"KGB special tactic: Marines vs D-temp without cloak detection"
-Mark4
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| The 8 Hour War of Atrition on Rivalry | | | Author: | | | IP: | XXXX | | Date: | 07/29/99 02:07 | | Game Type: | Starcraft | | Labels: | Starcraft(1), Text Only(1) | | Report Rating: , # of Ratings: 1, Max: 8, Min: 8
Lifetime Rating for GayProtoss: 7.3333 |  | Let me start by asking this: Do you know how long it takes to run out of minerals on a large 4-player ladder map?
It's not a rhetoric question. The answer is I got about 2 hours of sleep today. I turned off the computer and there was light in the window...
Ok, let's skip to the chase now shall we.
Map: Rivalry
Sides:
Teal Zerg: top left
Terrans: top right (White) and bottom left (Purple)
Red Protoss (me me!): bottom right
Being a free-for-all ladder match on fast speed it was destined to be a micro management showdown... let's not get ahead already... so... oblivious to the match's fate, I cloned my 4 happy little probes and went with Gateway-Forge-Assimilator build to protect against the silly early zerglings and tech up. The early game was uneventful. Another gateway, cybernetics core, pylons, cannons, a shield battery and about 5 zealots later, I only have one thing on my mind: expansions. It's too early for map control, and that is nigh impossible in this setting - but the only thing that matters for the long game it was going to be is real estate. How much do you own, how fast the moolah is flowing (although gay protoss certainly don't call their resources 'moolah' but let's not get into the method acting now)...
I split my zealots up, leaving two at choke just in case, while the three went in all directions, to the bridges and beyond. They didn't find anybody yet, but they will in a moment.
I'm prepared to switch to dragoons and already researching weapon upgrade and range, while teching to templar when...
Purple vultures show up in the west (bottom middle exp.) and play cat and mouse with the zealot. The guy gets poked with concussion grenades for a while, chases them, then has enough of it and gives up. I see mines being laid.
About the same time I see a timid white dot north of my base (right middle exp), which turns out to be an scv accompanied by four marines. No stim, no medic, no bunker. They all die where they stand, then I split my reinforcements into two groups: 4 new zealots + dragoon up north to keep white out, 3 goons and dark templar at my natural bridge to keep vultures out. One high templar joins both groups shortly, along with the probe to start an expansion at right middle. As it turned out, white never attempted to take it. Meanwhile, vultures somehow break through and follow a slow-poke high templar going north near my choke. The bikers die to cannon fire, leaving the bad guy with about 20 hitpoints left. He grunts something bad about drunk drivers and continues his leisurely promenade to the newly warping in pylons and nexus as if nothing happened. Tough guy. Shame about those broodlings later.
I start another gateway and robofactory (not bothering with observers yet) with spare minerals, all while non-stop probes and goons. I send a probe, then five goons with no detection towards bottom middle (remember those vultures?) to find it still unoccupied. The goons kill mines as they pop up but miss a couple and the leading couple takes it up the bumhole and likes it - yellowish but still kicking. Templar, much more goons, are soon to follow to take this one as well, after maynarding the probes from main to first expansion. I spend excess minerals on probes in both nexuses. When the third warps in, I maynard them to it as well.
At the same time, observers start taking peeks around. I'm struggling to keep broke, putting up stargates and going for corsairs and d-web.
Um, oops... this is mid-game already. Well, almost late-game, but this one battle was so long, it still counts as 'pre-game', period.
Purple has three bunkers, 8 tanks, and 20 goliaths or so along with a couple science vessels. This force is supposed to keep me out of his natural, where he expanded (turns out he never had a chance to expand elsewhere, since I got two.
Well, that force cost me a couple cannons and more than a couple newly mass-produced goons... the rookies who haven't adjusted to their life as a cripple, and keep walking off in random directions for no apparent reason other than enjoying arclite rounds where the sun don't shine.
Purple had tried to push in with tanks and irradiate, even nuke later on, but it didn't work for him. The bridge is too narrow, and on the other side, there's a ton of those guys ready to run in, lose two-three of their own, kill the tank, then run back (except for that stray one that wants to go the other way no matter what - don't you just hate that guy? Blam. Thanks. )
Finally the web is here. The corsairs get shot out of the sky a lot, just because that science vessel looked so juicy behind those goliaths for some reason... however that stops his attempts to push through the bridge cold. Nukes are soon to come, from the middle 'island' and over the bridge. First one is used on the Zerg I believe... if it landed, I do not know, it wasn't in my territory.
