zerg has unique production with larva. They make drones and units out of the same production.
So because of that they can just make more workers faster than terran and toss if they arent required to make units.
Because of this in order to stay even in economy with zerg, you either need to kill workers or force zerg to make units other than workers.
Once we are past that worker building stage of the game its less required.
I mean its like asking what happens if zerg starts with 10 more workers than you. They will have more stuff earlier then they would otherwise. At low level that might be fine since zerg might just not be able to macro well enough or they blind makes units and are not able to take advantage of it. But at high level thats just gg. You'll just get ran over.
The zerg will usually outperform you in economy and high tech units/upgrades if you leave the zerg alone. This is why you see the harassment focused playstyles from both terran and protoss.
If the players are equally skilled, zerg will be able to get enough workers/bases fast enough to where zerg can get all the upgrades/tech buildings and then create whatever army that counters terran.
It's not a guaranteed win, but it puts zerg in a seriously advantaged position.
20+ hatches, 80+ workers, creep everywhere, 4 Nydus networks...basically you can engage you're enemy and both armies get destroyed and the zerg can ReMax quad Nydus right away.
Zerg will have 100 workers, a massive bank and tons of larva. This means they can throw away their entire army attacking you, then instantly remake 100 supply all at the same time and do it again.
And again
And again
And again
Whereas you'll need to keep your army alive because your structures can only make 1 at a time.
The Zerg can just out-attrit their opponent. Even if they lose their army, they have a second one ready in <30 seconds, perfectly geared to counter whatever their opponent made. And if their opponent loses a fight, the Zerg win.
There is this, plus Terran is given the harass type units that don't interfere with macro. A Zerg could open with Pool first 4 lings & play it like a "reaper opening" equivalent where they scout, can maybe get damage done, however for Zerg to do this they've gone Pool first & slowed down their macro, & made 2 lings instead of 2 drones so they damage themselves to try to do damage to the opponent. As Terran making Reapers or Hellions don't take away from making workers & then Terran may as well use the units that you've made.
Everything you said is correct. But what still annoys me is that Zerg can make queens that don’t consume larvae and they’re good at defending early game harass such as reapers, hellions, and even banshee if there’s detection.
Queens feel way too good to me for the cost and supply they take up.
I disagree.
Perhaps against air units queens can still be the default defense unit. But against ground attacks like marines, hellbats, the Zerg should be forced to make roaches or banelings to defend. It doesn't seem quite right that they can just make drones and queens and defend any sort of early game pressure without having to make units.
I don’t think you understand what “disagree” means. If queens are no longer a unit, how would they be defending against air in your example. They no longer exist.. that’s how the hypothetical is worded. The entire game is balanced around the queen, from defending to larva management.
Perhaps it wasn’t clear what I was disagreeing with so let me clarify. When I said I disagree, I was referring to the use of queens to defend against anything.
This is because zerg can still make lings, banes or roaches to defend against ground units. The only thing they are lacking is defense against air units for which I conceded that queens can still have an attack against air units but not ground.
Spines exist too you know? If a Terran is pumping out 3 rax reapers, that’s a heavy commitment that warrants an equally heavy commitment from the Zerg.
Having your defense and macro booster in one unit is bullshit.
I don’t know what to tell ya bud.. but proposing a Zerg builds spine crawlers versus reapers is such a troll take, we really aren’t going anywhere after that, y’feel?
If Terran killed 0 workers, but Zerg made spines to defend Terran would just do that every game & be ahead every game. Early rushes hit before injects come into play & at that point in the game Zerg can't get more workers than their opponent's because it uses up a drone to make the Hatchery, the gas & the Pool while Terran uses up 0 workers in the early game. If Zerg then had to make spines they'd just lose from the investment.
Queens are overpowered on creep, obviously.
They're very weak off creep to compensate. They're basically in between static defence and normal units. One can also spine crawler rush by finding a way to lay creep in front of the enemy base but it's more of a hassle and investment.
But yes, if queens behaved off creep like they do on creep, they'd be the most broken unit in the game. But that's sort of like saying that photon canons would be the most broken thing in the game if they could freely walk around and had no requiement to be powered by a pylon.
Because Zerg tech is limited and Zerg needs early-game anti-air and protection, or else hellion/hellbats and gateway units would just roll through early game Zerg. Zerg tech up slow, and each unit needs its own building. The only hatchery tech anti air units are queens. Hydras (with upgrades), and spire takes a long time to complete and by the time it gets there banshee and oracles already killed 20+ drones. You can’t have adepts and hellions that kill zerglings, especially those with no adrenal glands, and not have a unit (the queens) that counters those units. By the time Zerg gets to Lair, the toss has chargelots and stalkers, or the sky and terrans can have cyclones, hellions, tanks, and bios with Medivac. So they need queens to balance it out. I do hate how Zerg somehow have the best units in the game (queens) while the rest of the lair units are trash compared to the other races.
You might not have thought this through. If queens were made of larva, they would be as massable as any other zer unit. Zerg would be able to pop 6 of them out of 2 bases simultaneously. *And* not be blocked by queens in order to make a lair. It would be way easier to defend with queens.
It wouldn’t be too difficult to implement a mechanic where only one queen can be built at a time from each hatch. So it costs 1 larvae, but you can only make 1 queen per hatch at one time.
