Zerg Rush/Video Games: Difference between revisions

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** The classic Zerg rush refers to using the zerg's advantage in the early game of being able to quickly churn out weak units (e.g zerglings) to sack the enemy's base before they can set up their slower-to-build but more powerful units. Of course, the numbers will be few, thus rendering the trope null and void in this case, but it is where the term originated.

*** In [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jen46qkZVNI this infamous video], the tactic is applied in reverse: the Terran player performs a Zerg Rush [[Death by Irony|on the Zerg]]! With [[Worker Unit|SCVs]]!

** In Starcraft parlance, a "rush" involves getting a particular unit as quickly as possible and attacking with it before the enemy could hope to have a counter. This applies even if the unit in question is a late-game unit. For example, a Terran player can do a Banshee rush (essentially helicopter gunships that have a researchable cloaking upgrade), and the Protoss can Void Ray Rush (airships that can [[Beam Spam]]). Both were possible tactics against Protoss and especially Zerg players, who often don't have enough early-game anti-air to stop such an attack unless they see it coming and prepare specifically for that (leaving them open to a more conventional ground attack).

** In a rather hilarious bit of irony, the Zerg in SC2 are most effective when employing the opposite of the [[Zerg Rush]] in the early game. Instead of churning out a lot of zerglings early on, they instead constantly build [[Worker Unit]] drones far faster than the other races can, build a huge economic advantage, ''then'' [[Zerg Rush]] (Except at that point, it's usually just called a push or an attack). In fact, in pro-level play, it is up to the other races to hamper the Zerg early on to prevent them from "droning" and running away with an economic lead.

* For most ''[[Fire Emblem]]'' games, this is a favored tactic of the AI opponents; they'll typically field armies that are anywhere between twice to four times the size of your party and, unless they're on the defensive, will send units to attack you in large numbers. This is offset somewhat by the player units having better stats, better equipment and the benefit of support relationships, so a properly-leveled party will take little/no damage from the resulting Rush. [[Nintendo Hard|Hard/Maniac Modes, however...]]

* The Russians in ''[[Age of Empires III]]''. Their light infantry is weak and has low HP, but they're built by tens and are the cheapest units in the game.

*** The Yamato cavalry rush was another staple of the original game.

*** Plus the late-game Shang villager horde, involving villager-only upgrades that turned them into passable fighting units. When you consider that the Shang had the cheapest villagers in the game...

* In ''[[Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri]]'', this is the main tactic of the Free Drones, a faction of socialist proletariat who have a distrust for the well-educated upper echelons of society that once oppressed them (and so have a certain [[Dumb Is Good]] ethos). They feature an industry bonus (the citizenry being made up almost entirely of blue-collar workers) and a research penalty ([[Department of Redundancy Department|...the citizenry being made up almost entirely of blue-collar workers]]), resulting in being able to deploy vast quantities of units but having subpar equipment. The Hive, the only other faction with an innate industry bonus, usually works similarly but to a lesser extent, mainly because they don't have a research penalty. They do have an economy penalty, though, which negatively effects their ability to research.

** Another faction that likes to [[Zerg Rush]] is [[Church Militant|the Believers]]. They have a bonus to Support under their preferred political system which allows them to field larger armies, combined with a bonus to attack and [[Belief Makes You Stupid|lack of research]] that causes them to have lower-tech units then normal (albeit not exactly weaker so long as they strike first). They can't build as quickly as the Hive or the Drones, but they can maintain a larger army and their bonus to attack is incentive to strike first.

** Any faction can zerg rush an opponent with rifleman in the earlier games. Infantry have now been nerfed to the point that even the lowliest of vehicles is still marginally better than the best trooper (sans the Commando units, but you can't readily rush with them due to the one-per-army limit).

** Allies and Nod both relied on Zerg tactics in the first game of their respective series, mainly due to the fact that even their strongest tank was pathetically weak compared to even the lightest tank of the opposition. Somewhat subverted with the Allies, as they had Cruisers with BFGs that can level a whole base on Naval maps, but totally straight with Nod, as even their Air support was inferior to that of the GDI (they had no naval force whatsoever).