Eventually, I put a nexus on my natural as well, and transferred bored probes to it. When the minerals ran out, I had bunched them up together and stormed them to free up the control to bring big guns into my army.
All this time I'm upgrading with two forges and one cyb-core, and getting two new toys: dark archons and arbiters... I had about 2-3 DA's for each arbiter until I hit supply limit. The reason is I saw white massing battlecruisers. I also got about four carriers before hitting supply limit, three reavers and a shuttle. I've tried to use reavers and d-web to take out purple's choke, and after several failed attempts, had an arbiter come over to stasis twice, then use goons to clean up. The first nuke sent on me I was aware of, but it also coincided with me taking over the White's fleet so I chose to move my troops out of the way and let 3 cannons and assimilator get blasted, instead of microing the local dark archon into feedback range. 3-4 goons got popped in the process, but I didn't mind...
... because meanwhile, on the other side of the map ...
A brave but timid observer noticed a 'naked' expansion belonging to white pumping gas out of the middle and has been nagging me about it. 12 goons went over to say hi. Later on, purple tried to do the same thing (with the other geiser in the middle) but he didn't have 12+ BCs to back it up, and goons did his expansion in.
In this case however, I saw the big uglies zoom in on my homeys slowly but steadily.
Scrambling arbiters and dark archons, I ran into the scene (Nuclear launch detected! Ah, buzz off...) to stasis the whole shebang. Missed a couple of them, corsairs and carriers started to pound, then DA's finally got in range.
In the middle of the half-frozen battle, one had the energy to feedback the science vessels in the back. One minute later I had four brand new and slightly smokey battlecruisers in my fleet, with no other BC on the map. Checked control, it read 177/200. So I didn't lose much, just an arbiter or two. The BCs helped me to take some of the more obnoxious of purple's tanks in the west before I had the spare attention to take that choke out.
Then the battle field became very quiet. The two terrans were beat back by the Zerg and myself, stuck between a rock and a hard place, they retreated to their mains and sat tight there before being eradicated by the zerg, one by one (who had the middle left expansion (the top middle one was mined out by white).
Meanwhile I have been supervising uncontrolled territory of the map and making sure all the fighting doesn't come my way. My main 3-reaver 4-carrier + misc dragoons + corsairs + templar and dark archon force sat at middle-bottom expansion (the one me and purple fought over) with their protoss double opposable thumbs up their private parts doing nothing with me thinking that I have about 7000 minerals, 200 control and there is NO money on the map left.
I saw white gather a substantial group of marines and medics (30+) gathering at top middle, heading towards the zerg. They chased the observer away with comsat, but I checked a minute later to see an amusing sight: the 8 scrambling medics running in the opposite direction, followed by three ultralisks with blood stains on the grass here and there. Shortly afterwards the Zerg said "I'm putting an end to white once and for all". About five minutes later I saw a bunch of floating buildings heading in every direction, with scourge following. The group of medics strayed in my territory and I've mind controlled a couple. Why not?
At the same time I asked purple to pass some SCVs over. In exchange to be left alone to see me duke it out with the Zerg. He complied and I did leave him alone, but the stalemate carried on for too long... he didn't see any action for a while (except maybe Zerg's occasional attacks).
Eventually he had surrendered. I observed the remaining heaps of goliaths in his base, now neutral, to be swiped off the map by a heap of zerglings.
So, there we were, him and I, on the opposite sides of a large, deserted map full of gas and not a drop of minerals.
Late game.
We exchanged a few words occasionally, and he seemed a decent player/sport, at least at first. He had sent cracklings under swarm to my right middle expansion, doing a lot of damage to it, but losing his force to cloaked goons, storm and maelstorm.
From the very beginning our battle was made of spells (they don't require money!) ... my two medics cured parasites full time, his queens would broodling everything that wasn't cloaked. My corsairs would go chase off overlords to stop his cracklings from seeing my units under arbiter's cloak... in other words, the best of the best. He'd used hydras to chase off corsairs, I would use templar to pop hydras, he'd use cracklings to chase off templar, I'd use cloaked goons to kill cracklings and so on. The expansion eventually fell, because I was cutting losses. The ratio of his minerals/cracklings to my goons wasn't favorable, so I pulled out my two dark archons, goons, templar and the arbiter away, leaving cannons behind to be eaten up in short order. I had more of them at my natural. Occasionally I would send a cloaked templar (arbiter set to follow) to storm the forces that came in to kill the expansion. There wasn't an all out battle there, just skirmishes with never more than one-two control groups of units.