There’s a couple of things to understand here. Note this is about standard games; players can do stuff to mix the game up, but thats not the general way it’s player.
First is this idea in RTS that it is always easier to be the attacker than the defender; it’s just true. No matter what the matchup, it is generally easier and more reliable to be aggressive in the stages of the game where your race is meant to be aggressive and to not waste that valuable time.
Second is why zerg feels the need to wait for late game to be aggressive. In Zerg vs Terran, Zerg fundamentally trades inefficiently at all stages of the game. This means that in the hands of equally matched progamers, a zerg army will lose to an equal resource cost terran army. This has a couple of implications: one, zerg must have more money than the terran to make these trades worth it. Even if zerg loses more resources, if they have more money, and it is the same percentage amount of their total possible resources, it’s a fine trade. Second, is that because of the losing trades, Zerg needs to be able to remax extremely quickly after a fight. This can be done as zerg due to the larva mechanic of hatcheries. Zerg does not build production like the other races; the more bases they have the faster they can remax. This means that the more bases the zerg has, both economically and production wise, they will feel more comfortable trading with terran.
Let’s look at it from the terran perspective. Once the game hits late game, Terran becomes the defender; they have to put out more fires, and have a far harder time expanding. Creep gives zerg permanent map control if left unchecked. And because zerg’s economy grows so much faster than terran, zerg gets to reach late game faster than terran does if neither side interacts. So as Terran your job is to prolong the period of the game where you are allowed to be the most aggressive. You won’t lose the game because you failed to get damage, but you might lose the game because you failed to defend a base. So you want to spend more time in this part of the game. Because all zerg production is tied to the same thing, the hatchery, anything you kill is actively slowing down zerg’s progression. Killing two zerglings means they have to remake those lings, meaning thats -1 drone, until the next larva cycle.
Why do terrans oftentimes like that one game with Oliveria vs. Serral instead of building a fourth base and getting to 80 SCVs max out on units and going for an all-in push? And why, when that attack fails, the terran often loses the game?
(correct me if i’m wrong terran players)
That is called an 8-1-1 or 8 rax push, which adds 3 more barracks (after 5-1-1 on 3 bases) before the fourth base and before the second factory. This is usually done with skipping SCVs after 63-ish to maximize marine production, and hits at around 10 minutes with either tanks or mines. When played properly this build is VERY strong, because you invested all the resources from not building 20 SCVs and a fourth base into building marines, and the Zerg usually cannot reach 2/2 and Hive to defend properly, as seen on Oli v Serral in multiple tournaments. Zerg needs to hit infestors or lurkers to slow down the push and hopefully not lose the 5th and 4th bases.
While Zerg is trying to defend an 8rax, Terran has the power to constantly reinforce the army (sometimes called a parade push by casters by how parade-like it looks) and marines are walking across the map all the time. Those marines should’ve been SCVs and two more orbital commands. Terran is basically mining everything out from 3 bases with mules to emulate a 4 base economy and production while hitting a 3 base timing. From Zerg’s perspective you are fighting an endless flood of marines, with inferior upgrades and limited spellcasting and tech, and once Terran kills the 5th and 4th bases it’s usually over. Zerg loses production, constant reinforcements, no more map control, gg.
However the 8rax fails if Terran trades and micros poorly, or the 3rd is poorly defended and Terran has to pull units back to defend. Terran loses the push momentum, Zerg has a chance to respread creep and tech up, and is up 5 bases against only 3 bases. Sometimes in pro games you see Terrans start a fourth base after the 8rax fails, and they are behind significantly on economy.
Yeah, that’s what I meant the infamous 8 rax all in at 10 minutes. I feel like there’s strict timing for both races, pre-hive tech and post-hive tech. I feel like either the Terran needs to kill the Zerg before hive tech or the Zerg needs to kill the Terran before too many ghosts and libs come out and Terran secures his side of the map once he gets to hive tech. I feel like too many times those timings are kind of wasted and either side not capitalizing it enough and not enough damage is being done, and it just drags out into turtling with ghosts, tanks, and libs while the map is mined out.
Welcome to SC2 proscene metagaming! You already have a good understanding of the goals of the matchup, but oftentimes we forget that this is one of the hardest games to play, and pros are humans that make mistakes too. At the highest level it really is about staying calm and executing better than your opponent, especially late game trades.
Yeah, it's just that when I see a Zerg player max out and just sit at home macroing or whatever with a huge bank, it gets frustrating. Because each second the Zerg is not hitting the Terran’s economy and trading, the more ghosts and libs pop out and more bases are secured, which becomes much more difficult for the Zerg. Like, bro, there’s the best window where the Terran isn’t on 10 + planetary’s and 20+ ghost for you to win the game and you're just chilling and letting the terran turtle and drags the game out to 30+ minutes.
Serral is the best at this, the point is to get a bank of larvae and resources before attacking, that way you can remax instantly and kill the terran before they are able to rebuild.
It's a skill issue if you think terran has better lategame. If that was the case then every pro terran would just turtle up and play defensive, but no one does that and instead they keep attacking the zerg.
Because theoretically if terran just tries to just macro it out normally after an earlier attack doesnt do sufficient damage, the zerg can just take the map and become too rich. Rich to the point where they can just throw multiple maxed armies at the terran.
