"Goliaths look much more badass than they actually are"
-Bob_The_Newt
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| Thinker's Paradise Part 3 | | | Author: | | | IP: | proxy8.sXXXX | | Date: | 04/03/01 04:04 | | Game Type: | Starcraft | | Labels: | none | | Report Rating: , # of Ratings: 1, Max: 8, Min: 8
Lifetime Rating for [SM]Strega~F: 7.2000 |  |
Well, it's me again. After many hours trying to find a decent game to BR, I have succeeded. Prepare yourself for the ultimate in entertainment value (except for the hidden costs and tax fraud problems) that money can buy! Also note that my picture editing program decided to screw me royally, and as such the pictures may not look right in some cases. Sorry for the inconvenience but, as mentor and all-round great human being Dave Letterman says, nobody's forcing you to read this and this site is FREE, so STOP YOUR WHINGING!
Also note that this game was played on vanilla SC, not Brood Wars. The reason for this being that I just don't seem to like Brood Wars, or at least didn't like Brood Wars. Since this game was played, I had an epiphany. Deciding that I wanted to play as terran (reason unknown to me, I must've been drunk) so, as I rang my friend to play a nice modem game as the terrans, he persuaded me to play on Brood Wars instead of vanilla. This turned out to be the greatest moment of my life. I don't know if it was the alcohol or not, but I actually found myself enjoying using the Terrans. Most imprtantly, using the new Terran units. I now play Brood Wars. Praise the Overlord!
Now I know that the title of this is Thinker's Paradise Part 3, but it is a little different from the first 2 parts. For starters, it is actually a decent read! (Editor's Note : That is, in no way, a guarantee.) While parts 1 and 2 have little scenarios for the reader to look over while the report loads, this one does not. It does have a problem in it though. But before I get to that, I shall explain my situation.
I recently downloaded version 1.08 alpha and copied it to disk for my friends who don't have access to the internet. These two friends are my chief StarCraft friends. ie. We play SC against each other a lot. Now, one of the bonuses of 1.08 is the replay function (with which I got some fairly decent pics going) and the fact that you can play games with the computer on your side. One of my friends has 3 computers and cable connection between them, which we sometimes use for LAN games. This is the story of such a game...
The thinking part comes in here. I asked both people to name themselves "Computer" and have 1 REAL computer player in the game. Your task is to find out which one is the real one. I also asked them play like computer players, but, as you'll see in the report, one of my friends did not. In fact, he played like a tool. He played kind of like me actually...
As you can see to the right, the map is good old Lost Temple. I am teal protoss and my allie is brown terran, known henceforth as MyComp. His name is in teal on the map as brown does not show up properly on that picture's background.
Our enemies? Why, none other than yellow zerg and purple protoss. From now on, yellow zerg is known as Troy. The reason? He is the player that acts nothing like a computer in this game. Purple protoss can, however, remain as ProtossEnemy. Also, the reason why his name is in yellow on the map is because purple does not show well. Now, on to the game!
The game started out like any other, myself and all of the other players going random, but then something strange happened. I got this urge to dance around the room and shove foreign objects up my ass, for I was the gay Protoss. Yes, that's right. I think that Protoss is gay. So sue me! The one good thing about them is psi storm and reaver drops, and believe me, I made use of these abilities every step of the way.
I decided to do a money build, where I basically got a few cannons on top of my ramp and a few on the bottom section before my natural expansion. Afterwards, I would expand. Now, do not confuse this build with a newbie 136891658 cannons build, for I only built enough to hold any sort of quick rush.
After my 3 cannons started warping on my ramp, I started on gas and also scouting. My probe, however, was not welcomed and got chased by probes/drones at my enemies' respective bases.
During this time my partner built up a highly effective force of 12 or so marines and some bats, while getting a refinery and 2 bunkers at his ramp. Before warping in a nexus at my expansion, I was rushed. Not exactly the best rush in the history of the game, but a rush nonetheless. Yes, 3 zealots attacked me. I feared for my life, I truly did! Well, no I didn't. That was a lie.
My good friend MyComp decided to counter and sent 12 marines to Troy's base. Now, here is where he proves his inability to act like a computer player.
After sending in roughly 12 marines to attack Troy, MyComp was astounded to see a fair few sunkens morphing at the top of Troy's ramp. Needless to say, after destroying only 1 of these immobile anal probes, the marines were ended of their otherwise uneventful lives. We must move on...
