It's no secret... When a match reaches late-game mode, I rarely lose. The only player that I've played that can maintain and match me in late game battles is Swift. Why is this? I honestly feel like most players are fairly solid at early game and midgame, but once late game hits, they cannot hang. This makes sense since there are a lot less manageable variables in play. This low variance allows people to adapt and move quickly with decision-making. I'm also not talking about newbies or decent players, I'm strictly referring to top expert players: Tier 2-4. There are obvious sets of skills that separate the Tier 1 player from the rest. Of course having a high APM helps, but there are many more factors that affect your level of late-game play.

I've thought about this for months. I guess it's in my nature to do things the best way possible since I'm an Industrial Engineer (and Mathematics) major and the one word that describes us is "efficiency". It's comprised of pure problem-solving skills of diverse systems. Anything from complex energy-saving problems to warcraft2 resource management. From maximizing a company's workflow to finding the most efficient way to play Warcraft2 late-game. You get the point.

I've tried my best to categorize some major factors that affect late game results. This is a high-level breakdown of factors. Keep in mind that there are many different scenarios that will give you an advantage or disadvantage, but sticking to these basic principles will definitely give you better results. For the sake of my argument here, lets assume both players have reached the end game as equals.

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Switching Gears

Knowing when to switch gears from midgame to late game is key. Of course, this point in time has no value. It changes each game depending on how early and midgame play out. Generally, once I have lust with at least ogres, I switch to late game mode. My main concern and #1 priority is acquiring an expansion. This has to be your #1 priority. This has to be your goal. I cannot stress this enough. Of course, if you have the opportunity to wipe out his base on the first hit, then by all means do so. You can do whatever that specific game requires of you. If you feel like you need to pressure them (I always do), then do it. BUT always do it for the sole purpose of distracting and buying time to take an expansion. Do not rely on a one-lust-hit attack this to win a game and then forget about expanding - you will lose to a tier 1 player.

Next game you play, make sure you concentrate on getting an expansion as soon as you have a nice set of ogres to pressure your opponent or to defend. This is your priority.

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Expanding

Once you've solidified your first expansion, what to do next? Take another and another expansion as your resources permit - do not overextend yourself. How to expand? I like to gradually expand to the bases next to me, like a virus per se. I do this in the most logical, and optimized, order, however.

For example, if my main base is at 4, I will expand to 5 and then s5, THEN 3. Why? Expanding to s5 before 3 will in effect protect 5. One thing to note, the outermost expansion automatically becomes the number 1 target, keeping your inner most expansion safer.

If I start at 5, I will take s5 and then 4. Again, 4 is the innermost expansion and will be hard to reach. I'd rather mine out s5 quickly.

The 11 position is a tricky one, but of course very doable. When I like to do is try to secure 9 and block off at the bottom of s9 simultaneously. Why? To keep the attention to the outermost expansion, s9, while you mine 9 hard.

The art of expanding to random places is not reliable in competitive matches. I know I do it a lot, but I do it for the sake of having fun and risking a lot. The truth is, you need to have a standardized system of expanding from any position. Once you take an expansion, your main priority needs to be to take another. Remember, that 'other' expansion will take attention away from your solid expansions, and so on. It will take a lot of work to bring down a chain of bases.

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Constant Peon creation

This is self-explanatory. Never stop making peons. You should always keep this in the back of your head while playing. I know it's hard to attack, expand, and defend, and then stop in the middle of it all to make peons in each of your 3-5 halls. Assuming you've expanded successfully and have multiple halls, making peons is your next priority. You will die very fast if you don't make peons. You've spent so much resources building these expansions and creating an army in the midst of late game, you NEED peons to produce gold to support it all. Again, THIS IS YOUR PRIORITY AFTER EXPANDING. Peons are what drive the workflow of a game. Everything depends on them mining gold. You should have an internal clock in your mind to remind you to make more peons every few seconds, no matter how much you're expanding, lusting, defending, etc. This will save you in so many games.


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Map Awareness

If I were to choose my favorite part of late game play, it would be map awareness. This requires high level of APM and macro management. Some of you are probably looking at the title and have no clue what I'm talking about. This is something I've named myself to refer to how much a player is aware of what's going on in the map, literally. How the hell are you aware of what's going on in the map? On screen? No, hacker. I've listed a few skills that pertain to this topic, most of which are for creating attacking advantages.