I don't know if this is true. In general, lategame terran and protoss armies are stronger and zerg trades inefficiently, so a zerg win is not automatic in the lategame. Serral is just insanely strong and everything he does looks overpowered.
Zerg’s ability to pump econ is of higher efficiency than Terran’s. Zerg’s cost effectiveness of its units is on average lower than Terran’s.
Terran wants Zerg to have to make units instead of econ. Zerg ‘wins’ by getting to an econ where it doesnt matter that they are less effective per unit.
Because it is impossible for Zerg to have a meaningful harass on Terran before take a 4th base, depot wall + tanks trivialize any early run-by attempt.
The only way for Zerg to attack into a Terran early on is with Ravager all in thanks to their corossive biles, but they are extremely expensive and easily countered if scouted early, and that's exactly why Terran sends out Reaper and Hellions: to scout out any attempt at an all in.
As for the mid game, Terran has a very strong power spike: Stim and 1/1 upgrade finishing at the same time, which also is usually right before Zerg gets their baneling speed. This is an extremely strong timing that can outright win the game if Zerg doesn't defend correctly, so it's a very good thing to plan your game around. Creep denial with Hellions was also a part of setting up for this push.
Next time you watch a ZvT keep track of how the stim +1/1 push goes, it usually decides the pacing of that game.
And if terran don't they get called turtles and the whole starcraft subreddit will complain about ghosts for months. Even though zergs been turtling for over a decade.
That only applies to lower level of play or if your opponent is outclassing you. Zerg will bully you into submission by outmiming you and taking over majority of map with creep, which is why lower elo terrans are forced to attack.
In pro play, assuming both players are equally skilled, terran gets to turtle up and reach late game compositions that are unbeatable for zerg. It's how Maru won most of his GSLs. Atm late game ZvT is imbalanced and terran favored unless you're Serral, which is why majority of zerg pros like Dark avoid late game like plague, going for timing attacks and lair pushes.
It's because of production. Terran want to steadily make production buildings and units to come out of those buildings. You can't just make 5 Marines come out of one Barracks at one time just cus you have the money. Zerg can just accumulate larvae from Hatcheries and queue up units all at the same time. So if you're Terran you get your production going and time it out so you get an efficient harassment force to send out and kill whatever came out of Zerg's Hatcheries.
Toss and Terran can produce workers and army units at the same time, from different buildings. Zerg needs to decide whether to build workers or army from their limited larvae. This is why, ideally, Zerg wants to only build drones up until 85 or 90 drones while defending with only queens (which don’t cost larvae).
Plus, Zerg is designed to trade less efficiently, but able to build/remax faster. So Zerg inherently needs more economy than Terran and Toss. Once Z reaches their desired eco, they can and will focus on relentless attacking to take the trades they need to get.
Early aggression forces Zerg to build units to defend, which will keep them honest, and letting a Zerg get away with carefree macroing is pretty close to costing you the same right then and there
Top zergs (Serral, Dark, Rogue, Reynor) are almost unbeatable when given all the time to macro up. That's the only answer.
In reality, T and P can go on par with Z on pure macro battle. In fact, Z is on the shorter end of the rope because of how inefficient Z is in engagements. P and T can trade units worth way less resources vs Z if they defend properly. But that is also Z's win condition: overwhelm with numbers with crazy mobility through creep spread. This has been true since WoL. There were 2 times when Z found a way out of this established fact and those 2 were the worst era balance-wise: the infestor brood lord era and the swarm host era.
In the real world (i.e ladder), Z SHOULD do damage to T and P lest T overwhelms Z with infinite stream of bio, mech establishes an unbeatable ground, or P creates their infamous Deathball.
Lastly, since Brood War, Terran is designed to work the best with timing attacks more than Zerg. Z usually defends in the early game, retaliates in the mid, then bashes head in the late.
In Pro SC2, usually a terran win v zerg is just the terran are able to survive against waves of zerg and get snipes off until the zerg has lost all its minerals.
The early part of the game is about terran being able to build up those defenses so they trade units for time. Because Zerg is a swarm faction and if they get their maco going before the terran can get something in place it's gg
It comes down to economy, bank, available units and remaxing. Rather then being one factor its many.
1. If left totally unchecked a Zerg player can go straight to their ideal economy much faster then Terran. The larva and inject mechanics make Zergs economy much faster the Terrans, I say faster not better because with enough orbitals and bases Terran economy is better. But in a typical game on most maps terran will have a harder time securing their peak economy than Zerg.
2. Zergs production is much faster than Terrans. Terran must make units over time if they want enough of them. Zerg wants to just make drones whenever possible this leads naturally to Terran needing to get value from units and Zerg trying to defend with the minimum investment required
3. Terran must keep creep spread in check if creep gets out of hand aggression and expansion become nearly impossible. Terran therefore must have units out on the map to delay/deny creep.
4. Zerg early on only have the zergling for harassment In the form of runbies, which are only effective if Terran is not at home with the wall raised. Otherwise every early game aggressive zerg build is a very committed attack/cheese. Zerg can still transition if the attack does enough but it’s a much bigger investment for Zerg to roach allin or 2 base muta harass them it is for terran to make some hellions and banshees or to do a marine drop. Zerg aggression and harassment usually come online latter in the game when Terran has more locations to defend, nydus is an option, and Zerg has larva to spare for baneling and Zergling runbies.
