TvP - lost to mass colossus, thoughts?

Just played a long interesting 2v2, both teams terran and protoss, I was terran. Did marines at first for a marginal first strike at enemy that disrupted his supply. Protoss I attached already had colossus on first attack, but I foolishly pressed a second when I should have gone for the other door or checked for expos. Other terran did mass marines and meds. I guess I was doing alright holding off the marines and meds, but the colossus would devastate me. At the end I was all teched out on infantry and tanks but couldn't take them. Tried siege and thors with thor being marginally more successful. My partner tried voids with better success on the colossus, but then the terran caught on and kept his marines near the colossus so air wasn't working.

Colossus are hard enough for me to take out, but with stimmed mass marined and meds it wasn't happening. What should I have done when presented with this type of opponents? Replay attached.

 

vikings can own colossus from a safe distance

 

Vikings help, as Makki said, because they can hit colossi and colossi can't hit back. Siege tanks can work, especially from a distance. If you can close on them with marauders, that works too. The thing about colossi is that they're great at tearing down low-health ground units, but their durability isn't that great. A few EMP rounds from ghosts can clear off their shields, which usually freaks the player out.

The best way to use colossi against ground units is to hit them at long range (9 with the upgrade) and keep some zealots and stalkers between you and them. The zealots should hold back the ground troops, and the stalkers either help the zealots or discourage air troops from getting too close. It's also good if the enemy is concentrated in a tight area so colossi can hit many troops at once and can gang up to burn down tougher troops, like tanks or marauders.

So you want to set up the opposite of that. Fight out in the open, where you can spread out to minimize their AoE damage. Get around them and make sure they can't just run up a cliff to escape and then burn you from up there. Hit them with the super-long attack range of the fighter-mode viking and/or siege-mode tank. Blast EMP rounds on their front-line troops to cut them faster if you can't hit the colossi immediately. Use banshees, and cloak them if the enemy has both stalkers and detection, and make sure that the banshees hit the colossi directly and not the other junk.

Lastly, remember that just getting the tech to make your first colossus takes 4:30 of pure teching time. The order of buildings you need is: Pylon, Gateway, Cybernetics Core, Robotics Facility, Robotics Support Bay. And that doesn't count actually building a colossus, which is another 1:15 without chronoboost! That's a lot of time, and a lot of gas. Stalkers cost 50 gas each, so if you can pressure your enemy, cut down their gas income, make them build more stalkers, make them get an observer, all of this stuff will make it hard for them to get colossi at all, and then your problem is solved.

In most 1v1 TvP games that I play (silver, so it's not like I'm an expert), Protoss never get that far. They either crush me early with stalkers and zealots or I pound them with marines and marauders so constantly that they don't even try to tech past stalkers, because they're scrambling not to get blown up. If they're frantically trying to deal with your constant pressure, they're not teching and expanding. You can expand quietly and keep them pinned until your attacks start getting bigger armies and higher-tech units/upgrades, and then you win.

A similar issue is "how do I stop a dozen carriers?" Well, carriers are huge and awesome. If you let them get a dozen carriers, you made a mistake, and you better have a whole lot of vikings or battlecruisers or something! Otherwise, you beat carriers by never allowing them the breathing room to build any.

 

the collosus was not your problem the problem was you were not spending your money ( neither of you did) i checked at one point you had 2.2k mins with at least 14 marines queued ( so another 700 mins) and you team mate had around 1.5k mins. the other team on the other hand had 800mins each ( this means that he had assuming equal resource mining 2.1k more mins worth of units and 700mins worth of units for a total of 2.8k more mins) 2.8 is alot of units simply better macro would be the first thing to focus on rather than what beats mass collosus, cause haveing more stuff than the other guy generally wins

 

Lol I love it 54 minutes of no one switching tech to adjust cept your teamate who switched to mass void to combat mass marine lol!

Lots of action though cool fight but its already been said as soon as you saw all the robotics facilities and mass colossus you shoulda quit making rhines or mass marine medivac and switched over to vikings siege tank... Tanks for the other guy who was massing rhines and vikings to own those Colossus they dont micro away from vikings they just run.

Your teamate sumed up what was wrong with that whole fight when he asked what are you building... My response to that is always, depends on what they have. You gotta learn reactionary play its the key to the game really without it we might as well be flipping coins to determine the winner each game. You gotta rig that coin and learn proper unit counters, or youll never make it outta bronze/silver league.

There should be proper reading material in the Terran sections here on the forum, but watching youtube replays and such and watching what pros do to counter certain units and army builds is a good way to learn. If you like Terran Mech watch Debo's livestream hes a guy from team liquid all about the Terran mech he's got balls of Terran steel and hes not afraid to show em off.

http://www.teamliquid.net/video/streams/Debo