Starcraft Strategies

I wrote this in high school when I was obsessed with the phenomenal computer game Starcraft. I started converting it to a webpage as I was applying to Blizzard for a job. I ultimately decided against sharing this page with blizzard, but I went through all the effort of writing it so I thought I would at least share it.

Bare with me here. This was originally written for my eyes only so not everything is cited properly. One might argue that none of it is cited properly.

  1. Unit Properties
    1. Protoss
    2. Zerg
    3. Terran
    4. All Species
  2. The Art of War
  3. Unconventional Tactics
  4. In Depth Tactics
    1. Protoss
    2. Zerg
    3. Terran
  5. Web Resources
  6. Untested Ideas
  7. Map Specific Strategies
    1. Unlimited Resource Maps
    2. Limited Resource Maps
  8. Team Tactics
  9. Experiences I can learn from

Notes on unit properties and combos sorted by species.

Protoss

  • The protoss zealot rush is powerful but 2 nexi just slow it down. Use 1 nexus and pump zealots with 3 gateways. Consider a massive upgraded zealot drop as a midgame tactic.

  • Corsairs concentrating their fire level any number of mutalisks because corsairs have splash damage. Use them in conjunction with the massive reavers built up for the surgical strike. Also use arbiters, templar, and massive dragoons for the final push.

  • Stasis dragoons can plug a chokepoint. There is rarely a wrong time to use stasis. It rules and should always be available.

  • Don’t know where to put pylon? Hint: one cannon space from your border.

  • Observers rule. Use them and set them to patrol so they cover more ground and are harder to find. Probe for weak points and find enemy battle groups before they attack.

  • Corsairs with disruption web combined with dragoons and reavers are an awesome force. Also consider casting disruption web on the Terran choke point and then running your dark templar past to kill the com/sat station.

  • Protoss can box an opponent in as easily as the Terrans can with reavers, dragoons, and shield batteries (photon cannons too of course).

  • Ghosts can’t launch nukes in stasis.

  • Late in performing a templar drop? Did your opponent already set up defenses? No problem, bring in a few corsairs clear a path with disruption web and then give him psionic storm right in the minerals! Or use hallucination to make a few dummy shuttles.

  • Fact: unless otherwise ordered units automatically attack the enemy units with the highest damage. Fact: archons have the highest Protoss damage, but they are expensive. Hallucination, however, is relatively cheap. Hallucinated archons can draw fire from enemy units while your real units move in and do damage.

  • It might be a good idea to keep a battery cluster within your base or near it protected with cannons. Four batteries are relatively cheap and well worth it if they can recharge a large number of your forces. Try to dance dragoons out of combat, recharge them, and bring them back. Or retreat the entire force back and fight from the plentiful regenerative force of the shield batts.

  • Cannons are expensive but sometimes they do hold distinct advantages over zealots. They can be laid down rapidly by a single probe, they have great range, are tough in groups, keep out rushers and droppers, and they slow down an attacking force so that reinforcements can hopefully be brought in.

  • It’s true; a shuttle can pick up a reaver immediately after it fires. Beware, however, the reaver still suffers a short drop lag before it fires. Dark Archon mind control ability is useful especially if it looks like the resources are getting thin. Control arbiters, defilers, battle cruisers, drops, whatever. May want to use feedback on these if it is during a difficult battle but if you catch one by itself snatch it up.
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Zerg

  • Steroids for your harvesting: Build nine drones, start an overlord and a vespene extractor, now with 8/9 food, make another drone then cancel the extractor and recover that drone. Voila 10/9 food.

  • Brood war dark swarm blocks ranged attacks. Use lurkers (which aren’t considered ranged) under a dark swarm vs. Terran. They can also be used defensively against the zerg but not offensively because sunken colonies are “melee”.

  • If the Zerg go air, make sure they have at least 12 devourers. Mutalisks lack the raw firepower.