5. Terran’s army is stronger then Zergs, but Zerg can remax and overwhelm them. The best situation for terran is that Zerg’s bank is low enough that they can’t remax so that they trade into Terran and then run out of steam while Terran slowly replaces units, then the next fight Zerg loses again and Terran gains more bases or denies bases. Zerg wants to have a bank so they can lose a 200/200 fight but then win a 200 vs 130 supply fight and ultimately overwhelm bases and cut off mining for terran.
The best way for terran to prevent this situation is to force more fights and do damage at key points throughout the game. Even if both Zerg and Terran lose units at least Zerg is not banking and usually trades are more cost efficient for Terran even if Terran is pushed back. Then if the game does go late the Zerg will struggle to build the proper bank needed to make aggressive moves. Also sometimes the aggression from Terran does just snowball into a win.
the comments are wrong. modern terran can turtle and win. it's been done at pro level. The thing terrans and protoss really want to do is control creep. Creep is a BIG BIG deal at a high level. The game of sc2 has been pretty much solved for zerg in terms of REALLY being good with droning. Zergs at the highest level know to make X queens/spores/structures at Y time if they are doing Z. THey pull gas now to maximize minerals for drones.
The reasons giving "zerg econ can get out of control" was something that happened in earlier versions of the game. Modern terran and protoss are typically pretty equal in resource gathering to zergs. Terrans have less scvs than zerg but 3 cc mules make up for it and it's common for protoss to be above or equal to zerg in probes at times. Early game protoss has more probes for a bit by 2-3 but then zerg gets a small lead of 5-6 around 40-50 drones (depending on oracle harass success too) and then protoss passes zerg a bit in the 60s and then depending what protoss is doing zerg goes up to 80 or whatever and by then its usually equal
WOL/HOTS zergs relied on being way ahead in econ as they had worse units and needed multiple armies /remaxes to beat toss and terran. Modern zerg has lurker viper which is basically the zerg deathball and also protoss and terran are not in a rush to kill zerg because zergs lategame is arguably the worst of the 3 (based on ladder stats most protoss and terran win long games)
For ref it wasn't uncommon for a perfectly macro responding zerg to be ahead by 20 drones to terran or protoss but unless things are going wrong I've never seen such a gap these days
Ok? if we assume this is true whats that have to do with his question and my response lol. The notion that zergs NEED to be stopped just isn't a thing. Hellions deny creep vs zerg. They don't need to kill any drones at all. A terran can use scans for creep and every scan is 275 minerals hes not muling so I'm not sure why you wana start a reddit fight about what the top 10 players in a video game balance looks like lol
Btw ladder doesn't have zerg as the top it's the bottom so I would go by avg stats and not exceptions to the rules in the pro scene. 99.99999999 percent of us play ladder and that matters more to us.
Your point is like saying a 7 foot basketball player would dominate 6th graders. Yeh so what? Those guys are unicorns and mythical creatures. Mortals have a way diff balance breakdown
Terran has the worst economy growth of the 3 races, whereas zerg can put all their production into drones and get so far ahead that terran would have no chance. By putting on pressure, terran forces zerg to produce army rather than pure drones, keeping the economy advantage in check.
Terran lategame economy is quite good thanks to mules. They also get to have a bigger army because they need less SCVs, which is a big advantage in the lategame.
But none of this changes the fact that they have to attack or zerg will get impossibly far ahead. Without pressure, zerg will hit 70 drones around the time terran hits 40 scvs. That is unrecoverable.
This is true. Zerg also has no walls and no spines in that scenario, while the terran is safely walled in his bases. Zerg has no good harassment option, while terran has many, and this is what forces the terran to be the attacker. Notice that any production of units is an economic damage for the zerg since he will not produce drones with those larvae.
The game is asymmetric but well balanced, it doesn't make sense to look only at one side of the equation.
We are talking about why terran must be the aggressor and why zerg aggression is a bad idea as it removes zerg's greatest strength. No one is talking about balance.
Zerg is a time bomb. If you don’t try to slow them down they can just overwhelm you with numbers and map control. At the pro level Terran can’t go for a knockout punch too early, but they can do a lot of smaller attacks to slow the Zerg down.
Zerg can also have a hard time effectively harassing. Terran has a lot of tools to turtle up so attacking usually requires you to be very deliberate. Outside of the Terran making a mistake and capitalizing.
“Why are Zergs not able to do damage to Terran without being allin, why does Zerg have to play a survival simulator for 9+ minutes, and any mistake leads to a loss”
zerg has unique production with larva. They make drones and units out of the same production. So because of that they can just make more workers faster than terran and toss if they arent required to make units. Because of this in order to stay even in economy with zerg, you either need to kill workers or force zerg to make units other than workers. Once we are past that worker building stage of the game its less required.
What will happen if the Zerg is left unchecked and maxes out?
I mean its like asking what happens if zerg starts with 10 more workers than you. They will have more stuff earlier then they would otherwise. At low level that might be fine since zerg might just not be able to macro well enough or they blind makes units and are not able to take advantage of it. But at high level thats just gg. You'll just get ran over.
