General advices Protoss strategies

General advices

This page is an advice sources for average-skilled money map players. You probably know a lot of this already, but try to find the 1% of new infos that will hopefully help you to become a little better than the god you already are. It's the first version, i will try to get more screenshots/pictures in the futur. I also plan to add a "From LT to money map : how to become good on noob maps after beeing expert on expert maps ;)". If you dont agree about something or if you have some comments, feel free to mail-flame me. Or spam me (superpenguin) on battlenet, @europe every weekend.


The classic "be a good boy" advices

You are on battle.net. it means behind each aka there is a real player, it's an humman. it means that :

- You must behave correcly. Imagine : you take a cannon rush, and just after it the enemys go for you at 3vs1 and your allys doesnt help because they dont know how to ally, but just after you countered the attack with reavers and killed everyone nexus, one of your ally BS you with mass carrier. In this situation, 90% of the player will say "f**k you stupid haxor n00bs you are a [other cencored words here]". But what's the point ? it will not give you anything except looking as a rude player. Cannon rush is a tactic, if your enemy win with it, he isnt more noob than you. You just have to get better to know how to handle it properly. 3vs1 rush is a tactic also, you just entered a "no rules games" you have to accept that. In general, you can have your ally to help or to counter them. Also you can ask about AE if you thing the game wasnt fair, but it's just numbers, dont take them too seriously. And dont insist repeating 50 time "ally end" like a big spammer, dont run with your buildings all over the map when there isnt any chance.

- About hacking : dont think every player that beat you does maphack. You can ask about it but dont be too offencive. Last week i was accused of hacking by someone that is probably a decent player, with the following "evidence" : i attacked with 3 zealots without scouting. And from his point of view, that was true, but he wasnt knowing that i scouted EVERYWHERE (the 6 other positions) with a probe and he wasnt there. My so great brain dediuced that if he wasnt where he wasnt, was probably where he was ;) On an other game, i detected an incoming drop because i had a drone outside of my base ready to do a secondary base. If you suspect someone to hack, DO check the replay, and if there is very very obvious psyonic abilitys involved in your enemy strat, then you can do what you want, including sending the replay to blizard until they transfer it to the trash box, or using voodoo to curse his computer, basicaly both will be equaly efficient. I think maphack is involved in about 10% of the random fastest map players, but 9 of this 10% play so bad that it's hard to say if they know how to look at the minimap. If you think that 50% of the games are filled with hackers, then it's probably because you play in a wrong or to risky way.

- You will see players not acting like i advice. They will insult you for any reason they can invent and have all the nasty behaviour you can imagine. The bad way to act is to insult them back, they usualy just want to be provocating, and they just feed themself with your insults. The good way to face it is : ask them how old they are (usualy the answer is 10, so there is absolutely nothing to worry about), ignore them, say "lol". If you are BSed by an ally and you thing there is absolutely no chance to win, destroy yourself :) it will take out all the fun of the other guy who was willing to do it himself :)

On a different topic. Dont act too much stats depending. If a player with 25-25-0 in stats join the "only expert" game you made, his stats are not the prof of him beeing a noob. Ask him when did he started starcraft, how many hours/days he plays... it will be a lot more meaingfull. The only case where you can ban directly like a mad guy is the obvious freedisc player with 146-2-67 or someting like that. But explain yourself, just saying "bye freedisc player" is enough in my opinion. Concider the number of games played more important that the win %... Someone with 1500-900-40 is probably a lot better than someone with 180-30-5. My comment about winbots : it's the most pathetic thing i can think about. Blizard have reset a lot of account and that's a good point. But a lot of winbot users are stupid enough to use them again : it's like "they deleted my account so i start an other one with 2x the numbers of win of the old one, it's so funny this way". As a computer science student, i know for sure it would be very obvious to detect the basic winbot : every game created is recorded on the server, and especialy for ladders, there is more info like the player account used, how many units builds and attacked... I hear some peoples who claim "it's impossible to sort the winbots from the early-quit or missed games. But a game with both player building 0 units, one quiting just after the 2 minutes, like more than 100 times / hour ? sure it must be a fully legit player ;) My best wish would be that blizard continusely put on their scripts to parse the log files, and after every hour, broadcast a message in every channel with "the following players have been CD KEY & IP banned for using hack programs : < list of +100 names >. After a few days battle.net would be a better place.

