I started playing SC2 and Zerg 1v1 6 days ago and I have learnt a lot in that time, it feels like Zerg have to spread themselves around and build multiple hatcheries as they are both Zerg military and economic buildings, but I struggle to defend my hatcheries once they are built. Mass marines, transformers and BCs tend to be able to destroy my hatches before I can even get my army over to defend, which results in me losing bases even when I am at a military advantage.
My only working counter at the moment is simply to build random hatches, lairs, spawning pools and spires around the map so the blow of losing any 1 or 2 bases is not so bad, I find that when people wipe out your 3 closest bases to your starting location they tend to give up on finding any others.
The problem is this tactic is expensive and I have the feeling if I was playing better players they would pretty quickly wipe out my spare bases.
So can Zergs put up a cost effective defence against a more mobile army of heavy units?
You’re doing the right thing.
- Think about what you loose compared to what your opponent looses but also income.
If you loose 1-2k more ressources than your opponent but you have 500 more income, you will be even after 4 minutes and ahead if the game goes on longer.
–> burrow (upgrade @ hatchery) to burrow drones at a base that is being or going to be attacked if you don’t have time to evacuate the drones
–> creep and changelings (from overseers) will help you scout an attack earlier
–> splitting your army in case of attacks from more than one side will make you faster (use the hotkeys for “add to control group and take away units” in the last section of control group hotkeys!)
thanks for the reply, burrow is nice and saves me a lot of drones, as far as changelings go, how often should I be making them? And how should I go about getting them into the base?
I see a lot of other Zerg players being far bolder than I with their overlords, but I just tend to lose my overlords if they get too close to the enemy base.
As for creep, I only average 67 AMPs at the moment, which I want to get better at, but in the meantime there is only so much I can do
I see…
With 67 APM I’d say that your macro is lacking a lot.
–> keyboard repeat rate is as set to fastest in Windows?
–> How do you manage your macro and army? More than 1 control group?
–> Do you move the screen with your mouse as little as possible? (camera location hotkeys are nice)
–> In general, you can improve your apm with micro trainers, playing more in general and better decision making.
–> More bases, more larvae --> more APM. So if you don’t expand much, your apm will be low. The biggest point is decision making though (and some sort of build order)
If you could provide a replay (upload to drop.sc and post the link here), I could have a look at your control groups, micro and decision making. (if you want good further feedback / coaching)
as I said, I started playing SC 6 days ago
my repeat rate is on the fastest
I generally put all my hatches on 1, my queens on 2-5 and my zerglings and hydras on 6
I cannot use the camera location hotkeys because I have inverted f keys, I would like rebound them but I don’t know what to
it is also saying I cannot post links in my post?
but I did upload my 3 most recent ZvT games if you want to have a look, my ST2 name is Briist
_Imgur: The magic of the Internet
I cannot find you if you don’t have a clan or don’t give me your bnet tag or whatever adress.
Mine is Shuuragksh#2589
Edit: And I can’t find you on _rankedftw.com either because you don’t seem to be ranked yet. (you will be able to play ranked matches in 4 days I guess)
briitte#2555
https://drop.sc/replay/13110108
https://drop.sc/replay/13110102
https://drop.sc/replay/13110035
again, thanks for helping me so much
your injects are so good - 99% efficiency?
your build order is pretty slow in terms of economy, you’re not getting to your destination in an efficient way
since you’re really good with queens there’s a lot of standard options you can use
dark - 2 base nydus swarm host (wcs global 2019)
serral - 3 base ling bane hydra
definitely stop with the 14 pool if you’re not going into a hard ling or baneling rush, that’s the reason the enemy has more units than you
best thing to raise your supply is you can simply go 16 hatch, 18 gas 17 pool standard zerg expand build, and with more queens you will hit 200 faster
once you get that down, it will be easier to understand how going pool first messes with your economy unless you get solid damage in the first few minutes of the game
if you get lair like a minute or two later you will have a lot more drones, and will overwhelm the opponent with the size of your army
I’ve only watched the first replay.
- Don’t take any gas before you have a 2nd hatchery at least started
- Don’t take more than 1 gas per 19 drones until you have at least 4 bases and 50 drones (only exception would be cannon-rush defense with ravagers or vs. proxy barracks + bunkers).
- 1-2 queens per hatchery for injects.
- Don’t get roaches before 2-base saturation + 3rd hatchery.
- Don’t get any lair unit before you have 3-base saturation + 4th hatchery.