  • Mutalisks used as independent strike groups to evade psionic storm will never work. It fractures their already weak firepower and cannons chew them up. However, if you can quickly get a spire (Build order: Pool, Lair, Spire.) and rush out a bunch of mutalisks you will have an extremely effective early game harassment tool. Using them to sneak behind minerals almost always works, but do not engage in any fights unless you can easily win. Instead look for holes in the air defense to hit buildings or run across defense line to cripple mineral operation. Remember that Zerg units heal. Pull them out if a battle goes south. Also, make some colonies for defense and watch out for corsairs.

  • Marine Rush problem, take a hint, use lurkers and sunken colonies. M+Ms will chew up the muta rush.

  • Make a couple colonies to cover the rush then straight to lurkers expand and probably hit Terran.

  • If the game is Zerg vs. Zerg try offensive nydus canals.

  • Use patrolling scourge to prevent drops. Also use them to pop annoying protoss observers. Keep a sufficient stock of scourge around when combating the protoss. Their uses are numerous.

  • Hide lings well away from the main defense and leave them. That way you can ambush siege tanks without them going into siege mode. Remember, even 12-24 zerglings are expendable.

  • The Zerg have vicious speed, diversity, and flexibility. They have lurker drops, multiple angle guardian attacks, hydras everywhere, ultra rushes, defiler cloud, and the defiler/ling combo.

  • Zerg rule at being unconventional. Fact: Infested Terrans can burrow, nydus canals can be built on enemy creep for a surprise assault, plague causes up to 295 damage.

  • Plague: Up to 295 damage this spell rocks versus anybody but is especially detrimental to the protoss because it bypasses there shields and hurts the armor they can't heal. Also use it for harassment, offense, and especially defense. It will put an attacking force in a tight spot. Will the zerg or terran commander retreat and repair/heal or press on and hope to win despite damage? Protoss units will take shield and armor damage simultaneously.

  • Plague does not stack. Multiple plague castings reset the degeneration they don’t compound the degeneration.

  • When in doubt make hydras.

  • Burrowed ling scouts and defiler annoyances are highly underused.

  • Bury lurkers in unpredictable but high traffic areas, at a chokepoint if possible or layered if not possible. Put an overlord on wide patrol in case of observers.

  • Burrow zerg units one on top of the other. It looks like 3 hydralisks, OOPS it’s 3 dozen. This works well with lurkers. Draw back is psionic storm will kill them all.

  • Check to see if protoss is teching up to corsairs. If so, go all out on zerglings and rush him with 2-3 dozen. Just remember not to get bogged down in his chokepoint. Run past it if you have to. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to spread out you overlords all over the map without any two in sight of each other. Keep a few in the base on the Hold command in case of dark templar.

  • Dark swarm does not protect buildings at all.

  • Versus protoss use plague.

  • Dark Swarm: Zerg have a powerful advantage over terrans with dark swarm. Terrans have ONLY two melee units, firebats and mines. If they have no firebats rule them with zerglings, if they do then use lurkers.

  • Dark swarm with lurkers makes a good defense against zerg units. Punish the zerg commander who sends only hydralisks and zerglings against you.
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Terran

  • Cloak a ghost or two before putting him in a shuttle and he will come out cloaked.

  • Keep a few SCVs at the choke point always to repair during an attack.

  • A hovering building can be used like a drawbridge at the Terran choke point.

  • Ghosts can’t launch nukes in stasis.

  • Put Spider Mines on the spots where a nexus would naturally go.

  • Terran can overwhelm an opponent with multiple simultaneous nukes.

  • When nuking the choke point put an engineering bay over top of the ghost. It isn’t foolproof protection but it might confuse your enemy long enough for the nuke to fall. Put a tank near the ghost and enemy units will automatically target the higher damage unit.

  • Bogged down by psionic storm? Fear not! ComSat his base while positioning 2 fully charged science vessels outside it. When ComSat finds the templar (and/or arbiters) have the vessels shield each other and then rush in and hit them with EMP!