Well, a little recap is probably in order. My base currently consists of a forge (upgrading shields), 3 cannons at the top of my ramp, 3 cannons at the bottom of my ramp (protecting expansion), an expansion, 3 gateways and a cybernetics core. MyComp's base consists of 3 barracks, 2 bunkers at his ramp, an academy (already upgraded range, getting stim) and a factory just starting to build.
My unit count consists of probes. Lots of probes. Oh yeah, I've just started to get 3 zealots (low on gas). MyComp has a scattered amount of marines in his peon line and some firebats sitting along the outside ring of his base, acting as a warning system for any drops.
From scouting, it is evident that Troy is going hard defense, and not much else is known. He doesn't have an expansion as yet, which is a good sign. ProtossEnemy has, as far as I can tell, 3 gateways and various tech structures. Upgrades are as yet unknown. Also, as far as I can tell, I am the only person with an expansion at the moment.
Now, back to the game. It is at this point that I realise the error in my plan. Six cannons cannot exactly beat 12 zealots, especially when the zealots have speed upgrade. Luckily I have started on some zealots so, as soon as my defense falls I have the necessary backup to stop the intruders from causing serious damage. While my 3 brave warriors take on the 6 remaining members of the elite clan, Protoss Pimp Squad XII, I cleverly run my probes the hell out of my expansion area.
Managing to kill only 1 of these feminists, I knew that I was in serious trouble. Shortly after they started ripping into my nexus (expansion nexus), 3 more of my new-best-friends rolled off of the production line (?) and, as the enemy is weakened already, manage to kill 4 of the 5 remaining before my troops die once again. After putting my nexus into the yellow, I finally got some more zealots and finished off the threat at hand. Overall, I lost 6 zealots, 6 cannons and a couple of probes, while also having my nexus beaten brutally as if it had stolen some drugs from that guy on The Sopranos. Crisis over.
There was a short lull in the action after this, as all sides built up their forces and climbed the tech tree. Myself, I rebuilt my cannons so that I had 4 above and below my ramp, and I also warped in 9 zealots (totalling 12) and 12 dragoons. The goons sat out near my workers in case of a mutalisk raid or a drop. I also climbed up to the point of having level 2 shields and level 1 armor/attack for ground troops. My tech tree branched out to templar, and I had 6 high templar with psi storm and energy researched when the most influential battle of the game happened.
MyComp has, at this point in time, his expansion online, level 1 attack/armor for his ground, a fair few tanks and marines, and also some bats to help out if things got too much.
Now, back to the topic at hand. To your left you can see (hopefully) 3 dragoons and 3 zealots attacking my defense. Deciding to counter after beating off this measly attack, I sent my zealots to help out the cannons and then to continue on from there. This, however, would not happen.
Yes, as luck would have it, Troy did not get mutalisks like I expected, but rather a whole heap of hydralisks and zerglings. And to top this off, MyComp couldn't help out at all because ProtossEnemy had attacked him with lots (and I mean lots) of zealots, causing myself to be all alone in this frightful endeavour.
The attacking forces were as follows : 3 dragoons, 3 zealots, 48 hydralisks, 24 zerglings.
Wow, those zealots really had me worried in this battle! This is where I go absolutley psychotic and, among other things, yell obscenities at my enemies. After geting over the initial shock of all this, I decided it was time to own some newbie ass! Taking full advantage of the narrow space within which these huge amounts of units were travelling, I let loose with psi storm. Never have I been so happy to have been protoss. One templar, with the energy upgrade, can unleash 3 psi storms. Now, if I have 6 templar and an enemy confined to a small space with zero manoeuvrability (wow, long word), you can probably guess what happened.
As a matter of fact, I took out all of these guys without even having to bring my dragoons into it. Yes that's right folks. Psi storm, 12 zealots and 4 cannons killed all of these units without much micro on my behalf. Perhaps storm isn't as useless as we once thought it to be...
Well, it's time for a minimap update. Something that I said I'd never ever do, I am doing. So I hope you're all happy! I think it's pretty obvious as to what means what on the map. A big coloured circle indicates a main base belonging to the person of that colour. A smaller circle is an expansion that is operational. Oh, in case you have forgotten, I am teal, MyComp is brown, Troy is yellow and ProtossEnemy is purple. Hope that cleared anything up for you.
Well, I know I said I wouldn't include any puzzles, but I guess I lied. See if you can figure out which BR.com and NH regular I am referring to in this little riddle.
Today My Ass Constantly
Told Me About Cocks.
Ok, while you ponder over that one, I'll walk you through the minimap. Everybody has taken their natural and ProtossEnemy has taken the bottom right island expansion. Also, remember that this update is done from using the replay function. As it happened, my partner and I didn't know that ProtossEnemy had the island until later on when I decided to expand there. Needless to say, cannons own probes.
