How do you keep your enemy from gaining map control? It seems that once they have it, they get many expos and you are limited to one or two.

I've tried raiding and using specific unit counters, but they always get more food worth of units (due to their greater resources).

Any help?

The only real solution is to obtain map control yourself or harass as much as possible to prevent them from expanding/obtaining superior economy. With zerg, you can spread creep all over the map; terran can ninja gold expansions with MULE calldowns and carried SCVs as well as pwn everything with hellions and splash; protoss has the ability to defend an expansion that is being set up as well as completely decimate mineral lines (not that terran or zerg has a hard time doing so).

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jun 6 2010, 7:00 pm by Aristocrat. Reason: "economu" LOL

Counter harassing is the way to go. If your opponent has map control, they are more spread out. Use drops, air, stuff like reapers, ect to harass your opponent all around the map. Make him pay for having to spread out his forces.

That's what I was gonna say. The only way to counter it is to take advantage of his divided forces.

Aside from that, preventing enemies from gaining map control in the first place is one of the only ways to deal with it. For example, keep an eye on every expansion as early as is possible without gimping your own forces. Keep a solid hold on the watchtowers; as Zerg, spread zerglings everywhere to keep an eye on things. As protoss, use observers enough that your foes can't get a secret expansion. Deny all attempts to make new main structures, either by burrowing zerglings or by shooting at the building once it's been started. As Terran, spreading a few reapers around to kill any workers that try to establish expos can be helpful. Keep an eye on your minimap. Always pre-scout to see what forces are around before you make a raid. If he divides his forces in half, choose which ever one is more vulnerable to eliminate. If you can destroy half his army without losing at least half of yours, you're ahead and he knows it, too. Abuse Colossi cliffwalking, zergling speed, and reaper cliff jumping. Scout religiously. Always knowing where your enemy's army is will be a big help. Abuse baneling minefields, too - making a terran waste mana on scans will help a lot, and if he builds ravens try to snipe them and make him waste minerals. This won't work so well against protoss, who can take an observer along, but making your enemy more cautious is generally a good thing.

Basically you go for very sneaky tactics, figure out where he focuses certain types of structures, that, if taken down, will knock lose his control, or slow him down, to where you can gain control somewhat.


If you can find multiple weak spots that are important, try hitting them all at once. This could be dropping Dark Templars in each base, avoiding detectors but hittig important parts. Hit them all over and they will feel overwhelmed. Lot of reapers can work too, or invis ghosts. Nydus worms also can work too.

Pick one tech to go for. Do not be a jack of all trades early in the game.

That can be dangerous - you have to pick the right tech and you have to be flexible enough to switch if your opponent tries to counter.

Yeah, but early game. If you tech too much, then you will have no force that may deal with your opponents'. It's better to scout and choose a tech to go for early game.

If your opponent takes map control it usually means one of two things. One, he beat you in some battle, managed to take advantage of a temporary weakness that you didn't capitalize on, or has a better army composition than you. This means that you are behind, and that you need to work to get back on top. Alternatively, it means that they overinvested in military at the expense of production in hopes of using it to secure more expansions to increase production later on.

You should know which of the two it is, because they both demand different responses. If your opponent isn't ahead of you, you need to play it cool, build up forces and get upgrades. If he wants to catch back up he needs to take an expansion, so if you find out when he does that (ideally you attack just as he's transferring his workers to the new one) you can do a timing push that will catch him off guard and punish him for spending too many resources on taking map control early on.

If they took map control as the spoils of some victory over you, you will need to get creative because they haven't done anything you can punish them for, yet. (And yes, taking their natural 3 minutes before you take yours counts as a victory even if you don't fight over it) At this point you need to do something to get back on track. That can be a macro action like grabbing another expansion and pumping workers in hopes that the attack won't come until you get your production up, you can make a new unit that may give you battlefield advantage, or you can employ a tactic to damage their economy without losing too many units. Essentially it's up to you to steal back the win from your opponent.