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Warcraft 2 Strategy Guide January 1996 * * * * * By Paul O'Keefe * * * * * * The Warcraft 2 Strategy Guide from Blizzard Entertainment should be out soon, and will probably be a lot better than this. This guide is not a product of Blizzard Entertainment. This guide is just a few strategies that helped me play the game. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Contents: 1. Keeping a Defense 2. Planning an Offense 3. Using Spells 4. Building a Town 5. Keeping Troops Alive 6. Battles at Sea 7. Upgrading the Right Way 8. Cool Things to Do 9. Cheat Codes --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Introduction: Well, here I am with the Warcraft 2 manual, a bag of chips and a glass of soda. My lava lamp is making wierd bubbles, and I'm racking my brain to try to think of all of the strategies I have used in Warcraft 2. I mainly play as Humans, so I will be refering to the units as the Human version. Ex: a "knight" can also mean an ogre. Here goes! -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Keeping a Defense A defense is perhaps the most vital thing in any war effort. With a good defense, you will have enough time to create a good offense. Depending on what mission you are on, you may know how to use different types of units. The most basic defense is a row of 4 or more knights, then at least 6 archers right behind them, in a single row. It is always good to have about 2 bastillas behind the archers. In this picture, the enemy comes from the top. If the enemy approaches from another side, rotate your defense accordingly. The bastillas ( or catapults ) in the back are huge helps. They will always fire at the first guy, and unless the enemy is very slow, the shots will miss. But the shots WILL hit the area right behind the attacker, killing anything there. Bastillas are also great at killing axe throwers and archers, and sometimes an enemy will retreat once he sees the bastillas. E E = enemy K = knight KKKK A = archer AAAAAA B = bastilla B B Once you get Churches, immedietely research paladins, and then the "heal" spell ( only humans have this spell). Use the heal spell to replenish your health after each attack, or during an attack if the need be. The heal spell will enable you to focus on building an offense, because you will not need to continuously build defenders. If you're playing as the nasty little Orcs, a defense is not as easy to maintain. If you're fast enough, the "bloodlust" spell will enable you to kill attackers rather quickly, but it is pretty hard to cast it on your defenders in time before the attackers get to your defensive line. The "rune" spell can be helpful. Place a line of runes about 6 squares before defensive line. Be careful not to overlap runes, as they will be wasted. A line like the one below will kill or seriously damage quite a few attackers before they get to your defensive line. 1 = 1st cast 1 3 2 = 2nd cast 11123334 3 = 3rd cast 12223444 4 = 4th cast 2 4 If you are playing a level where dragons (or griffins) attack your town make sure you build archers, and a lot of them. The worst thing you can do in a dragon attack is to position your units on after another like in the left picture. Position your archers like the right picture. WRONG!! RIGHT A D = dragon AA A A = archer AAA D A AA A D A A A Can you see why? In the left picture, each time the dragon attacks, he damages at least 2 or 3 units, because the trail of fire continues beyond his target. In the right picture, the dragon only damages one unit per attack. Make the RIGHT choice. Ha, ha! Get it? RIGHT! :) Catapults are usually the only thing that would cause you to have your defensive line retreat. Catapults are slower than other units, so they probably get close after you have killed the other attackers. Depending on what I have, I will either send 2 bastillas, or 2 to 3 knights out to kill the catapult. Make sure that the knights don't go one after the other, or the 2nd or 3rd knight will get hit with the blast. If you send bastillas, make them "move" toward the catapult until the enemy fires. One of the bastillas will probably get slightly hurt. After the catapult fires, "stop" your units and they will automatically fire and get 2 dirct hits, most likely destroying the catapult. If for some reason you decide to send archers or some other unit with a ranged attack, move them up next to the catapult and the catapult will over-shoot them. Cool, huh? Build gryphons as soon as you can, and keep them a little after your defensive line. If you see a group of enemies with no axe-throwers, death knights, or dragons, send your gryphons over and you could get a few easy kills, since most land units can not attack units in the air. Make sure you explore your surroundings thoroughly, and build towers (I think guard towers are more useful) around points of attack. A few flying machines can set a perimeter around your base, and if the flying machines come under attack, it is easy to have them retreat. If you play without the "fog of war" build flying machines as soon as you can, and explore the whole map. You will definitely be able to spot attacks early on if you play this way. Is that it for defense? I guess so. