Macro Basics and Core Zerg Mechanics
- Camera Locations
- Injecting Methods
- Shift Deselecting
- Control Grouping Eggs
- Control Group Stealing
- Macro Cycle
- Creep Spread
Camera Locations
Camera location hotkeys are an important mechanic in the game as they allow you to more easily accomplish multiple tasks. They are crucial for injecting your hatcheries, responding to attacks and generally allowing you to move around the map faster.
It is recommended to have at least 4 camera location hotkeys that you are comfortable with, the first 4 are by far the most used and most useful in a game as you generally won’t be injecting more than 4 hatcheries regularly and for everything else you can click on the mini map. However with this being said, I personally use more than 4 usually around 6 and set 7-8. If you are comfortable with using more camera locations go for it, however I find the later ones are mostly useful for transferring workers as well as taking bases a little faster, which isn’t a huge deal.
Setting Camera Locations
Roughly set camera locations for your bases at the start of the game generally when there is some down time in your build order. Once you have set each camera location, you have taken each base, you can recenter the camera on that base and then remake the camera location so that it is centered.
Injecting Methods
Check out Lambo’s video on inject methods here.
You will use camera locations for all methods of injecting, however there are two main ways of injecting. I would recommend starting with only camera location injects, however as you improve you can start using the inject Queen control group method in the later stages of the game.
Camera Location Injects
Once you have set up your camera locations, you will use them to alternate through your bases and use a single injecting Queen which you should make for each base to inject those bases. Ideally you will inject each base every 30 seconds (when the injects pop and the inject Queen has enough energy for another inject).
Boxing Queens
The boxing method is ideal in the early game because there are fewer things going on and it gives you more accuracy. To box inject, select your camera location hotkey, box the inject Queen and then inject the hatchery. Repeat for each Hatchery that you are injecting.
- Select camera hotkey
- Box/select your injecting Queen
- Press your inject hotkey (default is V)
- Inject the Hatchery
- Repeat for each base
Note: in addition to this, if you start to miss injects / the energy on your Queens starts to build up, you should hold shift and repeatedly inject the Hatchery to queue up the injects. You can use rapid fire inject for this by selecting your Queen, holding shift, and then holding your rapid fire inject key over your Hatch. Important: make sure you are box injecting if you are queuing injects. If you use a inject Queen control group, queuing injects onto the hatchery using shift will cause all of your Queens to move out of place.
Inject Queen Control Group
The Queen control group method is less consistent because it can cause wandering Queens if you aren’t careful, however it is generally a bit faster and the control group can be useful if you need to quickly pull your Queens to the front to defend. For the injecting control group method, put all of your injecting Queens on a control group, select that control group then go to each of your bases using your camera location hotkeys and inject each base.
- Select your Queen control group
- Select camera location
- Press your inject hotkey (default is V)
- Inject the Hatchery (Only inject once! injecting more than once using shift will cause wandering Queens)
- Repeat 2-4 for each base
Note: there are two ways you can most commonly get wandering Queens, the first way is injecting one Hatchery more than once. This causes the second closest Queen to come inject the base and leave the base they are supposed to be at. The second way is when the Queen that is supposed to inject the base doesn’t have enough energy to inject but another Queen on the control group does, causing that Queen to walk across the map to inject that Hatchery. Understanding the actions/circumstances that cause wandering Queens is useful if you use this method, as if they come up by accident it is easier to recognize it has happened and quickly correct it (flip through your camera location hotkeys to find the Queen and bring it back to the base it is supposed to be at).
Shift Deselecting
Shift deselecting is a game mechanic that is useful for many different actions within the game, it is particularly relevant for things like sending drones back to mining, queuing up roach burrow attacks and sending scouting lings out onto the map.
Shift deselecting allows you select a large group of units and give different numbers of those units to do different tasks. As an example, to put a group of workers back to a base after pulling them away to save them you can send all of the Drones to one gas, hold shift and deselect three Drones using the bottom frame on the screen, then send all of the Drones still selected to the other gas, deselect three Drones again and then send the rest to minerals.
Control Grouping Eggs
Control grouping eggs is a critical Zerg mechanic which allows Zerg players to easily manage their units before they even hatch. By control grouping eggs, you can control group your units and separate them into different groups before they are even made.
Note: if you are struggling with not over-using F2, control grouping eggs makes not using F2 significantly easier.
