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On March 10 2009 00:57 w3jjjj wrote:Oh, haha, I guess I can at least pretend to be gosu for a bit. XD cmon lols, last season when you hit B+ I think you were #6 or #7 in America on the last day. Obviously some people didn't play (there was only one A in America, which is clearly untrue), but damn that is impressive man. lols Hwaiting! :D
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A minor bump on this nice guide. Playing terran against this style is just frustrating and tilting.
To me, however, it seems that a transition into hydra/lurker/defiler is more synergistic than switching to ultra at the later stages of the game. I think the natural inclination of the terran when facing a turtling/lurk/swarm/plague 4 base zerg will be to start producing pure vessels and no tanks. Hydralurk/defiler is a much better counter for SK terran. And since we'll have plague already at this stage, the hydras become extremely bothersome for vessels. Scourge seem like a waste when the vessel are already at 1 hp and require more multitasking to control, not to mention their AI is just crap sometimes.
And then, hydras are way better at dealing with mines than ultra/ling/defiler.
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This should really be in the recommended threads.
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On March 29 2009 03:21 radar14 wrote: A minor bump on this nice guide. Playing terran against this style is just frustrating and tilting.
To me, however, it seems that a transition into hydra/lurker/defiler is more synergistic than switching to ultra at the later stages of the game. I think the natural inclination of the terran when facing a turtling/lurk/swarm/plague 4 base zerg will be to start producing pure vessels and no tanks. Hydralurk/defiler is a much better counter for SK terran. And since we'll have plague already at this stage, the hydras become extremely bothersome for vessels. Scourge seem like a waste when the vessel are already at 1 hp and require more multitasking to control, not to mention their AI is just crap sometimes.
And then, hydras are way better at dealing with mines than ultra/ling/defiler. I've come to agree with this more and more lately. Hydras is a nightmare for vessels. I still think you should get that ultra den and the upgrades though. You want yo be able to do an instant switch should he start making tanks.
I'm a little torn when it comes to zvt and evo chambers. Is it worth getting triple chambers after your first +1 completes or not...
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On March 29 2009 04:18 Crunchums wrote: This should really be in the recommended threads. +1
Replays Please :D...
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how many times do I have to bump this before it goes in the recommended threads : 3
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Google cache for the win: (edit: link with cached page with bold texts and such: http://209.85.173.132/search?q=cache:t0X_iCCOC2cJ:www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=89139 "steps to improve standard" w3jjjj&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us Now, for w3jjjj's guide: )
I actually wrote this as an advice to another thread, but hell, so much time was put into it might as well be a guide.
What to practice to improve ZvT. Do the following in the order given.
1. survive to hive with good econ 2. secure and defend 4th 5th gas with swarm 3. sneak units out to harass T's expo attempts 4. with good plague, clean up whatever T has near your bases 5. non-stop expoing.
Step 1, survive till hive with good econ is the most crucial, mastering survival to hive with a good econ will get you all the way to B-. Most lower level Z has a hard time in hive because their early mistakes pile up, hive play is hard enough by itself, trying to play catch up in hive is impossibly difficult without mastering steps 2-5. So work on your survival skills first, a good early mid game will make your hive play a lot easier.
For early defense, lings are superior to sunkens for the possibility of a counter. vs 1 rax FE I make 8 lings to force a bunker and use those lings to deny scout. Pure drones until 27 supply, when overlord comes I make 4 more lings, and 1 sunken, with spire on the way. Any early push attempts can be punished with a speedling counter + 2 more sunken at nat. If he doesn't push then no more than 1 sunken is needed.
9 mutas when spire finishes. The downside of this opening is that your 4th hatch (expo) will have to go down right after mutas, whereas if you only made 2 lings early and 10 lings after 27 supply, those early drones would afford you a 4th hatch when spire is 2/3 finished, and you will still have 900/900 for mutas. So 8 lings early pressure comes at the cost of slower 4th hatch.
Your muta micro is fine imo. But keep in mind that mutas serve the primary purpose of buying time for lurkers, so keep them alive even if you don't do as much damage. Get that den after mutas and lurker right away, make 3 drones 1 overlord and then 3 hydras, when hydras come out send them to the ramp of your third, when they get there your lurker aspect will finish, that is the correct timing to set up your defenses. After the initial 3 hydras you can power more drones, you have 1 group of mutas and 1 group of lings, that's plenty to buy you time.
If your muta harass didn't pay off, and T pushes out with m&m early. It's not a big deal, let him pass and counter his main with muta/ling. Go straight for the rax area to shut down his m&m reinforcement entirely. Most likely you'll draw him back and those 3 hydras on ramp will be lurkers in time. If he is persistent in sacrificing his main...add 2 more sunkens (5 total) and transfer your expos drones back to your nat, sac that expo. Trading an empty hatch for his main is a good deal, and those m&m can't break 5 sunkens.
