Being a Teamgame Monster

Its pretty noticeable how in big team games, some players are monsters that continually grow in power or apply their win conditions very forcefully, while other players are basically chaff that do nothing but camp a lane until a powerful player applies a win condition.

What separates a macro monster like Klon - or a forceful wincon meta setter like sfire - from the hordes of weak players who do little more than take up space? At game start, everyone has the same resources, and shared income means they work from the same basic income as the rest of the team.

I think one of the most important attributes of a good teamgame player is that they avoid attrition of all forms as much as possible - trading evenly with an opponent is a fail, and often even trading 2:1 can be bad. The best way to become huge is just to translate your metal into units and economy and avoid losing any of them as the game progresses - retreat, repair, don't trade. Be an opportunistic coward, and only fight when you can inflict losses but not take any.

Another very important mindset is the weight of units. At the beginning, low weight units are OK. by 10 minutes in, low weight units are going to be lossy. By 20 minutes in, anything lighter than a reaper is going to suffer a lot of attrition and should only be used in support. One of the biggest failings I see in players is they fail to "scale up" and switch to heavier and heavier units as the game progresses. As battlefield density increases, the weight of your units should be increased alongside otherwise you'll take losses where an opponent can retreat/repair heavies without loss.

Another factor is buildpower. The later the game, the more cons you should have. Cons should be used in increasing numbers for a single job. 20 minutes in, you should have dozens of cons, not 3-4. You need to be at the front instantly reclaiming and translating it into more units to skew the balance in your favour enough for the team to make more opportunistic attacks where the opponent is locally very outgunned possible.

Economic growth is key. You should always, always, always be making more eco, even when you have enough eco. You don't need to make it fast, but you do need to make it. Eco should be grown forever. If the game drags 30 minutes and you kept making eco where an opponent didn't, you will eventually be fighting at a big advantage.

I am also a purple heart whore, and light units definitely have utility at later game stages - but they should no longer be mainstay of your forces.

Is this about being the carry in a pubgame?

My current style of playing consists on deciding the counters of what my enemy makes most of the time. I have a passive style of play, i don't micro things over and over again. I think about all the options that will make me win a game. Since i know all the players (big elo especially ) in zero-k I always know the style they have of playing.

For example i know hokomoko that he is a micro management player , to counter him i just make some defences ( teraformed defences in a area) to stop his expansion easily. If he goes striders i can easily counter them because he doesnt have enaught experience with them. He rarely makes strong economy( singularity ) and stuff and thats why in midgame players like him will fail against macromanagement.
In your case [GBC]1v0ry_k1ng i know you do well with heavy tanks, you dont like airplanes and you play spiders from time to time. And you rely a lot on your team to advance and attack+retreat spots on the map. You never take risks and never go in alone against big elo players.
In case of Anarchid i know he is a strong micro player, he will do well in the start of game. To counter that just use planes or other air units to counter the raids against the weaker teammates you have. In midgame he can do decently wont know exactly to stop the counters against his striders and other big stuff. Late game he will fail if he wont make economy ( a thing that i know for sure) because most of the times he doesnt do that.
In case of Svatopluk, he is like a mimic guy, he copies your tactic easily and applies it in the next game. This kind of players are hard to predict and I know all this because i have the same strategy like he makes( with the condition that i make less striders ) . Copying som1 tactic fast , reproducing it faster and better and winning the game with surprise tactic thats how i win most games. Svatopluk currently is starting to do stuff like that but he is cautious and will test "new things" like 50% of time.

Examples of surprize tactics are:
-using silo to stun detriments and then cons to bury them (thats a standard for me when countering them). Same applies to other striders if i get the chance.
-using terraform to stop advancing enemy (reaper army and other stuff) or to terraform buildings on top of it.
-using cloacked eraser to kill things with roaches, or attack with surprize different spots on the map
-newton space scouting (they nerfed it, i invented it and exploited it to hard)
-newton space valks and skuttle bombing from space( I invented it and they nerfed it,again because i exploited it hard)
-Impulse capacitor for athena( Athena attacked by newtons constantly while it is on repeat, giving it the ability to fly into space and never come down again!. I exploited it and they nerfed it)
-Blastwing bullets( again they nerfed it, i was using this with newtons)
-Other surprize tactics are the ordinary rushes: bd rush, goliath rush, krow rush, wyvern etc and must mention the decoy rushes.

Besides all this another thing that makes som1 strong in team games( i am not strong i just play decently at a 50% fun and 50% serious game) and thats why my potential is at 20-40% most of the time. If i start to micro all stuff intensive i can get more elo, better spot in team game but i wont have any fun at all.

In the end as a resume of what i said, the thing that i know for sure is that my clan and team makes me better in team games. Alone i am to lazy to micro all the things from all the sides. Having a 1300 elo player holding the front against a 1800 elo player is a big aspect on how i win games most of the times. I dont need the low elo players in my team to kill the enemy. I just need them to hold the spot where they are and let me do the instant "game win" with some fast tactic :).

Forgot to mention that i reclaim 50% of time and almost never make cons to go front and reclaim stuff. And I always assist the bigger elo players than me in games. And attack same front with them if needed. I also listen to what they need and what they tell me to do most of the times :).

Pff easy answer. Spam cons and eco in rear, then switch to heavy things instead of continuous raiding. Of course starting the game with two comms and receiving units every now and then also helps, but that's probably not what you wanted to hear.