Play and REplay

You will never find anything more usefull than replay. Sometime it's fun to have cool replay of you playing and winning easy a 2vs1 to show your friends how good you are, but it's not the best one to improve yourself. It will help them maybe, but it will not help you. In starcraft, anything that kill you make you stronger :) So, when you die vs good players, save it ! You will probably learn more in the replay than in the play.

Take also a look of other players replays. Unfortunately it's hard to find "fastest possible map" replays on the world wild web ;) but not that hard in fact you just have to clic on the link :)

Static / Reactive gaming

In this part i will introduce the 2 main types of technical advices i can give about money maps : the static and the reactive gaming. It's not all white or all black, some advices are in between.

Static means things that will allways stay true from one game to an other. It's often obvious things like "build a lot of probes, have a good production rate with enough building to spend your money in units and upgrades" and about unit balance knowledge like : "1 ultralisk will kill 1 zerglin" (even if the ling is played by a micro god ;) It also includes all classic strats like "make 24 hydras in 6 mins" or "drop them with reavers after 5 mins". When there is something you know even before the game start, i will call it static. It doesnt mean that it cant be affected by how the game is run. For example, sometime your drop will fail because your enemy has good defence, sometime it will work. But in all cases, it's the same drop, you did the same build to make it, the tactic is the same. You do that mechanicaly, once you decided what you will do, it doesnt involve your judgement, only the result will be affected by your oponent choices, therefore judgement, therefore, reactive gaming. All money map players that are just above the newbie level are good in general at the macro part of static gaming. You can play just by building 20 gates and sending zealots out of them in 100% of your games, you can be sure to win somme. After days, you can tweak your build order to get the best possible number of zealots in 6 mins and have a > 50% win ratio with just that. If you introduice a point where you will switch partialy to dragons, your win % can be as high as 80% in all your 2vs2 if you play with a friend that have the same static gaming knowledge, But i will still concider that a little noob in some way. I still know some players with more than 500 games that play only this way. Maybe they try to evolve a little every 100 game, like if they have been muta-rushed 100 times, they will build cannons near the nexus every time. But it's still very static, what you change in the next game from the past ones is in your general knowledge, and not If you are satisfy with that you are not ready to read this page. By reading this page, i assume that you have basic to good knowledge of static gaming, and that you want to investigate about reactive gaming.

Using scouting to make your mind about what to do, anticipating on the enemy tactic, what and when to micro to be more efficient, playing as a team, when and where to attack, retreat, defend, with what units to counter your enemy units, all of that is what i will call reactive gaming. Anything that require your brain is part of it. It change from game to game, it's dynamic, it explain why you can do 10 different games vs the same person with the same races, it's like chess. It require your own experience of the game, but i hope this page will help you to find the reactive power that miss to a lot of players on money map. "No rush games" will suppress the most part of the reactive gaming that's why i find them somewhat borring. Durring 20 min it's pure static : you build your base, there is no "games event", no "player interaction", neither between your allys or your enemys. After the time, you think you can experience a good reactive gaming fun ? no, in fact... After 20 min you send your units to kill the enemy and the enemy send his units to kill you. It's very very predictable, i'm tolerant with everything, but i think most low players dont like money map because the reactive gaming is more hidden than on LT, especialy because a lot of $$$ players act like in "no rush game" even in "no rulz games", thinking skills only rely in static gaming. You can be an static gaming expert in protoss in just 100 games. But you will definitely lake reactive gaming experiance if you have less than 500 games (or maybe even more). Playing reactivly is the best way to compet with the reactive skills of your opponent (or to have an easy win ;)

Even if you play $$$ maps, you can get some advices, either static or dynamic from LT or hunters player. Psy storm kill hydras nicely. It's true on LT, it's the same on $$$ maps, even if you will see them less often in $$$ because a lot of ppls neglect reactive gaming, like i said. Going to straight to mass carrier will get you dead 90% of the time vs experienced players, more than true on LT, true on $$$. Dont mass rines vs a terran that mass tank :) Spending all your money will be more usefull than to collect it... All of theses are example that some advices are applicable to both types of maps.

Money map static-macro topics

It's probably the most well know topic for the average money map player. The more units you have, the easyer the fight will be (not 100% true, but let's assume that a player with say, 20 zealots can kill a player with 5 zealots)... To produce, you need production building :) but not empty ones :) If you have 12 gates and no units, in that time the enemy can attack with 15 zealots. Units that comme out 1 by 1 out of the buildings will not survive too long to an invading army.

