analysis:
- I wouldn't blame the opening at all. You weren't dead because of it, so I shall assume it's viable.
- I think you should have fought with your initial force for his watchtower instead of backing off to the one on your side of the map. Just leave one marine on yours and claim his. You can always back off. Having both of them would give you more confidence to liftoff your CC earlier.
- I feel like you took your 2nd gas too late. You went for infantry upgrades and tried to tech up to starport, but you just couldn't support it all on 1 refinery. Consider either not getting +1 armor after +1 attack and building a starport instead, or taking a 2nd gas quicker.
- GOD you we're pulled back so badly at 9 minute mark. I know that protoss all-ins are scary. Vision is the key in my opinion.
- at 17 minute mark you made a terrible miscalculation/decision to attack into his fortified natural. Think of it this way: if you are both on two bases, macroing up havily, then there is a very thin chance of such attack to end up succesfully. You weren't dead before this attack! If you could stall him (scare him, feint attacks/drops) you could buy yourself time to get precious vikings to deal with collossus tech.
Hope these points help, though take them with a grain of salt, as I am noob zerg player myself.
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United States8476 Posts
Oh, another hint: you had 59 scvs before starting a 3rd. You should never have that many workers before a 3rd as terran. If you're looking to play a macro game, I recommend cutting scvs at around 50 for a 3rd CC and then resuming them after the CC starts. Those 9 scvs cost more than a CC and don't give much return at all.
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Your opening was fine, but after that your build order was really sloppy, monk covered this aspect nicely. A strong build order will result in a much faster expansion, and you will reap huge snowballing advantages from this.
I felt that you played quite "scared". You could easily have just chilled at the bottom of his base with your 2rax force for quite some time, that said against a good macro protoss (this one was not) you would be right to fall back (but even then not right away). You built a ton of bunkers over the game for no reason. That said, I felt maybe you were reacting to what you expect from a pro protoss rather then a protoss at your level.
The bunkers you built in your main base should be built outside your base protecting your earlier expansion.
You need to do a bit better job on scouting his tech path, earlier drops would help, maybe scanning his main rather then his army, building a rax in the left side base and floating it to his main.
You were quite late on starport tech, you just need to get that alot earlier since just the threat of early collosus was present you should have had a reactor starport up by around 10mins.
You scouted he was going collosus at 16:45, his army arrived at your base by around 18:30. In this time you had the production capabilities to make 6 vikings, but you made 0. Even worse you tried to engage his army with collosus without any vikings, and you paid dearly for it. Instead you should have been trying to delay him with drops while you churned out vikings.
Your stutterstep micro could use some work, your stutters are often too long.
You had too much production for 2 bases. Instead try to spend your money better, you shouldn't have more then 5rax and 1 starport unless you are behind on vikings then you can get another starport.
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My attempted followup to a blue post:
It seems like you invested very heavily in army size while he invested very heavily in tech. If you don't do anything with your larger army and keep sitting around and waiting, his early tech investment will catch up in the late-game and run you over. If you added a 2nd gas along with your factory then immediately added a starport and went into double medivac production, you could have been much more aggressive in the midgame when his army was tiny and yours was massive by comparison.
When I watch Polt's stream, he uses 2 rax in 90% of his TvP (except when he goes 1/1/1), even on tal'darim altar and other massive macro maps. He always adds his factory and 2nd gas at the same time after his CC, then his starport immediately after the factory finishes. He does this even when he suspects something like a 3 gate robo. I remember a really sick game that he played against a 3 gate robo all-in; even though P broke into his base and took out tons of SCVs, the tech advantage from the medivacs let Polt counterattack cost-efficiently with his smaller army, doing enough damage to equalize (and ultimately win the game). Similar concept can be found in Naniwa vs MVP at Blizzcon (I believe); Naniwa did tons of damage to MVP with his gateway push, but Naniwa was so far behind in his tech that MVP was able to counterattack for the win with his medivacs. If you stay on barracks tech against a P you suspect is "tech" 1 basing (as opposed to 4 gate), you won't be able to counterattack very efficiently.
Finally - the game wasn't over (contrary to what you thought) until you attacked into that choke horribly; if you engage with a sick concave/flank in open territory, sometimes you don't even need vikings to take on relatively low numbers of colossi at diamond level. Obviously that's not ideal, but if you started viking production immediately with double starport and tried to pin him with drops, I think you could have caught up sufficiently.
