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My question is this:
If I am terrran, and my opponent's(protoss or zerg) strategy is strength i.e. large fighting force, harass/special tech not necessary quickly, off of several separated bases while mainting control of the middle, what is an appropriate strategy or style to play that counters this sort of game?
I often find this style hard to play against. The events amount to me trying to take down one of the bases, each of which appears as important as the other(s), and my opponent slowing me down as much as possible, until eventually he is able to break my attack with his forces superior to mine, because I am in my opponent's territory.
Feel free to discuss other styles-counterstyles in this thread.
----- ----- ----- I'll just abuse my thread for a second cause i just played A DEAD SEXY TvT, please enjoy :-)
http://www.wgtour.com/match.php?id=187558&datab=broodwar
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Korea (South)17174 Posts
Counter style :D ? Hmmm....
BW is a game where a large majority of games played involve one player doing that kind of stuff that you explained. So I'm not really sure what you're talking about specifically with this style, but...
I guess you need to harass more earlier to defeat this kind of "style," They will be kinda spread out in attempting to expand alot and control the map, so you can do some sort of tank drops/vult raids keeping them from expanding a lot, or M&M drops against zerg. While you are harassing you should have one expansion and be getting a second one ready. Shortly after your second one is up and you have a lot of SCV's and a full amount of facilities to make guys, go for a big ass attack. Try to use dships to lure a large portion of their army away from the middle before you come out to attack, though.
Dunno.
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Osaka26967 Posts
Heres some suggestions if you are beyond the early harass stage that Rekrul talks about. If you are faced with a strong middle presense, and your opponent has two main bases of production, you have two good options.
The first is a common distraction technique, where you make him commit hs forces to stopping a smaller drop at one of his sensitive areas (found with scan) which can be obviously his minerals, or his tech. Once he commits his forces to that attack, (as most players for some reason send vast amounts of forces to kill 2 drop ship drops) your main force can try and reclaim the middle, or attack his other base.
(ok just reread Rekruls thread and thats exactly what he said)
Another option is for later in the game if he has you bottled up and is abusing the map. At this point, he has you out numbered, and you are running low on resources. You need to strongly attack two of his bases at the same time, forcing his hand. He can either commit all to one place, losing the other, or try and split his forces, giving you the oppotunity to defeat one of both of his forces with good seige and mine layouts. The problem with this is it is often dectable with good scouting, and it commits you to making a lot of units for transport. Terran has a much harder time with this than protoss, as toss has the advantage are arbiters. (Look at the Testie / Veg game on ETD that was played last week for an example of this, even though p didnt make it out)
I guess what I am trying to say is that if you are in the position where you cannot retake the middle, you need to be a little more creative in the way you break out, rather than just trying to grind your way out of a situation. Most people react strongly to medium drops, and this deception will allow you to move your units a little more freely if you have made him busy elsewhere. Once you break a containment, the next factor is to not over extend, and be sure that you secure your economy so that you can continue the fight.
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MURICA15980 Posts
I thought I read "counter-strike" at first. Too much CS -_-
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here is what i had done to me once: 4 tank drop on my main mineral line, 15 vulture raid on my expo while my forces were dealing with a drop
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Manifesto wrote:Another option is for later in the game if he has you bottled up and is abusing the map. At this point, he has you out numbered, and you are running low on resources. You need to strongly attack two of his bases at the same time, forcing his hand.
I see what you're saying, it's kind of natural for me also to think drop when I am contained and the enemy has to split his forces to defend his far away bases. However, it just seems to me that drop are easy to defend especially when the element of surprise is gone. He doesn't need to keep THAT many units defend, so his middle army is still strong enough for me to have push out slowly. and when I start pushing very agressively he can always pull back the units home, which takes 20 seconds or so. Also, how would you recommend I attack 2 bases at the same time, if my opponent has me, as you said, bottled up?? The only way i see is drop/vultures, but vultures are SUCH gamble. Most of the time players just end up losing their vultures in this kind of harass. And to effectively attack 2 bases t the same time with dropship, you need at least 4 dropships.
'Medium drop', I guess, is a good idea. Maybe even feinting a drop of 3-4 dropships that I want to be detected. Shit i just thought of a craziest thing! Scan places where you think observers may be, and then take 3-4 dropships and make them pass that place a couple of times before going in the direction of your enemy's base. He'll think you are ignorant of the observer and rally the forces to your death, but the drophips are indeed just a diversion for his enemy armies. Well, maybe this is not the craziest thing, but it seems good to me! (hard to pull off though) I see now that this is what Rekrul said. However tosses have very good ways of dealing with drops. CLiffs can be defended really well with like 1-2 goons, 1-2 zeals, 1 dt. That is a small commitement, and when they know I am going drop, I am the one that gets the worse end of the stick.