  • If your sieges aren’t working out it isn’t because you have too few tanks. It’s probably because you have two few marines. Try 48 marines, 12 medics and perhaps 4 tanks. If cash is tight 36 marines, 8 medics, and one or two tanks work well. Do not forget to build turrets, use stimpacks, and have comsat ready. This works on nearly all map types. If you are sieging later in the game add fully upgraded ghosts to the mix. They cloak, so they scout, they lockdown, and in a pinch, they nuke. Do not do this late in the game if you are fighting protoss ground units.

  • Use science vessels to shield tanks during attacks and defense. Also, two shielded tanks can clog a chokepoint nicely.

  • Mines don’t damage friendlies and they don’t chain react when shot.

  • It may be a good idea to keep four firebats around at all times considering the weak terran melee.
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Universally Applicable

  • Relax and have fun. If you win great, if not just record the battle and see what happened.

  • The counter to a zergling rush is clear. Get up defenses of some kind as quick as possible but use your workers to counterattack if necessary. Then produce more fighting units while your workers occupy his zerglings.

  • The full amount of resources is reclaimed for an aborted upgrade.

  • Use the double layer defense like the guy that fought me to a stalemate. For protoss put a couple cannons to the front and sides of a couple templar. For zerg use burrowed hydras and lurkers with overlords for scouting. For terran use a small tank, bunker, turret, mine combo with maybe two of each.

  • A sure fire way to beat computer opponents: Run in with a drone, attack their nexus once then run out. All the enraged workers will chase you.

  • Pull out some minor disruption and mass a "game finisher." Of course it’s rarely that simple.

  • Defensive structures automatically target the unit with the highest damage. Templar can just walk through sunken colonies if the colonies are busy with dragoons. This also applies to the other species.

  • The enemy has no idea that the huge force he destroyed is all you had.

  • Balance surprise and preparation. Sometimes you must sacrifice your own preparation in order to surprise your opponent. It is not always a mistake to be impulsive and forsake future gains for a chance at catching your opponent off guard. The ability to produce powerful weapons is no match for lesser weapons shooting at you right now.

  • Priority: aggression and risk taking are key to victory. A natural and vital component of these is speed. Spread and do it quick. Don't worry about defense just respond to threats.

  • Secondary: Intelligence and forewarning are just barely secondary in importance. What is often forgotten here is that these things though they are intangible are worth resources and usually a significant amount. Losing a scout at a mineral patch is well worth the knowledge that the enemy has recently moved to that mineral patch. Advance outposts to stall an enemy and forewarn of attack are enormously valuable and can usually be paid for with the blood of an opponent facing your rallied and ready troops. Even suicide recon missions can be very practical when used correctly.
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Words of Wisdom

Most of the following are quotes from Sun Tzu's The Art of War. The rest I took off someone's webpage which I have not cited.

Your battleground is not to be known, for when it cannot be known, the enemy makes many guard outposts, and since multiple outposts are established, you only have to do battle with small squads.

My translation: Do everything in your power to kill scouts in the form of mines, burrowed units, cloakers, overlords, and observors.

So when the front is prepared, the rear is lacking, and when the rear is prepared the front is lacking. Preparedness on the left means lacks on the right, preparedness on the right means lack on the left. Preparedness everywhere means lack everywhere.

My translation: Instead of a translation I'd like to point out that with a tactic that I call the Defensive Blitzkrieg a large border can be almost completely defended without the defender fracturing his forces. The trick is to position scouts all along the border so that the main centralized force can strike out against the main thrust of an aggressor. The danger here is illustrated by the previous quote.

These kinds of discussions suck. Why? There are preferences. BOTH of those have their own pros and cons, and you can't become a computer and decide what you are going to do before you evaluate the decision. That's what separates Humans and AI, ya know? - Seeka

This isn't from the Art of War. The moral is: Don't take advice on this game whole-heartedly. There's more merit in whatever works for you than someone quoting tips!

