The Danger of Expanding, and how to fix it

[don]

Okay. There must be something to this in lower levels. I have not lost since I stopped expanding altogether.

I've been moving up and down from 25-17 copper before, now i'm steadily climbing and at 11 with no losses yet.

I rush to a 1Pylon 1Gate 2Zealot Choke, Hide a Dark Shrine, Rush to 4-6 DTs while pumping as many zealots as possible, 2 Stalkers and an optional sentry. By the time I have 4 DTs, I already have charge and level 1 ground weapons.

When I have 4-6 DTs I push with DTs behind. Once I open the choke (if there is one), I run all my DTs to his mineral line(s) splitting the DTs if he has an expansion using the old worker split shift click from SC1.

If the push does not win the game, I re-build an army adjusting to what he has, having the hardest time when Zerg goes mass muta.

I always win to guys that expand and have a hard time with those that don't while using this strategy.

[TheRabidDeer]

Okay. There must be something to this in lower levels. I have not lost since I stopped expanding altogether.

I've been moving up and down from 25-17 copper before, now i'm steadily climbing and at 11 with no losses yet.

I rush to a 1Pylon 1Gate 2Zealot Choke, Hide a Dark Shrine, Rush to 4-6 DTs while pumping as many zealots as possible, 2 Stalkers and an optional sentry. By the time I have 4 DTs, I already have charge and level 1 ground weapons.

When I have 4-6 DTs I push with DTs behind. Once I open the choke (if there is one), I run all my DTs to his mineral line(s) splitting the DTs if he has an expansion using the old worker split shift click from SC1.

If the push does not win the game, I re-build an army adjusting to what he has, having the hardest time when Zerg goes mass muta.

I always win to guys that expand and have a hard time with those that don't while using this strategy.

Do they just randomly expand or what? If its in copper they probably are expanding without knowing enough about what their opponent has, or they know what their opponent has but dont know what it means. The build you describe uses a TON of gas and must take a really long time to build up so there is no reason they wouldnt be able to hold the expansion if they have been using it properly and have detection of some kind. I mean, dark shrine alone takes a long time to get up, but to get charge researched as well as 4-6 DT's...

But... yea... in lower leagues I can see expanding even more risky since you may not have the experience or knowledge necessary to make a judgment on if you can safely expand or not. I consider myself fairly decent and I still misjudge expansion timings sometimes.

Interesting to note that somebody suggested making it HARDER to expand somewhat recently, because they felt it was too easy and too powerful when you get one running :P
http://sclegacy.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3920

[don]

Do they just randomly expand or what? If its in copper they probably are expanding without knowing enough about what their opponent has, or they know what their opponent has but dont know what it means. The build you describe uses a TON of gas and must take a really long time to build up so there is no reason they wouldnt be able to hold the expansion if they have been using it properly and have detection of some kind. I mean, dark shrine alone takes a long time to get up, but to get charge researched as well as 4-6 DT's...

But... yea... in lower leagues I can see expanding even more risky since you may not have the experience or knowledge necessary to make a judgment on if you can safely expand or not. I consider myself fairly decent and I still misjudge expansion timings sometimes.

Interesting to note that somebody suggested making it HARDER to expand somewhat recently, because they felt it was too easy and too powerful when you get one running :P
http://sclegacy.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3920

Yeah that was me before i got into beta... Basing on videos of pros that all expand. And so when I got into beta, my mindset was, that those that secure expansions really have the advantage... so I lost 4 placement matches trying to fast expand.. this thread first gave me the idea that 1 basing might be good. Probably enough to get me out of copper quick with minimal improvement on my macro and micro.

Oh, and IMO, if you don't build stalkers and sentries much and dont research warp-in you can go DTs + Chargelots pretty easy. You just have to hope your opponent is not AtG rushing you.

[landakaqua]

Yeah that was me before i got into beta... Basing on videos of pros that all expand. And so when I got into beta, my mindset was, that those that secure expansions really have the advantage... so I lost 4 placement matches trying to fast expand.. this thread first gave me the idea that 1 basing might be good. Probably enough to get me out of copper quick with minimal improvement on my macro and micro.

Oh, and IMO, if you don't build stalkers and sentries much and dont research warp-in you can go DTs + Chargelots pretty easy. You just have to hope your opponent is not AtG rushing you.

problem with dts is that they're too easy to counter....scan sweeps by terran, overseers by zerg...

but if you're lucky the protoss guy might go for stargate and that's when you KILL EM with dts

[GnaReffotsirk]

Yeah, the fastest DTs possible are at close to 8:00 around 7:35 to 8. If you utilize a robo while the shrine is about to complete, while your WG tech also is about to complete, you can DT rush their mineral line by using Warp-in.

You can out a few Zeals while everything is warping in.

A thing to note is that as I have been working to recreate SC in SC2, there really is a difference in econ phases, military production, and structure production, which allows players to choose an econ build via fast expo with minimal military present.

That's what I want present in SC2, that a player may choose to econ, while the enemy is preparing for an assault, and by the time the assault arrives, there is sufficient defense to push back the attacker, but at the same time the econ one does not have the sufficient attack potential to do a counter attack just yet. This gives time for the aggressor to pull-back and either:

a. produce more units, which leads to some small disadvantage, but will grow as the econ path blooms.
b. grab his own expansion, which leads to slowed military production.

In the end the two will equal themselves should:

1. with option A, the produced units are used to hamper the econ growth of the econ builder.
2. with option B, the produced units are proper to counter what the econ builder may choose (higher tech, expensive but few, high damage; lower tech, mass cheap units)