Zerg vs Terran, out of ideas - Mentally Exhausted.

First off, my apologies,

One thing about strategy based games that gets to me is going to the forum and reading threads/posts about people complaining when you can clearly see the faults through their own stories/rants. Typically during their cry's of agony you can spot out what unit they did/didn't build that lead them astray - or what action they didn't do or perhaps should of done...and ultimately if everything they say sounds sane, it leads it to being the player simply can't compete macro/micro wise in the end.

I've hit a point where I'm just lacking any logical way to approach a Terran match up when I'm Zerg. When the Terran player is aware of how to play, has knowledge of what units counter what, I seem to get no-where once mid game arrives.

-End game prior to mid game mech strats? The Terran building wall off seems to get in the way of this, I don't see how I can muster through a walled off choke point less the Terran is fast teching to air. Correct me if at the moment their is a weak spot to this common Terran Strategy to wall off their base.

-Build this unit to this unit and it's cake walk type strats: Again, note all the Terran's I've played and lost too have had scans on my base - even if I stash my army outside of the bases, they will be able to see what possible units I can make and maybe already have; conflicts with Terran's unit arsenal being relatively easy to work with when choosing what counters what in a Zerg match up.

-It's no longer what I know of them, it's all about what they see me do: Out of all my Terran defeats, they've all defeated me differently from marines/tanks with later Thors, to mass bikes and marauder back up vs roach - to medivac micro on my base to slow my progress of macro management. It's always them countering my moves, largely in part that I can't see what their doing, yet they scan/scout me.

Truly this thread if anything is here to plead for advise on a certain dance/tug-o-war of tactics used to deal with Terran in a predictable way, because any unit I pull out of the Zerg arsenal has a plain counter from a Terran point of view - and to make matters worse, they've been abusing scans on me every game now rendering any "mystery" of what I have moot.

Please also note most of the suggestions you give, will be ones I've tried and have just failed miserably so I wont be looking for, "*mass unit* and tech to these units = easy win" type tips, they only work if your enemy is unaware of unit counters or makes several mistakes in not scouting you out.


-I also apologies for this post being difficult to read, no amount of text can truly reflect my aggravation at the moment in regards to this match up - it's a real pain in my side when I just want to play/learn and improve...yet I can't fathom any more ideas on how to approach this mess.

 

Well if a Terran player is abusing scans then that is hurting their economy a lot. Each scan is a lost chance at 300 minerals. Also, you could try using an Overlord to drop creep and hide technology that way. The only thing is if the overlord dies you will lose the building, but if you hide it well (or even just put it in a part of your base that won't be scanned, and later you can put a creep tumor there) it should be fine.

 

If a Terran walls in. The easiest way to win is simply: map control. Target his expos, not his main base. Make him run out of resources eventually and super hard for him to get expansions. By the time a Terran player is getting his first expo, you should have your first expo well populated - possibly looking for a second expo. Don't go head on with the wall filled with tanks, that's stupid.

Just cause he scans, doesn't give him the advantage you think it does. You have Overlords and Overseer's Changelings. You can either sacrifice an Overlord or two and send it straight through his base, or work a way to sneak in Changelings. Not being able to see a base as easily at Terran does, is NOT an excuse for losing.

SC2 is a game of constant tech switching and counters. You have to deal with it and get on the same level. Zerg has units that counter Terran units as well. He scans you and sees your Hydralisks, you scout him and see him making tanks, you should start building roaches - instead of continuing to mass Hydralisks.

 

That's what I usually try to do - starve terrans out. I try to harass them any way possible without loosing too many units to mm oder mechs, and try to control the map and hinder any expos. This way, even if he is massing a big, well composed mech army, you should have an advantage because of the expos you can build. When he comes out, you place your units strategically, maybe send your mutas into his now empty base (except when he built missile towers), and with microing and spending your resources on the hundreds of larvae you should have at that point, you should win this game.

Of course, good terrans don't turtle completely, they harass you early and keep in touch with your forces.

What I learned to beware of is a soon marines only rush, he builds about 3 baracks and sends waves of marines. Either you scout his many early barracks or position a zergling in front of his base to be able to counter that.

Also beware of early cloaked banshees. That's gg if you don't have an overseer/spore crawlers + mutas/hydras/queens. If you can counter that, he should be quite vulnerable since he teched fast to get banshees, so attack him afterwards, better scout before.

That's only approx. silver league advice, but maybe it helps.

 

The idea is to get a huge economic advantage over the terran. Don't just sit on two bases and expect to win just by countering. You have to aggressively expand to 3, 4, or more bases to force the opponent to move out before he is ready.