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Unconventional Tactics

The following two tactics make use of the ability to ally with an oponent player. Sadly I didn't invent these two tactics, but they aren't cited properly.

  1. Serve up some ally lurker surprise (mines can be used too). First, create a thick minefield or lurker patch in a location that is frequently trodden but easily overlooked. People expect burrowed units at their opponent’s chokepoint. Instead put the minefield or lurker garden just outside your opponent’s chokepoint or in the direct center of the map. Next ally with your opponents and keep your head up with some good reconnaissance. When the attack comes “de-ally” just as his army moves into the danger zone and watch the fire works go up.

  2. "The whites of their eyes" Terrans usually probe the range of your units while bringing in or before bringing in their siege tanks. Either way trick them into moving in too close with the ally command then de-ally when it is too late for them to retreat. If they scout with individual marines manually target them with your units.
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In Depth Tactics

Zerg

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General map of zerg strategy: Drone probe, sunken chokepoint, muta rush, burrowed hydra/ling sight and defense (Zerglings are ever so expendable), Weakness: m+ms, Solution lurkers and sunken colonies, make sure to spread burrowed units and put them in unlikely spots, try to keep oveys around the burrows to prevent them from being ambushed by observers, remember oveys are expendable but don't have to be lost they absorb some damage and heal, this is important to remember, all zerg units heal, try to pull almost dead units out of action and reuse them later, put oveys on the islands, intell is worth 100 minerals per patch, containment is the goal, also try to mine out multiple spots quickly this is relatively inexpensive for the zerg and there are three options if attacked without defense, 1 retreat out the drones, 2 burrow drones and wait for backup, or 3 hastily harvest till killed.

(Zerglings produced in two minutes!) For the quickest zergling rush, send out the first overlord for scouting. Then build drones till the “food meter” reads 7. Then wait until you have the 200 minerals and build a Spawning Pool. Be ready to build the instant you have enough resources. Next build a drone and send it to scout another site (if your opponent is zerg use this drone to build a creep colony on his creep, you may want to send one or two more drones to do the same once the zerglings are produced, just be careful of drying up your resources this way). Then make your second overlord. This overlord and the pool should finish at almost the same time. Immediately produce three pairs of zerglings. Before they finish rally point them to a position past the ramp (assuming temple). By the time they reach that spot you should have found the enemy or know where he is by process of elimination. Before these 6 are done you need to decide whether to produce more zerglings or get more drones or whatever. If you’ve already started down this path, more zerglings is recommended. Send the zerglings to the enemy and establish a rally point within his base. First kill any enemy units (if facing zealots dance your zerglings by cycling them out of action once they are hit and then back in once the zealot selects a new target). After enemy units are dealt with destroy supply depots, pylons, or the spawning pool. If possible pick off harvesters one at a time. Just don’t attract their attention because a harvester counterattack will destroy your zerglings. If they do counterattack use your superior speed to evade them. It’s likely he didn’t send every worker so run from the counterattacking group then circle back in and kill any still harvesting. Keep up this harassment for as long as possible and try to produce drones at your own base (don’t forget to reset the rally point) to get a resource edge on your opponent. Retreat may eventually be necessary if he manages to produce more fighting units. Save your zerglings rather than throwing them away in this instance.

Zerg drop consists of 10+ Ultralisks w/ the extra skin upgrade accompanied by 8+ Hydras. This will tear up most Protoss mains late game that are lazily defended with Cannons and Templars which aren't that good at tearing down Ultras. The best part about this combo is that Ultralisks are just about the only unit in the game that don't get trashed by Carriers in 2 seconds which allows you plenty of time to level his base.

Variation on a theme. Hydralisk/Ultralisk combo. Its easy to execute and killer. Throw some ultralisks at the frontline they will sponge up damage. Use them to draw Storms and Siege hits while the Hydras come up a little later doing the real damage.