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i just saw the replay.
k so lets start:
- first of all always wall of (you do not have to do this with your first depo rax) its the first line of defense you can always go back to
- after a 2 rax pressure i would build an exe asap especially if he is just sitting in his base and you cant do any damage (and this is the whole purpose of a 2 rax dont let him play greedy and exe really quick) while you are building an exe
- you do not have to build 2 bunkers while expanding in your main, just build them on your expension if you feel insecure and add another rax (on xelnaga you can build 3 bunkers because of the none existing ramp on your 2.)
- try to scout when he takes his 2. on this map it was really late so wasting a scan to see want he is up to isnt the worst thing, you can also trying to poke his ramp and see his unit composission to know want he is doing
- after you stim finished you could cursh him because the 2. is so wide open and he only had 2 sentrys
- your drop play wasnt quite good:
1. always take marines before marauders
2. you were attacking the only thing he could easily afford to lose (a gateway-.-)
3. try to drop on both expensions or try to attack with your army while dropping
- if your a scouting double forge go double upgrades as well
- always scout his units in the mid stages if hes going robo immortals etc you can assume collosses if your unsure just scan but you should have scouted him with your drops anyway (some people are saying that you have to go viking blindly against p but i dont agree)
- you should have go towards your lategame: vikings or ghosts you didnt build any of those
at the end you got an bad angle and with the force fields it was gg
(im not a native english speaker so plz excuse my bad language)
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Thanks for the help, these were some of the most constructive TvP posts I've seen.
I played another TvP, and although it was a bigger map (meaning I FE'ed), I tried to clean up my midgame transitions and got into the the lategame with, I believe, a good advantage because of reacting properly. My macro was a tad sloppy during my initial 4 rax push but I got to a point where even though I had a bit of a bank, I was able to basically remax instantly. Obviously, watching the follow-up isn't required (especially since I won this), but I figured I'd post anyway.
http://drop.sc/68088
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On December 05 2011 05:18 upperbound wrote:Thanks for the help, these were some of the most constructive TvP posts I've seen. I played another TvP, and although it was a bigger map (meaning I FE'ed), I tried to clean up my midgame transitions and got into the the lategame with, I believe, a good advantage because of reacting properly. My macro was a tad sloppy during my initial 4 rax push but I got to a point where even though I had a bit of a bank, I was able to basically remax instantly. Obviously, watching the follow-up isn't required (especially since I won this), but I figured I'd post anyway. http://drop.sc/68088
It was a bit better, but you really need to throw down your 2 gas right after your 4th rax. You don't throw any gas down for ages and that should kill. You need that gas to get an earlier starport (yours is still late). Your stim is horrendously late, combat shields and upgrades are also late. All of this stems from the fact that you didnt put your gases down when you had plenty of minerals to do so. You would also have been able to get addons for your barracks earlier and avoid the large amount of mineral float that you had.
Also I felt that although it worked out for you, your initial push was weak and that with better micro/positioning the protoss should have just crushed it easily. What made you think that you were hitting a good timing with that?
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Toss went a really greedy 14 nex and didn't seem in a hurry to build extra gates, so I felt I could be really cost efficient with marines and get an early 3rd down. I didn't take the gas because I meant to expo behind the push faster, but screwed that up. I think your point is well taken, which is why I said my macro slipped during the push.
Thanks for your continued feedback, this has given me a lot of things to work on shoring up (and gives me hope that my fundamentals are decent, it's just a matter of practicing the midgame build a bit more) and hopefully I can continue to climb into masters pretty soon.
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On December 05 2011 04:41 NrGmonk wrote:
Oh, another hint: you had 59 scvs before starting a 3rd. You should never have that many workers before a 3rd as terran. If you're looking to play a macro game, I recommend cutting scvs at around 50 for a 3rd CC and then resuming them after the CC starts. Those 9 scvs cost more than a CC and don't give much return at all.
In most scenarios you want to take your third or at least build the cc before the 12 minute mark that's around the time you reach saturation on your natural and main as well. I don't think you have to really cut workers to start the cc at this time and I think it's well worth it to be able to immediately saturate your third as terran because it's hard to keep up in economy otherwise. There are situations in which you took a hit early and you want to get the third cc up asap to help producing additional workers but in a standard game I would never stop scv production. On the other hand I am just at around 750 points in master league so if somebody objects my reasoning please go ahead.
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EPT