When his army is out of his base and vulnerable, you can then attack from multiple directions at once to quickly demolish it. That shouldn't be too hard to micro, almost all zerg units have no in-battle abilities that you have to use.

 

Dude....DUDE.....!!!!! i suffer the same pain

The problem is that Terran have so much diversity and can counter (EASILY) anything we do as zerg.

I play Zerg out of stubbornness because i hate Terran..not because they are crap....because they are so damn good - but i'm too seriously thinking about switching races.

Terran can do so much..MMM balls, Mech builds, air, rushes...and loads more because they have like 25 units to choose from...zerg...lol we have about 8 and only 3 are worth building!

Its a joke that Zerg have been gimped

 

I actually see them better then in sc1.Zerg have way better map control now ,and that`s what there suppose to do.

1. Zerg map control
2. Terran flexibility
3. Protoss brute force

Btw dont get me wrong i dont win all my games against terrans /toss.Actually so far my win ratio is about 50% ,so its mostly up to the skill of the player.I find sc2 a pretty even game for all races.

 

yeah you are right about Zerg are designed to spread the creep all over the place and try to dominate map...BUT the problem i find is that Protoss and Terran both seem to be anti-Zerg races.

They have too many counters in my opinion and not enough diversity.

Dont get me wrong they are a great race to play and I have loads of fun...but i now understand why some of the top players are migrating away from Zerg and shifting to Terran.

Pound for Pound they are very hard to beat.

 

really, the counter thing... zerg can tech switch faster than other races bcause you build one structure to open up all your hatcheries to new unit production. he has to build 2-4 of the structure to pump them effectively.

vs a walling terran, I expand like a ninja, and go for muta/BL/roaches and it takes out lots of stuff, haven't fought a good battlecruiser terran, but I'd probably aim for muta/corruptor, and roaches for expansion takeout and such.

 

I've never considered such an option, how many would it take to block out sight of a building rendering it un-clickable as well? I may have to tamper around with this tactic, would make me feel much better if they were unable to view what buildings I had if such a trick outs out.

A few of you have mentioned in this thread that a Terran who walls in should be countered via map control...I don't understand the confusion or said logic behind these responses. I agree that map control is a huge deal if* you're dealing with a player not expanding, but I never mentioned nor did I mean to imply these Terran's aren't expanding or even attacking prior to mid game.

By wall in, I'm referring to ABC's/101 Terran build orders where they block off a choke point to handle a early attack with relative ease. By this point I bring up, I'm referring to the point that a direct attack on their base often ends bad for the attacker if the Terran has the right amount/quality to behind said building wall off.

So I agree with you on the point of starving them, the issue is enduring their attacks when they come out. Every defeat I've faced so far as included Factory type units, from Hellions to burn hydra/zergling, to tanks/Thors+marines handling my ground as well any mutas I was making.

That's a very valid point. I truly do admit my biggest weakness has been finding ways to scout an enemy base with out a high chance of sacrificing an overlord, but that's my issue to over come.

I'm well aware of this, however, what I can't seem to grasp is when you add in unit combination. If a Terran masses one unit, I know what unit I have to counter it, yet when they combine 3+ units into a group, I get stumped as to find a weakness as each unit they bring is aiding the other on their weakness.

Are you implying roach is the counter you advise for a Terran going tanks? They mow through them just as they do hydras, now, while they may take in 1 more shot, and 1 more shot can make a difference, in this case I disagree with you unless you can kindly show me a video of a Zerg player pushing back a Terran Tank/infantry push with roaches as the counter for the tanks.

I'm not trying/attempting to turn this into a "no, you're wrong - that's impossible" type response, I just lack confidence in said approach to tanks as you imply. I find Zerglings well for the job when the tanks are caught off guard, and clearly air is an option, until you add in the Thor being the reasonable counter to that, add in marines for support to help keep units away from the tanks and you have a disaster.


I'm coming to a theory that I'll have to lose several more times to see a pattern of unit builds, because if marines almost always escort tanks, I ponder if banelings with zerglings and hydra may be the best bet I'll have vs such a attack on me.


Another huge issue I've encountered has been Terran's mounting up S tanks near expos wither their army by them - if truly the way to break them is starving, then I ask how one commonly deals with S Tanks in S mode when clearly Mutas aren't the option as they are expected as a counter, hence marines/thors are brought up.

Broodlords are a nice touch, but the time/cost it takes to reach them often leads to games ending before that stage arrives.

 

@RationalThought

Not going to quote your post, since it's quite long.

