Strategies for Specific Maps
Each map has its own personality. Some things work great on one map but not on another. The first thing everyone should do is download a copy of all the maps. You can get excellent copies off of Shlonglor's Page. Crayon in the colors of the starting positions to help us communicate in team games. Trust me, it will help your game a lot. Here are some strategies you can use on certain types of maps. I've grouped them by basic characteristics.
Large Land Maps
Plains of Snow, Garden of War, Bridge to Bridge Combat, Continent to Explore, Crossover, Gold Seperates East and West, No Way Out of This Maze, Skull Island
Small Land Maps
Death in the Middle, No Where to Run Nowhere to Hide, Gold Mines, Mine the Center, Mysterious Dragon Isle, Three Ways to Cross
1 on 1 Land Maps
One Way In, One Way Out, Unyielding Fortress of Stone
Large Water Maps
Fierce Ocean Combat, High Seas Combat, Islands in the Stream, Rivers
Small Water Maps
Critter Attack!, Fork in the River, Four Corners, Oil is the Key, Sprial
1 on 1 Water Maps
Cross the Stream, X Marks the Spot
Large Land Maps
A good way to really mess someone up is to tower them in. Just make sure you are out of visual range. This has worked great for me many times. Use guard towers in case you get caught. Your loss won't be that expensive. Use your footmen to protect the towers as they go up. Whenever possible, set your towers on the other side of trees near the enemy's city. This works great on GOW and POS. If you can get 3 or 4 towers up and functional, put up barracks and an inventor if you can. This strategy works great if you've gotten into someone's town and killed some peons. They will be so busy rebuilding that they won't notice.
On Maze, you can wall off large sections of land using the trees. Warangel loves to do this bit by bit until he owns all the free mines.
These levels are some of the best for mages since they can stand behind a row of trees and nail a line of miners.
POS is dangerous for humans because it is relatively open. Ogres and lust up and come in your town in large numbers. Be careful in choosing this level.
On Maze or Bridge to Bridge Combat, don't go two farms then barracks. There's no need. Don't try more than 4, though. I've been caught being greedy a few times :)
Small Land Maps
See the tower above comment in Large Land Maps. It works very well on mine the center.
On mine the center, put up towers around your second mine even if you can't mine it yet. If you don't get that mine you're dead.
On Nowhere to Run, a 2 on 2 game can be won with nothing but catapults. If you are side by side. If you are on opposite sides, make two archers and send one to each side so they can't get any lumber at all. Then build catapults. They take soooo long to train so you'll need two barracks. Don't feel bad about the 4000 gold upgrade to level 3 cats, gold is never a problem on this level. If you win the catapult war, start building towers near the borders. They will run out of lumber very quickly. On 1 on 1s, invasion is the best option unless you find that key buildings are exposed to their catapults. Keep up with footmen, guide your peasants in their chopping and invade.
On a one player Nowhere, be ready for an early grunt invasion. If you're not ready for it, get some buildings in the way. Some people will try to build a barracks on your side if you let them. That's something I might try if somebody forces me to play this idiot level :)
1 on 1 Land Maps
On 1 Way In, work on your 2nd closest mine before the far one, but get some towers up around the more distant one to make sure you can access it when you need to. Get mages pretty quickly, because you'll be able to blizzard his peons from the comfort of your own home :) You can also tuck him away in the stone corner of the passage way and flame shield or blizzard them as they pass with a big group.
There is a new, scary strategy for 1 Way. I don't know it or care to do it, but basically you build barracks on the other's guys side and repair it. You stop making peasants and make two grunts and go in. If you don't know this one, always be walled in by your 3rd farm or choose high resources.
Unyielding Fotress of Stone is cool, I'll let you know when I win one there. My problem is not grabbing my 3rd mine quickly enough, so be warned.
Large Water Maps
Get your oil patch! You can't do squat without oil. When attacking someone else, get their platform first.