To control group eggs, hold control and click the egg on the wire frame at the bottom of the screen after making units and then add to whichever control group you need to. There are some complexities though depending on what units you are making, this is because all Zerg eggs from larva are considered to be the same, so when you control click them you will select all of the units you just made, including Overlords and Drones. To solve this, simply reselect your Hatcheries and Larva for every group of units that you are making. For Overlords and Drones, you won’t need to control group anything.
As an example, if you wanted to make 3 Drones, 2 Overlords, 20 Zerglings and add them to control group 1, another 20 Zerglings and add them to control group 2, and 3 Vipers and add them to control group 3 you would need to follow these steps:
- First 20 Zerglings
- Select Hatcheries
- Make 20 Zerglings
- Ctrl Click the Eggs while they are selected (so you don’t also control group the larva).
- Add to control group 1 (add and steal also works fine)
- Second Set of 20 Zerglings
- Repeat the same as the first 20 Zerglings (make sure to select your Hatcheries again). Just add to control group 2 instead.
- Vipers
- Repeat the same as the Zerglings except add to control group 3.
- Drones and Overlords
- Reselect Hatcheries
- Make Drones and Overlords
- Just make sure to do this separately and not make them in the same group as units or else they will get control grouped as well.
While this process sounds complicated, it is fairly simple once you get used to it and it is always the same order of actions. This means, that once you have practiced it, it becomes automatic and muscle memory and you won’t have to think about control grouping your eggs at all.
Control Group Stealing
Control group stealing is mostly useful for splitting up units once they have already hatched, which makes it much easier to respond to muliti-prong attacks and drops.
You can learn a bit more about control group stealing in the hotkeys article that I wrote, essentially it is very rare to need the regular add and create control group keys as they either work just as well or worse than the steal hotkeys in most situations.
There are many ways to effectively use control group stealing, however I will explain a couple ways you can use them to respond to multiprong attacks, set up your own multiprong attacks or respond to drops.
The most obvious way you can use control group stealing is to box or select part of your army when you need to split it up and control steal that to another control group so that you can use it separately. I personally find that this method can take a bit longer, than the next way which is to send all of your army at the drop location and then box and control group the defending units that you want to send. Then you can reselect your main army and move them back into the proper position. This is generally faster to start sending units to respond as you can send them right away, the only drawback being that it starts to move your main army group out of position until you can move it back.
Macro Cycle
The macro cycle is a list of macro steps to take and can be applied to any race. It can be useful to follow and practice, especially at lower levels to ensure that you don’t miss anything. With that being said, higher level players won’t follow the macro cycle super closely as it is better to be constantly spending larva as it pops up.
The Zerg macro cycle is based around the core Zerg macro mechanic, injects. Every 30 seconds you should follow your own macro cycle and that macro cycle should start with injecting your bases. An example macro cycle would be as follows:
- Inject Hatcheries
- Spend Larva (make units/Drones/whatever you need at the time)
- Make Overlords (some Overlords for every macro cycle is good to start out with to not get supply blocked)
- Spread Creep
- Follow your build order (build structures, start upgrades etc)
- Move your army/scout etc until 30 seconds have passed and then restart the cycle
Creep Spread
Creep spread is a fairly simple mechanic but it is an important one, especially for ZvT and ZvP (and in ZvZ when playing against Mutalisk). You should have defense/creep Queens separate from your injecting Queens on their own hotkey to spread creep. In addition to this control group, having the spread creep ability on rapid fire can also make spreading creep easier.
One of the things that is important to keep in mind in terms of creep spread, is that denying creep spread / killing tumors is often one of the main goals of your opponents, whether it be with an archon drop, 2 medivac drop, hellions or anything else. It is nearly impossible to stop your opponent from killing every tumor, especially if your opponent is active, however whenever enemy units come to deny creep once you have sent units to defend the attack you should respread the creep there as soon as possible. Try to remember to respread creep whenever you defend / push back pressures that kill tumors.
Method
Generally the best method for spreading creep is to click on the mini-map to go to different locations with active tumors and then box or ctrl click a tumor and spread creep from there (either by repeatedly using the ability to more accurately place tumors or by using rapid fire and waving your mouse).
Placement
The positioning and placement of tumors in the early game is important as you won’t have a lot of Queens, will need to invest most of your energy into injecting and will therefore not have a ton of tumors to work with. This means you should do your best to place your first tumors at the edge of creep to get the most value out of them. (Generally you should always be aiming to spread creep as far as possible on each tumor, however it is more important in the early game).