OP is a question I've been pondering for a while, particularly the difference between opmtimal 1v1 and team play. There's already been some great responses, and I'm far from good at teams, but I've noticed some things :)

#1 - composition
More players expanding faster + more noobs=more porc. Lot's of opposing porc=dunt make so many raider. While raiders still have a very important role in teams, they're not the default like in 1v1. Up-scaling your composition to keep it relevant is beyond important. If someone's using monospam against a player in the late game they're just delivering metal.

#2 - noobs in the meta
Good things to take into account is which noobs porc, which noobs over eco, and which noobs know how to composition. This is far more important than it may seem if you're serious about getting elons.

- Leave porcers alone and go smash his team-mate. Outnumbering people is fun.

- For over ecoers, you can basically use a small raid to effectively kill them, then immediately transition into aggression against their communism weakened allies.

- If someone can't composition, bring your cons along because you're gonne feed on them all through early to midgame, then use your inflated army to defend while you manufacture the silver bullet for their stronger players.

- Also, if someone doesn't know how to end-game, you can get a DDM up and then leave lane to gank :))))

#3 - map awareness and punishing over extension
A lot of noobers get scrabbly when I push them out of the center starting position. Essentially, I like a mobile playstyle which is conducive to assisting allies. Many games can be won by assisting your ally to defend against attacks that are overextended, or by doubling up on hammering someone's risky forward position. Noobs favour slow units that are strong locally but weak at global impact, so naturally you want them to take a 'lane' to the side and just push.

I think that team games aren't even close to their final meta as far as ganking is concerned. I see early game combined commander rushing being ridiculously good if any clan manages the coordination. Early doubling/tripling etc. defines the metagame for so many team RTS formats, and the mechanics in ZK seem to lend themselves to it even more (since reclaim, since map chokes are rare, and since you're not required to take workers off resources in order to forward build turrets).

#4 - silver bullet
Not to stoke the sfire, but he's probably one of the best at this role. When he's done pissing about trying to get headhunter, he will contribute nothing for ages then win the game by ramming his win con down your throat. Pluks should all get a mention here.

#5 - late game macro and board control
That thing where you never stop growing. It's really important. *Unlike some other games, ZK doesn't have a population limit. This means the influence of strong players can continue to grow in a game unfettered by anything but communism.

#6 - recognising opposing team weakness at a meta level.
Be 3v3. You're against one godly good player and two nooobers, while your team consists of two moderately good players and one noober. Their one godly good player can't start both air and ground: if you put a moderately good player on both you're guaranteed to win whichever one he doesn't go for. If he's air he can't expand, if he'd ground air is uncontested and he will be forced to fend off ground forces and air forces simultaneously. Pick on him, kill his units over other units. Wall off his team mates with porc and just make sure he doesn't make it to late game. Knowing how to capitalise on the weaknesses of a team with high skill discrepancy is elo farm.

#7 - leadership
Having your team do what they're good at, or fostering a teamwork environment, or even just calling the shots. I tend to go hands off in this respect because it's not a style that interests me - but it's definitely legit.

#8 - Clear win conditions
Sometimes your team is losing and there's not many ways to win the game. Recognising what will win the game in this scenario turns losses into wins. Good examples are stuff like 'slinging' off weaker players by all-inning their base/army/forward and then being prepared to hoover it up immediately. The risk of committing to both a huge attack and the workers to boost your momentum is big, but if you don't have a chance otherwise then you've got to recognise it as an option that is more legitimate than the ordinarily superior "safe" plays. It'll look stupid if it fails, but you were going to lose anyway. Another one I see is recognising that if you're at sea and your land team is failing, you need to not only win sea, but win it with something that can then immediately crush land afterwards. It's no good taking the sea with mass typhoon if your entire army is rendered redundant immediately and you then have to build up in order to affect the game once more. Switch to amph or hover and you can usually backstab your land opponent before they're prepared for you while they're busy trashing your allies, you are then set to win the game since their army won't be able to touch your sea base.

#9 - attrition
It's true, attrition is more important in teams if you're expected to carry. It's my greatest failing as a teams player, I just don't like having my units for more than a few minutes... Army's metal worth is essentially multiplied by skill, it's better for lower elo players to sacrifice their units though this is an ugly reality for many (and it's not fun to always take the hit). It's also better for the team if reclaim is ceded to the better players as well (though only if it's convenient to do so). A 2k elo glaive is better than a 1.4k elo glaive. Predicting your allies excess and being prepared to put it to good use is also handy.

Ivory, I think your 3rd post sums it all. And to do all of that, these "monsters" likely need a lot of concentration/focus, which I am not able to muster when playing ZK.

I would also make a distinction between strong macro players who can handle all aspects of the game (whom I rank highest) (i would put Svatopluk, [I]burp, Klon, in this category) and smart/aambush players who cannot/don't want to handle everything and "just" carry on their specific strategy without caring much how the rest of front is doing (I would put Firepluk, Forever, maybe @Rafal[ZK] here).

quote: What separates a macro monster like Klon - or a forceful wincon meta setter like sfire - from the hordes of weak players who do little more than take up space?

The desire to win vs the fear of losing.

SnuggleBass' summary should go onto the wiki or onto a blog, under the title "how to carry your team".