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2. Planning an Offense Once you have an adequate defense set up, the time is right to get to work making an offense. Early on, all you will have is footmen and archers. In my opinion, archers are good at defense, but their attacks aren't powerful enough to make a good offense. Even with full upgrades, archers can't fire repeatedly at a good rate. There is a few second delay between shots, where enemies can get in a lot of hits. Because of this, I mainly focus on making land units such as knights, footmen, mages and dwarven demolition squads, and bastillas. Most enemy towns are protected by a couple of guard or cannon towers. Make sure you have two or three bastillas to take out towers. The range of a bastilla is only 1 more than a cannon tower, so make sure you don't positon units in front of the attacking bastilla, or the cannon tower will kill them. Upon first sight of of an enemy approaching you when you are attacking a tower, have your bastilla(s) retreat and move knights to intercept the approaching enemy. A lot of the time the enemy will simply go right for the bastilla, no matter how many knights you have defenders you have. Make sure you protect your bastillas, because if you lose them, you will not be able to get into the base without heavy losses. It is much better to wait and make more bastillas before attacking than to just send in your troops against a tower. If for some reason you need to get past a cannon tower without killing it, remember that, like catapults, the tower will overshoot its initial target. A tower will usually attack the closest thing to it, meaning that you can attack it with archers, and keep a knight constantly running around the tower. The tower should go after the knight, which is constantly running so the tower will over-shoot him, and you might only suffer light losses. It is still much easier to attack it with bastillas though. K = knight T B = bastilla T = tower KKBBKK Dwarven demoliton squads are awesome! If you ever see a group of enemies such as grunts or ogres ( it is important that the enemies do not have a ranged attack, because they will not walk up next to the squad ) just send a demolition squad up right into them. When the enemy has gathered around you, detonate your explosives and the explosion will kill or seriously damage all of the enemies. Demolition squads are also helpful in destroying towers. Two squads can kill a towerby detonating themselves next to it. BE CAREFUL YOU DON"T HAVE FRIENDLY UNITS CLOSE TO THE SQUADS AS THEY DETONATE!! You will just end up killing your own units. Once you get into the town, immediately attack the barracks, only stopping to kill enemy units that could harm you. Once the barracks is gone, you are pretty much home free. Attack any additional towers, and then go for the peons. Once the peons are eradicated ( the great hall will continue to make more ) then attack the great hall. Attack any peons attempting to repair the great hall. Once the great hall is destroyed, MAKE SURE you have killed EVERY peon. If you don't kill every peon, the peon will build a new great hall, and you will have to do everything over again. After the great hall, the barracks, and all the peons are dead, go for any other building that has the capability of making new units, such as Temples of the Damned, shipyards, goblin alchemists and dragon roosts. Depening on what the enemy is attacking you with, you may want to destroy the dragon roost first, or the shipyard, or anything else. Save the pig farms for last, since they don't do anything to kill you. When trying to approach the base, you can usually find a few lone guards. If you don't want to lose much health in an attack, you can attack the enemy with a bastilla (the enemy won't see you coming). You can surprise the enemy and get an easy kill. I guess that's it for offense. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3. Using Spells Spells are cool, powerful, and perhaps the funnest thing in the game! Here is a list of spells and their uses: HUMANS: Paladin: - Holy vision: Just like far-seeing from Warcraft 1. Useful for scouting areas. I don't use this spell very much. I mainly use flying machines for scouting. - Healing: This is a great spell. I use it mainly for defense. Any time a unit is getting low on energy, use this spell. - Exorcism: I've never gotten this spell to work. Maybe it's a bug or something. Mage: - Lightning: The basic attack for mages. It is fairly powerful, and it doesn't use any magic power to fire. It can attack air units as well as land and sea. - Fireball: I don't really like this spell. It uses way to much power, and doesn't do enough damage. It is useful in getting rid of towers if you are patient. It continues beyon its target, so if the enemy is in a row, use fireball to do a good amount of damage. - Flame Shield: This is a good spell for sending a lone troop into an enemy defensive line, but it can be dangerous if any of your other troops come in contacted with the enchanted one. Try casting flame shield in the middle of a group of enemies. You can use the enemy to your advantage, because anywhere the enemy goes, he will do damage. Useful on peons. - Slow: You can try using this spell on retreating enemies, but I have never been able to find a good use for it. Otherwise, cast it on attacking ogres or other strong units to slow their attacks. - Invisibility: I was a bit disapointed with this one. You can't cast it on dwarven demolition squads ( it will kill them ), and death knights can still see your invisible units. What a rip-off! - Blizzard: I think Blizzard Entertainment put this spell in because the name of their company is the same as the name of the spell. :) Anyway, this spell is quite powerful, and has a good range. To make an