After holding off what was obviously a major attack from Troy, I decided to counter. The only problem was, I had 12 dragoons and 3 templar left over. Sending the templar with me would slow down the counter-attack but would ultimately help out in case of swarming. What to do...
I decided to just send in the goons as to have the highest element of surprise possible. I also started getting some stargates so that I could hopefully rid the map of the foul infestation known as Troy once and for all. My goons reached the mid left expansion and started reaking havoc all over the place. I should probably mention now that MyComp had just beaten me to the counter by sieging below Troy's sunken and also hitting with some freshly built wraiths. After destroying all but one sunken, this attack was removed - at the exact same time that my dragoons arrived. Damn.
Anyway, my forces ripped into the remaining (and damaged somewhat) sunken and destroyed that before some zerglings came to play. I lost track of how many zerglings I killed, but they were definitely on crack and were doing pretty well to stop my incursion. I did, however, manage to destroy the expansion and also use one "lucky" warrior to scout out the innards of the zerg hive cluster. I didn't really see anything too bad, except there were 2 spires and he had a hive already finished. Aside from killing an expansion and getting some useful information, my attack did nothing that would count as "worthwhile."
Well well, I guess a short update is in order. Somewhere along the line, MyComp got a nuke silo and the required tech beforehand. I don't know when, and he didn't say anything about it, but he had nukes. Weird. I personally have made a robotics support bay and gotten a shuttle, ready to expand with. My scouts now number 9 and I am ready to attack with them, MyComp has just started an expansion at the top left island expansion and also takes my mineral only shortly after, due to some ProtossEnemy activity near his mineral only. As you can see, the first nuke doesn't take.
After losing my dragoons to lots of zerglings, I decided that now would be the oppurtune time to attack with my scouts. Also, MyComp was heading out towards ProtossEnemy so I figured "When in Rome..."
Passing overhead and helping out in a battle for the middle, my scouts had been discovered. The enemy knew of my plan! Blast! Oh well, who cares? What could possibly happen to scouts inside a zerg base with 2 spires and a history for going overboard on defense... D'oh!
Yes, as you can see in the picture, I encountered 1 spore colony, followed by a million scourge from 4 hatcheries. Needless to say, my scouts didn't make a comeback in this game. Another attack lost to the zerg. Ho hum.
My newly created reavers and shuttles (remember how I teched? Well, it was worth it!) took a little trip down to the local Wal Mart and picked up some discount templar and some faulty electrical goods, just for luck. The elite strike force then travelled to Troy's main base and unloaded, only to be greeted by some zerglings. Hurrah! Now, as we all know, 3 reavers own 6 zerglings quite heavily, especially with storm backup.
Persisting with his idiotic ways, Troy decides that the best way to combat reavers is with, wait for it, MORE LINGS! Oh the humanity! Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end. So, after mutilating the entirety of Troy's main, ProtossEnemy stormed my reavers and killed 2 of them. As revenge I stormed some templar that were just entering the area, but they just stormed right back! The result? Some templar got toasted by storm. You really can't help but laugh, can you?
ProtossEnemy decided to come out of his shell, fully, and started going crazy date on MyComp's ass. The action was pretty much nonstop through the centre and by my mineral only (controlled by MyComp) and I had box office seats. Occasionally I would storm any intruders that got too close, but mostly I just let my allie take care of himself. So, with the finesse of an Irishman on St Patrick's Day, MyComp laid the smack down on ProtossEnemy by nuking the absolute shit out of him. I did have pictures of this happening, but they kind of got mangled up a little bit, so you'll just have to take my word for it.
I decided to do another reaver drop, due to the overwhelming success of the last one, but it didn't exactly work as planned. To start with, my shuttles got intercepted by ProtossEnemy's scouts, then my reavers got encased in that blue stasis field stuff (meaning he had arbiters, the bastard!) and then, to top it all off, guess what came in to kill them? Carriers. Yes, carriers. It was at this point that I expanded to MyComp's mineral only, as he already had mine, and I needed the money badly. I lost quite a bit in that attack, but it did offer me reassurance. Troy hadn't retaken his main and that meant that he only had his natural expansion. One good thing, but carriers and arbiters didn't seem like such a good notion at the time. Bugger.
Another update coming up, just to please the masses. As is blatantly obvious, Troy has only his natural expansion, while his allie ProtossEnemy has the most number of bases, totalling 5. Only 3 have cash left to mine though. Myself, at that moment in time, controls 3 bases with my natural nearly all dried up and my main completely bare. MyComp has 4 bases, bringing our team's total number of bases to 7, 4 with money left, and our enemies have a total of 6 bases, 4 with money leftover. So, all in all, it is pretty even money-wise at the moment for both teams, but the amount of money is not exactly evenly spread between the team members, to say the least.
