EPT![[image loading]](http://docs.kde.org/development/en/extragear-games/knights/Knights-castle-queenside.png)
There is an element of design that has gone into a lot of great strategy games which I think SC2 has not sufficiently addressed – and that is the ability to defend and play defensively. From castling in chess to militia in WC3, the importance of defense and the defender's advantage in strategy games has always been of the highest importance. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that no strategy game which does not give sufficient importance to the defender's advantage can be considered a complete strategy game. The purpose of this post is first, to explain why having adequate opportunities for defense and adequate defender's advantage is important, and second, to present elements of gameplay that seem symptomatic of a lack of defender's advantage.
“But why must defense be so important?” you might ask.
In the game of risk, battles are won and lost by roles of the dice. We’ll use this game to look at these types of games from a purely design perspective, without things like skill or other elements of strategy to confuse the issue.
Risk and Relevant Rules (skip if you know the game)
+ Show Spoiler +
The attacker may roll one for each army he has attacking, to a maximum of 3, and the defender may roll one for each army defending, to a maximum of 2. When the dice are rolled, the highest and second highest of each roll is compared, and if the attacker tied the defender’s roll or worse, he loses an army, where if the attacker rolled higher, the defender loses an army. When the defender loses all their armies or the attacker only has one army left, the battle is over. If the attacker won, he takes the country he was attacking.
The math behind the dice-rolling in Risk implies that the defender has a very slight advantage*. However, each player has a notable advantage once the other is no longer able to do so. So, in areas where both have an equally large number of armies, the attacker is at a slight disadvantage, and in areas where both have an equally small number of armies, the attacker is at a large disadvantage.
But now, let’s say we want to change that. Defending is boring – let’s make it more rewarding to attack by taking away the defender’s advantage. Let’s say each player can only roll 2 dice, and on a tie nothing happens. That makes it even. Should make things more fair. Seems logical, right? You’d probably think that until you see a spot where it looks like your opponent will attack at their next convenience, and you realize – “Hey, he’s going to attack me on his next turn. Why don’t I attack him first? It’s the same roll either way, and this way, if I win – I get his territory.” And then you see a place where your opponent isn’t ready to attack and you think to yourself – “Shouldn’t I attack him there? Otherwise, I’m just waiting for him to be ready to attack. I’ll just attack him when he’s not ready instead!”
![[image loading]](http://cache.kotaku.com/assets/images/9/2011/08/risk.jpg)
Don't let the cover fool you - this game's all about sitting at a table rolling dice.
Then, you realize that if he’s not going to attack, you attack him, and if he is going to attack, you… still attack him. The most reasonable strategy is just attacking everywhere you can at every opportunity, and then you realize that you’re just sitting down and putting a bunch of markers on a board that doesn’t really matter and rolling dice until you pick almost all of them up again – and the game is ruined. You’re now just rolling dice to see who’s better at rolling dice. Arguably, that’s the biggest part of risk anyway – but my point is that when attacking isn’t strictly worse than defending, strategy goes away and we’re left with just execution because both sides always want to attack. When you attack you get stuff (in, SC2, destroying bases) and when you defend you don’t. So, if defending isn’t easier, why would you ever defend?
See the point? If you make defense equal to or harder than attacking, the game becomes merely attacking whatever you can whenever you can attack it. That's doesn't make for a good strategy game because it removes a basic component of strategy - should I be attacking right now or defending? Imagine that attacking is actually easier than defending - and whatever decisions you had before are simply gone.
Now we come to SC2, which I will argue has not given sufficient attention to defender's advantage and to defensively oriented units and structures.
Don't buy that defender's advantage is really as crucial as I'm claiming? That's actually fine, because even if you don't, it's worthwhile to note that games of SC2 tend to be at their best when they’re long. Some people feel that this is because long games are so rare, but I feel that's an inadequate explanation. If there were as much or as intense action going on in the early game as their is when each player has taken 3-4 bases, I might accept that explanation - but the two are just completely different in terms of difficulty. Personally, I think the reason these games are so epic is that more is happening, so action prioritizing matters more and those with great multitasking are truly able to show their prowess. I also think that the general shortness of games and relative effectiveness of strategies which emphasize only the early game is one of the reasons why people have said that SC2 is so easy comparatively
I. Rush Builds
![[image loading]](http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-gj7exPDP_sU/TcjG2GfbElI/AAAAAAAAAO8/wRcCu_JF2Zo/s640/1.JPG)
This is, in my humble opinion, the biggest evidence there is of a lack of sufficient defender’s advantage. I’m not a pro player, but I watch enough streams and tournaments to know that people still rush each other, and it’s even a pretty normal occurrence. I have no problem with this necessarily, but from a game design standpoint, the best case scenario is that the earlier the attack, the harder it will be to make successful.
