How to win 1V1 lategame?

So, I'm losing almost all of my games recently against my friends. Keep in mind that we always play private games since we aren't good enough to play public.

I'm usually able to get a 2-3x economy advantage, majority map control and hold it very easily. My units tend to be much stronger and greater in number.
We play without some super weapons, simply because we either don't know a counter or there isn't one (Nukes (tacticals are ok), Detriments, Rainbow turret..etc)

However, my enemies usually spend the greater majority of their income building a large defence around their base. An hour into the game and they have a complete shield line/projectors/screamers practically chained together. The issue that I have is that I simply cannot fit enough units in the small'ish chokepoints available on most maps. Even with 20+ Dante's supported by ~10 shields I usually can't get close.

They however, usually have a VERY weak mobile army, perhaps some AA units but that's usually it. It's all well and good to capture every single outlying mex but when it comes to actually directly attacking them I can never get close, and usually end up resigning 2 hours into the game out of boredom or getting destroyed from a crawling bomb rush.

What are some tactics I can use with a practically infinite economy, to destroy a super-powerful defensive line, without using super-weapons?

you should just win earlier to avoid this from happening altogether. games can be won within a couple of minutes and frequently are.

otherwise, what DAKADAKA said. get artillery, preferable mobiles but big berthas are also great especially if enemies have counter artillery in their base. reef or funnelweb spam also is greatly effective against pretty much everything.

point is ofc, that the the super weapons you mentioned are also called "game enders" for a reason. if you cant make them it can be difficult to end games at all.

I suggest you watch some high level 1v1 games. Shadowfury has a lot of them on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/Shadowfury333/videos

If you and your friends don't mind, you can invite someone to spectate your games. This way if any questions appear they can get a decent answer immediately.

With some hacks it's also possible for a coach to share team with you (like SC2 Archon Mode) which allows some more direct help but at the cost of only being able to help one team.

quote: Your ten last games are on maps Sandcastles, Supreme Battlefield, SuperSpeedMetalX,..

By all the criteria I'd use to judge maps, these are extremely bad maps. If you try playing regular maps you'll probably find what you describe is not an issue, as there are few chokepoints.

Superweapons are terrible. Never used in 1v1. They're difficult to deal with once their out, but the chances of someone winning once they commit to a superweapon is fairly low unless they were already winning.

The argument that they're uncounterable does not hold, since pretty much everything in the game counters them up until when they are completed (99% of the game).

It's also a good win condition for them to use from their porced up base.

So I would fight to have the ban removed, because it's unjustified and facilitates their playstyle while harming yours. Failing that, you should focus on improving your economy and army management skills to the point where you can take the map so quickly, then generate an unstoppable army before they can consolidate their defenses with high end silliness.

If your economy is smooth, you will have the artillery up in time to kill anything he could possibly have that would prevent your aggression. If he rushes something that kills artillery (like behemoth), then he can't possibly have afforded the DDM's to hold off your enormous army.

Make sure that on top of securing metal income, you're spending all of it. If you have 100 income you need enough energy and BP to spend it. Five minutes into the game there's little reason to ever have your metal storage over zero again. Not at this skill level anyway.

If you want to genuinely get better, playing (or just watching) public games is the best way. But you will rapidly (within a couple of days) get so much better than your friends that they won't want to play you, unless they also play public games. So it's up to you! :D

While it's true you've banned all the weapons meant to defeat these mega-base strategies, 1v1 is never designed to get to mega-base stage. 1v1 usually ends in less than 30 minutes, you rarely see units over 1k cost, artillery, or static shields (only shieldbot shieldballs).

If you really aggressively take the map and make a lot of raiders and then assaults, you will end the game before the enemy can get out big units.

But we have designed Zero-K for all map sizes, skill levels, and for FFA, which is why we have the end-game-button units. If you can sink 30k into one and still hold off the enemy, then you deserve to win. That's what it's for. It creates this awesome tension at the end of the game where it's like a timer has been started, when those shots start flying the enemy had better have a huge mobile army to push into your base and snipe the superweapon, or it's game over.

Nuke also has a similiar mechanic, where the enemy has to have appropriate scounting and intel and made Antinukes (this counter should be pretty obvious). This creates a single point of failure: Just kill the antinuke, and let the missiles fly! The other 'single point of failure' is the singularity reactor. Just snipe them out and take out the whole enemy base (And if the enemy isn't using any, well build them yourself and just roll over him with eco).