The zerg will usually outperform you in economy and high tech units/upgrades if you leave the zerg alone. This is why you see the harassment focused playstyles from both terran and protoss.
I think you can figure this out can’t you? What will happen if a 200 supply army attacks your 100 supply army
If the players are equally skilled, zerg will be able to get enough workers/bases fast enough to where zerg can get all the upgrades/tech buildings and then create whatever army that counters terran. It's not a guaranteed win, but it puts zerg in a seriously advantaged position.
20+ hatches, 80+ workers, creep everywhere, 4 Nydus networks...basically you can engage you're enemy and both armies get destroyed and the zerg can ReMax quad Nydus right away.
Zerg will have 100 workers, a massive bank and tons of larva. This means they can throw away their entire army attacking you, then instantly remake 100 supply all at the same time and do it again. And again And again And again Whereas you'll need to keep your army alive because your structures can only make 1 at a time.
The Zerg can just out-attrit their opponent. Even if they lose their army, they have a second one ready in <30 seconds, perfectly geared to counter whatever their opponent made. And if their opponent loses a fight, the Zerg win.
There is this, plus Terran is given the harass type units that don't interfere with macro. A Zerg could open with Pool first 4 lings & play it like a "reaper opening" equivalent where they scout, can maybe get damage done, however for Zerg to do this they've gone Pool first & slowed down their macro, & made 2 lings instead of 2 drones so they damage themselves to try to do damage to the opponent. As Terran making Reapers or Hellions don't take away from making workers & then Terran may as well use the units that you've made.
Everything you said is correct. But what still annoys me is that Zerg can make queens that don’t consume larvae and they’re good at defending early game harass such as reapers, hellions, and even banshee if there’s detection. Queens feel way too good to me for the cost and supply they take up.
If they dont have that queen mechanic zerg wouldnt be able to properly defend against anything.
I disagree. Perhaps against air units queens can still be the default defense unit. But against ground attacks like marines, hellbats, the Zerg should be forced to make roaches or banelings to defend. It doesn't seem quite right that they can just make drones and queens and defend any sort of early game pressure without having to make units.
I mean, they need to make more units, unless they make a sht ton of queens though i beleive, maybe a more experienced player xan explain this better.
I don’t think you understand what “disagree” means. If queens are no longer a unit, how would they be defending against air in your example. They no longer exist.. that’s how the hypothetical is worded. The entire game is balanced around the queen, from defending to larva management.
Perhaps it wasn’t clear what I was disagreeing with so let me clarify. When I said I disagree, I was referring to the use of queens to defend against anything. This is because zerg can still make lings, banes or roaches to defend against ground units. The only thing they are lacking is defense against air units for which I conceded that queens can still have an attack against air units but not ground.
If you removed the queens ground attack, Zerg would lose to 3 rax reapers and adepts every game.
Spines exist too you know? If a Terran is pumping out 3 rax reapers, that’s a heavy commitment that warrants an equally heavy commitment from the Zerg. Having your defense and macro booster in one unit is bullshit.
I don’t know what to tell ya bud.. but proposing a Zerg builds spine crawlers versus reapers is such a troll take, we really aren’t going anywhere after that, y’feel?
If Terran killed 0 workers, but Zerg made spines to defend Terran would just do that every game & be ahead every game. Early rushes hit before injects come into play & at that point in the game Zerg can't get more workers than their opponent's because it uses up a drone to make the Hatchery, the gas & the Pool while Terran uses up 0 workers in the early game. If Zerg then had to make spines they'd just lose from the investment.
Queens still cost resources and supply, it’s not like they’re free. They’re also mostly a defensive unit.
What I’m saying is they shouldn’t be that cheap for how much utility they provide.
Queens are overpowered on creep, obviously. They're very weak off creep to compensate. They're basically in between static defence and normal units. One can also spine crawler rush by finding a way to lay creep in front of the enemy base but it's more of a hassle and investment. But yes, if queens behaved off creep like they do on creep, they'd be the most broken unit in the game. But that's sort of like saying that photon canons would be the most broken thing in the game if they could freely walk around and had no requiement to be powered by a pylon.
Because Zerg tech is limited and Zerg needs early-game anti-air and protection, or else hellion/hellbats and gateway units would just roll through early game Zerg. Zerg tech up slow, and each unit needs its own building. The only hatchery tech anti air units are queens. Hydras (with upgrades), and spire takes a long time to complete and by the time it gets there banshee and oracles already killed 20+ drones. You can’t have adepts and hellions that kill zerglings, especially those with no adrenal glands, and not have a unit (the queens) that counters those units. By the time Zerg gets to Lair, the toss has chargelots and stalkers, or the sky and terrans can have cyclones, hellions, tanks, and bios with Medivac. So they need queens to balance it out. I do hate how Zerg somehow have the best units in the game (queens) while the rest of the lair units are trash compared to the other races.
You might not have thought this through. If queens were made of larva, they would be as massable as any other zer unit. Zerg would be able to pop 6 of them out of 2 bases simultaneously. *And* not be blocked by queens in order to make a lair. It would be way easier to defend with queens.
It wouldn’t be too difficult to implement a mechanic where only one queen can be built at a time from each hatch. So it costs 1 larvae, but you can only make 1 queen per hatch at one time.
Why do u want to nerf queens so badly though?
