Digital's Warcraft 2 Strategies

I'll explain the stuff that you probably should not build or do:

Oil Refinerys. They are almost useless. Oil shouldn't be a problem if you have about 4 oil tankers. If you do build your shipyard too far from the oil rig, build another shipyard instead of an oil Refinery. If you do get into serious ship battles, with 10+ ships and find even 8 tankers don't get you enough oil, THEN get a refinery.
The 4000 gold level 3 upgrade for Catapults.Come on! 4000 dollars? Do you know how much crap you can buy with that? You only get 15 more damage. Not even worth it. Paying 4000 to upgrade a catapult is the kinda of thing that can lose the game for you. The 1500 gold upgrade is the only one you should pay. The only time it's useful is on Nowhere to Run.
Berzerker Regeneration It's just too slow and costs too much. Usually you don't have Berzerkers survive a battle too often either. If you got a huge amount of money and a bunch of 1/2 dead Berzerkers, that is the only time, I might get it. That's never happened in a game either.
Catapults. Well I guess I never talk about them so I will. Use peons to kill catapults. Maybe it's not at all practical, but I seem to see it happen a lot. People forget peons can attack.
I found a perfect way to protect a catapult. Place an Ogre on all 4 sides if it. Bloodlust them all. This really won't work against big armies but it works against the guys that keep charging your cats. What happens is the enemy walks to the catapult. The closest ogre beats on the guy attacking. Then the enemy walks between your two ogres. Both of them take a hit on the guy and he is dead, no damage to your catapult. You could also totally surround your catapult with a wall of bloodlusted Ogres. I just got pissed when people kept destroying my cats, so I came up with this. This works with only 4 Ogres.
Chanman found a better way. Select a group of about 8 Ogres and right click on the Catapult. The Ogres will automatically fully surround the catapult. Anyone that wants the catapult has to go through all those Ogres. If you can bloodlust them!
( Thanks to Chanman for this )
Catapults attack an area the size of a barracks. The middle of the attack, where you aim it receives the most damage. everything around that center, 1 space all the way around, receive splash damage which is much less then the damage done to the center.
Catapults are great for taking out towers. USE THEM!
Ballistas/Catapults are cool if you can protect them. They can really help you out a lot. But, YOU HAVE TO PROTECT THEM! Don't build catapults on land levels until a lot later in the game when you have lots of Knights/Ogres to protect them. Really the only reason I ever build them is to attack towers. If the enemy doesn't have towers, I don't build them. They can do very good in attacks if you can protect them.
Make sure you keep exploring the entire map. This one always gets me. I think I have destroyed all of someone's place, when I discover that they have a huge town somewhere else.
Take a fly by and compare the amount of gold in your enemy's mine to yours That way you know if they are mining more gold then you or not. If they are ahead on gold, you have mine more. If they are way ahead on gold, then you better do something quick or you are going to be in trouble.
Cancel construction on a building If your building something and it is going down for sure, as in being destroyed by your enemy, cancel construction! Save what money you can. That includes ship buildings.
If your building goes down when a unit is training, you get the money back. I always believed that you lost the money when that is not the case.
Thanks to jrpcboob for this info.
Something that should never happen is you dying with lots of gold and lumber. The reason you lost should be because you ran out of gold or lumber however it happened.
Something you should never have is level 1 knights. You should always be at least level 2-3 by the time your knights are made. Level 1 knights are just an ugly sight.
Never try to attack a Footman or Knight 1 on 1 with an Axe Thrower/Archer. I played one idiot that just kept making Axeman to kill my 1 Ogre. That one Ogre killed 4 Axeman that popped out of the barracks before the Ogre destroyed the Barracks. Instead you should build Ogres to Take out Ogres or Grunts/Footman if you can't. Axeman are useless in hand to hand combat.
A good strategy is to make tons of air ships. Then place one over all the mines. That way you will always know when someone builds a new town. It also works as a great intimidation factory. They see that flying machine and they think you are watching it. So usually, they don't build there but head to another mine. If you got a flying machine over that mine too, maybe they will keep looking if they are stupid :) If they do decided to build there, you will see it with your flying machine. Either way you can't lose.
Use farms as walls. Use farms to block passages or important buildings. Farms work so well as walls because they have 400 hit points and they are useful too. Don't worry about losing them. It's worth it. Don't lose too many however.
Here is an old one that you probably all know but I just really started believing it. Build walls around your towers. That way they can't be sappered, and anyone that attacks them will have to first take out a wall. Put two walls around one if you are really scared of attack.
Walls aren't really as bad as I thought. A few well placed walls will do really great. I would not build a huge town out of them, like I see some people do. They are easily destroyed with Blizzards/Death and Decay. They only have 40 hit points.
Bezerkers ARE better than Rangers! Bloodlust Axeman can absolutely destroy even Level 7 Rangers. We ran some tests. A bloodlusted Bezerker took on a Ranger 1 on 1. Both of the were powered up all the way. After the battle the Bezerker walked away with 32 hit points left!! It only took 3 hits to kill the Ranger. That means in three hits, the damage done was about 17, 50/3=17. 17!!! The highest damage the Ranger can do is 14. So that means Axeman are way more powerful.
We ran a second test. 9 bloodlusted Bezerkers vs 9 Rangers. The Bezerkers won with 5 Bezerkers left!! That means Rangers are not as cool as everyone says they are. Axeman are in fact better. It only takes 2 Ogres with full magic to Bloodlust 10 Berzerkers. It sure is no problem finding 2 Ogres standing around. The only problem is you have to have bloodlust. That is never a problem for me.
Don't spend a bunch of time building defenses for your town. You would have much more success building more barracks and tons of Ogres, Axemen, and Death Knights. What I find that happens a whole lot is people spend tons of time building all these towers in their town. Then they don't have any guys to protect all these towers. You might want to build one or two towers by your mine but any more than that I really would not go for.
The perfect army for the humans is: Lots of Paladins, then a group of 6 or more powered up all the way Rangers to take out dragons, then a group of 3 or more level three Ballistas to take out guys and towers. Than you have a group of Mages with Polymorph, Blizzard, Flame Shield, and maybe invisibility. If the enemy runs around all these guys to get to the ballistas then cast a flaming Shields around the Ballistas.
The key in land levels is to out barracks your enemy. Someone I was fighting had 2 barracks, and he was trashing me. So I build 3 and then 4 and took him down!!! I worked so well. The only thing is you have to be able to support that many barracks, and I could cause I had millions of peons.
Don't build anymore barracks than you can support. Don't build 5 barracks if you can only have 2 constantly training guys. I see these guys build 5 barracks and they are only using one, what a waste. Build barracks as you need them after your second barracks.
If you see yourself behind someone else, build more peasants, lots more, if they have better armies, build another barracks or shipyard, if you can support them.
UPGRADE YOUR MEN AND SHIPS! A lot of players do not understand how important this is. You must upgrade you guys in the blacksmith!
Always stay a level ahead of your enemies in both ships and men. If you see they have level 3 ships build level 4 or 5. The same with men, build them up in the blacksmith. This has won many games for me. I would take out four level 1 knights with four level 4 grunts and the people playing me would be so surprised. Every level you up upgrade ships/men will pay off more. Its the best investment you can make, almost.
Here is an old one that you probably all know but I just really started believing it. Build walls around your towers. That way they can't be sappered, and anyone that attacks them will have to first take out a wall. Put two walls around one if you are really scared of attack.
Don't rely too much on towers. It is better to build a lot of Ogres then to make towers. I see a lot of people that build tons of towers and end up having no ground force to protect them. Maybe build one or two towers but I really would not build many more. Towers are a lot easier to destroy then they are to build. One Sapper takes one out. Two if they are close. Juggernaughts can take them out in two hits. Ogres with bloodlust can take them out super quick.