** An interesting subversion: Some players (especially in Tiberian Sun, where [[APCs]] can travel underground, past barriers and undetected) would load up an APC with Engineers and rush it into the enemy base. Since all base-producing functions was concentrated on the Construction Yard, a good Engineer rush would cripple a player long before the real fighting started. It's more of a traditional Zerg Rush (where you cripple your opponent) than the more popular meaning.

** An interesting variant (actually predating the [[Trope Namer]]) was the tank rush. What makes it a subversion is that this tend to be used with GDI's Heavy Tanks and Mammoth Tanks, the two heaviest tanks in the game, that would just steamroll over the opposition. You still use overwhelming numbers, but due to the cost and build time of the tanks, this is likely a late-game tactic. It is gruesomely effective, as fending off all those heavily armored tanks can be extremely difficult to near-impossible (especially Mammoth Tanks, as they literally had no weakness to exploit).

** Then again, the GLA faction has Angry Mobs, which is 9 civilians with pistols and rocks (unless you Arm The Mob with AK-47s) counting as a single unit. It's fun to throw a mass of 200 people firing AK's and throwing molotov cocktails at your opponent's base.

* ''[[Rise of Nations]]'' has the Terra Cotta Army wonder, a Zerg Rush ''kit,'' basically. Every thirty seconds (initially; it goes up by half a second for every infantry you control), you get a free basic infantry unit. ''Read that again.''

** Also present in the game are the Chinese race, whose main bonus is instant villagers. Depending on Age, villagers can be upgraded to simple military units. This makes for a semi-effective ''anti'' Zerg Rush tactic, as a Chinese player with adequate resources can spam their city with villagers up to their population cap. Which can mean several ''hundred'' instant soldiers.

** There is also the upgrade "Artificial Intelligence": All units are created instantaneosly, regardless of power or cost in resources. (Assuming you can pay, otherwise it doesn't work at all)

** This very much applies to the armies of Mordor (and to a ''slightly'' lesser extent Isengard) in the original novels as well. Sauron is practically the poster boy (poster-Eye?) for the 'plenty more where they came from' school of evil strategy. His Orcs are clumsy, cowardly fighters and only effective in huge numbers, especially against skilled warriors like (most of) the Fellowship.

* Scout rushes are a frequently-suggested (if rarely-executed with more than 3 Scouts) strategy in ''[[Team Fortress 2]]''--Scouts can reach the objective before any other class and have twice the capturing power at the cost of lower firepower and health.

** The first half of the campaign pits you against a Russian force generally 2 to 3 times your size; the first few missions pretty much end up in a total retreat.

* In ''[[Warhammer Online]]'', whichever of the two opposing realms (Destruction or Order) outnumbers the other is often accused of using this tactic to win in RvR, using their increased numbers and over abundance of tanks to steamroller the opposition. Trouble is, the tactic often does work if the underpopulated side can't put up a decent melee line to slow them down whilst their ranged take them apart.

** And just so you get the point of how weak Zerg Rush soldiers can be, these soldiers can be defeated with any attack in one hit. Even Luigi's taunt.

*** Ah, so ''that's'' how you're supposed to get [[Last Lousy Point|that bonus]]! Wait... event matches don't give out the bonuses... crap.

* ''[[Survival Crisis Z]]'', oh man. Go to act 3 and find a neutral safehouse of level 11. You will never see the end of the mob.

* [[Disgaea]] blatantly states this in the tutorial of the first game, saying the best strategy in the game is to rush one unit wildly with your soldiers. This is also an effective strategy for distractions, by sending out weak and useless characters, thus the AI auto targets the weakest link, leaving your main fighter several turns of beating the ever living hell out of the enemy.

'''Sapphire''': Indeed. Numbers are power. Human wave tactics of this scale can only be called amazing. }}

* [[Serious Sam]] often has [[The War Sequence|moments]] where rather weak Kleer skeletons or Marsh Hoppers can overwhelm the player just by having so many of them at the same time.