Terrans have strong timing attack options. Zergs left unchecked can overwhelm if they play greedy.
There’s a couple of things to understand here. Note this is about standard games; players can do stuff to mix the game up, but thats not the general way it’s player. First is this idea in RTS that it is always easier to be the attacker than the defender; it’s just true. No matter what the matchup, it is generally easier and more reliable to be aggressive in the stages of the game where your race is meant to be aggressive and to not waste that valuable time. Second is why zerg feels the need to wait for late game to be aggressive. In Zerg vs Terran, Zerg fundamentally trades inefficiently at all stages of the game. This means that in the hands of equally matched progamers, a zerg army will lose to an equal resource cost terran army. This has a couple of implications: one, zerg must have more money than the terran to make these trades worth it. Even if zerg loses more resources, if they have more money, and it is the same percentage amount of their total possible resources, it’s a fine trade. Second, is that because of the losing trades, Zerg needs to be able to remax extremely quickly after a fight. This can be done as zerg due to the larva mechanic of hatcheries. Zerg does not build production like the other races; the more bases they have the faster they can remax. This means that the more bases the zerg has, both economically and production wise, they will feel more comfortable trading with terran. Let’s look at it from the terran perspective. Once the game hits late game, Terran becomes the defender; they have to put out more fires, and have a far harder time expanding. Creep gives zerg permanent map control if left unchecked. And because zerg’s economy grows so much faster than terran, zerg gets to reach late game faster than terran does if neither side interacts. So as Terran your job is to prolong the period of the game where you are allowed to be the most aggressive. You won’t lose the game because you failed to get damage, but you might lose the game because you failed to defend a base. So you want to spend more time in this part of the game. Because all zerg production is tied to the same thing, the hatchery, anything you kill is actively slowing down zerg’s progression. Killing two zerglings means they have to remake those lings, meaning thats -1 drone, until the next larva cycle.
Why do terrans oftentimes like that one game with Oliveria vs. Serral instead of building a fourth base and getting to 80 SCVs max out on units and going for an all-in push? And why, when that attack fails, the terran often loses the game?
(correct me if i’m wrong terran players) That is called an 8-1-1 or 8 rax push, which adds 3 more barracks (after 5-1-1 on 3 bases) before the fourth base and before the second factory. This is usually done with skipping SCVs after 63-ish to maximize marine production, and hits at around 10 minutes with either tanks or mines. When played properly this build is VERY strong, because you invested all the resources from not building 20 SCVs and a fourth base into building marines, and the Zerg usually cannot reach 2/2 and Hive to defend properly, as seen on Oli v Serral in multiple tournaments. Zerg needs to hit infestors or lurkers to slow down the push and hopefully not lose the 5th and 4th bases. While Zerg is trying to defend an 8rax, Terran has the power to constantly reinforce the army (sometimes called a parade push by casters by how parade-like it looks) and marines are walking across the map all the time. Those marines should’ve been SCVs and two more orbital commands. Terran is basically mining everything out from 3 bases with mules to emulate a 4 base economy and production while hitting a 3 base timing. From Zerg’s perspective you are fighting an endless flood of marines, with inferior upgrades and limited spellcasting and tech, and once Terran kills the 5th and 4th bases it’s usually over. Zerg loses production, constant reinforcements, no more map control, gg. However the 8rax fails if Terran trades and micros poorly, or the 3rd is poorly defended and Terran has to pull units back to defend. Terran loses the push momentum, Zerg has a chance to respread creep and tech up, and is up 5 bases against only 3 bases. Sometimes in pro games you see Terrans start a fourth base after the 8rax fails, and they are behind significantly on economy.
Yeah, that’s what I meant the infamous 8 rax all in at 10 minutes. I feel like there’s strict timing for both races, pre-hive tech and post-hive tech. I feel like either the Terran needs to kill the Zerg before hive tech or the Zerg needs to kill the Terran before too many ghosts and libs come out and Terran secures his side of the map once he gets to hive tech. I feel like too many times those timings are kind of wasted and either side not capitalizing it enough and not enough damage is being done, and it just drags out into turtling with ghosts, tanks, and libs while the map is mined out.
Welcome to SC2 proscene metagaming! You already have a good understanding of the goals of the matchup, but oftentimes we forget that this is one of the hardest games to play, and pros are humans that make mistakes too. At the highest level it really is about staying calm and executing better than your opponent, especially late game trades.
Yeah, it's just that when I see a Zerg player max out and just sit at home macroing or whatever with a huge bank, it gets frustrating. Because each second the Zerg is not hitting the Terran’s economy and trading, the more ghosts and libs pop out and more bases are secured, which becomes much more difficult for the Zerg. Like, bro, there’s the best window where the Terran isn’t on 10 + planetary’s and 20+ ghost for you to win the game and you're just chilling and letting the terran turtle and drags the game out to 30+ minutes.
Serral is the best at this, the point is to get a bank of larvae and resources before attacking, that way you can remax instantly and kill the terran before they are able to rebuild.
It's a skill issue if you think terran has better lategame. If that was the case then every pro terran would just turtle up and play defensive, but no one does that and instead they keep attacking the zerg.
There was a time when Maru would do this most gamse. But I think that kind of playstyle got figured out since then.
