[OxygeN]

Cheesing is defined to me as a cut in economy to gain an offensive advantage. This takes form throughout the game, in the early game as 6pool, proxy gateways & terran barracks, and mid-game with potential utilization of workers to build offensive structures, or just to deal additional damage/tanking.

Before I begin, let me state by saying I am writing this from a Terran perspective, as Terrans have a very useful spell called "MULE" which allows the maximum utilization of any creative strategies, and innovative aggressions.

So what constitutes a cut in economy? When you can't produce off all your production structures, the loss of potential for expansion and additional production structures. However, there is potentially an optimum level of production off of 1 base, if you are looking for an early push. Potentially in any match-up, because of the structure of the game, it does not really matter if you have 1 more barracks, or 1 more factory. The idea is if you get a better unit mix than the opponent, all you have to do is to make him engage you before he gets a better unit mix than you, and you would win.

So what do I then mean by optimum level of production? And where do the cheesing vs All-In strategies come in? In a very simple analogy, you decide to go Marine Maruaders Medivac Ghosts vs an 3 gate robo strategy. Simply put, MMMG with at least 2 emps with kiting would decimate any similar food army once the Terran reaches his critical mass. Here comes in another concept of critical mass, when and how much is enough? Its really simple, when you hit about 20ish units of infantry, it is a very good time to consolidate a mid-game position. Also, because at 24ish units of infantry,he would probably have like 14-16 units of zealots/stalkers/sentries/immortals.

In a straight up fight, with some insane micro from the Protoss, he may still be able to beat you! You mis-timed your EMPs, or he split his sentries, and well, good luck to your MMMG ball when 5 zealots are in your face with guardian shield, immortals slaughtering maruaders at insane speed. However imagine now, if you brought 10 SCVs along*, if you have the micro to carry it out, all you have to do is to alternate moving infront of your army at first, "creep-blocking"** the zealots to slow down their charge, and later on attack when they are beside your ranged units. What you are doing here, is effectively slowing down the duration the zealots are beside you by at least 2 seconds, which is HUGE when it comes to the amount of DPS a marine/maruader can do in 2seconds with stim. And later on with the attack click it soaks up 450 damage from stalkers/sentries. Which is equivalent to 4 more maruaders being able to attack... about 9 marines... u do the math. the additional DPS is essentially FREE! Why? Because MULES essentially cover up the losses from your SCVs, and if you over-saturated your mineral line by like 3 or 4 before moving out, you essentially have the same amount of workers as a protoss fully saturated.

Hence, you are losing ZERO economical advantage, as a matter of fact, you could even expand, continue SCV production, and even unit production off all your buildings! Of course you are losing the opportunity cost of getting another expansion, but as I stated earlier its the idea of using your early unit mix to beat his unit mix than to wait later on and keep on countering each other repeatedly.

Essentially even if you do fail the push, and you lose all your SCVs and most of your units, you are still in a good position for a comeback and expansion if you have been producing SCVs all along as you pushed.

What appears as cheese to other players may actually work for you, as you can develop strategies to make people build whatever you want them to build(natural reaction), and not build whatever is not viable while you do a 360 Degrees tech switch. That is actually in my opinion a display of sheer strategic genius, but I haven't been able to utilize that to much success! So do not be daunted by the calling of cheese as long as you know whats the follow-up plan.

Still, 6 pool games are still incredibly funny, if you take things on the lighter side! HAHA!

Hope this was worth a good and informative read for all Terran players! :X

*1 Starport - Medivac 2 Raxes with Tech labs - Maruder/ghost 1 Rax with Reactor - 2 marines, SCV.
** Term adapted from Warcraft II, essentially blocking the unit pathing

[ToRXypha]

Its not abusing IMO thats the intention of the ability, to 'abuse' it is to use it for its intended purpose, which constitutes it as being strategy.

think this game has 2 parts strategy and tactics.
Strategy is the bigger picture, ( i'll take this upgrade and build these units in this game againts that player because...,)
Tactics is the way you employ your strategy and make it win. eg using the high ground, flanking and getting surrounds and all that micro that i just haven't got right yet . well thats my 2 cents anyway from a gold leaguers perspective.

[happieness]

well i just started playing multiplayer 3 days ago, however the strategy u mentioned is one that i make to good use, good for defensive or offensive purposes.

recently won a game, TvP he went forge/void, i manage to delay voids but to push properly i didn have the units to sacrifice so i send ahead 13 scvs to absorb cannons and use thor/marau to finish him off. and its esp good for blocking, coming from alot of WC3 ladder

[OxygeN]

xypha : i think i agree with whatever you said, if you have to boil down everything, SC2 in its purest form would be as you mentioned both strategy and tactics. Though, the hard part is to master it, not understand it!

happieness : lol! I bet you played human or orc in wc3!