Want to hear a really nasty strategy? If you start with high resources, send a peasant out looking for the other player's town. When you find the town, make an arrow/cannon tower close enough to hit peasants as the enter and leave the town hall! There is almost nothing the other person could do. Level 1 grunts sure can't take out towers too quick, especially if they are being hit by a tower! Then build another tower when you have more money. This will keep the other person being attacked so busy that you can clean up. This strategy is so mean! But it is really funny.
( Thanks to G-Man for pulling this on Warpmaster. Luckily I was watching because that would have screwed me over too! )

Here is an even worse one. This works fine with medium resources. Wait until you get a couple of grunts then go build a tower by their town. You have to get up that lumber mill and Barracks first. Build the tower close enough so it can hit some enemy buildings. You have to do this really early in the game. If you have a teammate both of you do this to one person at the same time. Make it an arrow tower. If you are lucky, your opponent will not see it until it is operational. Then once they see it, they will attack. Then what they usually do is attack the tower. So what you do is have your grunts attack the guys the enemy footman attacking your tower. If the footmen start attacking your grunts, run! That way your tower will keep hitting the footman. Try running around in circles around the tower that is so funny. If the footman go back to attacking your tower, attack them with your footman. Repeat, if necessary. What you want to happen is your tower takes lots of hit points away from the enemy footman. If the footman run back into their village, you send in you grunts and attack buildings. If the footman come to attack your grunts, run back to your tower and do the whole above, running thing again, haha. This is so bad, haha. Then try to get another tower, but build it closer to their town. Keep building more towers, closer and closer to their town. Try to take out any towers they might make. You have to back up all these towers with grunts. Try if you can to get a tower built in their town. Once it's up they are pretty much screwed. This strategy works a lot better with a teammate. You really want to only try this on 1 on 1 land games. It is too risky to try that with no teammate and more than one enemy. Gotcha was able to pull it off. Once he destroyed all the enemies footman and barracks, he just kept building towers in the enemies village. Then he went off and attacked the other player and let just his towers take out that enemies village! It was so funny! Then what he did was build his town hall in where the enemy was and he had a whole village set up with lots of towers already built for defense. This was really risky and he barely pulled it off. This is so dirty try it!

Want to really humiliate someone? Start building towers in their town as you are attacking them! If you take out all their guys except peons then try it. Put a tower up right next to their mine and town hall if they are still mining. Then upgrade it to cannon tower, hehe. Then it will take out the town for you. You might want to use this as an offensive weapon, If they are still making guys in the barracks. The tower will stop their gold supply pretty soon and humiliate them too. hahahahaha. Don't do this if they have a Gnomish Inventor up though.
( Thanks again to G-Man who pulled this strategy on Warpmaster. G-Man built tons of towers in Warp's town and let the towers destroy the town for him. He is the master of dirty tricks. hehe )

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