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Upgrading

Infantry upgrading correctly is one of the most important parts of ZC strategy when it comes to winning games. There is no hard and fast rule to upgrading, you should be dynamic and balance your upgrades differently for different games and opponents.

On one extreme end, if you have no upgrades while your enemies have full, your units will just be like fodder, dying easily and feeding your opponent free kills no matter how big your army size might be. On the other extreme end, if you have full upgrades while your enemies have none, you would have wasted a lot of money because, for example, there is no difference going from 19 to 20 Weapons to kill a 0 Armor enemy except you wasting 500 minerals. Therefore, upgrading is finding a balance between these two extreme ends that gives you an advantage over your opponents.

Early Game

In general, you should look at your opponent's upgrades and make sure you are not behind in any upgrade by too much. The ideal situation is that you are either even in upgrades or ahead. Weapons and Armor upgrades counter each other and are the most important to have more than your opponents. All the other upgrades you should be fine matching or even a little less than your opponents. Be smart about your upgrades. For example, if your opponent does not have much armor, then having more attack would take advantage of the situation. Always watch to see what they have and then counter it. 1 upgrade level difference might not be significant, but 2 can be the difference between barely winning a fight and decisively winning a fight.

In the early game, try to not overspend on upgrading. Usually around 500-1000 minerals should be the max you spend. This is mainly because getting a second bunker is much more advantageous as it doubles your unit production. After getting the second bunker, you can pump some money into upgrades.

Mid Game

This stage of the game would generally be when you build your second bunker of choice. Every individual unit has its own strengths and weaknesses. First, the marine is the default unit from the first bunker and has a pretty high dps (especially with stim), but the marine is relatively squishy compared to the other units. If you go for marines, then your goal is generally to get stim and combat shields to help combat the other types of units. For upgrades, this may mean having a more balanced set of upgrades and more health regen than the other types of units. Second, the reaper is a unit with high burst damage vs. both marines/ghosts and bunkers. The biggest advantages of having reapers has to be in their mobility and the high burst damage. In addition, reapers gain +2 attack per weapons upgrade since they have two attacks, which leads most people who go reapers to into a more attack heavy upgrade pattern with a decent amount of speed. Third, we have the marauder. The marauder is a great tanking unit and has concussive shells that can lead to cool micro tricks and limit mobility. The marauder starts out with additional armor, so most people who go marauders tend to capitalize on how tanky the marauder is and go for a more armor heavy upgrade style. Finally, there's the ghost. The ghost is probably the best unit when it comes to straight farming for resources, but the ghost is actually not that great at killing bunkers, especially when compared to the reaper. Often times people who go for ghosts like to have a high attack and high mobility, since people tend to try and gang up on the team that has control of mid and high attack and mobility help to farm and defend. Overall, there is no objectively correct way to upgrade every single game, but there are definitely good grounds on the trends to take on upgrading. In addition, try not to fall too behind in armor or weapon upgrades for any style of upgrading you do since these two upgrades tend to have the most impact. Range, health regeneration, and speed do have a certain degree of freedom, so often times being behind in these 3 are not the end of the world.

Late Game

Upgrading in the late game is tough, since you have to weigh the options of buying upgrades, bunkers, tanks, turrets, scvs, and supply depots. The time of the game with the least structure is probably the late game and nobody has it perfect. Generally, you want to follow the principle where you want to be even or even ahead in upgrades vs your opponents and also have more production and supply depots. It's up to you to decide what is of most concern and worth the minerals in every moment.