Worker Mining Ratios

General Discussion
1

If I remember correctly, in WoL and HotS, the best Zergs were mining with 88 drones and the best protoss and Terrans were minding with a bit less than that.

In one Pro game between Stork and LIfe, in HotS, Stork lost because he had 20 idle workers for a very long time, even though he had about 100 total SCVs in the game. he was playing mech. If he had not forgotten those SCVs, he would have easily crushed life. This implies the correct number of SCVs for a mech build is 100 SCVs…even though you have Mules too.

In Broodwar, as Zerg, I mined with 96 Drones, 2 per mineral field on 3 bases on BGH or 5 bases on a normal map. I had a 99% win percentage on all maps around that time, and I had a 90% win percentage in 2006/2007 when most players had improved somewhat, and I still mined with 2 drones per field on 3 bases on BGH or 5 bases on a normal map, with 4 workers on diagonal geysers and 3 workers on orthogonal geysers, or a total of 96 workers.

On BGH, I aimed for 12 hatcheries on 2 bases, and 20 hatcheries on 2 mains and 1 natural. On normal maps I had 12 hatcheries on 5 bases and 20 hatcheries by the time I got 6 bases.

My Cousin was about a 400APM Protoss in Broodwar, and he swore 100 Probes was ideal if you were not using Mind Control, and 120 Probes were needed if you were planning on mind controlling a Terran or Zerg ally’s workers. He had a 99% win percentage on all maps around 2001.

As I mentioned in another thread, in AGe of Empires III, British are allowed 100 settlers, and yet the best British players get the 100 settlers AND get max fishing boats with the cards for even more fishing boats at reduced price, so they have a total of whatever it is 110 or 120 workers in a 200 supply game, and they NEED that to keep up with the Dutch because the Dutch get near-infinite gold from banking…so the British play defense until they get their ~120 workers, and then they start massing Dragoons and the Dutch loses if he hasn’t gotten a good harass off before then.

So this suggests that the ideal number of workers in a 200 supply RTS is in fact 100 to 120, depending on your build. So my cousin had it right for Protoss in Broodwar, and I had it right for Zerg in Broodwar.

In Warcraft 3 as anyone other than Undead, I sometimes mine with up to 50 workers…in a 100 supply game with upkeep penalty for more than 50 total supply, and it’ still worth it to have 50 workers, because if you are double-teching and towering, then you use about half your workers for construction and the other half for mining. I have a winning record as all races in Warcraft 3, but I’ve never been ranked above low 30’s in WIII. As Undead, I mine with 4-8 Ghouls and 5-10 Acolytes. If you want the fastest possible 3/3 upgrades you need at least two bases with each race, and if you want the fastest possible 100% tech, you need at least 3 bases with each race. When I do handicap matches against 3 Insane AI’s I fast expand immediately and tower the map (as every race,) and take a third as soon as my main and natural are properly defended. I can beat 1 insane as soloing with any one hero, so to hve a real challenge, when I practice, I need 3 insanes or a level 30 opponent in 1vs1.

On one base, Human needs 5 on Gold and 15 combined on wood and construction projects. On two bases, you have 10 on Gold and 25 combined on wood and construction projects. On three bases you have 15 on Gold and 35 combined on wood and construction projects. You pretty much speed build everything the entire game, especially expansions and towers, so you need a ton of gold and lumber to pay for the speed building. And in some cases you pull your workers to militia to attack the creeps to take another expansion. So on Lost Temple, you creep the middle while you work up to 20 workers (15 on wood) then you come back home and pull 5-10 workers from wood as Militia and take the fast expand and start speed building towers and the Main structure. AFTER you fast expand, you upgrade to Tier 2, and that’s how pro gamers play the Tier 1 to Tier 2 transition. If you do that right, you can tower both bases before 3 Insane A.I’s hit you with the first wave, and I recommend getting a few Cannon Towers at each base as soon as you unlock cannon tower tech.

LightKnight69 used to Fast Expand as Undead in W3, and take 4 bases and mine with 20 Acolytes and whatever Ghouls he wasn’t using for combat (He usually stays on Ghouls for combat for a very long time though,) and he has wins over Pro Gamers.

So I think people are actually not macroing enough in SC2…and I’m the biggest culprit, I do a 1 base all-in every game and win that way in SC2, but if you have the APM for it, you should be aiming for 100 to 120 workers in SC2, depending on race and unit composition. Like Terran mech needs 100 workers AND Mules, and sky Toss needs 120 workers. Zerg needs 100 workers or more in SC2 AND larva inject AND macro hatcheries…

2

Thought Stork played Protoss?

3

He had swapped to Terran at that time. Trust me, it was Stork playing Terran mech. he almost won too. Like I said, if not for ~20 idle workers for 15 minutes, he would have won.

