I've been curious about this for a while, and have only seen fairly poor explanations of why Zerg is the reactionary race on TeamLiquid forums. Most of these explanations have been along the lines of, "if the zerg sees lots of marines, then he makes banelings. Or if he see's lots of stalkers, he makes hydras, therefore playing a reactionary style". To me that doesn't make zerg exclusively reactionary, that's just building counters, like every race has to do.
In my thoughts, I've come to this explanation. Zerg is reactionary, particularly in the early game, because he has to choose between producing drones, and producing units. Ideally he only wants to make drones at the beginning, however if he scouts an incoming attack, he is forced to react and produce units instead.
Now, before I move onto the next section, I put it to high level players, is this explanation correct?
Ok, assuming that's correct, let's move onto another question. Is the zerg race only 'reactionary' when the zerg is trying to macro and gain an economic advantage? If the zerg is early pooling, roach rushing, or 1 base bane busting, he isn't really playing a reactionary style is he? However, this is fairly uncommon play at high level though.
So, is Zerg only reactionary when a standard play style is followed (15 hatch, 14 pool14hatch etc)? Does this mean that zerg in team games (where the players are following a very aggressive playstyle) is not a reactionary race?
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