Offense
Preliminary Offense
There are two factors to consider when determining plans for
an early offensive. First, you have to consider the map. If it will
take you a few minutes to walk to your opponent's base, any
sort of early ground-based offensive will probably fail. Your
only hope in such a case would be to build your first
Barracks/Gateway considerably closer to your opponent,
instead of near your own base. This is a risky technique.
However, if your opponent is a short distance away and you
have a straight-line path to his base, an early attack might be
a good idea.
Attacking early has the added bonus of giving you information
on the enemy's position, as well as denying him the same
opportunity to attack you and gather similar intelligence. In any
case, you should constantly pester your opponent with attacks.
They don't have to be game-ending attacks, but they have to
be significant enough to keep your opponent's military size to
a minimum and to contain your opponent in his little corner of
the map. The military losses for both sides are usually about
equal, so the objective isn't to kill more units than your
opponent. Instead, the objective in early attacks is to slow
enemy production, and gain the psychological advantage so
that later in the game your opponent will be less willing to
expand or attack you.
Structures are relatively hard to destroy, so you generally want
to pick on enemy units instead. If you have the opportunity,
sneak out a few of your attacking units to kill enemy worker
units to slow your opponent's income.
Also consider whether your attack plan meshes with your
opponent's attack plans-the best way to discover this
information is with early reconnaissance. If your opponent
constructs three or more Barracks/Gateways, you should
prepare for an infantry rush and counter it by doing the same. If
you see that your opponent is trying to quickly get to the
aircraft stage by not spending minerals on infantry, seize the
opportunity and attack as soon as you can. Alternatively, you
can try to expand early, because your opponent probably will
not bother you for a while if he doesn't bother building a lot of
infantry-type units.
Email: ngriffin85@hotmail.com
