StarCraft: A beginner's guide |
Jan 15, 2020 Omega StarCraft: Brood War (Zerg #10) Written by medievaldragon on January 15, 2020. Posted in StarCraft Remastered, StarCraft Walkthrough Guide. Infested platform over the planet Char; Kerrigan's base of operations.
The focus of this page is on winning against other human players on Battlenet. I am also assuming you are playing Brood War which is better balanced than the original and has more interesting units with which to play.- StarCraft: Brood War is an expansion pack released in 1998 for StarCraft — an award-winning real-time strategy game. It was co-developed by Saffire and Blizzard Entertainment.
- For Starcraft: Brood War on the PC, Guide and Walkthrough by Dark Vortex.
- StarCraft: Brood War, like its predecessor, is a real-time strategy game chronicling the exploits of three different races and their conflicts in a far-flung region of the galaxy known as the Koprulu sector.
- See full list on starcraft.fandom.com.
Get the general idea
You should play enough to know the build tree of your race as well as others. If you don't know how to build a particular unit and don't know the utility of a particular unit, you are going to get burned by it sooner or later.In ideal games between evenly matched players given even mineral consumption, the game should come down to who makes the most efficient use of their resources. The winner should be the player that lost the least minerals in their units lost in battle.
In popular maps like Big Game Hunters or in maps where the number of players is less than the number of players that the map was designed for (such as a 2 player one on one in The Lost Temple) it comes down to who can build units the fastest.
In most games, however, the skill levels are not equal, and (sneaky) tactics of the moment will tend to dictate the actual outcome of a game. Learning the utility and strengths and weakness of each unit will be crucial.
Fundamentals
Like most resource-build army-things mostly equal kind of games, you wont get very far by simply sending your armies into one on one battles with the enemy. All things equal such battles will end up being a draw. As with any ordinary military tactics, you usually want to over power your enemy by attacking stategic weaknesses with strength, and delaying the attacks from your opponents strength.What this means in StarCraft is that you want to build up big armies, and attack your opponent's smaller armies, and weakly defended buildings. A common strategy to this end is the drop. Where an overlord, dropship or shuttle is used to deliver your army to an approach angle to your enemies base which they have not strongly defended. Similarly, though, if your enemy has more than one base, it is usually best to attack the weakest first.
Among beginners, a common problem is that they don't know how to build at top speed. So a skilled player can simply railroad a weaker player by building an small army at top speed and sending them to attack the opponent's base before they have build up an adequate army/defence of their own.
So an essential skill is the ability to build quickly. This is achieved by making sure you have the fastest possible resource collecting stream as well as building in units and buildings simultaneously with each other. Here are a few rules of thumb that should be follow roughly in order:
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There are certainly exceptions to the above rules. Different maps will dictate that you modify your strategies accordingly.
In addition to these basic rules, the beginner needs to be aware of how to perform many actions at once. Queueing up commands with the shift key is essential. For protoss and terran, your peons (scv/probe) should return back to gathering minerals or gas after commanded to create a building automatically by virtue of queued commands. Setting rally points are essential for organizing your troops later in the game, but at the beginning of the game (when you are spending time waiting for peons to build), they are effective for sending your peons to the mineral patches at the very instant they are created. These saved fractions of a second do accumulate and thus it is worth it to redefine your rally point to a new mineral patch after each peon is created at the beginning of the game.
The beginner must also become accustomed to the keyboard short cuts. Navigating the menus with your mouse while you are in the middle of a battle or other micromanagement is an unacceptable waste of time. Learn the short to building peons (terran: ss, zerg: sd, protoss: p) as well as making your common buildings (protoss probe: bp - pylon, bc - canon; zerg drone: bc - build creep, bh - build hatchery; terran scv: bb - build barracks, bu - build bunker) and common units. Look at the highlighted character in the menus to see what each key does. Press a to send a selected army to attack (to attack a sequence of points just hold down shift and queue the attack pattern up!) Also remember that audio queued events can be zoomed in on immediately by pressing the space bar.
A common mistake for protoss and terran players is to load up the unit queues in each of the buildings as much as possible at the beginning of the game. At the beginning of the game, when you have relatively little money, and little to micro-manage, you should instead queue up two units at each building and increase the queue as each unit is built. This is essentially 'cash management'. Doing this will leave you with more minerals on hand to build more buildings while not slowing down your unit build rate. Ordinarily the goal is to put those minerals towards making more buildings that will in turn let you make more units at once (it is better building 2 units in each of 5 unit generating buildings than 5 units in 2 unit generating buildings). Once this micro-management starts becoming overwhelming, use the full building queues (5) to maintain maximum build rate.