Also on this topic for W3, as Night Elf, I basically never stop making Wisps throughout a game, no matter how long it goes, you need them for dispelling anyway, and you need them for Ancient Protectors, which I mass Ancients late game to add to my army or just to tower all my bases that still have Gold. and in reality, Zerg in SC/2 is the same way, you mine with 96 drones, but you need perhaps another 100 drones throughout a game for various structures you make, mostly static defense and macro hatcheries.

IN W3, by the time you’re on 4 bases, you don’t need as many workers on Wood any more, because you’re not towering as much and you’re no longer teching as much, so you can gradually stop replacing lost workers and go down to around 30 to 35 workers. But you peak at 50 workers by the time 3 bases are saturated. So again, after you finish teching, you can cut workers, either kill them yourself, don’t let your opponent kill them, obviously.

In 1vs1 insane on Terenas Stand I probably make 100 towers as anyone other than Undead,and probably make 30 towers as Undead. In 1vs3 Insane on Lost Temple, I probably make 2 or 3 times as many towers as each race.

For anyone who doesn’t think Upgrades make a difference in W3, they matter BIG TIME. Each armor upgrade makes an 11% diminishing difference vs the previous upgrade or no upgrade. Each attack upgrade adds an entre Attack Dice to the Unit. Some Units have, I forget, 10 or 15 sided attack dice, even cheap units such as archers or Huntresses have 3 or 4 sided attack dice, so a 3 attack huntress WITH the improved glaives does way, way more damage than a 0 attack huntress with or without the improved glaives. Anything that does any sort of bounce or splash benefits massively from attack upgrades. So for example, when you see “pro gamers” who never or rarely research upgrades, they are being foolish. 1/1 upgrades only cost as much as 1 fewer units, and it benefits all future units by about 10% offense and 11% defense. In fact, for Night Elf, you can get 1/1 upgrades for the cost of 1 huntress, and as Orc you get 1/1 for the cost of one Grunt; basically if you sell an Artifact from a level 5 Creep Camp you paid for 1/1 upgrades.

So for example, 2/2 upgrades curb stomps 0/0, and 3/3 curb stomps 1/1 even worse than 2/2 beats 0/0.

So anyway, all of these games follow the same worker count ratio. Approximately 50% to as much as 60% of your supply should be workers, depending on your race and unit composition.

4

It depends a lot on your style, it is ok for you to make a ton of workers if your strategy is agressive trading all the time.Currently it is not rare to see a minimum of 75 workers even for terran while some years ago was 60-65, now some Z goes up to 90-100.

For mech terran with that amount of workers, I saw it a long ago, it was a battle mech strategy, a lot of workers, trading all the time with hellion-cyclone.

Also I think the google deepmind AI made a lot of probes and played a macro- trading style and showed that even 30 worker bases could work because the diminishing returns are not that big proving that more workers is usually better(they are big but if you are not expanding it can be extra money from the bases).

5

i thought this said worker mining riots where the scvs would rise up and seize the means of production.

6

Yes, depending on map and Zerg composition, they need that many workers, especially since Terran gets mules and Protoss gets warp-in and Chrono Boost.

Zerg needs 10 to 12 hatcheries and 10 to 12 queens doing injects, although about half your queens, before you have time/money to macro hatch, they are doing creep spread. So when I play Zerg in SC2, I double queen right away, because they are stronger fighters in pairs, so I keep 2 queens at each base right away. Then when I’m ready, I macro hatch at every base.

So My Zerg mirror I push the map on 2 base timing with Roaches, followed by either Mutalisks or Swarm Hosts, and contain my opponent, then I macro up to 5 saturated bases with 10 to 12 hatcheries, and just crush him.

My Zerg vs Terran and Zerg vs Protoss is similar, except I just use ling/bling/muta the whole game.

In the real world, it takes 7 non-combatant logistics workers for every 1 combatant in the United States Military. So the 1 worker supply per combat unit supply ratio of SC1 and SC2 and even AoE (which is meant to be as realistic as possible,) is actually unrealistic. If the game was realistic it would be 7 workers per combat unit.

Also, further analysis of Broodwar in Hindsight, there was a game one time where I was matched with a Gosu Protoss and I was playing Terran, and there were 3 gosus on the other team. Early on, they eliminated our ally, so I put 8 SCVs in a Dropship and told my Protoss ally to mind control them. I was going mech, and he wa smassing the heck out of Dragoons, DTS, and Arbiters.

So he macros up to 120 probes (same as my cousin) and builds a terran base, all while not missing a lick as protoss (he battles were non-stop the entire game) and so he has close to 200 supply of Siege tanks and about 64 supply of Dragoons plus 4 arbiters, I have a tone of siege, goliath, vulture, and dropships. So he puts 20 tanks in siege mode at a time and recalls them into the enemy rear lines, and like one or two salvos blows the enemies’ entire base away. And we were attack-moving the rest of our units through the middle of the map, while also dropping some units, and tanks and goliaths and goons have very bad pathfindinig, so you must managed the fron lines and run them forward enough so your second line can also get in range to attack. And there were so many dragoons and tanks on the map that it literally filled The Hunters entire middle map area and all the choke points on the entire map with Units, and we got Map Mazed on a NORMAL RESOURCE map, because the other team Mind Controlled too. But the point is we won a 2vs3 with 100 SCVS (2 main 2 natural) and 120 probes for mining (2 main, 3 natural).

