people arent worker rushing?

Beat: worked 30 hours last two days. NO TIME 4 SC2

Worker rush!

Brag: Played MTG with Kevin Knocke (CatsPajamas)
Beat: Lost to him in our match
Brag: He scooped to me to give me the win.

Beat: addicted to civ 5
Beat: have only slept 4 hours the last two nights from playing too much
Variance: Greece op

Is it that good?

Should I get AoE3 or Civ V?

Most older-school Civilization fans aren't that into V because of some fundamental changes to the gameplay it made; if you haven't played a Civ game before, you'd probably like it.

IV is more complex but is also probably the GOAT turn-based strat game.

To make this post more topical:

Brag: Hit 100 Terran wins today
Brag: #1 in my division
Beat: Still in bronze

SC2 is the only rts I've ever played outside of a few games of AoE2 and custom games in WC3.

Which game is more mechanics based? Strategy is great but I want to be able to micro a little.

Civ isn't an RTS, it's turn-based. There is zero micro.

Good to know, pass then.

is it similar to Rome: Total War? used to love that game

It's in the same genre as the non-RTS part of Rome: TW, yeah.

In Civilization, you start with this (screenshot is Civ IV):



A settler and a warrior. With your settler you build your first city, with your warrior you can explore, use him to defend your city, whatever. You can also attack other people (once you scout them) but that will go about as well as a-moving your SCVs at the start of a game.

From your cities, you build buildings, units, workers to improve the surrounding train and improve the resource yield you get from it, more settlers to build more cities, even Wonders of the World that will grant their owner huge benefits. You send citizens to work the terrain surrounding your cities, from which they generate production capacity (more production = build stuff faster) and commerce, the latter of which can be divided up into tech research, gold income, and citizen happiness as you see fit (if your populace gets pissed, there be riots yo!). Tech research will take you from the above warriors with stone clubs, through the bronze age and the iron age to mother****ing artillery and fighter jets and nuclear weapons. Eventually, you get:



Dat minimap! A sprawling civilization with powerful armies and cities, and tons of neighbors to conquer (or ally with!). It's a blast.


Also, if you liked Rome: Total War, I highly recommend Europa Universalis 3 (you can check out the VG thread about it):



If that doesn't give you nerd chills, I don't know what will. It's technically an RTS, but feels like a turn-based game at times because you can adjust the speed at will (not in the Starcraft "you can go into the menu and change it" sense; while fighting wars you'll want to be moving at like 1 day per second, whereas during peacetime and without anything major happening you'll be bored to tears by anything slower than 1 month per second).

You can start the game at any point between 1399 and 1821, and command any country that existed at that point in time. There's very complex economy management, it's hard to learn but a very rewarding experience once you do.

I have >200 hours on EU3 in Steam, and probably many times that for all the Civilization games (started playing the first one in 5th grade!) over the course of my life.

For a slightly more topical post: what do you guys recommend doing to get familiar with units you haven't used before? For example, despite all my Terran experience, I have absolutely no idea what to do with:

- Reapers
- Ghosts
- Hellions
- Thors
- Ravens
- Battlecruisers

Should I just try to work them into my play and see if I can figure out something useful to do with them? Seek out specific builds geared towards them and try to get good with them?

Brag: 25-9 since the intentional tank and playing ~80% random!

wat

What about my post did not make sense?

Just play monobattles and choose them.

Sandbox imo

The fact that you play a race and don't use about a third of the units available to you

Okay here I go with all those units u mentioned goofy:

Reaper: Sucks. It costs a good deal of gas and build time on the barracks. As a harass unit, it has been practically nullified vs. Zerg due to the queen change. You can use a reaper expand against terran/protoss, but the way you delay tech AND army with it really hurts bad compared to just gasless expos.

Ghost: Sucks except against protoss. Against P, it becomes a supporting unit that can snipe off HT and remove the shields/energy on other protoss units. Nuking is fun and all, but ghosts are often too much of an investment of both money and time.

Hellion: Decent. They make for good map control in every matchup, and are a pretty good mineral sink when going Mech compositions against Z/T. Their fast harass can win games just by roasting your opponents mineral line. The best way you can learn to use them is to go reactor hellions after expanding against zerg (make 4-6 of them before switching to tanks), but you need to remain active with them and maintain map control. Their DPS, when you look at it, kind of stinks. You could also try marauder/hellion pressure against protoss (look it up) and opening with a 4 hellion drop against all races (Mostly P)

Thors: Decent. Hellion/Thor is a pretty common mech composition vs. Zerg, and thors take a large beating from enemy siege tanks so your bio/other units don't have to. You should also make thors once you know you are up against muta/ling/bane against zerg to power up your army. Thors should hardly be used against protoss though, only in select compositions (Such as a 2 base 2/2/2 build of marine/thor/banshee).

Ravens: Whenever you feel the need for immediate mobile detection obviously. Point defense drone is a great way to do timing attacks against protoss (Such as a 2 barracks 1 factory 1 starport all in), as stalkers are made near useless. Raven/viking is a good way to defend against cloaked banshee harass, and a raven can be a neat way to help clean up creep against zerg and avoid baneling land mines. If your gas ever gets way too high, just make one imo. PDD blocks missiles from vikings, corruptors, mutas, phoenix, stalkers, marauders, and so much else.

Battlecruiser: Lol. Just a capital ship no big deal. You need a lot of economy and a good situation to transition into them. You should probably just avoid using them. In general, in late game, transitioning to something that costs so much (money and time) and can be so easily countered (By vikings, templar/stalker, and corruptors) is just silly. End the game faster by keep doing what you are doing.

Reapers are pretty sick against terran as a rush if unscouted/proxied because they own marines and often they don't have a marauder.

I do this gas first 2 rax cut scvs at 13 until two rax's are down then attack with 4 reapers. With good micro it wrecks a terran.

I don't like hellions. I think thors are imperative in TvZ... attatch a few scvs to them and get +1 armour and thy are pretty hard to stop. I would put hellions with the thors but marines are just better imo. blue flame hellions are awesome at running by to expansions and frying drones.

Ravens I don't make enough but I think in lategame its probably a good idea to always have one.

reapers: formerly imba. now lol.

ghosts: PEWPEWPEWPEWPEWP

hellion: based on how terrans use them, im pretty sure these units can be produced for free

thors: they shoot up and down

ravens: they see what cant be seen and also make big boom booms at great cost

battlecruiser: they are cows that fly and have lasers on their heads

hope this helps

TIL that Brood Lords are AMAZING. ZvT on Daybreak, was getting a wide creep spread until my opponent came at me with a bunch of marines and siege tanks. The tanks just wrecked my roach force completely but I had enough larva to keep him from killing me right away. Since I was floating on 20k minerals/15k gas as I tend to do (slight exaggeration possibly) I said "**** it" and went for a greater spire, morphed like 15 brood lords, and watched with glee as they TORE through his entire army - I kited from high ground to his army on the low ground as best as I could, and his siege tanks probably killed as many marines as I did when they attacked the broodlings. Once I cleaned up his marines his siege tanks went down like instantly, and from there I marched on his base for gg. I should use them more often.

Yes 15 brood lords are good against tanks which don't shoot at the air and marines which cost 50 minerals

fwiw im a zerg who doesnt use brood lords (or very, very rarely uses brood lords)

perhaps i should start