In Big Game Hunters (or a two player match on a four player map) as a rule of thumb, protoss should build towards having about 4 nexus', zerg should expand to 9 hatcheries, and terran should build towards about 3(?) command centers. The protoss are a special case, since its possible for them to be building multiple races at once (Dark archon can mind control friendly or enemy peons for other races and start building thier race as well.) A protoss player should, of course, also be trying to build 9 hatcheries and 3(?) command centers as well (if your brain doesn't explode from handling that much stuff at once.)
Then you should be building towards a situation where you can pump out units and constantly sustain a near 200 unit-slot limit while you are doing battle with your enemy. With the protoss, you should build about 8 gateways, or a similar number of telportation ports, and make sure the build buffers are always full. (These are late game suggestions that don't apply to the beginning of the game.)
Building units quickly
Building units quickly is different for zerg than for the other races. For zerg, you need to build lots of hatcheries. You know you are being inefficient if any hatchery has three larva that are not mutating to units. The reason is that the speed of building units will be limited by the number of available larva, and once your hatchery has three larva it will stop building more larva. Taken to the logical conclusion, what this means is you should be building units evenly over all your hatcheries, rather than building units out of your hatcheries one at a time. This applies mostly to the beginning of the game when you are trying to build drones to collect more minerals to build more hatcheries. Once you are really building later and in the middle of the game, you should either be at your 200 unit limit, or should not have 3 idle larva anywhere.For protoss and terran, the army builders (barracks/gateway and spaceport/teleportation port) have a build queue. It is temping to simply fill these queues, and let the build process take care of itself, however this is not a good idea at the beginning of the game. Instead you should build lots of ground army builders (gateway/barracks) and build evenly in each. In this way, more of your mineral resources are dedicated to units that are about to be built, rather than on units that you wont see for a long time down the road. In this way you are pushing for simultaneous building rather than sequential building. You units will pop out faster relative to the minerals put into building them. Later on, your mineral production and the number of army builders should make this amount micro-management prohibitive. At this point you should switch to simply filling the queues of your numerous army builders.
Standard armies
You should learn the standard armies for each race, just to give you a baseline for the minimum you should expect from an opponent. If you are a beginner, you should start just by building these armies, to get a feel for them.Standard armies (offence motivated) | |
Protoss |
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Zerg |
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Terran |
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Despite claims or theories to the contrary there are no unbeatable armies. There are no unfair units. Every attack has a counter attack that can beat it. You need to build up experience to learn how to beat any given individual attack. If you find a certain kind of attack difficult to deal with, adopt that attack yourself and see how others deal with it.
Avc media player. However creating a successful defense or counter attack to any impending attack requires reconnaisance to know what your enemy is up to. Also remember that an experienced opponent will also be trying to observe what you are up to.
The Rush
A lot of players are perturbed by some of the highly skilled players who will build an army as quickly as possible and send them straight at them. Just as they are starting to build up their tech, they are met with 4 zealots, or 6 zerglings versus no appreciable defence whatsoever.These players typically complain or request a 'no rush' time period at the beginning. But there is no enforcability in battlenet, and more to the point, its part of the game. The right response to a rush is: have a defence.
There are suitable defences for all variations of the superfast rushes (a handful of offensive units built at the very start of the game and sent to attack).
Suggested defences for the superfast rush. | |
Protoss | Build 2 probes, then 1 pylon ..
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Zerg | Build two drones, then three sunken colonies surrounding your base. This should hold off one or two player superfast rushes. |
Terran | Build two SCVs, then a barracks, then a bunker near your base, then a second barracks, then a second bunker, then marines as fast as possible (as well as supply depots as necessary. Send the marines to the bunkers of course. |
Slow rushes. | |
Protoss |
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Zerg |
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Terran |
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Introduction[edit]
This guide will focus on explaining all you need to know on how to properly play Zerg on BGH. We will only talk about playing Zerg in team games and not in 1v1, which will greatly simplify things in terms of build orders and strategy required to play Zerg on the top level for BGH.
Zerg Build Orders
Zerg is considered by many the weakest race on BGH, but in team games it's never bad to have a Zerg in your team because a lot of times, a game has been turned by no more than a handful of Zerglings.
Role of Zerg in Team Games[edit]
The advantages of zerg over protoss and terran is speed. Speed in units, and ability to tech at any speed while maintaining the ability to quickly catch up economically. The best zerg players will use both holes in your defense to slip lings in and holes in your build order with their faster tech. Then when damage has been dealt either killing or harassing, zerg will catch up economically. Zerg units are vital in order to harass, sometimes even suicidally, for the advancement of the team. Depending on positions, Zerg is expected to be able to tech very quickly to mutalisks, or mass economy in order to build a huge advantage using the mass drone producing capabilities of 3 hatcheries. Maintaining a relevant drone count while having the correct number of units / defense is why zerg is the absolute hardest race on BGH.