A) The Sweep: You've seen this in Game 1 of Swift vs ViRuZ (reference youtube link below) and you probably think we're stupid for sending lusted ogres in every direction for no reason at all. We lust a set of ogres (I usually do 4-5 ogres) and send them off in one direction. I do this for the sake of sweeping area in the map for the sake of clearing it and knowing there is nothing there. That's my main reason. My second reason is to catch any units unlusted and off guard. Or we send them lusted to our open expansions like 6/8. This tactic is so important to me in late game because it is both a defensive and offensive tactic. I win so many games because my opponent runs out of gold and I have like 30k stored, EVEN THOUGH they mined more than me. I contribute that advantage to sweeping. You need to do this once late game hits - always. This saves me a lot of time too. I lust ogres, send them off, do other stuff on the map, and after a few seconds, I check back on those ogres. I lust them again, send them in another directly, and so on. This may seem straight forward and easy, but it is the most underused tactic that I see in my 1 vs 1 matches vs expert player. I win games solely due to this most of the time.

B) The Annoyer: You have probably seen me do this or you've most likely been the victim of this. You need to keep your opponent on their toes at all times. Send 3-4 lusted ogres at them for the sake of hitting a scout farm or other buildings. But once you do, pull your ogres back after 2-3 seconds. Do not let them die. You have no idea how much you impact your opponent this way. Not only do you force him to take major, unmeasurable, action towards your threat by lusting ogres and prepare to defend, you also affect them psychologically. Like "is he going to attack me?", "I wonder how much more is coming?". It's important to note that this not only takes valuable time from his APM and attention, it gives you a lot of time to do other productive things like expanding, sweeping, creating peons, etc. Being an annoyer is only effective if you pull your ogres back. Please realize your 3-4 ogres will fall instantly to an armada of lusted ogres and it will not benefit you. If you can do this constantly through the game, the accumulation of time wasted on his part and time gained on your part will become noticeable.


Swift vs. Viruz

Game 1:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=naKHRSmMyd8



I hope this helps expert players improve their late game. I'm targeting players in Tier 2-4. I'm not writing this out of arrogance or to try to insult the level of late game play that I see and keep seeing. I genuinely want to help expert players improve in late game for the sake of competition and quality of games. I know a lot of players get stressed out during late game, and hopefully this upper-level overview of tactics will help. Play a lot of 1vs1's and practice this. Players who rely on their first lusted attack aren't even tier 2 in my book. I'll add more stuff later and go over specific examples if requested. Thanks.
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~~~ViRuZ~~~

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Anything from complex energy-saving problems to warcraft2 resource management.

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[quote="cpt^Claw"]

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yeah, like you having 30k gold and 0 wood in midgame (game 1 vs swift)

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http://server.war2.ru/news/advanced-strategy-by-viruz/
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viruz, do you have a warvideo collection of your gamez? i remember a couple of replays on megaupload, but theyre gone

also, i am not asking only for epic 40min 1v1 series, but also tricky strats, gaying n getting gayed, exploiting weaknesses of average players like tyrus, koorb, interesting games in general

muy bueno!

TLDR, OP is huge newb.
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Originally posted by Shotgun_
TLDR, OP is huge newb.

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Every contribution is appreciated. You should stop this troll/negative attitude sg. It is no longer funny after 3463462 times.
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Originally posted by Lightbringer-
Hired a maid to make this post.

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Go prepare your breakfast already.
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I'm not so sure about this sweep mentality. It seems to me that it's more or less scouting using common sense (never move ogres without them first being lusted). Scouting is an art in itself, maybe thats what you are trying to describe. I would never split up my groups and move them to unimportant areas without a purpose, especially if it involves any kind of luck, which is exactly what you are describing, getting lucky finding unlusted units is just that, you getting lucky. If you are good enough at scouting, you wont need to do something like this. Eyes are far quicker at "sweeping" the map, then a bunch of ogres trying to get LUCKY. It's far more efficient to know where your enemy units are and catch them unlusted on purpose than it is to flip a coin and hope to get lucky. I use the same technique, the difference is that my catching you unlusted probably resulted from my eyes seeing you. I use eyes a lot. I did not see any use of eyes once in any of your games. You are under utilizing a really great aspect of the ogre unit.

Last edited by test on Wed Jul 30, 2014 12:59 pm; edited 1 time in total

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It's far more efficient to know where your enemy units are

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Originally posted by test
I'm not so sure about this sweep mentality. It seems to me that it's more or less scouting using common sense (never move ogres without them first being lusted). Scouting is an art in itself, maybe thats what you are trying to describe. I would never split up my groups and move them to unimportant areas without a purpose, especially if it involves any kind of luck, which is exactly what you are describing, getting lucky finding unlusted units is just that, you getting lucky. If you are good enough at scouting, you wont need to do something like this. Eyes are far quicker at "sweeping" the map, then a bunch of ogres trying to get LUCKY. It's far more efficient to know where your enemy units are and catch them unlusted on purpose than it is to flip a coin and hope to get lucky. I use the same technique, the difference is that my catching you unlusted probably resulted from my eyes seeing you. I use eyes a lot. I did not see any use of eyes once in any of your games. You are under utilizing a really great aspect of the ogre unit.

