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always have a ling on the watch towers. Units im afraid of, terran and protoss units. because theyre really good.

Siege tanks, sensor towers (underused imo), and bunkers are essential for map control as terran. I also like to place a viking or two in places that drops tend to go by in TvT.

Obviously watch towers and keeping an eye for expansions are key too - I like to leave a marine at or near enough to their third to know the second they are taking it.

I define it as phoenixs and dts since protoss don't have much of a way to control the map other than this. Blink stalkers can allow temporarily it in pvt but definately not in pvz where zerglings and fast moving roaches always mean the key points will be controlled by the zerg till your move your army out.

I as a zerg player love to use ling muta for map control until late game against t when i have to move out or loose to tanks

In my opinion the person that has map control controls the neutral part of the map and/or map vision. It's not a measurable resource like minerals or army size, and it's often subjective based on how the players feel. Sometimes you can scare your opponent out of map control by feigning a push even if your army is smaller. Then you can leave units around the map and at watchtowers to scout, until your opponent takes back map contorl.

TvZ. Map control doesn't exist short of Siege attacks. Thank you for the shredder.

Zerg needs lots of creep spread. Protoss needs pylons around the map to quickly warp in units late-game. Terran is too OP to need map control.

doesnt exist for protoss unless its a mirror match up

I like to warp in Reavers from Aiur and use them for map control.

Almost as important as map control is realizing when you don't have it. If you aren't or can't scout past your front door, you need to start planning for the worst case. Build the extra bunker, build the anti drop defenses, etc.

My post from SEA

Map Control. How do define it?

Map control is when it is safer for you to move around the map than your opponent, allowing you to safely mass expand

How do you achieve it?

I usually achieve it with constant pressure on their base, forcing them to stay in their base or lose it (e.g. void harass, muta harass, drops, ect...) DTs also work against terrans who dont get ravens

Which of your units are critical for map control, and which enemy units do you watch out for?

As i prefer to play random, heres what i see as critical for map control:

Terran -
Hellions. They can destroy mineral lines in seconds, and are very mobile. You have to watch out for these, or you can be set back a lot

Reapers. Not very popular and very situational, the reaper is one of the strongest units for making your opponent fall back to defend, giving you map control, because they laugh at static defense. This is made up for with their high cost and long build time.

Nuclear missiles. Difficult to get in place, but can cause panic in you opponents making them react by moving all their workers, stopping mining for 20 seconds.

Siege tanks. Keeping them stuck in their base is just as good as making them scared to move out

Cloaked banshees. Fast, not restricted by terrain and a lot of DPS. Very good with keeping the opponent stuck in their base.

Vikings (except vs P)
Against T, vikings can give your siege tanks an extra +2 range, keeping them safer and knocking out enemy tanks without getting shot back at. Against Z, you can use vikings to kill off overlords spread to know enemy movements

Medivac Drops - Designed to make your opponent fall back depending on the size of it, medivac drops can be the final tool Terrans need to keep the opponent in their base.

Protoss:

Observers - allowing you to know where your enemies army is allows you to keep everything safe. Also helps spot drops safely.

DTs - Nothing like a cloaked unit to pull your army apart just because you ran out of scans. This slows down the terrans push by a lot, allowing you to safely take 5 bases and make an invincible deathball.

Phoenix (vs Zerg) - Destroys overlords, kills off mutas and a very fast speed allows the phoenix to be incredibly helpful in the PvZ matchup for keeping map control.

Mothership - If you dont have to move your army till it is in their base, that is map control. The mothership achieves this with mass recall

Warp Gates - The final mechanic for map control that protoss has, Warp gates allow a protoss to bring small forces of units into any point in the map that the player chooses. This allows defense from harassment as well as warp ins from a warp prism to deal massive damage, especially when it is DTs that are being warped in.

Zerg -
Speedlings - the fastest unit in the game, it makes expanding for your enemy incredibly difficult unless they set up a wall. Not walling vs a zerg is usually suicide.

Burrowed banelings - causes the opponent to have to bring detection with them or they lose their army

Overlords - You can spot the drops, you dont die to them. Simple enough

Mutalisks - The fast speed and high number of uses of mutas makes them incredibly important for securing map control. Mutalisks can destroy enemy drops, fight off vikings and destroy mineral lines, and be back home in time to hold off those tanks

Creep Spread - The final key to zerg map control, the creep mechanic allows a zerg army to spot an enemy terran or zerg army and intercept it in a short amount of time due to its naturally high speed and the bonus from the creep.

How do your attempts to secure map control change based on terrain features?

Mainly, i just try to keep the enemy on less bases than me while amassing an air force. Why an air force? because air units ignore the terrain. Its different as a zerg though (i use ling/infestor/bling/muta/ultra) because of creep, but the best thing is to constantly deny their expansions while hurting the ones that are already set up.

On a side note, i have found that the person with map control the most usually wins the game.

12/16/2011 06:36 PMPosted by pandasGoRAWR

Terran is too OP to need map control.

I can only speak for ZvT. Terran's form of map control is denying the map control for other races. They don't exactly need map control because they are constantly making their army and this makes them complete invulnerable as long as they remember to seige up, etc. Besides scanning at various points of the game, there is hardly any reactive play required from the terran player (Eg. doesnt matter whether the zerg player is going BL, ultras or infestors, they just need ghosts late game). So, once again, map control is not really needed for them.

This is why terran player streams are really boring. There's hardly anything going on besides what's in their base. In the early game, it's just a blind execution of a build. Because their units are so good. It's usually up to the opponents to counter. Without proper mapcontrol, the other races can actually lose outright or be significantly crippled by any throw-away drops or when the terran player pushes out.