As far as map control goes, it's all about slowing their progress down to an eventual halt. You should always be aware of any of their expansions as soon as it's going up and harass it to no end. It's as easy as sending one Zergling to nearby expansions and positioning Overlords at further ones near you.

You should start thinking differently about your approach to attacking with Zerg (as you already seem to be doing). It's a lot different from SC1 where you just Ctrl+A click an army somewhere. Roaches/Lings/Banelings are great vs. Tanks/Marines. Roaches can move under the Tanks while burrowed while Banelings simply annihilate Marine balls.

If they have a combination of units, you should have a combination as well.

This video is a perfect example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BeWDaJs6iwA - start from 2:40

 

I feel your pain as well. the problem is terran is the counter to zerg. It seems every terran unit is perfect for countering every zerg unit.

for instance last night I had a game that I knew I had in the bag. Like usual I had harassed the terran early until he got his wall up. This gave me enough map control to get 3 expos up including a gold. I had more money than I knew what to do with. I was constantly wiping his air units out with my hydras (pretty much the only unit match up that's in the zerg favor.) I figured I would be slowly draining him of money by doing this since I was keeping him down to only 2 base while I had 4. Then I saw a huge marine ball. Thinking to myself "broodlords are supposed to counter marines pretty hard." I built 20 broodlords, 10 corruptors, and 10 mutalisks in a single spawn...as I said i can make an economy work. i kept the corruptors and mutas a little back to guard the broodlords in case he sent in valkries. I then danced the broodlords on the very edge of their range hammering into the marines. The marine ball then tore my 20 broodlords up in less than 30 seconds. still taking advantage of the one zerg advantage of being able to pump out an entire army in 30 seconds I spawned another 20 broodlords. Again within seconds the lowly T1 marine ball tore the broodlords to shreds without taking more than about 20% losses. It was insane, i thought broodlords were supposed to be the counter for massed weak biologicals. Oh and did I mention twice during that I got a fungal growth off on the ball but that **** does so little damage it was laughable.

And this shows how zerg counters don't actually counter crap. all the units in the world won't do you any good when your units are crap, especially when they suck against what they're supposed to counter.

I had the complete advantage, I was able to pump out units in insane numbers ni the blink of an eye, but nothing i built did any good whatsoever because all I can build is crap. The marine ball just rolled through all 4 of my bases as they constantly pumped out hydras, broodlords, and zerglings, even surviving 35 banelilngs rammed up their pooper because the massive amount of ranged fire assured the only 4 banelings actually made it to the ball with the speed upgrade.

This is not the only game either, this kind of thing happens to me constantly, I take map control, rock the production and have an overwhelming advantage...then the terran decides it's time to push and nothing I put out lasts more than a few seconds agasint it. Even when my army comprises of several thousands of minerals worth of units against a couple of thors, or an MM ball.

So to sum it up I don't see how i'm supposed to leverage my always superior economy when 1 zergling does about as much good as 150 mixed zerg units against a terran player

 

@skullkandy - I'd like to see a replay of that.

 

Im going to say that skillkandy is full of $#!% or just about the worst player to ever control 20 broodlords.

Regardless, one big thing people don't factor in in these match ups is the official blizzard counter vs the practical counter.

Roaches are supposed to be pretty good against mech, but that is only really seen in 1 practical situation where they soak up damage while the real damage dealers finish the fight.

What is really good against mech though is mutalisks. Plain and simple. If terran commits to a MM tank attack, even if its a max food MM tank army, you have 200 food of mutalisk needing to only kill the marines in that mix to win and if you cannot do that then there is just too much of a skill deficit to overcome.

If they manage to transition into thors after you just wiped the floor with the MM tank army, and you keep pumping mutalisks, then thats just failure to transition properly. Once you beat that main army, you are at a large food advantage and it is really a cleanup job where you can pump out whatever unit seems most useful at the time.

Either way, as far as walls go... baneling bust that down and congrats, no more wall.

Hellions giving you trouble? Roaches eat them.

Banshee problems? Either go hydralisk/mutalisk or build a second queen or spores and you are safe.

Thor here? Zergling surround will eat it, or just having a lot of anything before they have a lot of thors (since thor is such late tech, if you let anyone mass them... you deserve to lose)

This goes on forever, every problem unit you face has a solution. You said you had problems when the terran have a mix of units? If that is the case then it simply comes down to whether your tactics/micro are better than their tactics/micro. If you are facing a group of say.... marauders hellions and thors with lings, mutas and ...idk throw in a cool high tier unit like the brood lord into the mix, then it all comes down to whether or not you can kill his hellions before they kill your zerglings which kill the thors that would have killed the mutalisks.