Mutas are almost always the preferred tech pattern in a BGH team game due to their mobility and firepower, which in the hands of a good player can be crippling to the other team while he is being defended.
Zerg should always avoid head on army encounters unless accompanied by a teammate, and instead focus on sneaking in speedlings in the early game and mutas in the mid game into the mineral line just after the other players move out. Taking full advantage of zerg in team game requires using their mobility. In order to maximize your and your ally's unit's efficiency you should focus on keeping the enemies separated and using your speed to create 2v1 / 3v2 / 3v1 situations wherever possible, as well as backstabbing opponents that have just left their base unguarded.
Overlords are crucial for a Zerg and his teammates. Effective scouting of unit movement in all stages of the game is essential. Proper overlord positioning is necessary for knowing the correct amount of defense to have, counter attacks moving on the map, proper preparedness for terran allies vs early wall breaker attacks and for matching opponent zerg's tech timing. Correct placement later in the game vs dt, lurker rushes and mines is also critical.
One of the most important aspects of having a zerg on your team is that it changes the army composition of your opponents. With two Protoss allies on the zerg's team, the zerg can force a terran player to 2 rax, and force a protoss player to make zealots instead of goons, which are both obviously beneficial to your protoss allies.
Understanding Build Orders for Zerg[edit]
StarCraft: Remastered
There's a few basic builds for zerg, 12 hatch, 12 pool, and 9 pool. Depending on what the positions are and what you're facing you'll need to decide which build suits you best.
Strategywiki Brood War
9 pool is good if you're trying to apply early pressure and take pressure off your allies. In most high level games, 9 pool is used about 95% of the time. 12 pool is a good in-between build that still gives you pretty early lings with a couple extra drones and an earlier hatchery. 12 hatch is good if you know you have a window of opportunity in the start to get away with a bit of a greedier build. 12 hatch is a very powerful build if you can do it without taking any damage. 12 Hatch is not a good build if you have another zerg opponent. If you share the 11 / 12 positions with an ally this is a good macro build, and a good build if you're going fast expansion. Fast expansion is generally a bad idea on BGH unless you have another zerg going 9 pool, your opponents do not scout, or you share the 11/12 positions or 6/7 positions with your ally.
In most games players open with 2 to 3 hatch lings with speed until something happens that is reason to stop making lings. If the other team has a good enough defense that make zerglings useless or you kill one, or the map is in solid control by your allies then you can stop making lings and start switching to mutas or hydras. Generally speaking in the early game, if you can make a drone after each building it is ideal, sometimes situations do not allow this.When you forsee the death or crippling of an opponent player, this is the time to start making drones and mining gas again. Antares autotune audacity plugin. Do not do this prematurely at the expense of allowing the opponent to live.Start mining gas, building drones and teching to mutas as soon as he's knocked out.
If you're coming back from a low economy ling build or got crippled by an attack, you will want to start mining gas and teching only after you can afford to make drones and overlords non-stop off 2-3 hatcheries.
In most cases you can just keep massing mutas until the enemies get a hard counter for it (sair or irradiate). Mass mutas are extremely powerful when microed properly, do not forget to get air upgrades. +1 attack is generally the upgrade of choice. If you face sairs or goliaths, then get +1 armor. Meanwhile spend your excess minerals on more workers, expos, hatcheries and later when you are fully drone saturated or ready to make an attack start making lings. You'll also want to continue planning for the next stage of the game by getting ground upgrades melee, and carapace. Sometimes if you have to switch to hydras due to sairs, get the third evolution chamber for that as well. Take as many expos as you can.
Adrenal glands is a very important upgrade, get it as soon as your hive finishes. Overlord speed is also very useful, but it can be delayed until after hive if you're not having difficulty with invisible units. Once you have hive ultralisks, zerglings and defilers are the most powerful late game combination. Guardians and Devourers are excellent choices too if you have numerous expansions and face turtled opponents.Drops are also very powerful if the middle is controlled and you have an adjacent enemy. Swarm drops are also very powerful.
Tips 'n Tricks[edit]
- For some bases fast expanding or even later expanding is extremely difficult due to the large choke (6) or the normal hatchery placement is tankable (pretty much every other natural). You can overcome this by just hatching next to the gas but out of tank range. This is particularly useful @ 6 o'clock where you can place your 2nd hatch and get 3 gasses up and sunkens in a much safer position. This is also useful if your expo gets taken down in the mid-game by tanks, you can just hatch next to the gas and out of range of tanks and get the 3rd gas.
- You can move your larva to the left side of your hatch by selecting another non-larva unit in the same box as the larva and pressing stop or 'S'. This is useful to make drones pop closer to minerals and also for placing buildings that are obstructed by larva.