*** The strategy may fail against defenses, but only when using the basic level of factories. Each up grade to the factory increases the speed of construction. Going from seven seconds down to TWO.

* ''[[X-COM]]: Apocalypse'' has what's called the Hoverbike swarm, where you buy lots of cheap, weak, but highly evasive hoverbikes which you use to absolutely overwhelm attacking [[Flying Saucer|Flying Saucers]]. It works very efficiently for most of the game until the aliens start using Dimensional Multi-Bomb Launchers to take out many bikes in one shot.

** Even more so in land battles.

* The Egyptians in ''[[Age of Mythology]]'' are the ones with cheap weak troops that build fast. Throw in a few production speed upgrades and a Meteor god power dropped on a hostile chokepoint, and it's Wall of Slingers time, especially if you go with Ra and use your priests to empower military buildings. Isis boosts population cap and grants economic bonuses. This is very bad for whoever's on the receiving end. And Set has stronger slingers and the ability to summon cheap animals to fight.

* In ''[[Civilization]] III'' the Aztecs are made for this tactic. Their Jaguar Warrior unit is the earliest fast unit in the game, and ''fast units retreat at one health unless fighting other fast units.'' This allows for multi-turn rushes of epic proportions very early in the game. As a bonus, the Aztecs are Militaristic, which means that military buildings (such as Bunkers, which increase the total health of any unit produced in that city) cost half their normal price.

** Also applicable to Civilization II when using the "Fundamentalism" government type - they can produce the "Fanatic" Unit that requires no upkeep or support and any reasonable size city can produce one a turn. If you have twenty cities in ten turns you can throw two hundred of them at your enemy.

* In the ''[[Halo]]'' series, most skirmishes allow you to take on one squad of a few grunts/jackals backed by a brute/elite at a single time. When the [[Goddamn Bats|drones]] show up, they go down easily and typically carry piss-weak weapons, but show up in really large groups. The flood also tends to send in wave after wave of infected (even more annoying in ''Halo 3'', as flood infection forms can revive the combat forms you just put down).

* The Husks and Thorian Creepers in ''[[Mass Effect]]''. They're not very effective with it, except in the higher difficulties, however.

** Naturally, the best strategy in the tribal and civilization stages is to have sheer numbers over the enemies. This is especially easy to employ during the Civilization stage because land vehicles are rather cheap and sea vehicles only cost some 500 sporebucks more, making building an entire army very easy. Just hope that your that your machines are actually powerful enough to wage a war against a city.

** Enemy empires (including the Grox) have no trouble being able to launch their massive space navies at your colonies.

* A bug (or so we hope) in ''[[Panzer General]] 2'' allowed the Red Army to buy the T-34 tank for free, thereby allowing you to fill the map with them and [[Zerg Rush|Zerg Rushing]] the vile Nazi.

* The favored tactic of the Mastermind archetype in ''[[City of Villains]]''. Though it varies depending on level and powerset, the average Mastermind can summon six minions to boss around. On Mastermind-heavy teams, upwards of 40 characters can be running around a map.

* The mutants in ''[[Crackdown|Crackdown 2]]'' employ this swarming tactic.

* In the ''[[Homeworld]]'' verse, [[Proud Warrior Race Guy|Vaygr]] strike craft squadrons have more units than their - individually stronger - Hiigaran equivalents. However, the [[Scary Dogmatic Aliens|Kadeshi]] are simply the kings of this trope.

'''Fleet Intelligence:''' [[Captain Obvious|The enemy seem to rely]] heavily [[Captain Obvious|on fighter-class units]]. }}

** Good thing they're really, really awful at defending their fuel supply

* In the FPSMMO ''[[PlanetSide]]'' a Zerg rush was usually necessary to effectively wedge the enemy out of a tower. Taking a base was no real pain, requiring a multi angled approach until the enemy could be booted out. Attacking one of the outlying towers however... wave after wave after wave of soldiers holding doors open, having rockets spammed inside before a sizeable group of power-armored infantry could rush the basement where the spawn room was... God I love that game!

