[ryrymanpie]

Hi guys i am relatively new to zerg being playing for about 3 weeks now so excuse my ignorance.

After studying some day 9 dailies to be specific (516; 512 and 485) it is the general consensus that during the early stages of the game zerg relies heavily on scouting to determine any early aggression; macro play; cheeses etc.

Assuming that the opponent is playing a macro game and seeks to win/push between mid/late game the zerg player should be heavily droning until about 75 drones; once this point is reached ideally the zerg player wants to have a 3rd and possible 4th base (4th being less crucial). After the first benchmark has been reached the zerg player needs to begin upgrades; teching and continue to scout to determine army composition and movements.

Based off the day 9 dailies the zerg player wants to defend early aggression (not something as strong as a 4 gate but just a early push to harass) with static defense and lava inexpensive units (queens and if need be minimal roaches and lings). Now the problem that i encounter when i think of this is, for example you scout an early push coming nothing too daunting but enough to force you to stop droning to respond appropriately. Lets say for example that you just spent your round of lava on drones so you currently have 1-2 lava sitting around (generated from the hatcheries every 15 seconds) while waiting for the next inject to pop, from the time it takes his/her push to go from their base (A) to your base (B) you're frantically building spines, spores and basically what ever required to delay until you can get your next round of units out. My issue with this is, what if its too late? What if the units spawned from the lava injects while the opponent is knocking on your front door is not enough?

For instance, a 110 food terran player lets say about 60 food army so its decent sized but nothing too insane. One round of units from 3 hatcheries will most likely NOT be enough to save you from this push but perhaps with the increased static defense you will be able to hold. Anyway, this brings me to my overall problem.. what happens when a push is coming that you've scouted as early as possible but you don't have the ability to defend appropriately due to bad luck with injects and droning (an example i gave above)??

Day 9 places a lot of emphasis on how randomly building army units is BADDDDDD early game because you're randomly building units IN CASE something happens when there is no guarantee that this will happen and this is allegedly the WRONG way to play zerg. Apparently it is good to 'just hold a push by producing army units in response to a push than it is to have an army build in random anticipation and hold' as this method provides you with a way of learning even if you lose.

Now this method confuses me a little as Day 9 stresses that building units in random anticipation is bad and if you fail to hold the push you can learn from it. How do you learn from this though? assuming you scouted appropriately and you knew the exact moment he decided his army was big enough for him to push and move out and at that moment you stopped using your lava for droning and started up static defenses and army units however you were still unable to hold the push. It seems like the only thing you would learn from this is 'Okay, when his army is about 'this' big and its around 'this' time i should stop droning and start building lava inexpensive units to hold the push and then start teching and droning again until you can win at hive tech. However this method will still require you to have scouted his army and ANTICIPATE he will be moving out soon and in ANTICIPATION you start building an appropriate army to hold his push. What if you were incorrect and he didn't push? you have just delayed your droning and hive tech considerably on an educated guess? What if he did push and you managed to hold? however this seems to contradict the whole theory behind not building an army in anticipation.

Just wanting to know if i have the right understanding about this concept and if anyone can clear this up from me? If anyone who does not understand what i am talking about or wants to improve their zerg play i'd suggest taking a look at those dailies as they are quite insightful.

Anyway, i look forward to hearing any responses about this concept.

Regards,

Ryrymanpie