During this time, I've used hallucinated arbiters and corsairs to take a look around his territory. I saw almost a dozen queens spread out, just as many defilers, 4-5 infested command centers, 3 ultras and maybe two dozen hydras. Not a pretty place for a recall doom drop. I figured it would quickly perish to three plagues, and stated my opinion in our idle chatter... time went slowly, because we both were reluctant to lose troops we've gathered. Observers would get parasited or chased off with scourge, corsairs would come over to pop overlord and scourge leftovers, hydras would come over to pop corsairs... all this scrambling for detection networks and money pit traps took quite a bit of time.
Then, the only real all-out battle started in no other place than Purple's ex-main. My observer noticed dozens of cracklings, some hydras, lurkers morphing and an overlord or two for some reason gathering on high ground. I've recalled my doom drop nearby, to the south-east of his ex-location and let my reavers have a field day. Dark swarm, maelstorm, psistorm all were used. When the smoke cleared, one of my reavers was damaged, I've lost about 6 dragoons, but he lost the battle and the territory, along with all the zerglings there - I'm almost certain he pulled out some of the forces, cutting losses just like I did.
The zerglings I saw there were the last ones he used, relying on hydras from now on. Unfortunately, I didn't have enough templar to put a storm every place it deserves to be - the guys are slow, the map is big and those queens have some disgusting breeding habits.
The observer-overlord-parasite war continued. He no longer used scourge (too expensive) but relied on hydras instead. After replacing two observers I put together a trap that proved to be effective: dark archon, reaver, arbiter, and an archon (the only one I made in the whole game). Knowing where his 6-8 hydras were last seen, I looked around with a dark templar. Duh, they spot and kill him. The dark archon comes in with a maelstorm when they decide to chase the guy... then burrow, but maelstorm reveals them. The blue ball of energy comes in and eats them, helpless. He put together similar schemes to broodling my expensive templar and parasite units, luring me in with some psi storm fodder and what not later on.
As the archon ate those ugly bugs he gets rather frustrated with the stalemate and gives up attacking. "Ok, your turn," he said, "I'm not doing a thing until I hear the under attack message."
I've used yamato cannons to kill some colonies on the left-middle expansion he had (above Purple's base) moving them back, just as he complained how long that process would take, popping his defenses one at a time. Carriers were sent to reinforce them. At one point it dawned on me to hallucinate a ton of battlecruisers and go kill stuff, with my 4 real ones in the middle. It didn't work out... scrambling without hotkeys to synch 5 different unit types, I've missed my real cruisers going in, and lost two to hydras when hallucinations got popped by an area effect spell. I didn't even see it, it was off my screen at the time. I lost my corsair force even stupider... they would go in to web the colonies and accidentally flew over the hydras he put there. I had only one BC left, and wasnt careful with it, losing it in another pseudo hallucinate run, unsupported by other units. Repairing the four BCs I had left drained me of last of my money (I saved 51 minerals just in case I need a templar or an observer later on - and I did).
Without yamato and d-web it were getting more difficult. I did take out most of expansion's colonies (there weren't all that many, just a moderately well secure detection area, with sunkens and spores barely covering each other)... I've recalled my attack group onto the space free of the creep, and proceeded to level the expansion, now abandoned just like mine. Roughly at the same time he figures out a way to annoy me with minimal expenses: he broodlings his larvae and sends broodlings (20 at a time!) en mass to die against the cannons, unsupported, withering down the remains of my abandoned expansion, and bothering cannons of the other one, now empty as well (The Judicator in the local arbiter left a note stapled to the nexus: 'Gone attacking, be back in 3 hours')...
This is the part where my carriers eat the plague.