And SoMuchBetter, that is a tactic, not a strategy I mean if it works, great, and I see pros doig this all the time vs lesser players. But when the toss knows its coming, and usually he does, it is a waste of time IMO.
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United States3612 Posts
MPXMX-
I'll talk mainly about the map LT, cause thats probably the one that you're referring to. I'm def. not as qualified as Rekrul but, if Toss usually has that much control over the map, you can basically say GG if he is of the same level as you, as he can just do some ass Arbiter or Carrier strat and with such an economical advantage, you'll have to play godlike to intercept.
I think it mainly depends on the build that you choose. TvP is my stronger matchup that TvZ, and in TvP i like to go Fact-Port vs friends that I know won't cheese and 2fac vult in the matchups where they can possibly go DT. These are both good anti-expand builds vs Protoss, as Fact-Port a) forces them to build robo facility before expand [ESPECIALLY good vs 2gate range], and you can also take islands, one or both, if you turret them they're practically free expos. 2FacVult is really good, because if they go quick DT, they're dead, and if they don't have enough goons from some strat, you can weaken him a lot. (In otherwords, good build against Robo w/o Range [Some cheese strat]) Even if you cannot break in and target probes, you can mine all of the other expos and have an idea of where he will be expanding to, and you can run around Nada style with 2 dropships and vultures across the land to scout for your dropships and harass cliffs, etc.
Hope this helps you, especially with Terran having the range advantage, you should be able to take your main, natural, mineral only + island which will allow you to max and then push out with 1/1 mech, which is a force even when unsieged.
Oh, and, try to do Vulture harass earlier - > you mentioned that if it fails, it's a waste of time. I used to think this as well, but if you DONT do it, you lose anyways, and vultures aren't expensive at all.
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i dont think u should look at this as style, u should look at this as TvZ and TvP mid to late game. TvP it depends on what your strategy was, what u scouted, what happened. reading that http://hautamaki.isgsa.org/ PvT counters might give you some perspective on this altho it's from the P's point of view. someone always has control of the "center" so to speak; one player can theoretically be the one "attacking" and the other can only defend, and sometimes both players aren't sure who is who so they both defend or both attack (either by pure indiscernability or by a mistake by 1 or more of them).
in the context of each matchup you can recognize standard times when, depending on strats, one race clearly should be the one controlling and the other is the one trying to pull an advantage out of their ass. anyways, your time will come, the time to bust out, the time to run past with vultures and kill the anticipated probe to expo, to lay mines in the reinforcement line, to drop a shitload of shit.. it varies, and it drags on.. it's tvp.
anyways. tvz the zerg try to expo and, again it depends on how heavily they linged or sunkened, how fast they laired (obviously not too fast we're talking about the zerg who double expo while muta harassing you or delaying you with minimal lurkers). u may be able to screw up the zerg with a smart drop here or there, but when you do it and what you're also doing while you do that are key
so basically, the situation u describe (one person mass expoing and trying to keep you in) does not always arrive in the same way. u should fight hard for every inch before the situation arises, otherwise you have no chance when it comes time for them to expo. u have to scrape every little bit of advantage away from them you can. if you let them get away with something big it will take an equally large mistake to stop their mass expoing. in closing, if mass expos seems to hopelessly beat u, maybe u should look at the time before that for missed opportunities that would have made you stronger by the time they start to expo; if you struggle enough, you will be able to delay their powering and have a chance for the middle or mass drop at some point
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marine rush and kill his ass not hard
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if the opposition is that big and cannot be dislodged, it means you lost the game 10 minutes ago
stop fucking up early
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Stimey said it first, but casper definitely also said it. I think you lose some of your Tvps because of your early game. If you want to stick with your late expo build that you seem to like then you NEED to do something with that 2-3 fact push or yours. If it gets beaten chances are a good toss will have 2 expos running before your CC finishes.
I really think you need to reconsider your playing style of late expands. Post some replays of you pvt, that should help rek, or whoever give you specific analysis since I know you do not agree with me
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I find that if I expo early I have no map control at all and get quickly overwhelmed. And dropping with fast exp is not really good cause then you have fewer units in the beginning because of the fast exp and because of the port, so the toss can easily defend. So pretty much the only option left is to push slowly, and that makes me predictible and easy to counter IMO.
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