DarkBlizz

As far as workers are concerned, the ideal number is 22-24.

As a general rule, you build 2 workers for each crystal and 2-3 (based on distance) for every vespin gysir.
Any more will just clutter your ressource field and drain ressources, and as a Terran, you should always have 1-2 workers less so that there is space for your mules.

Every worker needs time to be build and costs 50 minerals. If you produce for example 35 instead of 21 workers (terran base, 1 vespin gysir only needs 2 for optimum), you have wasted 14x50=700 minerals for little to no benefit.
Yes, someday you might need them in your next expansion, but until then, those minerals would have been useful to upgrade your troops, or instead, build 14 marines, or 28 zerglings, or 5 marauders, or a few supply depots and bunkers, etc.
Oh, and - every worker needs supply. This in time forces you to buy (waste more minerals) on supply buildings/units you otherwise would not have to. And since there is a unit maximum, it's a good idea to keep the workers balanced and to generally have as few as you need and nothing above neccessary.

The idea is not to put as many workers as possible for a bit more efficiancy into your base, but to give every single worker a purpose for existance and to utilize every crystal you have in order to push an early techno+unit advantage. That is why it's not a good idea two build past 22/24. It will take minutes for those workers to actually get the crystals back that you used to build them.
Thus, why not leave them be and use the ressources instead for much better purposes?

Well, at least this april's joke is interactive.

EDIT: They need to be opened to play - naturally. Should reduce the loading time of the thread.

The replay of an AI match still does not work if the launcher is used.
Playing with lazylauncher causes no trouble at all, and watching real beta replays works as well.

The cache is installed, the maps are placed inside the cache folder accordingly and are the maps that are loaded when playing the game, the latest patch is used, the AI in the mod folder is precisly the AI of the match, since its tried immideately after playing the match etc.

The error remains: "unable to open map".

I was going to say: there's never time or ressources for that in the beginning, but I tried it just now, and it does work.
After the first few initial Zerglings, there's a window of opportunity when you can easily build a second hatcherie, instead of going for lair and roaches, and the two overlords.
This indeed uses the ressources better, the only trouble you will have is to get enough ressources to supply 2 hatcheries + 1(or 2) queens, because you're swimming in larva. I had almost always 7 or 8 larva around, easily outproduced the terran with roaches and zerglings, went aggressive and cleaned the mitfield and the rest was simply waltzing over the few defenses and killing the workers. Done in less then 7 minutes or something.
I never even got to produce the banelings, my baneling nest was just finished when the terran already gave his gg.
While this is, from my experience just now, a far more effective and more flexible approach than what I tested in that one playthrough, it will require you to act faster and more efficient, because there's a lot more going on and less structure.

EDIT: And on a map like scrapyard, where there's some longer distance to cover, you can actually build it after the 14th or 15th drone, BEFORE a spawnpool, whereas the spawnpool at the 10th is replaced by 4 more drones, with a second expansion following just after the first has about 15-20 drones and you have a few zerglings and a bunch of roaches as a defense against most kinds of rushes. Though the timing of the defense units is important. If you get it wrong, you'll still have your trousers down when the marines come, if you get it right, you'll have about 10 rouches and 12-18 Zerglings ready without restricting the growth of your hatcheries and expansions.
Zerglings and Roaches covered by Hydralisks tear everything apart (even banshees), and with banelings as an additional option, any ground warfare is to the zergs advantage.
And while you can take control of the battlefield and limit your opponents expansion possibilities, you can even start to go further for mutalisks to gain dominion of the air combat in its entirety.
Very interesting beginning, and very different to the usual protoss and terran openings.

Okay, I'm usually a toss or terra, but here's a very secure way to win against the AI 7.0 standard:

Packs of enemies can be nasty, so they need a bane. Thus, banelings.
Since I have not much experience in Zerg yet, I played this match for you:

-build up to Drone 10
-Overlord
-Spawnpool (save for it)
-while the spawnpool spawns build more drones, about to drone 15
-save the 150 crystal for the queen as soon as the spawnpool finishes (so be careful with drone production after the pool's at roughly 75%)
- 1 Drone (16)
- 2x Overlords
- 2 extractors (3 drones each at finish)
- Roach Warren
- 2x Zergling (4) (as soon as they finish you use 3 to explore the map for your enemy if you're on a 4 player map, one is placed either at an observetower or on the way to your base in a good distance (in front of the first expansion for example) - this allows you to know your target and is a good warn system as soon as the enemy comes, don't forget to recall the 2 zerglings that didn't run into their death and use them to observe or for your army etc.)
- Baneling nest
- Zergling Speed Upgrade
- Lair Upgrade
- Zergling Pack (by now your Queen should have been finished and spawned new larva, so that you can get a pack which is 4-7 Zerglings)
- Second Pack is Roaches 4-7
- Burrow Upgrade (can be very handy)
- Baneling Speed Upgrade!
- Zergling Pack
- From now, every larva gets roached for a while as fast as possible
-> Roach Packs
:Checkpoint: By now you should have about 2 Dozen Zerglings and 12+ Roaches in your Base.
Around this time the enemy will arrive (you'll notice when your watchzerg dies) with a tight pack of marines and a few marauder.
Keep your army tight and ON your creep, keep the Queen a distance behind, she can heal Roaches
If Burrow is already upgraded, watch your roaches and burrow the wounded, don't care about zerglings.
In my case, the enemy fled *very* quickly, and was torn apart.
:Question time:
Now that you killed the first group, do you think you are strong enough to punish him? Or do you prefer to wait and win for sure with banelings? First is possible, I took option 2 because I wanted to see them in action.
-You should have enough Crystal after the fight to buy expansion 1, ready your drone waypoints and if you haven't, hotkey your two hivethings, so that you can quickly outfit the expansion with drones while taking care of the war.
- Roach Speed Upgrade!
- 1-2 Packs of zerglings (around 10-16, I had about 12)
- transform them to Banelings as soon as you can
And that's it. Get a few Roaches if you lost too many ealier, you should have 1 pack of zerlings of about 12-14 with at least 6-8 roaches and a pack of 10-16 banelings.
1 Zerg ist the scout, then follows the pack of Banelings, trailed by the Zerg/Roach Pack. (Remeber to use the hotkeys of your lair and expansion to build drones, just to make sure in case things don't go as planned)
The Zergling will scout a screen ahead and draw the enemies together, the Banelings follow and attack the pack or marines and marauders, leaving nothing behind.
Your mainforce now walks into the enemy base and wreaks havok (destroy the tanks quickly that the computer will produce around this time quickly and take care of *every* factory or barrack expansion quickly so he can't get you with the tough units. Devour his workes and gobble everything up.
That should be it. If not, you should have a huge advantage and just proceed with roaches+zerglings and banelings as packmuncher. A few Mutalisks are painful too, especially since the AI likes to build tanks.

I've attached the replay, in case you know how to watch it. (and it works for you, for me it usually doesn't)
1. map was sky's (2) Kulas Ravine in the cache/download folder as "0011 (2) - Kulas Ravine.s2ma"
2. AI was 7.0 standard on medium
3. Started with the valkyrie launcher 0.25

Hope this helps you, especially the speed banelings can take out entire armies (for just 50 crystal and 25 gas per baneling).

Well, actually the strategy AI 0.21 usually only goes for roaches. Have never seen it go for Zerglings, sadly.
I prefer AIs to go for some early Zerglings and try for a rush, and then switch to roaches, because this pressures the player. If the AI goes for Roaches, it doesn't manage to put on the pressure, which effectivly means that as a T against a Z you don't have to block your base entrance, since there will be no rush. You don't need to go for Barracks or Marines as defense, but can focus entirely on depots and pushing the eco to the 20-22 scv zone, and THEN take all the time in the world to use your ressource advantage to build your advanced troops while starting expansion one.
It makes the game feel a little less "real" actually, because there's not the pressure of being attacks right away.

I love how with the 0.7 cheating AI, you have to be VERY fast to build up your defenses against those Zergling swarms. I actually go for barracks at the 9th scv now, and follow up with the depot on the 10th. As soon as the barrack's ready, I make sure it produces marines non stop until I have 4-8, otherwise I'd have to pull 3 or more scvs to save the depot+barracks barrier.

So my hope currently rests in the strategic AI, and that the author will add some zergling rush probes, or earlier attacks with roaches, to probe or punish the defenses. Currently, you have too much freedom in the early game there.

But well, you got no Zergling rushes, so maybe it will make you happy. 

There are currently two issues that I have problems with.

1. Whenever a Lost Temple map gets selected (either (2) or (4)), the launcher reports an error which suggests to close the program.

2. For me, AI replays still do not work. I played a 2vs2 4 AI Team match with 0.25 and afterwards tried to see the replay. It reported the "unable to find map" error. This does not occur with official replays.

- My Beta is freshly installed + patched
- I have replaced the cache with the latest
- The maps I use are within that cache folder, in the download folder, and belong to sky's pack.
So they are not only in the cache folder but also are the ones I use to play, so that the program should find them easily for replays.
- The replays are in the replays/recent folder

What am I doing wrong?