So build the correct amount of building to fill them correctly with 1 unit in each. But do not queuee too many of them... putting 5 zealots in 1 gate will take more time than to build 3 gates and put 2 in each.

Units need money, and money maps are not called money maps for nothing :) it mean you can have an huge quantity of ressource in a short time, but only if you take it. That's true on LT and that's also true in the $$$ map world : build probes/scv all the time. It's up to you if you decide to double nexus and when to do it, but it sacrify your early offencive possibilitys, and make you a lot more vulnerable to rushs. I dont talk about double CC with terran, because it's rather suicidal vs good player when done straight at the start (terran have a weak start enough, it's stupid to make them even more rush-vulnerable). In XvsX, the bigger is X, the less you should go for double / triple nex directly, especialy if your allys have weak races, or if you enemys has strong ones. In general, i would say that if you force your opponent to mass def, it should be the right time to let you double nexus if you didnt already. Or after a fight, if you have a large excess of mineral and you feel the game will be long. In 1vs1 especialy, take in account your enemy nexus number. Either your one is higher (in the limit of 3, after there isnt much difference) and you can continue to play in a mass unit way, try to tech about as much as him but dont play to risky, either you have less nexus than him, it means you will have to hurt him in some way before he can fully take the advantage of it (unit rush, cannon rush, drop...) And of course spend your money but as it's not a noob sc tutorial, i even dont need to say it :)

Now that you are a master in the way of how you build units, be sure to know what units you will build. In general, the more players are in the games, the more you have to build early (except in FFA). If you intend to mass carrier in 4vs4, it's even worse than in 1vs1 because it will be 3vs4 in early game on the battle ground. It will end up with : (a) your allys all died and you play a 1vs4 ;) (b) your ally didnt died but the enemys broke into your empty base before you had time to build them, and now it's 3vs4.

You have 12 lings and your enemy have 10... but the enemy win the battle without problems... wtf? This is called upgrades. when it comes to mid-game, the upgrades make a lot of difference. But it doesnt mean an upgrading player will win all the game vs the stupid player that are not upgrading. Especialy in PvP, look at this situation : the 1st player build a double nexus, 4 gates, harvest gaz from 2 extractors, 3 forge, and build 1 cyber core, and start all upgrades at this time. Out of his 4 gates, he made 14 zealots, and with his already evolved base, he now concentrate on building more gates. Now the other player make 8 gates early, and got around 30 zealots from them, after that he start just 1 extractor, 1 forge and prepare himself for the core because he is not completely stupid :) If i ask you the question : which player is the best, i bet you will say : "the 1st one, the 1st one". but now imagine : the 2nd player have read the "scouting" section of this webpage, guess who will win ? Even if the 1st player made a few cannons it will not help him that much, and i hope all will agree to say that it's not the best thing to do to replace the 14 zealots and 4 gates with 10 cannons and 2 gates.

An other usefull little advice : dont queeue to many units in the building list in early game, and if you see a gate with zealots and an other one with none, you should cancel the 2 last zealots of the full one to put one in the last. If you want to go offencive, you can queeue a little as you will probably be busy fighting, but try to have enough of multi-tasking, especialy to keep runing the probe production. And when you want to build seriously (to put an end to the ressources excess), do it with a lot of probes/scvs/drones. just take 3 or more free probes, bring them on the side of the building place, and start to use building key + click like as fast as a stimed marine ;)

The holly main CC/Nexus/Hatch

Depending on the map version and the game progress, loosing it vary from annoying to fatal. The things that rediuce the harm :
- You have a lot of money left (it probably means you played bad If you didnt spended it when in early game but, at last you can continue to play now :)
- You have a double nexus already done earlyer and a lot of probes
- The enemy suicided 60 mutas on it and has absolutely nothing to defend against your huge army that is countering him :)
- You have 3 allys ready to own the game. Sometime things dont rely on you alone and the game can last longer than you think.

