Quote from: Hadrian on March 27, 2010, 07:33:37 PM
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).
unfortunately i cant get the replays to work, but this really did the trick!
i use a slight modification to this build (after my 2 extrators i replenish my drone supply to make up for the gas workers [i dunno if that was implied], i only get 1 OL at 16 to get my roach den going a bit sooner).
But banelings are the answer. Keeping the fight on the creep is also a very good tip. Thanks for the help![/i]