- Don’t get any hive units or units that cost more than 50gas before you have been maxed out at 200/200 or close enough. (unless you have awesome creep spread.
Try to care more about the basics:
a) injects
b) spend all larvae asap without hesitating (learn drone-timing by watching your replays and by watching streams of players that are more or less 500-1k mmr above you)
c) expand and get upgrades whenever you feel a little save (speed & range upgrades before evolution chamber upgrades)
d) 1 spore crawler per base at 4:00 vs. terran and protoss and build up to 10 queens vs. them (injects & creep spread)
e) vs. zerg try to get an advantage in drones, don’t be behind in tech (roaches especially) and max out with roaches or roach/ravager with 66 drones - not more and not less.
ragnarok and bly gotta hang up the cleats
this is actually the standard play of john smogon style zerg (lambo, serral)
solid stuff
if you don’t follow this, by definition you are cheesing
cheese is really good in starcraft 2
anybody ever think about how rogue serral went back to back
full cheese followed by zero cheese what’s up with that one blizzard?
2018 lactaid meta
https://drop.sc/replay/13138878
Here is a replay vs. elite A.I.
army goals:
vs. terran: ling/bane into ling/bane/corruptor into ling/bane/corruptor/broodlord (don’t get more than 10 corruptors; 20 if he goes heavy air but always thing about a mass hydra switch or learn how to use vipers).
–> If there are no tanks or very, very few tanks, get like 10 lurkers and 10 broodlords with your ling/bane/hydra (only like 10 banes max once you have lurkers).
vs. zerg: ling/bane into roaches with a little bit of ling/bane into roach/ravager max out off of 66 drones into hydra/lurker + a little bit of ling/bane for runbys / harrass with 70-80 drones.
–> never forget 2 things in ZvZ: injects and scouting / attacking! Always do it whenever you have time.
vs. protoss: similar to zvz but only get 4 lings per base until you have 3 base economy and then you can either go ling/bane/hydra or mass roach/ravager 200 supply asap (just attack with what you’ve got at like 7-8 minutes, then get bases 4 & with 80 drones and max out on either hydra/lurker or corruptor/broodlord with ling/bane).
If you want a more simple game plan:
Max out with roaches, then 15 swarm hosts + nydus asap each game (take lair 3rd base and gas 2+3 when you have 2 base saturation. Roach warren + 1 evo chamber at about 40 supply and make 8 roaches right after you take the 3rd base or to take it.
Either you can win right away or you siege with nydus + swarm hosts and try to get in the base with changelings, overlords or overseers to place a nydus for the roaches.
Macro guide:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFeZeom2b4Dlt63qmkPO8hCencx-rE8xr
Vibe’s zerg BO:
https://imgur.com/a/o2LAnhy
Hotkey video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8jJoElKDUM&list=PLBI71ujp6L-KJfRej5mOudjzslP7l3a6z
Now I haven’t watched the replays, so I can’t be as specific as these guys, but this statement stood out to me. Losing tech or bases to an inferior army to hit and run tactics or unseen advances usually indicated a lack of map awareness, a general knowledge of what is happening on the map or just seeing the enemy coming. Overlords on the outskirts of your creep, creep spread itself and sometimes random ling’s on the map are very useful for this
you will probably like scarlett’s playstyle if you check out her replays
thanks for all the advice, I think the main point you want to put accross it that I am building too much military too early and that I should be going for more economy
I do have concerns that if I get rushed by BCs and I don’t have a lair, I will not be able to make corruptors, but I will see how the tactic plays out and come back if I have any more problems
so I tried copying your build from your video and I have played 6 games since then, sadly I have lost all of them against terrans and the only one I won was against a fellow zerg player, as I said I struggle for APMs and cannot replicate your build order perfectly but the main issue I come up against is that I am more susceptible to rushing than ever because for the first half of the game I can only produce lings, banes and roaches, almost all low elo games seem to involve some sort of rush or cheese and I cannot seem to defend against BCs or siege tank drops with this very heavy eco build
the other issue I have is that the tactic itself is too defensive, it requires you to build a better economy then the enemy and never take to the offensive, which puts me at the disadvantage throughout the early game
on another note, why do you spawn larvae with multiple queens? does it give more larvae?
bc theyre not on ur 99.8% inject efficiency level and banked energy accidentally
the second inject starts the second the 3 larvae from the first finish
if u want to attack just build ur spire earlier, if not build extra queens, spores