effective attack, make sure the caster has plenty of magic power. - Polymorph: Now this is a COOL spell! The enemy will not notice you casting it, so you can turn a whole group of defenders into sheep, hogs or seals. Wow! This spell will not work on catapults though, so watch out! ORCS: Ogre-Mage: - Eye of Kilrogg: Sort of like the holy vision spell, ogre-mages can make a floating "eye" to fly around and explore terrain and sight units. These eyes disappear rather quickly, so use them with haste. - Bloodlust: This is a pretty cool spell. The target will be able to do more damage with each attack. This is useful for quickly dispatching of an enemy. - Runes: I talked about these in the "Defense" section of this guide. If you want more uses, just cast this spell right in front of any enemy unit, then walk into the sight wange of that unit. He will chase after you, and go right through the field of runes. You can cast this spell out of the sight range of every unit. Death Knight: - Touch of Darkness: This is a lot like lightning. It is the basic attack for death knights. It does not use any magic power, and can attack units on land, sea and air. - Death Coil: If a death knight is getting low on energy, you can trade magic for life with this spell. It has a nice range, and is powerful. Whatever is taken away from the enemy, you get. I don't think it works on bastillas. - Haste: With this spell, the enchanted on will do all of his actions (walking, attacking) faster. Combine this spell with bloodlust for a fierce guardian. - Unholy Armor: This is just like the unholy armor spell from Warcraft 1. Be careful, it wears off quickly. Each time the spell is cast, the target loses half of his power. Use this spell conservitively. Don't cast it on goblin sappers! - Death and Decay: This spell is useful in groups, but is not worth casting for only one enemy. The manual says it can consume wood, but I have not gotten it to do that. Useful for destroying buildings. - Whirlwind: Again, this spell is useful for groups of enemies, but not much else. Actually, this spell works great against air units. - Raise Dead: This time around, skelatons stay alive without needing magic power. This means that they never die on their own. Using this spell you can build up a large army of the undead and march it on your enemies base. Skelatons are much stronger this time. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4. Building a Town I don't have that much to say here. Basically, the order that I build stuff in is: Humans Orcs 1st- town hall great hall 2nd- farm pig farm 3rd- barracks barracks 4th- elven lumber mill troll lumber mill 5th- blacksmith blacksmith 6th- upgrade to keep upgrade to stronghold 7th- shipyard shipyard 8th- gnomish inventor goblin alchemist 9th- stables ogre mound 10th- foundry foundry 11th- oil refinery oil refinery 12th- upgrade to castle upgrade to fortress 13th- church altar of storms 14th- mage tower temple of the damned 15th gryphon aviary dragon roost Of course, you will obviously need more than one farm. Build farms as needed. And if the battle is mainly on sea, build the sea buildings early on. I recommend at least 4 peasents, and as many as 8, depending on how much of the resources you need. I find that six farms can supply a good-sized army. And build towers as you see fit. If the enemy attacks with air units, make guard towers. Otherwise make cannon towers. READ! READ! READ! READ! READ! READ! READ! READ! READ! READ! READ! READ! READ! READ! READ! READ! READ! READ! READ! READ! READ! READ! READ! READ! This is a really cool trick. If you need to speed up the building of something, have one peasant "build" the building, and then have all of your other peasants "repair" the building as it is getting built. It will cost a bit more, but the building will get built a lot faster. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- 5. Keeping Troops Alive This will be pretty short. Basically, when you are in a defensive line, you may find that the enemy keeps on going after one unit. If you don't have the "heal" spell, then it helps to rotate your troops around the defensive line. For example, have the strongest guy switch places with the weakest guy. This way, the damage will be spread over many units instead of focused on one. If you have the "raise dead" spell, you can put the skelatons right in front of your defensive line, so the skelatons will take the damage instead of your troops. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 6. Battles at Sea Personally, I think sea battles are the hardest in the game. Here are as many strategies as I could think of. First of all, the cannons always overshoot a fast unit coming toward you, such as a transport or a oil tanker. What I find works is to use the "move" command, and click on the oncoming ship. As soon as the enemy ship passes you, use the "stop" command and, if the enemy is within range, your ships will fire and hopefully sink the vessel. Only oil tankers and transports will try to get through your defensive line. All other ships will attack it. Most bases only have one or two transports to shuttle their units across bodies of water. If you can find a transport on the shore, immedietly destroy it. If you destroy all of the transports, and the shipyard, the enemy will not be able to get any more units across water. This means that you can concentrate on making a strong navy. But beware, after you destroy the shipyard and transports, the enemy will continuously build land defenders, so when you do