Map control has 2 components:

Making sure the opponent cannot move out, by being ready to punish them if they do
Mutas, phoenix, banshees for harass purposes - if they move out their mineral lines are dead
Drops - again the mineral lines are dead

Knowing when they do:
Observers, watchtowers, creep/overlord spread

Some specific matchup related map control topics:
ZvP
Zerg should always have complete map control, until the protoss moves out. It then becomes irrelevant.

TvT
All about map control, because tanks are so centric

TvZ
All about map control, tanks are for controlling portions of the map
Mutas seek to take away this map control

When I think of map control immediately something I do that seems obvious yet I hardly see anyone do which I am excited to share is unit scouting.

Its what I call it name aside its the art of using a single unit to scout the entire map. Now this can also be done with multiple units but starting with the early game I use 1 worker to scout each spawn^ usually I pull one off the line shortly after placing my first depot. Using the shift command i tell it to go to each patch. The next scout is the worker that finishes the first depot, he is qued to go to the watch tower after finishing the depot. (I bring a worker off the line to go build the rax to arrive in time with minerals works out nice)
**At this point: We are going to scout the enemy base, and the watchtower vision is ours.
^when you notice your scout find the enemy base hold shift and use the patrol command to issue a box ish pattern around the back of the mineral patches and around the front of the base (the goal here is to create an uninterrupted path around your opponents base if he tries to use his worker to kill it will take him a long time you will gather lots of information and if you can micro well hotkey to him and keep him alive and then set up the patrol again)

The last bit of unit scouting wisdom I want to share is using idle units to check the entire map for hidden expos, tech, or just general information. Terran to Terran please stop wasting your scans mules provide lots of extra units. Using my favorite key (Shift) you can tell one marine to check the entire map, use the mini map to set his path and make it a safe path (no matter how long safe is)
(((Aside from map control, the shift key can be used to que up several drop ship routes, you can load rines send the drop ship around the outer edge of the map and even have it qued to unload in a odd edge of the opponents base, if you can time it right try to attack his front with a dummy attack, get a few rines and maybe even a marauder or two at his front so your opponents attention is on that, scrub that fight and focus on your drop that should arrive 10 secs after the front fight begins. *his front fight usually doesn't do much damage, a drop on the eco line is crippling especially if it goes by un-noticed)))

Some of this might already be in your deck of cards, I hope my rambles of scouting tips and tricks that have help me bring luck to you. I wanted to write this before I read the groups while the ideas are fresh in my head, so sorry in advance if someone has already stated all of this.

{A lot of this is referenced as a Terran player but many things will apply to other races, sub rines for lings, and sub lings for probes and even zealots.

GLHF!

I like making unexpected moves. High micromanaged low-army density 'stings' with Zerg.

Having an Overlord (or even better, a Com-sat ally scan) and throwing infested terrans over a ridge to a mineral line without having to sneak past a detector.

Randomly placed banelings to scare Terrans into scan-wasting, or being rewarded with a single baneling kill.

Ling rushing, /dance, run out.

Hydralisk dropped by Overlords, Nydus spawned immediately to drag them out safely.

Switching from mass Roaches/Hydralisk/Zergling/Baneling or any other ground-heavy deployment only to have all my saved-up-gas-from-no-upgrades and those 3 expansions and macro hatcheries with Queen juice all spam Mutalisks when they have no army to properly defend against them... and having an Overlord creep up a corner of the map where the Spire was spawned so they never expected you to build them EVER.

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Map control is very match-up specific and this question is very broad! please narrow your inquiries in order to get a specific answer.

Map control, has two specific components for me... one is the ability to see the map, hold key watch towers etc., to track enemy movement. The other aspect is the ability to control the open map and keep your enemy contained. With regards to watching or surveying the map, I use relatively cheap units such as probes or zealots to hold Xel'naga towers. Protoss can also litter specifc areas such as key expansions or narrow pathways (like John's secret hallway) with pylons to give cite, especially against mobile units like medivacs and mulalisks. Dark Templars are great at achieving both functions of map control, holding towers, watching expansions, keeping enemy forces from moving into the map without detection; The larger the map, the more useful they become.

Map control is a pretty broad subject, so I'll edit my post to try and fit it in here, what will soon follow will probably be a wall of text.

So main units zerg uses for map control are lings and overlords. Lings are fast and cheap and run around, overlords are fat and slow and float in one place.

With lings you run around and keep them everywhere. You have a ling or a few at each watch tower and do you best to keep control of the watch towers. You have a ling (later on a burrowed ling) at every possible expo. You keep a ling out in front of your opponents base to see when they're moving out. You have a couple lings running around keeping an eye for hidden workers, proxy pylons, or proxy tech/other buildings. Also keeping a ling in front of a protosses base to make sure they can't get a probe out on the map is very helpful.

With overlords, you have them sitting around close to your opponents base when you can, to watch for gasses, watch for them moving out, and to be able to sacrifice it into their base. It's good to have overlords floating around the outskirts of your base to watch for drops, or vs Z for incoming scouting overlords or nydus play.

Mutas are also a big part of map control, but are mostly used as a staple unit in ZvT. They can be used in ZvZ and ZvP, but usually aren't used as a staple unit. Mutas give map control in several different ways. One big one is the threat of counter attack, forcing the opponent to always be careful when moving out, have to make static defense, and leave units behind. Also the mutas give map control in that they can fly around and deny scouting and deny drops.

Overall SC2 is a game where information is very, so having map control to give you as much information as possible and deny as much information and possible is very important.