I repeatedly assaulted the colonies at his natural, taking them out one at a time, while using mostly unparasited observers to warn me about incoming broodlings/queens/hydras/defilers and used dark archons to deal with them successfully, although failures on my part were harshly punished by carefully micromanaged troops and spellcasters - essentially the same thing that I did. The stupid thing that I did was attacking with carriers from a different direction (main island, while the clump of my, now withered, doom drop was near the border of the map, with a long way around to walk on)... So, no dark archon was in range to feedback that stinker in time. Splat.
The medic does overtime and runs out of energy restoring the carriers. Man, plague eats things fast! By the time they got over to her (roughly one screen's width), only two of them weren't at minimal, and the strongest had less than 1/4 of original hitpoints. The good news were that my interceptors were intact. Taking one spore colony at a time with no mass hydras nearby kills it before any can be popped - using those for anything else will suck the money worse than the reavers do.
Which reminds me, that by the time I've made it to the doorstep of his natural, all my reavers were all out of scarabs. They are over-eager to fire at harmless buildings and clumps of broodlings, unfortunately.
During my slow, steady but hazardous cleaning up of the natural, I had over 8 dragoons lost to broodling, and had spent a lot of effort to monitoring approach routes with hallucinations. The real detectors would get parasited (then restored, rinse, cycle, repeat), so I held them back, putting hallucinations in front. Early on, I was steadily running out of templar and dragoons, with an occasional dark archon lost to stupidity/hydra traps (then again, sometimes maelstorm turned the tables)... Remeber that guy who got vulture rushed? At one point it was his turn to serve the time at the front line. Perhaps making another archon there would be a better idea.
I lost two carriers in an attack near the choke of the natural, where I got distracted and forgot that the maelstormed hydras they were above were under dark swarm. I managed to clean up the natural up, but progress into the base was just out of my reach. I could only move in three units into natural's space without them broodlinged in the next minute: dark archons and carriers. Hallucinations observing that space put a buffer of space my dark archons needed to watch out for incoming queens, and he learned to keep his hydras and defilers away from the ledge. At one point he made a failed 6 lurker attack. I mind controlled one, the rest ran away... 10 seconds later it pops with broodlings.
The turning point of that attack was when the second (and the last) medic I had was broodlinged to a clever observer trap. Knowing that I restore those things periodically , he had two queens and an overlord waiting. When the observer moved from its position closer to the arbiter's group, the medic was sent out to restore it... if I moved it too close the queen might see the arbiter, templar, goons and all the other things I don't want it to parasite or broodling. So, the stupid medic guided by my sure hand walks over to the edge of the water and walks about trying to reach for the observer which was just a little too far. One extra second out of arbiter's field was all it took. Poops, says the medic and proceeds to die horribly. Hi, say the broodlings. With no medics, the world suddenly becomes full of parasites. I keep all detecting parasited units away from the group to keep the arbiter 'clean', I even keep some arbiter hallucinations close to it to be confusing.
The queens get obnoxious, and in the next minute do a couple suicide runs to get that arbiter tagged, which they do. I send the other one I have over, and tell this one to go home... my dark archons feedbacked two-three of them, then mind controlled an overlord that came to take a peek. That's when three ultras came running, knowing that I'm out of energy to take them over. They kill both of the dark archons despite the efforts of two carriers, a bunch of goons and one archon. Out of dark archon power, I call it quits and recall the whole battle group back home, but not before they parasite the second arbiter as well. Duh.
"Ok, your turn." I've said and put the parasited units out of the way of others. At this point I had my main base and natural defended by cannons, 6 goons (moderately damaged), one archon, two useless reavers, 2 high templar, 3-5 mind controlled, parasited overlords (with no transport!) and a couple observers, one of them undetected. Two carriers and two arbiters were all that remained of my air force, and only one carrier was still free of parasites (but that changed soon enough).
First thing he did was finish up what he started with broodlings, kill nexus, pylons and the odd cannon at my bottom middle expansion. There was an ultra used to to bring nexus down to 1/4, then a couple drones sent to attack it under the dark swarm, with, as it turned out, lurkers and queens not far behind. I used recall and carriers to deal some damage to the troops, storming the lurkers, but then I lost a templar to the two drones! After the lurkers ran away, the drones returned. I had one templar below my choke, which was blocked by two reavers with an archon behind (it turned out to be a useless measure, they only got in my way, not his - they are too slow). I sent the templar to storm the nexus and slaughter the two insolent drones. It worked. I thought of recalling the guy right back into the base, but thought, hey might as well save up the energy.