Why? Let’s go back to our earlier logic. Defender’s advantage exists because there needs to be a reason people defend – otherwise everyone has only attacking on their minds, because attacking wins games, where defending only keeps you alive. Now, let’s get in the mindset of a rush build, where the aggressor isn’t just only thinking of attacking – he’s thinking of attacking as early as he can with as much as he can. To make the distinction more clear, pressure builds don’t build with the goal of exerting pressure, they build with the later goals in mind, and add whatever pressure they can, while they’re doing something else. Rush builds, on the other hand, seek only to have as much pressure as they can right away.
Let’s say your opponent comes into the game with a rush build in mind. You, on the other hand, the defender, having not come into the game with that idea in mind, will be behind, then, when you scout what is coming. The point is that defender’s advantage can’t just be some tiny little tie-breaker like it was in risk – because in a game of rush build vs. no-rush build, it’s not a tie at the time when the rush hits. The earlier the rush, the less prepared a person is, and therefore, the more the defender’s advantage must compensate. Earlier attacks are also easier to make and repeat, and if battles are close (i.e. the defender doesn’t have a lot left when the attack is repelled), the larger burden is on the shoulders of the defender. The attacker can force a mistake, and again, when your attack is successful in SC2 you often just win the game.
I don’t seek to do away with rush builds. If you’ve got a 3-gate rush build you’d like to put into your Bo3 series, great. Maybe you’ll catch him being greedy. But I think everyone would be happier if the game made it so that you *really* had to outplay your opponent to just outright win with it at the 7-minute mark. This is really my problem with the current rush builds. I never watch someone lose to a rush and think “the defender played perfectly, he absolutely couldn’t have stopped that”. Yet seldom do I watch a successful rush and think “that look really hard to do – he totally deserved that win”. In fact, often I’ve seen games where it looked to me like the defender’s control was better – yet the rush build still won out.
ok, so Huk gave up a bad position, but who is metroSG? And can anyone argue that he played particularly well? Seems to me losing 2 siege tanks in good position to an immortal and a stalker is a pretty serious blunder, doesn't it?
[more rush defense VODs go here for examples - updating later, feel free to add requests]
Someone who's used to rushing might see this and think: "this is completely unfair because now I can't punish him for being greedy". That's completely not so. If he tries to take his third before making units and you're rushing, any reasonable defender's advantage isn't going to save him (on this point, though, I think it would be best if the heightened defense came as some kind of tech unit, so you do can't entirely fixate on economy). What if he's only being reasonably greedy? Then the heightened defense actually works in favor of a more rush-oriented build. Let's say you commit to some early pressure, but are in a bad position to force the opponent off his nat. In the current game, he's enough ahead of you economically that in a short amount of time, he's going to have a reasonable amount more food than you do, and just be able to a-move you. Therefore, you need to continue to push even if things look bad. But with heightened defenses, you can pull back, expand a bit later, and try to catch back up. In addition, if being lenient on greedy play is what is needed, perhaps the "heightened defense" could come through tech or as an addition to unit-producing structures. It need not be 3 minute rush distances, or something that is available everywhere right away.
I guess what I'm really saying is that heightened defender's advantage takes the emphasis off of the early game, and that's good because that's the stage of the game that's easiest to execute and hardest to scout.
II. Deathball-style combat
![[image loading]](http://www.teamliquid.net/staff/Lovedrop/tsl3/finals/g7p4.jpg)
We’ve all seen them. Every race has them (though protoss is clearly the most infamous for them). You build up your food slowly, get all your upgrades, get a few power units, maybe make an engagement here and there. Then you take your giant army to your enemy’s door and each of you mash your armies against one another.
There’s some positioning micro to do, you might have some spells to cast, you can’t let your macro drop, but all of the action is centered on one big clash in the center of the map. The winner of the engagement comes out way ahead, the loser gg’s because he’ll never catch back up. Sure, sometimes it happens that you and your opponent lose about the same amount – you might go back and forth trading blows for a while, but you’re fighting like a Boxer… no, not even like a boxer – like a rock ‘em sock ‘em robot. Both you and your opponent only have one option – to hit each other right in the face, the only skill comes in reaction and execution.