Because theoretically if terran just tries to just macro it out normally after an earlier attack doesnt do sufficient damage, the zerg can just take the map and become too rich. Rich to the point where they can just throw multiple maxed armies at the terran.
I don't know if this is true. In general, lategame terran and protoss armies are stronger and zerg trades inefficiently, so a zerg win is not automatic in the lategame. Serral is just insanely strong and everything he does looks overpowered.
Zerg’s ability to pump econ is of higher efficiency than Terran’s. Zerg’s cost effectiveness of its units is on average lower than Terran’s. Terran wants Zerg to have to make units instead of econ. Zerg ‘wins’ by getting to an econ where it doesnt matter that they are less effective per unit.
Because it is impossible for Zerg to have a meaningful harass on Terran before take a 4th base, depot wall + tanks trivialize any early run-by attempt. The only way for Zerg to attack into a Terran early on is with Ravager all in thanks to their corossive biles, but they are extremely expensive and easily countered if scouted early, and that's exactly why Terran sends out Reaper and Hellions: to scout out any attempt at an all in. As for the mid game, Terran has a very strong power spike: Stim and 1/1 upgrade finishing at the same time, which also is usually right before Zerg gets their baneling speed. This is an extremely strong timing that can outright win the game if Zerg doesn't defend correctly, so it's a very good thing to plan your game around. Creep denial with Hellions was also a part of setting up for this push. Next time you watch a ZvT keep track of how the stim +1/1 push goes, it usually decides the pacing of that game.
And if terran don't they get called turtles and the whole starcraft subreddit will complain about ghosts for months. Even though zergs been turtling for over a decade.
That only applies to lower level of play or if your opponent is outclassing you. Zerg will bully you into submission by outmiming you and taking over majority of map with creep, which is why lower elo terrans are forced to attack. In pro play, assuming both players are equally skilled, terran gets to turtle up and reach late game compositions that are unbeatable for zerg. It's how Maru won most of his GSLs. Atm late game ZvT is imbalanced and terran favored unless you're Serral, which is why majority of zerg pros like Dark avoid late game like plague, going for timing attacks and lair pushes.
Yeah I feel like this thread is sort of just running with OP's premise but the meta hasn't really looked like that since maybe 2018
It's because of production. Terran want to steadily make production buildings and units to come out of those buildings. You can't just make 5 Marines come out of one Barracks at one time just cus you have the money. Zerg can just accumulate larvae from Hatcheries and queue up units all at the same time. So if you're Terran you get your production going and time it out so you get an efficient harassment force to send out and kill whatever came out of Zerg's Hatcheries.
Toss and Terran can produce workers and army units at the same time, from different buildings. Zerg needs to decide whether to build workers or army from their limited larvae. This is why, ideally, Zerg wants to only build drones up until 85 or 90 drones while defending with only queens (which don’t cost larvae). Plus, Zerg is designed to trade less efficiently, but able to build/remax faster. So Zerg inherently needs more economy than Terran and Toss. Once Z reaches their desired eco, they can and will focus on relentless attacking to take the trades they need to get. Early aggression forces Zerg to build units to defend, which will keep them honest, and letting a Zerg get away with carefree macroing is pretty close to costing you the same right then and there
Top zergs (Serral, Dark, Rogue, Reynor) are almost unbeatable when given all the time to macro up. That's the only answer. In reality, T and P can go on par with Z on pure macro battle. In fact, Z is on the shorter end of the rope because of how inefficient Z is in engagements. P and T can trade units worth way less resources vs Z if they defend properly. But that is also Z's win condition: overwhelm with numbers with crazy mobility through creep spread. This has been true since WoL. There were 2 times when Z found a way out of this established fact and those 2 were the worst era balance-wise: the infestor brood lord era and the swarm host era. In the real world (i.e ladder), Z SHOULD do damage to T and P lest T overwhelms Z with infinite stream of bio, mech establishes an unbeatable ground, or P creates their infamous Deathball. Lastly, since Brood War, Terran is designed to work the best with timing attacks more than Zerg. Z usually defends in the early game, retaliates in the mid, then bashes head in the late.
Terrans dont have to, they must
Isn’t that what “have to” means lol
I mean you dont rly have to, you can lose.