send in a landing party, you will meet a lot of defenders. But they can't get off the island, and their mine will eventually run out. If their mine is VERY large, you can always destroy it. The best way to get past cannon (or guard) towers located on a beach is a fast and furious attack. Send in as many ships as you can. Once you clear away a small area, get a bastilla or two on the beach (out of range of the towers) to take out the remaining towers. Your losses may be heavy. When searching for enemy ships, always keep a flying machine close by in case you run into an enemy submarine. You will know you are under attack by a submarine if you see big explosions on your ship, but no enemy units nearby. Or you can always make your own submarines, because they can see enemy underwater units as well. Submarines are very weak, and can be destroyed in one or two hits. The problem is GETTING those one or two hits, because if you don't have a submarine or flying machine close by, you won't be able to see the enemy submarine. If you can't get close enough to destroy the shipyard, then go for the enemy oil platforms. These are usually guarded by a few ships. Once you destroy the enemy's supply for oil, it will not be able to continue constructing ships. You can the rule the seas, and kill some buildings near the shore with you boats. Battleships have a longer weapon range than destroyers, so if you need that one extra unit of range to attack a building, get a battleship. If there are enemy ground units one square out of range, use the "attack ground" command to attack the space right next to the enemy. A lot of the time, the enemy will run towards you, and into range. If you are getting attacked with ground units being brought across on transports, build a GUARD tower as close to the shore as you can. A cannon tower would overshoot the transport, but a guard tower is not as strong. But each time the transport gets close, it will get damaged a little. Patience! --------------------------------------------------------------------------- 7. Upgrading the Right Way This is mainly just a matter of what you need the most. If most battles are on land, upgrade swords and shields. If the battles are on sea, upgrade your armor and cannons. Only invest money into elven rangers and troll berserkers you you have a whole bunch of archers or axe throwers, or if you've got money to spend (which is rare). Try to upgrade everything once before you go into upgrading something for the second time. I almost never upgrade my bastillas for the SECOND time. 4000 gold for only 15 extra attack points? You're crazy. I would much rather have 5 ogres than an twice upgraded bastilla. If you have any towers, upgrade them as soon as possible, since a watch tower can not harm enemy units at all. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- 8. Cool Things to Do 1. While you are building something, "repair" it with other peasents. It will be built much faster, but it will cost a bit more. 2. Cast "unholy armor" or "invisibility" on enemy demolition squads and goblin sappers. They will explode. 3. Destroy the enemy's gold mine. This will take quite a long time, but once you destroy it, the peasents will have to walk a long way to get more gold. Put a few knights in their way, and the enemy won't get anymore gold. 4. Use cheat codes :) 5. Click on critters so much that they EXPLODE. It takes about 10 seconds of clicking. 6. Repeatedly clicking on all of your units, and listen to the funny things that they say. 7. Using the map editor that is included with the game, make your side off in one corner, and make 7 opponents, all on the edge of the map. All of the opponents should be peasents. Make one ( 1 ) mine right in the middle of the map with the maximum amount of gold in it, and have a forest all along the edge opposite of where your base is. All of the peasents will make a town hall real colose to the mine, and begin making a huge town, right in the middle of the map. Ever see sixty peasents go into a mine at once? You will now. (you might want to use cheat codes if you intend to PLAY this level). Make sure you adjust the starting conditions to give enough resources to each opponent to build a town hall. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- 9. Cheat Codes Oh boy, now what you've all been waiting for! I don't think these are ALL of the cheat codes, because I don't yet have a "eye of newt" type magic code or a "iron forge" type upgrade code. This is what I have: glittering prizes - 10,000 gold, 10,000 lumber, 5000 oil it is a good day to die - all units invincible to everything except for excorcism and death coil. You can also kill most enemies in one hit hatchet - two chops on a tree and your peasent will bring it back showpath - shows full map. There will be a black haze around places that you haven't explored in the map in the upper-left hand corner on screen - same as showpath, but gets ride of the black haze make it so - build units and buildings super fast. Careful! It affects the enemy also valdez - get a whole bunch of oil. Not much use for this if you know "glittering prizes" UCLA - displays "go bruins". Not much use for this there can be only one - lets you see the ending sequence for your current side. The Orc's ending is cool! -------------------------------------------------------------------------- That's it! I hoped you liked it. If you really liked it, you can send me $500,000 dollars, and get the registered version! Just kidding. Good luck beating Warcraft 2!