Assume non of that has happened, your muta harass was good at delaying him, and your lurkers came out in time to defend ramp. You should have enough drones to almost saturate 3 bases, with your 3rd lacking a few. If T was good at muta defense, you probably won't be able to lurker contain him. What is important here is to get as much of your army outside as possible before T gets to your nat, so you can have the biggest flank. You can do the leap frog lurker trick to delay his push, but if you don't have enough lurkers (he came out really fast), then just go around him and cut his reinforcements and use those 5 sunkens to buy time. Meanwhile make only lurkers and few lings with excess minerals. There is no need to attack before he kills all your sunkens. At that point, provided that he got no reinforcement, even if your defiler is not out you should be able to break that push with a good 2 sided attack. All depends on how many units you sneaked out before T got there (size of your flank).
Steps 2-5 are all hive play, which is the most difficult to master as Z but at the same time most rewarding. All those T's complaining about us defiler whores for a good reason .
Step 2, secure 4th and 5th with swarm defense.
Although Day[9] said the goal of defilers is to push into T's nat, (instant gg) that is not very easy to do if T is good and aggressive. Your opponent had his entire army sitting at his choke, so you got to push him, vs better T who roams in the middle and irradiates all your defilers in the middle, and those who plant mines to counter lurker/ling/defiler, its better not to focus your play on pushing him, but rather focus on getting 4th and 5th gas.
When swarm finishes take your 4th and 5th, I take the nat of my third and the other main with lurkers on ramp. If you are not confident in your multitask then just take the nat of your third. It's easy to defend, just get a nydus up and always make sure you have a defiler with full energy. Use defilers like templars if you will. At least 1 defiler at each nat at ALL times. If you have spares send 1 per main to defend drops is a good idea. As much as defense goes, there is nothing T can do to you if you just do the above with constant swarm.
Edit: props to Resonance for reminding me of vessels
When using a defiler plus a few lurkers/lings to defend, you can do small scale swarm pushes when T gets close. If he uses siege tanks you will be forced to do this as part of the defense anyway. But if he just camps outside with m&m and vessels, you can still push him a bit and try to scourge the vessels right when the swarm is cast. The marines will be running, and even if they shoot, the AI will target ground units like lurkers and lings (protected by swarm) and you have a good chance of getting a vessel or two.
When plague finishes. Vessel hunting becomes easier, because his protection units are too weak to fight when plagued. So add scourging vessels into your "plague -> swarm clean up" move. I'll talk about plagues in step 4 below.
Edit: Quoting Zerg-Legend
"If a map does not have another main/nat that can be camped up for 4 gases off 2 chokes, there is often other chokes in the middle of the map that be defended. On Destination for example, you make camp up your 5/11 base with one group lurk/defiler/ling, and another group stationed in-between your main and 8/2 base should be able to reach both these bases in time to defend them. On rare occasions you will be pressured by three different armies at the same time, but microing that will be just as hellish for him as for you. Another possibility for Destination would be to get the 5/11 base than then the related high group exp. Defend the high ground exp with a swarm on the outer ramp and defend the rest with an army in the middle of your half."
Step 3, sneak units out to counter T's expo attempts
Even if you get contained it's not a big deal, leave 1 defiler and a few lurkers, then nydus the rest of your army and go out the other exits, Z has so many exits linked via nydus T can't contain everyone of them. With the army you sneaked out go harass T's expos. 2 base T will run out of minerals completely at 20-21 min if he macros properly. So just keep preventing him from using his third and he'll collapse on himself.
Counter his nat if you can pull it off, with swarm its very devastating. Imagine if you are T, your big army is outside of Z's nat, and all of a sudden you find a counter army in your nat with swarms... That is ideal, but again, good T will always have his units in the middle to protect his nat. It is often much easier to sneak around and attack those T expos than it is to push into his nat.
Step 4, use plague followed by swarm push to clean up whatever gets close to your bases.
This is the step that I'm currently practicing on primarily, getting down the previous 3 steps got me all the way to B+ last season, if I get step 4 down I think I'll make A- this season.
Eventually u do have to deal with T's containing armies. Use swarm to defend until you have plague, (while countering T's expos). As soon as plague comes out, it's time to clean up whatever is near your bases. Use swarm to push out a little bit so you can get plagues off while T retreats. As soon as plague is cast, refill your defilers immediately and attack with everything you have there. Don't worry if T has a much bigger army, plagued units die fast when they are under swarm, no matter how many units he has...trust me. You just have to remember to attack right away with swarm immediately after plague, cuz if you don't the plague will wear off and he'll heal. This is easier said than done, cuz you'll have 4-5 bases to manage and you have to keep up the macro, the sheer multitasking required at this stage is not easy at all. My advice is to kill those plagued units first, even at the cost of missing some macro.