So dont think if you can loose or kill someone else nexus that the game is over. A lot of protos fan are in a nexus zealots-rush frenzy when they enter an enemy base. Theres a lot of situations wich make this inaproppriate : in 90% of the time it's better to kill the probes first, especialy vs terran because they repair at an insain speed. With melle units, the fact of moving the probes in their way, even attacking with them can slow down the nexus destruction. Some cases where you shoudnt nexus rush : if you can kill evrything in the base :), if you think you will not have time to finish it before renforcement arrives, if he has lots of damage dealing units (esp. lings, vultures...) An other technic is to use splash damage units to kill probes (firebats, reavers, tanks, archons) or magic effects (iradiate on SCV and drones, psy storm).

Scouting

Use your probes and units to scout. I will talk here about the enemy base scouting and the map control scouting. While i will classify the action of scouting in the static gaming, the data you get is gold to have a good reactive play. The enemy will probably not send you a message like "i do mass carrier" but there is ways to detect that and to counter that. The screen is your "peronnal input device" : it give you info. with the info you get, you output some commands (it sounds reversed but you have to think that the player is you, not your computer). The more you see in the screen, the better your output will be, because you will compute more complete data.

In general, the best time to send your scout worker is after you build your first bulding. Use the shift key to queuee all moves orders to each possible starting point. In 1vs1 it's sometime usefull to send 2 workers in oposit directions, especialy if you plan to rush or if you dont know your opponent rush. Dont say "i dont want to be noticed so i will not scout". Dont say either "i will not attack before 10 mins so i dont scout". If you see your opponent mass defence like a mad with 94309403 photons or suken, concider yourself happy, the enemy is also building your defence : these cannons means he have less units and that you can concentrate on teching, double nexus or CC and increasing production without the fear to be rushed too hard. Especialy prepare anti cannons units (tanks, guardians, reavers+gon). But dont let him to much time, because if all you have is 50 guardians to kill his 20 carriers, it will become quite hard. If you see he has low defence and low units because he deploy production building or tech a lot, it's probably the right time to attack.

By scouting him you can guess what units he will build or he has. Look at his production building : 8 baracks after 5 min of game means you can except some marines :) 1 gate and 2 cyber core, you can prepare yourself for carriers. Also have a look at the ammount of gaz he harvest. A zerg that harvest a lot of gaz in early game and send you mostly lings can go muta a little latter. If you see a protoss with a lot of gaz and mass zealots without dragons, he can become a reaver-drop master. also just 1 early gaz may be a sign of fast zealot upgrade rush.

Most player will already know when they will attack when they just start the game. Basicaly, it's "i will attack when i will be ready". But they can do better :) The best time to attack is not only when you are ready, but also when the enemy is not. To do that you must be ready the most time you can, and you must scout ! take 4 things in account when you plan an attack on the enemy base : his defence, his units, his production rate and his upgrades. If he has a good combo of all of that, it will be hard. Compare the production rate to yours : if he have x2 the number of gates you have, you better hurry to fix that with your army :) the problem is if you have no army... dont attack a zerg with 6 zealots if he have 1 suken, 4 lings and 6 hatch, because you can be sure he will morph 18 lings more in a few seconds. Just wait he make the mistake to start 2 more hatch while you are getting 6 more zealots :)

Scouting doesnt mean you only have to watch where your enemy is, but also where your enemy will be. You can keep one small unit near his exit to be aware when he comes out. If you kill one player in a XvsX game with X>1 be sure he will not rebuild while you take care of the other ones, take all empty positions before he take them and mass def there. At mid and end game, it can show you a drop is comming or maybe mass air units if you put a few things around his base. Keep an eye on the map all the time. Even if you are not moving a lot around it in early game, keep an eye on the mini-map and send all scouting (maybe cannon rushing ?) probes to hell. Just put 1 of your own probe on it until it goes away of your base.

In all cases, either on money or non money, you need to know what your enemy is doing to react correctly.

Micro-management

It's not because it's money map that all you have to do is to use the attack move to win a fight with equal units. It helps a lot in early game for small number of combat units, and it still help with end game because magic units with area effect can get you a lot stronger. Of course you should be an "attack move fan" already if you read this, but it goes further than this. Read all non-money map tutorials about that, they will explain it better than me.

Basicly, i will just say there is 2 types of micro-management : doing clasic actions with units in a better way. I will take one example about this, and it's a quite common situation. You send 24 lings from your base to kill 10 marines in the enemy one, that is just next to you. if you just send from your base to his one, it will probably make a line of lings comming 1 by 1 on the marines, all getting stuck on 1 side of the path, because they take badly the curve from your base to the enemy one.