Zergling/Defiler – Dark Swarm, Plague, and Consume with a Swarm of Zerglings to take out ANYTHING in their way. This is a powerful and relatively cheap attack just watch out for Reavers, Archons, Templar, and firebats.

Nothing is more surprising than a herd of 60+ zerglings slamming into your defenses. Make sure they are highly upgraded especially speed and adrenal gland. Use this tactic to frighten, distract or deceive an opponent. They will be sure to beef up their ground defenses after this type of attack so use it once or twice hard and then change your focus most likely to air.

This will make the Zerg player vulnerable to attack for the first three minutes, but if he can survive he'll be able to dominate the rest of the game. Begin by morphing Drones until the control meter reads 9/9 and order them all to gather minerals. Pull a Drone off minerals and move it to an expansion. The instant you've gathered 300 minerals, begin a second Hatchery with the Drone at the expansion. Morph another Drone to replace it. As soon as it hatches, you should have 150 minerals. Use the new Drone to begin a Spawning Pool, and then morph an Overlord as soon as you can afford it. After this put up some sunken colonies quickly and begin building the units of your choice. Possibly this risky strategy: Upgrade the two hatcheries simultaneously so that the overlord speed and transports can be upgraded quickly. This is very dangerous because it leaves the base exposed but if you speed for lurkers then the enemy will be in trouble with out any cloak detection and you can execute a quick lurker drop.

Zerg must immediately get mutalisks for ambush and drop prevention. After probing/ambushing your opponents build up zerglings with burrow and station a large clump, preferably spread out, outside of your base to scout against siegers. Next get tons of hydralisks put them mainly in likely drop zones and to protect your overlords from corsairs and the like. Upgrade ground units and overlords as much as possible. Zerg should go for a massive drop finisher and should also secure any island minerals. These can be secured with hydras and a base or hidden burrowed zerglings until a base is ready for construction.

Protoss

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General map of protoss: Drone probe, if one opponent contain with dt, versus zerg add corsairs and finish him, it may be better to rush/contain with zealots. They are immensely powerful early on and remember that protoss shields recharge or can be recharged at a shield battery, dance the damaged ones out of combat and recycle them back in or hold onto them for later use, if their are many opponents and no terrans use dragoons and shield batts to clog up the chokepoint (terran tanks threaten dragoons), if many opponents no zerg go zealots with a shield batt (muta rush is a threat to zealots), with any of these strategies build a couple cannons for detection, if both terran and zerg pick an option, keep eyes open early on and possibly use two drone probes rush techers, go for a templar mineral drop with hallucination if needed, spread observors and look to contain enemies, secure own resources especially the cliffs/islands, diversify your spell casting units: arbiters with stasis and recall, templar with storm and hallucination, corsairs with web, dark templar with mind control and feedback and maybe maelstrom too if versus zerg.

Unstoppable Drop – Organize a cluster of units at least 6 reavers, but possibly 8 reavers with two templar in the middle and corsairs and observers in the air, then take an arbiter and make a bunch of hallucinations of it. Send the arbiter and hallucinations to the enemy base. Find a suitable sight and recall in the cluster of units. Reavers smash buildings, templar clobber any weak counterattacks your opponent musters and the corsairs assist with disruption web. After doing significant damage recall the entire group back to safety within your base with another arbiter.

Reaver Drop Quickly tech up to Reavers by pylon, gate, gas, core, robotics facility and support bay then get 2 reavers and a shuttle and go to opponents mineral line and drop the reavers to hopefully crush his economy.