If you want to jump a 2 or 3 deep turret wall with an Arbiter, it’s easy. You put Defensive Matrix on the Arbiter and suicide it into the enemy base, and you have just enough time to Recall 20-24 tanks in a giant death ball.

If you want to know how you get “Map Mazed” going mech, it’s because Siege Tanks and Goliaths count as two units (the Turret counts as a “sub-Unit”) and Vulture Mines count as a Unit. So when the enemies had two Terrans and a Protoss Mind Controlling Terran, and my ally had 200 supply of Siege Tanks with a few science vessels, 120 workers and max dragoons and arbiters, AND about 200 photon cannons, and I had about 100 Turrets on top of 100 supply worth of mech units, you can easily get map mazed. Terran missile turrets count as 2 Units, the structure itself is a unit, and the rotating turret is a “sub-unit”. However, when a “unit” is killed or trained only the primary unit gets counted by the Score screen, but the Sub-units all count toward “map maze”, including Carrier interceptors and Reaver Scarabs. So if you have a full carrier that counts as 9 unit stoward map maze and if you have a full Reaver that counts as 11 units toward map maze.

So you can only have 1600 total “units and structures” on the map before you get Map Mazed.

One time, we had 8 B+ to A+ players in a 2vs2vs2vs2 game and one of my Terran allies was just seeing if we could win with him massing nothing but goliaths and dropships the entire game. So we did eventually win, but this gae went like 45 minutes on BGH, so at the end of the game, in the score screen, he had the highest score, he trained 1200 Units in that game as Terran mech, and again, he didn’t mass vultures, although he did make a few vultures at the start, he made nothing but goliaths once he got his armory up.

That player was “Don’tDoThat”, who I have met again on Broodwar, he actually plays “Random” most of the time. True CallawayX16 was on one of the other teams, and a few other B+ to A+ players in the game. We were playing on BGH as a joke that day, but we mostly played on real ladder maps and Korean pro maps.

I think he was handicapping himself vs the other players that day, because he has a winning record against everyone other than “Tyrant”.

I have a winning record against Callowayx16, but I’ve never beaten Tyrant or Don’tDoThat.

The first Protoss vs Calloway’s terran I got my butt kicked.

the first protoss mrror, he won because I opened scouts trying to stop him from getting shuttles or Arbiters, and he was able to keep enough carriers so by the time I transition toed carriers and HT, he had to many bases and overwhelmed me. the second PvP mirror was a 3 hour stalemate. The third Protoss mirror game I won with Dragoon/Templar transitioning ot Carriers, and I won every other Protoss mirror we played. He’s A+, although he claims to be only C+, but he does that just to get people to play him.

When I beat him as Protoss in Broodwar, I had about 96 probes Like whatever it is on gas, 5 geysers and the rest on minerals. So that’s 3 on orthogonal geysers, 4 on diagonal geysers, and 2 on each mineral field. So 3 bases for the BGH games and 5 bases protoss for the Korean tournament maps. So to win Protoss mirror at A+ skill level in Broodwar, you need 90 to 100 probes in a high macro game, or you need perfect shuttle/reaver micro in a low macro game.

for any noobs who don’t understand this, you do NOT mass Battlecruisers with Terran Mind Control in a Gosu vs Gosu game, because Battlecruisers get beaten by just about anything that can attack air. You mass 3/3 Tanks and Goliaths with Science Vessels for Defensive Matrix in a Terran Mind Control scenario, and you use Defensive Matrix and Arbiters to recall giant mobs of Siege tanks into the enemy bases…

If you mass battlecruisers and a Protoss opponent sees that, he’ll just make more Dragoons and High Templar, or start massing Scouts, and either way you lose. A Terran opponent wil start massing Goliaths or Wraiths and you lose, and being an A+ Zerg, I LAUGH at Battlecruisers and don’t even need to change anything to beat them 10 to 1 for cost, so I can assure you, Battlecruisers or Carriers is NOT the way to go vs Zerg either. I have 3/3 air upgrades researched and a Greater Spire even if i’m not “going air” so when you start making Battlecruisers I just train 18 devourers, and I already have a ton of hydras, 6 defilers and 6 queens (ensnare is golden) and then when you think you’re going to attack me, I dark swarm, ensnare, plague, devourer armor penetration and hydralisk will wreck bcs, and if that’s not enough I can spam Scourge emergency training and they easily wni vs BCs or Carriers too. So with Ensnare, you can’t even run away when you realize you’ve lost the battle, so I clean up everything you control and then counter-attack 10 times faster than you can remax.