Edit: When you are cleaning up the plagued T units, this will be a good time to scourge those vessels cuz their protection units are getting owned. Also, it's good to plague the vessels themselves if you can, then add a couple mutas into your clean up army, those vessels die fast. I guess also on the same subject, you can build a spore colony at your nats, plagued vessels can't get close to irradiate your units, and even healthy vessels will have to take damage to cast an irradiate. Good move in general.
If you can do steps 1 through 4 mechanically, meaning you got it down with repetition so that you don't have to "think" about what to do. Your ZvT will be in the B+ range at least.
The last thing to work on is Step 5. non-stop expoing
The catch here is that the faster you expo, the more demanding your multitasking is. Cuz T will attack everywhere and everything that has a Z written on the wall. and if you have more expos than you can keep up you'll end up losing them. So don't expo too much if you are not confortable with the steps 2-4 above, over extension will hurt you. Follow these 5 steps and practice them in this order. Your zvt will improve very fast.
smi.lols Last edit: 2009-03-10 03:40:08
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On April 03 2009 13:28 Crunchums wrote: how many times do I have to bump this before it goes in the recommended threads : 3
not to be annoying, but...
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striker's post is great. thanks man
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When do u get your first gas ? I ve been practicing a build order with delayed first gas , like at 17 instead of 15 , this way u get 20 seconds late mutas but your 3rd is super fast and u will have a lot more lurkers to deal with his push later on ....
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Z is very opportunistic in that even the first 6 ling can win the game if your opponent makes a mistake and Z certainly has enough tools at lair to win. I think ZvT without hive tech is a better option for someone learning the matchup because being dependant on hive tech isn't a great thing when a lot of great players will see your hive tech and smash you before ultra ups kick in or defilers come out. Hive is certainly good, but everything zerg has is good.
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On May 07 2009 00:35 Zerg_Sasuke wrote: When do u get your first gas ? I ve been practicing a build order with delayed first gas , like at 17 instead of 15 , this way u get 20 seconds late mutas but your 3rd is super fast and u will have a lot more lurkers to deal with his push later on ....
The main difference comes in whether you make 8 lings when pool finishes or just 2 lings and 3 drones. The later can afford a third expo shortly after you put down spire, you make 1 sunken for defense and 10 more lings at 30/35, and you'll have 900/900 when spire finish. Your third expo will finish when your 9 mutas come out so this is the best econ build. Be careful of early aggression, however, since 12 lings cannot take on m&m early on, if T played 2 rax FE he can force you to cancel the hatch before mutas come out.
If you make 8 lings in the beginning, you'll have less money.You can either put down the third expo after 9 mutas, or hatch first and just make 7 mutas when spire finish, then slowly add more mutas. Alternatively, you can stop units at 34/35, make an early third expo 33/35 and then only 2 overlords to 33/51, which allows you to make 9 mutas + early third hatch despite 8 lings in the beginning. However, the downside of this last approach is that you are stuck on 51/51 for a while and you cannot grow further until your new overlord comes out.
If you make 3 drones and 2 lings the gas is taken at 15, if you make 8 lings then gas is taken at 16. I'm not familiar with 17 gas and I don't know how much difference it makes. When I desire a fast third expo I just go with 3 drones and 2 lings with 15 gas, you get both fast mutas and fast third expo with good economy.
Edit: If you got your idea from F91, I would advice you to follow his play style and decision making, but not his initial build orders.
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It would be great if there was some guide on how to stop different terran cheeze like ie fast tank , 3 rax sunken break cheeze , a-yu-mi cheez , I find all these strats almost impossible to beat when they are executed properly .
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Do you have any general tips on defending against the 3 tank 1 vessel push?
I usually just try and run my lurkers back and burrow them but sometimes my opponents just don't bother sieging their tanks and in that case my lurkers take a bunch of damage and I don't really slow down the push at all. Is there anything I could be doing to punish him not sieging?
edit: also I am curious about your gas timings with this build; when do you get your first and second gas?
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awesome advice man! I'll be surprised if it doesn't get a "!" from Chill! Will finish reading it later( a long with all the posts that have been posted). I would suggest editing questions that others ask into the OP to make people who are too lazy to read the rest of the posts learn more than they would from just the OP.
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wow awesome guide. It paints a very comprehensive image of how ZvT should progress during mid-late game, which Build Order threads don't. I've always had the trouble of hitting mid game and then having "durr what do i do now?" moments. So thanks a lot for the excellent guide and all the useful trigger information.
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does anyone have this replay? the link doesn't work any more.
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