All in all, if someone is having trouble with terran as zerg, the problems almost always stem from lack of transitions (which are extremely easy with zerg), poor micro/tactics against mixed units and a lack of appreciation of what the other person just did to you (Because honestly, as terran it is much more difficult to make a large army fast than one would think)

 

If there are enough Marines and they focus fire the Brood Lords I think they do pretty well against them. Next time you are dealing with a bunch of marines though, get a bunch of Ultralisks, Banelings, or Roaches and you should be good. :l

 

I used to go speedlings->muta->roach->t3, but been doing well vs terran by opening one-base roach. Most terran players are going to be pumping marines and getting helions out of fac w/ reactor, so when you show up with 7-9 roaches within a few minutes they have no counter. Even if they manage to get out some marauders/tanks in time to save their base, you should be able to do enough economic damage to keep them on the defensive and allow you to power drones and take the lead.

 

I have a similar issue with toss. You can have a huge advantage, even limiting them to one base... you can have 50 zealots, 20 stalkers, and 5 colossi... but all that is garbage against a good MM ball even if you have templar feedback'ing the medivacs. Even mass chargelots are dead before they can land a hit on a stimmed MM ball.

Terran is tough because they have so many options. Against zerg they can mass reaper which is insane against anything zerg can do until muta. They can mass marine. You must fear the mech. Against toss, mass marauder/marine... the only way to stop it is to force field off your choke. So you have to prepare for that every game... then oh, he showed up with mass marauder and TANKS, now my choke is meaningless.

I'm not saying Terran is impossible, I'm probably 50/50 against good Terrans, but some of their builds are so dominant that it opens up so much diversity for them.

As toss, you have to rush out a stalker, then you have to rush out a few sentries. Then you have to tech to immortal or colossi and hope you picked the right ones and hope that he doesn't just stim and snipe your colossi (force field helps). High templar are great but it's almost impossible to feedback the ghosts before they EMP you because they look like marines, plus by the time you have templar they have a bazillion marauders and templar don't kill them fast enough. Tanks are ridiculous because they don't 'overkill' so they wreck everything. You'd think immortals would be great but that's only if he doesn't have a ton of marines, which he always does.

It's just a bit frustrating sometimes. Early on, they wall and you can't scout unless you rush out an observer (which you lose when they scan it) so you're basically playing 'rock paper scissors' to see if you're going to survive. The only thing you can do to the wall is get vision and hit it with stalkers from beyond the marines' range.

 

The roach burrow and pop out tactic on an advancing marine/tank seems rather nice, I will consider trying that route as it'd be roughly the same time/cost going mutas sense spires take for ever to get up.

I have another question to ask Zerg players, and that's if they build additional (at least 1) extra queen(s) to be creep setters? (talking early-mid game, when minerals are in vast amounts) Sense speed and surrounding is so critical in Zerg vs Terran (and yes, Protoss too) match ups, I'm considering trying it, but want to know if other Zerg players have had trouble spending that early 150 mins instead of putting it into roach/hyrda/zerglings. (I'm referring to early-mid game when your army is still 10ish in numbers[not counting zerglings])

 

I sometimes build extra Queens at my expo''s but I only keep two at the most. This of course doesn't including making new ones to replaces ones that are lost in raids. However I am still trying to get the timing down on WHEN to expand. I was a HUGE Warcraft player and could do quite well with just one base. This of course is not Warcraft so I'm having a little bit of trouble with the new style of play. With that aside too, I think that spending the 150 mins to get a 2nd queen at another expo will pay off quickly enough if used well. Usually I'll try to get another queen right after an expo goes up and start spawning drones for the next 2 mins to get my econ up to support Ultralisk.

 

I'm not sure that I agree that one race has any real advantege over another. I just think they have different styles of play.

Knowing that Zerg have the better map control abilities I think it's a race to see who can starve who. If you know that they are going to build the wall then I would attack it so that he has to micro it more then planned. If you keep pushin him early enough he may loose his macro rythm to keep up with the micro defense. Yes eventualy they will get the tanks out and stop you from doing this but until then you should be able to gain some advantage.

Zerg are the swarm race so along with map control is an overwhelming force. You may not want to play that way however like in chess you have to play the postion and not necessarly what you want to do. You may have to be a little patient but if you use a swarm mentality you should be able to keep him from expanding and starve him out. Let him know that every time he spends the money to expand you are going to overwhelm it. Eventually he will do 1 of 2 things. He will bring out his forces to protect his expansion or he will try to straight attack your base. Either way what you want is to bring him out. You have the map control so maybe an approach where the idea is to starve him and chew him down piece by piece. It's not a quick win but a steady tactical one.

Just my 2 cents