You guessed it. Broodling. Duh.
The zerg moved into the south middle with 3 guardians and a bunch of hydras, with 3-4 defilers to keep them smelly. I sent one carrier out to get a stray defiler, which it did, but then had to use high ground and water around Purple's ex base to avoid a group of hydras trying to get the slow moving carrier. They almost got him, but not quite. When the guardians started poking at the remaining two pylons there, I stasised swarmed hydras and killed one guardian then retreated back to my base... the guardians left but the hydras stayed. I used batteries to recharge from the hits I took, while the defilers would coat the way into my natural with dark swarm and send hydras and lurkers in. The ultralisk (the only one left!) was there too. They all got stasised, except one-two hydras... I sent my archon and goons in, under the swarm and managed to fight them back, keeping defilers stasised as much as possible. Still, I was steadily losing cannons, and lost both batteries at natural.
The next attack was lurkers, covered by swarm from the bridge into the middle of the map, which finished up the remaining cannons. I wasn't able to do anything, just stasised them some... it takes energy to recharge those arbiters.
Unfortunately shortly before the land assault, my last templar died to a broodling. The not-so-carefully placed parasited arbiter gave line of sight to the queen that I didn't see until it was too late.
By this time (are you still reading this?) it was 5 am and I had to get up at 7 to go to work. I told the guy that I have to go to bed like, now (for a tenth time), and an opinionated debate began on the subject of who owned whom. He also for some reason decided that I'm a disconnector and stopped being pleasant. I said that I'm not, and that he has 5 minutes to take me out or I'm out of here. He replied with an expletive. We'll forgive him that because it were a good game.
So, the real assault commenced. Swarm, lurkers, hydras and an ultralisk tried to make it up my ramp. They did take out some cannons, but stasis neutered 5 defilers hidden under the same swarm... while lurkers were working on pylons and battery, the ultralisk under the swarm decided it can take my archon on one. The archon decided no way and ran back into the base. The ultralisk gave chase and said hello to six disgruntled-looking goons kept in the back from the broodlings. Out of the swarm like a fish out of the water, the thing popped in the second valley. The swarms dried up and lurkers scurried away, leaving stasised defilers behind. Mr archon and two carriers went over there. When stasis stopped, only one, maybe two defilers managed to run away.
The assault was repelled with zero casualties on my part, except of course, for the couple missing structures and cannons.
At which point I said that the time is up, and that he doesn't own me. The reply was something about me being full of it and that he has more units.
Having said before that it was a great game, I didn't repeat myself (I was a little tired to say the least), I simply clicked surrender button, turned off the computer and dropped into my bed, knowing that I was not defeated, nor was he.
Lessons learned (hoo boy here goes)
- Don't leave units near the enemy.
- Keep expensive stuff away from queens.
- Attack where it hurts, not where it's the easiest. (Thinking back to the game, a doom drop on his main instead of expansion early on would be far more terrifying and much shorter, for better or worse; it also just might take all those tech structures out, the hive included.)
- Getting no sleep really sucks.
- Don't play afraid.
- Expanding is good. (I had the most money in the game!)
- Fast speed is really good for spellcasting.
- Reavers suck in the war of atrition. Our big zergling battle in Purple's main cost me about 2000 in scarabs and lost troops.
- Protoss are horrible at breaking defenses with limited budget. Interceptors and scarabs add up.
- Don't sit around doing nothing. Win or lose and get it over with.
- Against the zerg, have a DA near your carriers. Plague sucks.
- Restore is a pimp's dream -> What are the Terrans complaining about anyway? Medics rock...
- If you don't keep the opponent busy, he will.
- I never saw any infested terrans. What was I scared of anyway?
- Plague hurts. So does feedback and maelstorm.
Questions:
- If a parasited unit goes under an arbiter's wing... what does the parasite's owner see?
- If a non-detector unit is barely out of arbiter's reach, and it's parasited... does the parasite's owner 'detect' the hidden units?
- If an arbiter is parasited, the parasite owner sees everything under it, correct?
I've tried asking my opponent but he chose not to respond. I can't blame him, although giving me straight answers would've been a notch in my 'good sport' book. I did pass him some ideas about hallucinations earlier, although it was to my disadvantage. But heck, I can't expect everyone to be gay and honorable. :) At least, not honorable. |
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