Dark templar rush as containment. Build two gateways (and possibly two zealots for defense after all this doesn’t have to be executed super fast). Then tech up to a templar archive and build dark templar. Be sure to have enough gas. Go straight for workers because they are easy to kill and you can get past primary defenses (especially if its terran with a com/sat, destroy or sap out the comsat). If possible kill any detectors, if not retreat. Just be flexible with this. Continue to keep an eye out and prevent your opponent from expanding. At this time also build up your own forces, probably dragoons but build corsairs and more dark templar against zerg, and get zealots if your opponent is going for tanks. Containment is the key. Beyond this go for observers, a drop, templar and psionic storm.

Quickly tech up to templar with storm and hallucination then slap them in a shuttle, hallucinate it, and burn an enemy mineral field. Easy as 1,2,3.

Protoss love dragoons and tons of them. The only other really decent unit is the templar (dark templar can be useful too, specifically for cliff coverage). I'd stay defensive until templar arrive and then use shuttles and hallucination to get templar in position to lambaste enemy minerals. Final push will likely use hallucinated archons to draw fire and dragoons for the main push. If a Terran enemy is focusing on siege tanks or the zerg are heavily depending on dark swarm switch production over to zealots and possibly archons (real and hallucinated if resources permit it.).

Try this! What about zealots only and tons of them? Imagine it, three nexi and dozens of gateways pumping out zealots. They would be so dangerous. Perhaps this is mucking up this strategy but a forge would allow cannons for detection/air defense, and the addition of one vespene geyser would make possible upgrading the zealots, building shuttles for a drop, and upgrading zealot speed.

Terran

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This strategy mostly applies to limited maps. Sprinkle mines and bunkered marines, a couple of ghosts with lockdown and medics with flare around your base. Use Wraiths and leftover vultures as fire fighters. Use nukes as an offense, skirmish with the wraiths, and finish your opponent off with a tank push. Don’t forget a suicidal shielded fire bat drop somewhere in the middle.

This tactic is beauty in simplicity. It works best if a choke point can be blocked castle-gate-style early on. Block it and put maybe four marines near it, then tech up to tanks with artillery, get two and tech up to shuttles. Use the shuttles to drop the tanks somewhere they can do damage (usually cliffs above mineral patches). At the home base expand and build a massive army of tanks. Try to use leapfrog coverage to attack another opponent. Shuttles will provide extra mobility. Turrets provide anti-air cover and detection, while engineering bays can serve as beefed up spotters. Be sure to upgrade the tanks and keep pumping them out. Possibly use a science vessel or two to shield the lead tank(s) in case of fast melee units. This way friendly fire splash damage won’t hurt.If the enemy catches on to your strategy and attacks with melee units quickly switch production over to vultures with mines. Vultures can easily be produced from the factories you already have and require no rare vespene gas. (This tactic is particularly susceptible to the zerg mutalisk rush. Build three turrets around command center and huddle additional structures around these. If mutalisks come quickly station two SCVs at each turret to repair it. This should slow those pesky mutalisks. Then under cover of other turrets build more turrets!)

The Terran All Goliath strategy only worked once, but could it work again? The counters, I think, are dragoons from the Protoss and dark swarm from the Zerg. EMP vs. Protoss, and a combination of firebats and mines vs. Zerg might even the playing field enough to make this work. Just remember to dance and repair goliaths like mad.

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Web Resources

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Things to try

The following would be interesting experiements to perform.

  • Interesting note, the reaver can be picked up by a shuttle immediately after it fires. There is still a brief delay after it is dropped from the shuttle. Since defense units target unit with most damage could a drop-pickup with one reaver and then with another divert significant firepower from the frontline?

  • Do a Dt rush and if they have turrets/cannons keep Terrans or Protoss from expanding. This works because neither of these species have airborne detectors early on. Sap out a Terran’s com/sat station by running in with one dt and then another, repeat as necessary.

  • It is well known that rushers must first scout to find your base and nothing is more annoying (especially for the Zerg) than for a scout to stumble upon an undeveloped expansion. A player with brass balls might do well to “accidentally” share vision with his opponents for a moment early on. This will allow his enemies to know the location of his main base, which will then develop defenses to stop a rush. His enemies will not waste time scouting. They know where he is! This will buy time for the expansion to develop without fear of being discovered. This is very “Art of War,” let your enemy know only what you want him to know, that being the location of your stronger units drawing him away from your weaker ones.