![[image loading]](http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_5wnsuvw0DIk/TIZu1IgNruI/AAAAAAAAAAk/kPyidEJz0oc/s1600/phpThumb_generated_thumbnailjpg.jpg)
After carefully examining the replay, Kaarthock determines that punching is imbalanced.
There’s really no reason this absolutely makes for a *bad* game, but I think we all can agree that a better game would have many points of engagement, power struggles over certain areas of terrain, feints, and etc. Y’know – like a real army would do in a real war (isn’t that what makes these war games?).
So what’s the problem? Why isn’t this how the game is now? The answer is simple – nobody leaves their deathball because if they lose a bunch of units, they’re suddenly vulnerable to their opponent’s deathball. If you take 20 food worth of guys and tell them “take that expansion” and take another 20 food and make a drop, and the forces hitting an expansion run into the enemy’s deathball – the deathball only has to run them over, counterpush and the game is likely over. The reason the game is over is that defender’s advantage is not sufficient to save you when you’re caught in situations where you find yourself reasonably behind in the army size (relative to race, of course).
III. Maps
![[image loading]](http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft/images2/thumb/b/ba/Shakuras_Plateau_2.0.jpg/400px-Shakuras_Plateau_2.0.jpg)
The ramp connected to every player’s main is a big defender’s advantage early on – but only as far as 1-base play is concerned. Often, this used to mean that players (generally protoss) end up waiting on 1 base to assemble an army to expand with. Recently, more and more maps are being released which also have a ramp, or at least a choke point (albeit wider) at the natural expansion. This is a big deal with regards to holding rushes for P and T, and a critical extension of defender’s advantage. More could be done here, however. Maps (at least those released by Blizzard) seem to be designed with the idea that, as you expand, your bases ought to be more and more vulnerable. Of course, I’m not suggesting that all maps have a bunch of mineral patches right in your base with you – just that expansions involving the forfeiture of what little defender’s advantage you have (and in some cases, they give the high ground advantage to the attacker) create ideal situations for deathball-style attacks. Throw everything into this one area and you’ll win if you have as much or more than your opponent. That’s not good design. And of course, rush distances could be longer. Maps are really important – just about every problem we have in the game could conceivably be addressed with maps, so it’s worth noting that even without the units and gameplay we feel we need to have for equitable and entertaining competition, maps can fix it.
IV. Protoss
I play Protoss. I also play Terran, but I only started after I got sick of the above types of games (all being deathball or losses to rushes). This is completely my opinion, again, but it seems to me that Protoss has some real problems with defense early – and watching the streams of pro players, it seems I’m not alone. I’m not going to claim that players don’t make mistakes or that there is a specific style of all-in which is completely unfair, but I will make the general comment that it seems like Protoss has more problems with early aggression – and, to my knowledge, PvP specifically is the only matchup dominated by rushes for as long as PvP has been. In my estimation, this is primarily because Protoss does a couple things very differently which lead them to less of a defender’s advantage. This isn't intended as a balance whine - and within the context of the current game, Protoss actually does fine (again, you've seen the deathball), but since I'm talking about defender's advantage - I'm going to bring up that they seem to be lacking specifically here.
First, there’s the warpgate mechanic. This mechanic drastically reduces defender’s advantage. Why? Let’s say you’re in a TvT where both of you are making MM and he pushes, when his army size hits 20 food. A big part of defender’s advantage is the time it takes for one player to get to the other player’s base. During that time, let’s say you both produce 6 food worth of guys. Your 6 food participates, while his does not – so your larger army kills that many more of his units. But now, let’s say that instead of making MM in a TvT, you’re making gateway units in a PvT.
![[image loading]](http://learningsc2.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Moving-out-with-your-ranged-units.jpg)
Again, your opponent pushes at 20 food and again you’re able to make 6 more by the time he hits your base. His 6 food still isn’t there to participate, and yours is. But then, because you’re protoss, your 26 food cannot have the same strength early as 26 food worth of MM, because warpin enables you to use this food if you were attacking also. So, in order to maintain defender’s advantage on both sides, the game must be designed somewhere in between the situations where the Terran has to stop pushes which are equal in strength to the units he can possibly make to defend it and situations where the Protoss has units so weak that they can’t defend early pushes. I think they’ve hit that window – but because some weakening must be done, rushes become more difficult to hold. I’d argue that the game hits somewhere in the middle right now, with gateway units being at a disadvantage strength-wise, but with pushes being still stronger than any push a Terran could see from another Terran in a TvT. But again, I’m no one of incredible skill and experience, just someone writing his observations, so my thoughts here may be incorrect.