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if u find a new expansion going up with an eye, by the time your ogres get there it may have reinforcements
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i zero bagged your mother

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Originally posted by Fast Luck
hassan-i-asher: majorin in takin pictures
dreamin bout wayne from catalina wine mixers
listen little friend stay outta the deep end
cuz you're less street than vampire weekend

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a funny term i heard coined before is "surprise scout." some dude hadn't scouted me and ran in with like 8 grunts and i was like wtf had you even scouted me? and he said no. i forget who came up with the term but it's pretty lol

surprise scout, heres an army.
often it looks like hacking thats why i like to do it sometimes to troll ppl and get accused liek claw likes

often it's just newb though, like when you see some dumbass running around with his entire army going into empty locations
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i zero bagged your mother

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Originally posted by Fast Luck
hassan-i-asher: majorin in takin pictures
dreamin bout wayne from catalina wine mixers
listen little friend stay outta the deep end
cuz you're less street than vampire weekend

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http://youtu.be/w_Y2VirGNi4
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~~~ViRuZ~~~

From NeRzyMan: "Ask Viruz about when he claimed to be a macro god on fastest and we played dual vs dual for 4 games in a row..."

I wanted to chime in after reading this shitty post...

In regards to "the sweeper" that's something hackers developed after they stopped hacking... you see good players that didn't hack were "efficient" and had an understanding for the flow of the game, a maphacker deals in absolutes and doesn't properly develop their intuition, so when they stop using hacks they need absolute knowledge to compensate. They need to know that "omg their isn't a pack of ogres exactly at this spot" because they can't intuit it.

It actually becomes inefficient when you are burning resources on "the sweeper" because you can't deduce what is actually going on without it. Those scouts could have been more efficient being applied elsewhere...

Anyway most of this stuff is really basic shit that any half-decent player from before the time where people like viruz even played EF would know.

Last edited by NaLzyMan on Wed Jul 30, 2014 5:33 pm; edited 1 time in total

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Originally posted by NaLzyMan
From NeRzyMan: "Ask Viruz about when he claimed to be a macro god on fastest and we played dual vs dual for 4 games in a row..."

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its not secret im a supreme late game pro, especially fastest - I think if we're giving away secrets, the biggest thing virus forgot to mention is farms.

so many times I see people held back by farms - "switching gears" - there comes a time u just gotta do the, as I call it - the 'five farm flop' drop those bad boys and keep ur production going and the rate of which u are growing, which is no longer farm after farm - ur not going 17 to 21 food anything - honestly - I bet very few people evenhit 80+ food, 100-120 is a great game. this alone will open u up and defly will not hinder ur progress - u want to keep growing and expanding - that means more than 3-4 barracks too
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I am also a contradiction of my own lies

Game 1 - won by deathknights.

That's what I saw. One player who was good enough to make dk's, another player who just made a million ogres and never attacked.

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Originally posted by Jon;

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Originally posted by NaLzyMan
From NeRzyMan: "Ask Viruz about when he claimed to be a macro god on fastest and we played dual vs dual for 4 games in a row..."

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no one cares what happened a decade ago

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Originally posted by Kith-Kanin

I think Swift and Viruz are really good, but they both have a fairly large ego because they stomp a player base of ~20. Back when the player base was 3-4000, it would have been difficult to be a stand out player.

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often it looks like hacking Very Happy thats why i like to do it sometimes to troll ppl and get accused liek claw likes

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It's no coincidence that the average pro-gamer retirement age is 22. Shit just doesnt flow the same upstairs after you hit ~22 - ~25. In the korean realm anyone over 22 is usually considered a "greybeard" which means he's over the avg retirement age (which is 22). There are some good old players (White-Ra, a whole whopping 30 for example), but the bulk of the best players are still teenagers/early 20's.

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Originally posted by Kith-Kanin


I disagree. I think more people care what happened a decade ago in war2, than what's left today.

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Originally posted by Lightbringer-

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Originally posted by Kith-Kanin


I disagree. I think more people care what happened a decade ago in war2, than what's left today.

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I'd have to agree with claw. I still play occasionally and what happened and who was great is of no use for me playing purposes now. It makes more sense to know who is good/avg/great currently for me personally.

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unlike you dreamfags, i actually have some 'pro' insights from 2001-2004 and people mostly sucked. lol

swift you've still played 300+ 1v1 games in the past 12 months........

Nerzy late game was FAR more impressive to watch than viruz, lol
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