Warcraft II

Basic Overview

Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness takes the continuing saga of Azeroth to the next level as the battle rages on over land, sea, and air. Using new weapons of war, including Dragons, Battleships, Elven Archers, Zeppelins, Death Knights and Juggernauts, both Humans and Orcs must use combined-arms tactics in an effort to become the true rulers of Azeroth.

Warcraft II is a real-time strategy game. You are responsible for building your economy and town while at the same time attacking and defending yourself against the enemy. Games begin with one Peasant/Peon or a pre placed town. The following three resources are necessary to that you must have to build your civilization: Gold, Lumber, and Oil.

Combat Mechanics

Unit Statistics
A unit has four ratings that determine how effective it is in combat. Hit Points indicate how much damage the unit can take before dying; an ogre with 90 Hit Points can take quite a bit more damage than a Grunt with 60 Hit Points. Armor reflects not only armor worn by the unit, but its innate resistance to damage. All buildings have an automatic armor rating of 20. Basic Damage is how much normal damage the unit can inflict every time it attacks. This is lowered by the target's Armor rating. Piercing Damage reflects how effective the unit is at bypassing armor. Magical attacks, like dragon's breath and lightning, ignore armor.

The Equation
When one unit attacks another, the formula used to determine damage is:

(Basic Damage - Target's Armor) + Piercing Damage = Maximum damage inflicted

An Example of Combat in Warcraft II
An ogre and a footman are engaged in combat. The ogre has a Basic Damage rating of 8, and a Piercing Damage rating of 4. The footman has an Armor value of 2. Every time the ogre attacks the footman, it has the potential to inflict up to (8-2)+4=10 points of damage, or it could inflict as little as 50% damage, or 5 points. On average, the ogre will kill the footman in about 8 swings.

The poor footman, on the other hand, with a Basic Damage of 6 and a Piercing Damage of 3, will only inflict 3 or 5 points of damage each time he attacks the ogre, which has an Armor value of 4 (that's (6-4)+3=5). Even if the footman is extremely lucky and does the maximum amount of damage with every attack, it will take 18 swings to kill that 90 Hit Point ogre. By that time, the ogre will have pounded him into mincemeat and moved on.

Upgrades
The most important thing to remember with upgrades is that weapon upgrades affect Piercing Damage. If the same footman from the above example waited until he had a double weapon upgrade, he would be able to inflict up to (6-4)+3+4=9 points of damage with each attack, which is almost twice what he was doing before. You can see now why Elven Rangers are devastating in numbers; fully upgraded, they will always do at least 6 points of damage with each attack against any target.

Summary
This tip may not change the way you play Warcraft, but hopefully it will give you a little more insight into the inner workings of the game. Try playing around with the unit combat values in the Unit Editor to see how you can change the balance. Lowering a unit's Hit Points and raising its Armor, for instance, makes it more vulnerable to magical attacks but increases its effectiveness against normal troops. You may also find that against some players, you're better off upgrading your basic troops than researching new ones, especially if they like to attack early. It's Warcraft's flexibility that gives it longevity. Above all, have fun!

Scoring & Ranking

Warcraft II uses a streamlined scoring system that reduces the chances of one player “padding” their score in a large multiplayer game. The key to achieving a high score is simply to cause as much damage as possible. Your total point score is based on the number and type of enemy units that you kill. Points gained from killing specific units are as follows:

Winning Scenario	500	Wall	1
		Tower	95
Critter	1	Farm	100
Peasant/Peon	30	Lumber mill	150
Flying Machine/Zeppelin	40	Runestone	150
Tanker	40	Barracks	160
Footman/Grunt	50	Oil Rig	160
Transport	50	Blacksmith	170
Archer/Axe Thrower	60	Shipyard	170
Ranger/Berserker	70	Foundry	200
Dwarves/Sappers	100	Guard Tower	200
Knight/Ogre	100	Refinery	200
Ballista/Catapult	100	Town Hall	200
Mage/Death Knight	100	Stables/Ogre Mound	210
Demon	100	Inventor/Alchemist	230
Paladin/Ogre Mage	110	Church/Altar	240
Legendary Hero	120	Wizard’s Tower/Temple	240
Submarine/Turtle	120	Cannon Tower	250
Destroyer	150	Aviary/Roost	280
Gryphon/Dragon	150	Keep/Stronghold	600
Battleship/Juggernaut	300	Castle/Fortress	1500

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