[TAEdgE]

Yeh it is good to abuse what is available, if you do it well, who's gonna stop you? Unlike a lot of terrans, you actually put thought into how to use what is advantageous to you, and i respect that. I hope you didn't take it as any imbalance whining, i just wish zerg had some cool little techniques like that. Damn defensive queens!

[happieness]

zerg has pretty damn strong offensives and probably the fastest expander.

[happieness]

You Tube

You Tube

watch this replay of the zerg.

[TAEdgE]

happiness i'm well aware of things like that, i try and incorporate it whenever i feel comfortable too, but that is so late into a game, and surviving until then in a good position is what the game is about. OxygeN is using terrans unique 'energy investment' (orbital command) to the fullest early on, while zerg uses queens for macro.

I guess you could say perfect queen usage (creep spread, constant spawn larvaing) is a great asset in any game of any style, not just one off things possibly like things discussed in this thread. I guess it's just how the mule/orbital is designed though, being able to make up for lost scvs and get a huge income in an instant if saved up, or used smartly like this. Protoss probably has the least interesting mechanic with chrono boost basically being a 'speed up' process, but warp gate is pretty damn sick.

Once zerg evolves more drops/nyduses will be more common. I've already experimented with Nydus army escapes when attacking expos. It's great!

[NvPinder]

Doesn't really matter how you like to sugar coat it, if someones entire play style revolves around never moving off one base and just doing cute timing attacks pulling half your workers and just praying you kill the guy then and there, it's a style that whilst is working well for people right now as people are still optimizing the 'standard' builds in this game, will simply get less and less effective as there's a very low skill ceiling on what the one-basers are doing and they will optimize it very quickly, meanwhile everyone else will keep on getting better and better, and the one-basers results if they continue to play this way will fade into insignificance.

there will always be a place for these strats in the game, in fact you almost need to play like this every once in a while if you're playing tournaments, because otherwise people will just punish your macro heavy style by playing even more economically aggressive and crush you mid-game anyway, however the players that simply 1-base over and over and over (ladder is plagued with these, because A) it's MUCH easier than playing for the late-game in mind, and B) it's not like you need to win a Bo3/5/7 series in ladder, its just singular games against random people that you're likely to not run into again for quite a while C)Half of climbing the ladder is gaming as much as possible, obviously the quicker you can win the better it is for climbing the ladder), are not going to progress as a player very far and they're just going to find their results getting worse rather than better.

Quick Comments

x5.Revenant:

[OxygeN]

Originally Posted by JPMoney

meanwhile everyone else will keep on getting better and better, and the one-basers results if they continue to play this way will fade into insignificance.

there will always be a place for these strats in the game, in fact you almost need to play like this every once in a while if you're playing tournaments.

That is quite contradictory there, if it is insignificant, why use it? lol.

But I agree with your post in the sense that there is a low celling on how good the one-base strat can get, that is rather undisputed, and obvious.

1 base maximum you can get is potentially 100food?

There is the celling right there.

[NvPinder]

hhhmmm, yeah sorry, I did actually mean 2 different things by those 2 lines i just didnt express myself very clearly, there will always be a place for using these strategies every now and again as a way to kind of balance your range of builds like you would in poker... eg: think of a cheesy all-in as a bluff in poker, if all you ever do is go all-in every hand in poker, bluffing 99% of the time, people are going to start realizing and are just going to start calling you whenever they had the odds to do so against the 100% range of hands you have and you will lose money very very quickly, however at the same time if you never bluff in poker and only play with strong quality hands, people will also catch on and will simply begin to fold anything every time you bet unless they have an absolute monster, thus simply playing both extreme ends of the spectrum will lose you money and you must figure out the right amount of bluffs to use in order to keep your image at the table solid. Just like you must use the right amount of cheesy all-ins in starcraft to keep your image solid and your opponents scared that you do have the potential to pull this out on them, stopping them from going something ultra greedy like a 16 nexus build. And at the same time if you always do cheesy all-ins, people will start realizing this, play very safe against you, and just make it to mid-game fine and crush you there.

[Exultant]

^ In other words, be versatile. But really, who's gonna be senseless enough to do the same macro tactic over and over if you're playing against someone familiar. Just do the same tactic to randoms if you want and vary your play when your're being recorded/ in comps.

Ye i agree that in time, there will be tons more macro-oriented games. Just like in BW, it's the traditional way of winning.

I'm noob and love one basing, faster games and usually works bahaha.