On April 06 2006 07:19 iD.MidiaN wrote:
Agreed with tomson about the starting build order part. 8 rax is so common, that "even" I (sorry if that comes off arrogant!) plump for 9 pool or 9 pool after overlord the majority of the time in R-Point. Not only is it good for stopping 8rax rushes but when you make 9 pool you have a good chance of slowing his expansion by as much or even more than your expansion is slowed down by having a weaker economy, this is especially true when he hasn't yet scouted you with an SCV. Even when he has scouted you with an scv he has to put several scvs on his ramp and really you're not at a disadvantage against depot rax rax even compared to what you would be with 12hatch 11pool, except against an 8rax you'll be safer, and never behind against an 8rax with a 9pool, with 12 hatch 11 pool or something similar you may be ahead after he tries bunker rush, but you also may be dead.
The point about the gas being too late I don't agree with, on R-Point I've noticed many many players like to play a fast academy build and in that case I'd rather have the extra minerals to buy a few lings in order to block his route up my ramp/into expansion and also afford sunkens when necessary. The only build that you're worse off against with a 5-10 second later gas in my opinion is a fast tank build, and that is so rare it's almost worth ignoring. However a few early game decisions I don't really agree with are: a) after placing spawning pool I would have sent out a scout drone to see which base he is and to see if he plans a rush - this way I can send my overlords to more useful points for scouting purposes, and I don't have to make a sunken so soon if he doesn't plan on rushing, which in turn allows me to build that gas a little quicker - at 18 rather than 20 supply. You didn't really use lings to scout his movement plans very well and thus you made 3 sunkens before lair, which would be ok vs fast academy builds (although I'd prefer 2 sunkens and 6 or so lings to block any stim and run opportunities, and also because he's more likely to attack 2 sunkens and 6 lings than 3 sunkens, which is good if he he only has about 6 marine, 2 firebat because you can get your lings in close to his marines and kill them), but not so good vs what he actually was doing. Also I think there's better hatchery/sunken placement at 5o clock which would be to place your hatchery to the left of your ramp, as close to the ramp as possible - this is a good place because it cuts out his option of stimming up your ramp and you only have to block to the left of your sunkens. In this game you try to block him going up the ramp with a sunken close to where the hatchery should be placed, but the left of the other 2 sunkens in wide open and if he really did do a fast academy build you may well lose your expansion hatchery because of that. (With the hatchery placement I suggested and making only 2 sunkens and 6 lings instead you'd be safer against fast academy by a long shot, not that 2 sunkens are required yet - he still doesn't have medics) All of this has slowed your lair and you have no minerals to pump drones as fast as you'd like, ideally you want to be able to use larva for drones as soon as they appear to get your economy moving as fast as possible. I assume the spore colony was a mistake? I wouldn't have made a 4th hatch at natural, nor would I have made hydra attack upgrade - infact I think that's a bad combination too because 4 hatcheries allows you to make many units fast but there's no chance that you can make 4 hatch hydra lurker with 2 gas, so it would be ok if you did a 4 hatch lurker ling build with carapace upgrade instead, not really my style though but it's alright. I would've started to make speedlings earlier though and stayed with 3 hatcheries and used the extra units to push him and then expand once or twice depending on how many minerals I have at the time. Making drones to transfer to new expansions - good. Dunno why you make hive so fast though, again it clashes with hydra/lurker attack upgrades, you're really stretching your gas thin and would almost certainly die to a marine tank timing attack. And he did come but he came a little too late, not punishing your mixed bag of techs. Minerals have accumulated a lot recently - not using those hatcheries well enough at this point. 1 gas drone at 6 doesn't help either. Now is the time to expand another 2 or 3 more times though - you have the minerals and as long as you keep making defilers and units from 4 gas you should be able to keep them alive and eventually win with mass out of 6 or 7 gasses. Now is a chance to attack while expanding too - he's taking his 2nd gas natural and you have defilers, the perfect unit for attacking and defending ... attack his 2nd gas nat, expand 3 times and he can't do anything about either the attack because you have swarm and he lacks vessels, or about the expansions because he'll be attempting to stop you from moving into his main aswell as raping his 2nd gas natural. Well you attacked(would've been better off attacking his new expansion though in my opinion - would've had more opportunity to escape without losing your army and you would've hurt his economy the same, or more than by attacking his base where he has more resistance) but you didn't expand and you haven't been making units for a long time so you couldn't defend your 2nd gas nat either. Well you made one upgrade really early in the game but your evolution chambers have not been doing much since - should always get them working, only time i'd not make an upgrade when I have evolution chambers is if there's an imminent attack and i need the extra minerals/gas for more lurkers or other units. It seems to me that many players assume that they don't need more expansions because they already have lots of minerals, however I see that as a reason TO build more expansions - you have a mineral/gas imbalance and so you mayaswell spend more minerals on being able to get more gas. Killed his 2nd gas nat - good, dunno why you started throwing around tiny groups of lings at him after that though. I like the attack at 19:30 though, buys more time and gave you a chance to exchange units and pop a couple of vessels, if you can continue to make an army the same size and keep exchanging units while building up your expansions your armies will continue to grow while his just withers and dies. You've now switched to ultras but I don't really agree with that decision, he has only marines and vessels at this point - a good army mix to deal with defiler ultra ling. You should've continued making hydra lurker. Also at this point his passiveness leads me to believe he's got a hidden expansion somewhere, top right most likely. Your scouting has been somewhere between really bad and none existent all game, you haven't really used overlord speed or spare zerglings to scout troop movements, hidden expansions or anything, you haven't seen inside his base all game either. 21 minutes was a very nice plague but the scourges? oh man the scourges were bad. Could've killed lots more vessels with all those scourges, even if there was no plague =[ Ok so it's looking bad at this point when it wasn't looking so bad not long ago, what went wrong? Well 2 hatcheries at the bottom natural was a waste of 300 minerals, all those sunkens were too, you have few drones at that expansion and none at your newly made 2nd gas natural. Also switched to ultraling was not good against his unit mix, and lack of scouting has allowed him to "weather the storm" and secretly expand to top right (presumably). From here it doesn't seem possible to win so I'll stop watching it now.