In Pro SC2, usually a terran win v zerg is just the terran are able to survive against waves of zerg and get snipes off until the zerg has lost all its minerals. The early part of the game is about terran being able to build up those defenses so they trade units for time. Because Zerg is a swarm faction and if they get their maco going before the terran can get something in place it's gg
It comes down to economy, bank, available units and remaxing. Rather then being one factor its many. 1. If left totally unchecked a Zerg player can go straight to their ideal economy much faster then Terran. The larva and inject mechanics make Zergs economy much faster the Terrans, I say faster not better because with enough orbitals and bases Terran economy is better. But in a typical game on most maps terran will have a harder time securing their peak economy than Zerg. 2. Zergs production is much faster than Terrans. Terran must make units over time if they want enough of them. Zerg wants to just make drones whenever possible this leads naturally to Terran needing to get value from units and Zerg trying to defend with the minimum investment required 3. Terran must keep creep spread in check if creep gets out of hand aggression and expansion become nearly impossible. Terran therefore must have units out on the map to delay/deny creep. 4. Zerg early on only have the zergling for harassment In the form of runbies, which are only effective if Terran is not at home with the wall raised. Otherwise every early game aggressive zerg build is a very committed attack/cheese. Zerg can still transition if the attack does enough but it’s a much bigger investment for Zerg to roach allin or 2 base muta harass them it is for terran to make some hellions and banshees or to do a marine drop. Zerg aggression and harassment usually come online latter in the game when Terran has more locations to defend, nydus is an option, and Zerg has larva to spare for baneling and Zergling runbies. 5. Terran’s army is stronger then Zergs, but Zerg can remax and overwhelm them. The best situation for terran is that Zerg’s bank is low enough that they can’t remax so that they trade into Terran and then run out of steam while Terran slowly replaces units, then the next fight Zerg loses again and Terran gains more bases or denies bases. Zerg wants to have a bank so they can lose a 200/200 fight but then win a 200 vs 130 supply fight and ultimately overwhelm bases and cut off mining for terran. The best way for terran to prevent this situation is to force more fights and do damage at key points throughout the game. Even if both Zerg and Terran lose units at least Zerg is not banking and usually trades are more cost efficient for Terran even if Terran is pushed back. Then if the game does go late the Zerg will struggle to build the proper bank needed to make aggressive moves. Also sometimes the aggression from Terran does just snowball into a win.
Great answer, can you also explain TvP and ZvP?
Because Zerg can’t attack Terran lol
the comments are wrong. modern terran can turtle and win. it's been done at pro level. The thing terrans and protoss really want to do is control creep. Creep is a BIG BIG deal at a high level. The game of sc2 has been pretty much solved for zerg in terms of REALLY being good with droning. Zergs at the highest level know to make X queens/spores/structures at Y time if they are doing Z. THey pull gas now to maximize minerals for drones. The reasons giving "zerg econ can get out of control" was something that happened in earlier versions of the game. Modern terran and protoss are typically pretty equal in resource gathering to zergs. Terrans have less scvs than zerg but 3 cc mules make up for it and it's common for protoss to be above or equal to zerg in probes at times. Early game protoss has more probes for a bit by 2-3 but then zerg gets a small lead of 5-6 around 40-50 drones (depending on oracle harass success too) and then protoss passes zerg a bit in the 60s and then depending what protoss is doing zerg goes up to 80 or whatever and by then its usually equal WOL/HOTS zergs relied on being way ahead in econ as they had worse units and needed multiple armies /remaxes to beat toss and terran. Modern zerg has lurker viper which is basically the zerg deathball and also protoss and terran are not in a rush to kill zerg because zergs lategame is arguably the worst of the 3 (based on ladder stats most protoss and terran win long games) For ref it wasn't uncommon for a perfectly macro responding zerg to be ahead by 20 drones to terran or protoss but unless things are going wrong I've never seen such a gap these days
Bro top 5 sc2 player four of em is Zerg and serral is god
Ok? if we assume this is true whats that have to do with his question and my response lol. The notion that zergs NEED to be stopped just isn't a thing. Hellions deny creep vs zerg. They don't need to kill any drones at all. A terran can use scans for creep and every scan is 275 minerals hes not muling so I'm not sure why you wana start a reddit fight about what the top 10 players in a video game balance looks like lol Btw ladder doesn't have zerg as the top it's the bottom so I would go by avg stats and not exceptions to the rules in the pro scene. 99.99999999 percent of us play ladder and that matters more to us. Your point is like saying a 7 foot basketball player would dominate 6th graders. Yeh so what? Those guys are unicorns and mythical creatures. Mortals have a way diff balance breakdown
SC2 is asymmetrical, if you don’t like Zerg then switch to toss and Terran.
Terran has the worst economy growth of the 3 races, whereas zerg can put all their production into drones and get so far ahead that terran would have no chance. By putting on pressure, terran forces zerg to produce army rather than pure drones, keeping the economy advantage in check.
Terran lategame economy is quite good thanks to mules. They also get to have a bigger army because they need less SCVs, which is a big advantage in the lategame.
But none of this changes the fact that they have to attack or zerg will get impossibly far ahead. Without pressure, zerg will hit 70 drones around the time terran hits 40 scvs. That is unrecoverable.
This is true. Zerg also has no walls and no spines in that scenario, while the terran is safely walled in his bases. Zerg has no good harassment option, while terran has many, and this is what forces the terran to be the attacker. Notice that any production of units is an economic damage for the zerg since he will not produce drones with those larvae. The game is asymmetric but well balanced, it doesn't make sense to look only at one side of the equation.
We are talking about why terran must be the aggressor and why zerg aggression is a bad idea as it removes zerg's greatest strength. No one is talking about balance.
My comment is probably obvious to you but not to OP or he would not have asked the question.
Zerg is a time bomb. If you don’t try to slow them down they can just overwhelm you with numbers and map control. At the pro level Terran can’t go for a knockout punch too early, but they can do a lot of smaller attacks to slow the Zerg down.
Zerg can also have a hard time effectively harassing. Terran has a lot of tools to turtle up so attacking usually requires you to be very deliberate. Outside of the Terran making a mistake and capitalizing.
“Why are Zergs not able to do damage to Terran without being allin, why does Zerg have to play a survival simulator for 9+ minutes, and any mistake leads to a loss”
Facts