* Some players of [[wikipedia:Steel Panthers|Steel Panthers]] are prone to do this: buying hordes of infantry (as opposed to a good infantry/armor mix), mortars (as opposed to howitzers) and cheap recoiless rifle jeeps (instead of tanks), even in open maps! The newest versions of this game have made spotting harder, which can make this trope more effective.

** He doesn't even have to be on the screen to combo you: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_qLvGwG0lo examples]. Lots of curse combos last a long time on normal competitive matches.

* ''[[Muv-Luv]]'''s BETA use that as their main tactics against the humans, and it usually proves to be very effective, since they outnumber the human forces on Earth at least 20 to 1, the average human pilot does not survive longer than 8 minutes into their first battle, and the BETA have control of the Moon and Mars. Plus it helps that there are {{spoiler|10^37 to 10^37+10^37x9^10 (It depends on how you interpret what The Superior says)}} BETA in the universe. As one player wrote in a stream of consciousness journal while they played the game for the first time, "[http://pastebin.com/18gQ2Ruk BETA are zerg. Discuss.]"

* One of the selling point of ''[[Shining Force]] Neo'' is that the game enables over 100 monsters on the screen at the same time. When that actually happens to you, [[Oh Crap|you're doomed.]]

* In Backyard Monsters you could wait weeks to finally get the highest level non-champion monster and send like 12 in or you can send in 250 of the lowest level guys and watch them wreck crap. The beauty is that you're method of sending monsters in can't actually fire that many at once so you need to do it about three times and if you do the game will crash. So yeah you zerg rushed the base, the catapult, and the game itself.

** The big Alliances in player owned space typically like to jump in huge fleets of 300+ ships into other systems when invading, in order to overwhelm the enemy's defenses.

* ''Section 8: Prejudice's'' AI is somewhat prone to doing this at times, especially in Assault games when the defenders go into Sudden Death. Subverted by the fact that they have the exact same stats as the player, although anyone with experience will have far better accuracy than they do. A fun game is to intentionally allow your team to go into Sudden Death and then stand outside your remaining Control Point shouting "THEY SHALL NOT PASS!!!!". The effectiveness of this strategy is debatable, [[Rule of Cool|but the awesomeness is undeniable]].

* Trying to [[Zerg Rush]] in ''[[Age of Wonders]] II'' against the CPU opponents is not typically a good idea as the CPU will try to keep construction pace with your own army size. Additionally, the size and strength of the opposing force units is a major factor in the CPU determining what kind of threat and response level it will assume but it focuses heavily on quantity.

** Generally the CPU will reliably fund three or four full stacks of units that stay together and defend its territory based around a Hero unit if given the chance to assemble the forces. This army descending upon you from out the [[Fog of War]] can be quite off-putting.

* A favorite tactic of [[The Horde|the darkspawn]] in ''[[Dragon Age]]: Origins''. Especially pronounced in the run-up to the [[Final Battle]] in {{spoiler|Denerim}}, in which many fight scenes will just consist of dozens upon dozens of darkspawn (most of them [[One-Hit-Point Wonder]] "grunts") pouring in toward your party from somewhere offscreen.

* ''[[Galactic Civilizations]]'': the AI has a soft spot for swarms of fighters and frigates. This tends to work well right up until the largest size of vehicle comes into play, at which point the path from [insert your homeworld] to [insert enemy homeworld] becomes littered with the husks of burning ships.

* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvugzSQwaso This] tactic from an ancient version of [[League of Legends]]. Heimerdinger, who can place down turrets as an ability, prevents minions from moving through the middle lane by blocking their path with those turrets. Patched up ages ago; friendly units can freely move through Heimer turrets.

* This is a commonly used tactic in ''[[Kingdoms Of Camelot]]'' on Facebook. The easiest way to take out an enemy city's defenses is with an initial wave of Militamen, the cheapest, most basic unit of the game. 'Scout bombs' are also used to destroy enemy scouting ability, sending a large wave of scouts to kill the opponent's scouts.