I found two solutions to reduce the problem. The first one is to group the units in middle of the map and then to attack. The second (better than the first one when you are sending less than 3 groups in my opinnion) is to send your units normaly and when they enter the path, to catch the first group with selection, move him close to the oposite side of the path, and wait for the other group to arrive. When the 2nd group is there, send the first one, and both of them will arrive on the enemy at the same time, increasing the chance to destroy them. Picture of the action follow (lings in red, marines in blue, and mouse actions in green) a draft picture about bad and good ling micro

Some other unit management can be to retreat, especialy in early game... If you think you will loose some units in a fight, most of the time it only take 2 clic to save them ! dont be stupid, it's not because you can make a virtualy infinit number of units that you can suicide them without thinking. When you rush a protoss and you see 30 cannon, do you think your 12 hydra are enough ? of course you should wait to have a bigger amount with more upgrades. So, you will probably loose 1 or 2 in the contact before you can evaluate the number of cannons but when you have good reasons to think you will loose a fight, avoid to fight :) Especialy in early game. Especialy vs static defence. And also think that when you are in your own base, you automatacly get a "defencive bonus" because your production will get you a few more units durring the travel time. And think about probes can be used defencively to some extent, at last in early game.

Now about magic and special abilitys. If you never used templars in PvZ games, then you are not a real protoss player. Just because it's a money map doesnt mean that magic is useless... I would say it's the opposit, there is more often big groups of units that comme from a predictable way, so area spells works great. And just because you can produce milions of hydra when you fight a terran with 20 BC doesnt mean Dark Swarm is useless... 12 invincibles hydras can hurt more than 50 that got killed before they can even shoot the BC. But take care of what you are doing, there is good micro, but there is also bad micro... Did you ever casted a DS to protect your hyrdas from carriers and saw 30 zealots comming right after that ? Did you ever retreated with an army of zealots, dragons, reavers and templar, then suddenly you ask yourself "where o where thoses 5 reavers has gone ?" while the zerg army is now taking care of slow unprotected templars.

APM

I presented in the previous section the importance to choose what to build, attacking at the right moment, using his units correctly... but of course i have to give a few words about the so overlooked APM indicator. For thoses who dont know already, APM : "action per minutes" is the number of starcraft action you do in a game. A cool program to analyse that is published at http://www.bwchart.com.

Some novice players think this is a direct mesure of how good a player is. A globaly accepted theory is : clicking fast will not automaticaly get you better, but it will give you the posibility to do more things. I am often beatten by player with a superiour or inferiour APM, of course the average of high APM players are often better than players with lower. For money maps, protoss require at least 80 to be usefull, zerg 60 and guessing i'm not good enough with terran i think 90 should be needed to play them correctly. But i have seen seen some 65 apm protos players, and it's like "everything they do is perfect", so they play correctly anyway. On the other hand, i saw some zerg with 130 that was move clic addict. Like "i was a bird in my previous life, so my right hand do some strange compulsive moves in the hope it will get me to fly". In this case, the number of clic doesnt make any difference.

Team play

Starcraft is MULTI player, and multi doesnt mean 2 for every game you play. If you are with your ally, you musnt be limited to the "i build my base, then i build my army, then i send all i have to a random place on the map. Team play is more important in fasted possible map than in LT. Random advices follow :

Be creative

If your enemy know exactly that you do the same tactic in evrey game you play, and you allways take the same race, it will be easyer to find a way to counter that. And you are less likely to improve your reactive gaming style if you dont repeat your games too much.

Try to inovate sometime find the units you underestimate the most, and give them a 2nd chance especialy when playing vs a less skilled player, you can have fun without risking too much (vultures, ghosts, defilers, templar, queens)... Try the spells you dont cast too often, new rushing startegies, new unit combos, new building style, cheesy techniques, or copy the tactic of some opponent you played before... You will maybe discover new things that you can now train in harder games. I realy want to try mass infested terran drop + dark swarm but i didnt had the chance by now.

Oh, and dont play 100% of the time with your friends, try to get your way alone, or in team with random ppls, it change a little. And play vs your own friend if they accept, no problem if they are just a little better or worse than you, it will help you to learn his playing style, and you will be better when you will be back on the same team. I learned a lot from TvZ and ZvT training, just doing about 6 games in a row in 1vs1 with a friend. Just dont take the result to seriously. A few games doesnt say who is the best. At last you can be sure to have a real oponent.



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