Next, there's Photon Cannons. Photon cannons are fine in early game defense, and yet, you see less cannons from Protoss than you see spines/spores from zerg and bunkers/turrets from Terran. Why? The main reason is that they lack the sturdiness and versatility that the other race's structures have. Terran can repair their structures. Zerg can infuse their structures. When a protoss structure gets attacked, the only thing protoss can do wait for it to die and rebuild it. This means photon cannons for early game defense are only as good as the amount of health they have.
V. Conclusions
I’d argue that SC2 as a game needs more in the way of defender’s advantage, whether that comes as unit additions/changes, map changes or strategy changes.
Now obviously, defender’s advantage cannot be overpowering, or no one will ever attack, and every game will end in a draw. And additionally, if implemented poorly, a heightened defender’s advantage which one is able to get at every location at any point in time actually punishes small engagements, but my argument is this: it’s almost 2 years since the game came out, and a lot of the defensive problems we ran into early on in SC2’s history still exist.
![[image loading]](http://lh4.ggpht.com/_s5cF89zQnlI/SpAkvLrn3jI/AAAAAAAAAO8/99ZElhqYjsA/scmotd-090609-1.png)
When I said defender's advantage, this isn't exactly what I had in mind...
I’m not arguing this because I really like sitting back and defending. Strangely, I’m arguing for greater defense because it will open up the ability to attack more freely, all over the map, instead of the current deathball format – because even if you lose smaller engagements in the attack, you know you have a strong defense to fall back on if a large direct push should come.
Don't get me wrong - I love SC2. This really isn't a thread about how terrible the game is and how it needs to change. The game's developers have already determined it will change. This is more about putting out there how I'd like to see it change. Whether they go this direction or not, I'll still be playing. But the game is young and has a lot of time to grow, so as long as that's the case, I'd like to weight in on it.
I’d argue that there’s hope they’re already ahead of us on designing with some of these ideas in mind, maybe even as early as HotS. The shredder has the potential to be that heavy defensive unit for terran, and protoss has a big question mark where the ability to use nexus energy for things like defensive structures has been brought up. Zerg has a ton of changes which could blow their matchups out of the water, too. Who knows - maybe zone-controlling units will be back on the table by the end of the HotS beta. Nothing is out of the question yet – the beta's not even out. But when it does take center stage, hopefully they will be open to this direction.
Edit: * This is only true in the case of army sizes 11 or smaller. For 12 or higher, the attacker has a slight advantage. See http://www.dandrake.com/risk.html for details.
Edit 2: Here is a compiled list of benefits to being attacked which you don't also get while attacking:
Terran
Rush Distance (except against gateway units)
Able to pull workers
Use of Ramp to bottleneck attackers (unless using PF at the natural on a map with no choke)
Use of Simcity against low range attackers
Use of already sieged tanks
Use of PFs
Use of Bunkers (diminished at open expansions)
Use of Turrets
Zerg
Rush distance (except against gateway units)
Able to pull workers
Use of Ramp to bottleneck attackers (unless expanding on a map with no choke at natural - not really useful with zerg's T1 units)
Use of Simcity against low range attackers (not useful with zerg's T1)
Use of Queens
Use of Creep
Use of Spine Crawlers (diminished at open expansions)
Use of Spore Crawlers
Protoss
Rush distance (except against gateway units)
Able to pull workers
Use of Ramp to bottleneck attackers (unless expanding on a map with no choke at natural - FF makes this big)
Use of Simcity against low range attackers
Use of Photon cannons (diminished at open expansions)
This list should be used to create discussions about the aspects of defender's advantage needed and whether each aspect is being addressed in each matchup. Yes, the protoss list is shorter and the Terran list is longer, but this isn't a complaint about balance - warpins are very strong for attacking and deathball style play, both of which are prevalent in WoL, so a lesser defense out front or a slower expansion as a result may be warranted. Terran, in addition, is required to put a lot of money into building infrastructure, especially in the early game, so greater defense or a faster expansion here may be warranted.