Stooping to the ultimate low, ProtossEnemy uses carriers on my partner. This is not what I signed up for, let me tell you that! This shocking move is even more sinful than the Clinton administration, and that's saying something! Although, you can't really blame him. His allie is totalled AND wasted all at the same time. But come on! Carriers? Couldn't we just talk about this or something? Ah fuck it. I'm protoss aswell! I'll get carriers too! YES! And then maybe I can download a map hack and play on BGH in compstomps! No, wait... MUST...RESIST...URGE! Damn those brainwashing tools! That's the last time I play a public game on B.net!
Oh I'm sorry. I kind of got distracted there. Just those carriers, the money involved, it all came flooding back to me, memories of those days when I was corrupted by the system and sold my soul to the all-mighty BGH Demon.
ProtossEnemy continued on his wicked way, moving up towards my undefended mineral only expansion and attempting to conquer all. Luckily, I was allied with a terran. And what do terran's do to carriers to effectively kill the vile intruders? That's right! Firebats! Huh? Oh wait, oops. Typo. I meant "Lockdown!" Sorry. Yes, MyComp saved the day with ghosts, wraiths and goliaths.
Well, while I was teching up towards arbiters to do a nice little "drop," MyComp did his own little drop on Troy's top-of-ramp defense. The result was very pleasing, as this last little piece of life he had slowly slipped away. Now you may be thinking "Why haven't they attacked ProtossEnemy yet?" Well, the answer is quite simple. Every time we were about to, something else happened. For instance, when I first had 12 zealots I was going to attack purple's main. But, as if the gods had planned it, I suffered from a huge attack, and although I still had dragoons with which to attack, my anger was now aimed at Troy. Also, MyComp has tried many times to attack purple's base, but is always cut off. So, there's your answer.
Anyway, back to the main plot. This defense that fell lead to another example of "You can't act like a computer for shit!" syndrome. Yes, you're not seeing things. This is what I like to call "Troy is a cocksucker." Good job, asswipe.
Now, as I was generating some income at my newly refurnished mineral only expansion, I was attacked there. Again. With none of my units around. Luckily, I had maynarded about a dozen probes from my now dry natural and they, together with the probes already at my mineral only, took care of the two (2) hydras attacking me.
After this attack I set up a nice little cannon defense there, as I only had some arbiters, templar and dragoons sitting back at base, and couldn't afford for them to be used as defense.
The game got pretty boring at this point. The entire map (except the mineral only at mid left) was dried out or nearly dried out, and we had been in a stalemate for nearly 20 minutes. The action had been constant, but not really noteworthy, as the three of us (excluding Troy of course) continuously traded blows throughout the centre. My attacks began looking more and more like a waste of time and the only real contribution I could make to the game was storming the hell out of the slow-moving carriers, but even this got repetitive and essentially useless. MyComp had kept nuking all over the place, but most of them didn't get through due to observers and the ones that did get through didn't cause enough damage to break the stalemate.
My grand total of 12 templar kept storming anything they could, but without a substantial force from either player (myself or MyComp) to go with them, my templar couldn't really achieve much. ProtossEnemy was slowly pushing through what had now become a joint terran/protoss turtle, but without the resources to back him up, the attacks became less and less frequent. Just as I was ready to send in my arbiters and recall my now 18 dragoons, something happened.
My arbiter's were en route to their destination, when the shocking message "Computer has been eliminated" came up on the screen. Yes, Troy had been eliminated. No, I did not kill him. No, MyComp did not kill him. Yes, he killed himself. the reason? "I got bored." Now that's understandable, but he knew I was gonna do a BR on it so long as it wasn't a 2 minute rush game. So, what did we do?
We played on. For about 2 minutes longer. Then myself and my remaining friend decided "Fuck it" and left the game. Now, if you feel robbed at not finding out the actual proper winner of this game, don't worry. I feel the same way. I personally believe that my impending recall would've broken the stalemate and given my team the edge needed for victory. Troy thinks that if he had stayed around, his allie would've eventually came through and won. Either way, I guess we'll never know...
I leave you all now with one of my poems. And guess what? This time it is actually readable (hopefully)! I look forward to knowing what you all think of this report, who you think the REAL computer was and let's not forget the "half-time riddle."
![This has been a [SM]Strega~F production.](users/Strega/TP3/POEM.jpg)
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