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...

** 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.

* The Brotherhood of Nod in ''[[Command & Conquer]]'' makes use of this at lower tech levels, able to produce huge numbers of cheap, expendable militia troops, as well as light, fast attack bikes, buggies, and tanks. However, while most soldiers fighting for Nod are poorly-trained, poorly-armed rabble, the other end of the spectrum is comprised of a much smaller group of super elites using technology that's often superior in many ways to that of GDI. If Nod has a single overarching approach to warfare it's not just zerging the enemy, it could probably best be described as sending favored sons to stab him in the back with a billion-dollar dagger made from alien technology while he's busy fending off the ragged but very fanatical mob in front of him.

** In ''[[Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2]]'', the Soviet Conscripts are pretty much designed for this tactic; Very weak, very cheap, easily spammable.

** 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).

** 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 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.

** 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.

* 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.]"

* 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.

* 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.

* In the (currently practice-only) level of ''[[FHBG]]'' titled "dinner blaster", just as the player has started to take care of two Sneakers, a load of Burgers fly in from the sides.