Zerg vs Terran, out of ideas - Mentally Exhausted.

I think a lot of players miss this aspect of the Zerg. I believe this is what the Zerg where made to do, overwhelm the opponent with numbers. Not with tech, not with abilities, but with numbers. As stated in the Strat guide ( Yes, I was the major noob who ordered a guide ), Zerg can build units faster than any race because it relays on the hatchery which can produce more than one unit at a time. So why not use it to our advantage? And yes, sometimes Terrans / Protoss will out number our own units, you just have to go off the information you can (hopefully) gather from scouting.

 

I agree with the OP, the Terrans are overpowered against the Zerg.

There's a lot of generic advice here, about map control and overwhelming your opponent with numbers, starve him of resources, etc. This is obvious stuff, but the problem is that in practice it doesn't work out like that against a moderately skilled Terran opponent.

Maintaining a lot of bases for a high resource trickle rate so you can keep producing massive armies requires a LOT of management. That, on top of actually fighting your opponent, attacking him, constantly trying to prevent him from tearing down your weakest bases. The Terran player has MUCH LESS work to do, which means he has more time to figure out where to hit you so you feel it most. He can make a few mistakes and still be okay. You make a mistake and you lose a base, and there goes the whole chain of "maintain high resource input so you can field massive armies which die all too fast." One link in your chain fails and your multiple hives and ability to train large armies falls apart, because now YOU are starving for resources. Against a moderately good Terran player, the chance of that happening some time during the game is pretty high.

The fact is that on a lot of maps a Terran can set up a pretty much impregnable base using very few units and resources. This leaves him free to harass the Zerg player who has a lot more territory to defend. The Terran workload is literally half that of the Zerg player, or at least that's been my experience, playing both Terran and Zerg.

This is what balance is about. I'm not saying a Zerg player can't win - of course he can, if he's good and doesn't make too many mistakes in the game. The problem is that a Terran player can be quite mediocre and/or lazy and make more mistakes, but he's still even with you.

 

Nothing much to add which other posters have already mentioned, except that if you want to improve on your ZvT strats watch similar ZvT matchups by good players. Google them up. Also, save and analyse your own 1v1 replays. Makes alot of difference to your mental thought processes when you play the next game.

About scouting. You mentioned that you need to improve on this. I think that this is the biggest determinant to winning. Scout early and scout regularly. Some things you may wanna do asap is research burrow and place zerglings at key expansions to watch out for Terran expansion. If he expands, harrass accordingly. You may also want to place burrowed zerglings across key movement paths across the map to warn you of a Terran army on the move. Research speed boost for overlords and use them to scout. Early on when the game starts, start moving your overlords over strategic spots on the map, to alert you of Terran activity, or over the edge of his base to scout him. You may wanna also research carrying capacity for your overlords to give them the flexibility to do drops on the Terran.

 

Not really, making a new hatchery is just like making a new barracks or gateway. Just add it to your control group of other hatcheries and you are in business.

Zerg units have no abilities to use in battle, and very few units have bonus damage against light or armored units. That means you can just attack move your units, while the terran player has to stim, siege up tanks, land vikings, and forcibly control about half their army to correctly target either light or armored units.

You can almost just control your main army and flank army from the minimap. It's not hard at all.

 

I agree with dave, maintaining bases don't just mean putting up a hatchery. There's nearly no benefit from them just standing there, except the enemy wastes time killing them. One has to set them up, if they are badly placed, defend them properly, saturate them with drones... isn't it obvious the required macro gets bigger the more hatcheries one has?

About the fighting, zerg may not have many units with abilities, but I feel like I have to really really watch out for them. Often, astray units (melee) run into doom, while terran units at least fire automatically. They can kite which is not hard to pull off but very effective. And using the only spellcasters, infestors (which one often builds against bio terrans) requires skill too, they are so easily killed and should be unburrowed for casting and immediatly burrowed afterwards.

That's just my impression, I'm in the middle of learning, so I might not have reached a point to judge right. But I feel like zerg are harder to play than terran, except for mutas, they are really nasty if one does not put up missile towers or place marines in time. I guess with increasing micro skill, differences between races will vanish, concerning control in battle.