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If you are spreading creep using a single tumor, the next tumor will be ready before the creep has spread to its full extent. More creep tumors will make the creep spread faster.

But, too many creep tumors and you will essentially be wasting queen energy (assuming you're continuing in a single direction).

What is the optimal number of creep tumors to balance creep spread with queen energy?

I understand that "too many" creep tumors allows you to fan out in other directions, but I'm curious to know a rule of thumb as a basis for decision making, and tweak per the situation.

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  • More tumors also allow you to recover from an attack to take them down easier!
    – Shahbaz
    Jul 27, 2012 at 9:06
  • @Shahbaz how do you figure?
    – Nick122
    Jul 27, 2012 at 11:32
  • Also, I believe that 2 creep tumors doubles the speed of creep growth. Then it exponentially decreases after that. Of course it really depends on how big of a route you are covering.
    – Nick122
    Jul 27, 2012 at 11:33
  • @Nick122, well if they attack to destroy the tumors to stall your movements, the more tumors you have, the more time you have to kill of their troops before they can clear the area.
    – Shahbaz
    Jul 27, 2012 at 11:41
  • Still not clear on how more creep tumors would help you "recover from an attack". Recovering from an attack requires resources and defenses. Creep tumors just add a little bit of mobility. Killing off creep tumors is never someones primary goal in an attack. While they are moving if they have detection they kill them but creep tumors don't have vary much life... they wont' serve much purpose.
    – Nick122
    Jul 27, 2012 at 13:37

3 Answers 3

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8

I did some testing and found that about 5 is nearly optimal. You have to wait about 1 second for the creep to reach its maximum spread, which seems ok considering you have to macro other stuff.

With 6 there is no waiting, but I think 6 is too much.

Further information:

TLO hotkeys his active creep tumors so he can hit the perfect timing consistently. He also plays a Zerg style that relies on 4 queens. You might want to watch some of his replays.

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  • Thats probably about correct :)
    – Nick122
    Jul 27, 2012 at 11:34
  • 1
    TLO talks about his Zerg macro in this highly informative video. He mentions creep spread near the end.
    – Alexis King
    Jul 28, 2012 at 19:50
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1 creep tumour and 1 overlord spewing creep works optimally too.

Simply move the overlord to where you want the next creep tumour to be, leaving creep production on, and when the tumour is ready creep is already at the destination.

This does require a lair though.

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  • I wouldn't say optimally. Overlords are not permanent and more then 1 creep tumor would still spread creep faster.
    – Nick122
    Jul 27, 2012 at 13:35
  • Creep won't spread any faster with 5 tumours than 1 with the overlord, since you can always move the tumour as soon as the CD is up. With only 1 tumour you will be ~30s behind on creep extent around the tumours, but the spread of tumours themselves is the same.
    – Nick
    Jul 27, 2012 at 13:37
  • Ahhh, I see what you meant now! Even still unless you have overlord speed, this wouldn't be a very easy tactic!
    – Nick122
    Jul 27, 2012 at 13:37
  • Even without overlord speed an overlord can keep up with the speed of creep tumour spread!
    – Nick
    Jul 27, 2012 at 13:40
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the easiest way to expand the creep it is have a queen which her only work it is make tumours, with this way in 4 to 6 minutes you will be controlling about 60 % of the map with creep

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