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Map Types

Unlimited Resource Maps

Terran-When you got the cash give your Terrans plenty of construction space and then use it for unit production buildings. Use mines for defense to cut down on supply points used. For attack use highly upgraded battle cruisers with multiple science vessels for backup.

Protoss-Make many worthless scattered outposts (AKA pylon/cannon combos) with one or two probes this will slow, distract, and confuse an opponent. (And hell! You should have money left to burn.)

Do not neglect your defenses on this type of map. Protoss should have abundant cannons, a few templar and reavers and a mixture of 12to24 zealots and dark templar.

Terran should have bunkers, tanks, ghosts with lockdown, and mines galore. Zerg units can usually serve offensive and defensive roles just don’t forget the colonies.

The general keys to an unlimited map are three full time bases harvesting resources, ability to mass produce units, and the ability to modify production in response to an enemy threat. Generally you can’t have too many producing buildings. I won a game using zerg. I built 9 hives.

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Limited Resource Maps

Terran- it won’t work on high resource maps but on limited maps like temple a siege drop (drop in which you build bunkers and turrets) would work nicely.

Fill Terran base with mines and bunkers with one in each, none, or hop the troops between them.

General-Three bases are probably a good idea. Have two at full capacity and work towards capturing or securing a third for when you need to expand.

Leave workers at the depleted geysers. That way, if the game drags on you can go for high gas low-mineral units like templar, archons, arbiters, defilers, and science vessels.

Protoss- it might be a good idea to replace the bulky choke point clogging cannons with units and shield batteries. Say perhaps 12 dragoons and two reavers with the zealots and templar nearby. This can lead into a corsair, dragoon, reaver combo.

On Temple cover the ridge over the expansion minerals with something, anything. It may be expensive but losing the expansion is decidedly worse.

On both the ladder games opponent had a “Holy” base defense your recon sucked. Limited maps don’t allow solid and rigorous defenses. Find a whole and punch it. Hit-and-run. Siege drops. Avoid the defended spots.

Stop being so conservative on limited maps. 8 mineral patches with 1500 each is a total of 12,000 minerals and you should have three bases each with that much. That equals 36,000 minerals or 72 battle cruisers estimated at 500 a piece.

Place photon cannons as detectors not your main defense. However, if cannons are needed to secure minerals go all out. At 150 a pop an average resource patch is worth 70 cannons and 11 pylons and a nexus and that doesn’t even mention the gas and the fact that you are denying your opponent these resources.

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Team Tactics

Team Detection: When using Zerg, send Overlords to allies to help them detect early cloaking units.

Team Defense: The most powerful is the Photon Cannon / Siege Tank combination. There will be no ground force that will be able to break through this combination, and you will be able to focus your economy on other things. If you are Protoss, send a few High Templar or Corsairs with Disruption Web, or later arbiters with stasis to your ally’s bases to aid in defending against massed units.

Team Offense: In general in team games, you should focus on getting a large, mobile army instead of massive static defenses. For example, place Photon Cannons as Detectors, not as your primary defense. Use your units to defend.

Use Devourers in combination with corsairs or valkyrie frigates.

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Learn from experience

Toss vs. Toss.

He boxed me in on finite resources using corsairs and dragoons on recall to keep me from expanding while he mined the whole map just starving me out. His recon was everywhere mine was nowhere.

Assorted Temple games

Money saved is worthless. Money spent equals deadly units. Not worthless. Also make sure you have the ability to spend money as you make it. Three harvesting bases is safe then build enough production facilities to spend the money as quickly as it pours in, and use mass mutalisks as mineral hit-and-run killers they are fast so keep them moving past and around defenses!