On many of these maps, you can build a mini city on the enemy's island without being detected. If you have sea superiority, pull your battleships up to shore to protect your men while building. This works great on HSC. Take a couple of peasants and begin to make towers if it's early on in the game. Barracks take a while to make. If it is later on in the game, though, towers aren't as helpful. Make barracks, inventors and mage towers. You should build this stuff before you get a town hall going on that island. Build away from the mines where nobody will see your stuff going up.
On low, always build two shipyards before a foundry. You can't get enough oil going to make battleships if you're making tankers from a single yard.
Beleive it or not, Gryphons can kick butt on new towns. They often don't have trolls or deathknights on new islands.
Foundry hops on HSC make it a really cool map. Don't let people hop onto your island and build barracks or towers. I usually get a tower up near my hoppable borders early in the game. When I see an enemy foundry going up, I upgrade them to guard towers and let them take care of the peon and the foundry. It's paid off in more than one IWL games for me.
On FOC, expand to the islands where you can keep your buildings away from the shore. These include blue, red, black, orange and white. (Get the stinkin
map if you don't know what I'm saying :) )
Early on, get the sea. Build a few towers in town to protect from invasions. Let him try to pull the early land invasion and lose his men to your towers. You'll own the sea and there won't be a 2nd invasion. Once you know
he's not making many juggs, make a lot of destroyers and put them on patrol to guard against transports.
I've learned a great technique for defending my islands. Once I have mages I set up towers all around the perimeter of the island. You don't have to have sea superiority. Mages protect the towers and nail would-be invaders. The tower will take out death knights or other baddies even if you weren't paying
attention. The towers also serve as "patrol bait". When they set their ogres on patrol they'll hit towers, then you can blizzard them all. If you have the sea, park you ships around the shore. I held Money and Terminator off with this combo for over an hour with no gold. All I had were 6 mages, 3 paladins and a poop-load of towers. They finally got in by sappering through rocks where I didn't have towers :(
And here's some excellent advice from Thrugg:
The art of expansion on Large Ocean Maps. There is one thing which always amazes me, I have witness this countless times, even by players I consider to be pretty good. They colonize an island, and what is the first thing they build? A townhall! What are they thinking?! When you take over a new island (land one or more peasents on a deserted island) the first structure you should build is a barracks or tower. Build it away from the sea, and as far away from the mine as possible. That way when somebody sends over a flyer to the goldmine, they will see nobody is there and think the island is safe for the taking.
This reminds of a game I was playing of FOC. I was bottom right, and I send up a peasent to the centre island, built a tower in the forest on the eastern side, then sealed it in with a barracks (and perhaps 1 or 2 walls). At this point I read across my screen my newbie opponet saying "I have taken over the centre island" publically (he had just been publically griping about the speed as newbies are wont to do). My peon finished building the barracks I trained a grunt and investigated. Sure enough, there is a townhall going up. I decide to wait abit, to make sure he finishes and wastes the full 1200 gold and 800 lumber. I then rush in with about 6 grunts, kill off his few peons and start hacking on the hall. I now read across the screen "Red(me) has invaded my centre island! Help!" Invaded? I was there before you buddy! :) So what I like to do is seal in a guard tower with a barracks. After barracks, I usually go for the townhall if no one is around and I can afford it. I may build a couple of farms to better wall in my tower though while I am waiting for the resources. A mage tower on the island is also nice for air defense, although usually if your opponet is using dragons, you will win anyway.
Small Water Maps
Get your oil patch!
On 4 corners, after the first few farms, build your mill in the opposite corner of your island and start chopping. Get a tower walled in near your main TH. Build towers around it and put your barracks and smith there, too. By the time the invasions come, that's where they will hit because that's where you'll be mining.
I am not a fan of healing, but small water maps may be a good time to get it. When resources are scarce you need your guys at top condition. Tou showed me how well this works.
1 on 1 Water Maps
This portion of the program is brought to you by Thrugg:
X Marks the Spot: This map still gets played far too much and is quite a popular map. It is a fair map, but if both players know what they are doing it can turn into a coin toss. What is amazing to me, is that despite the popularity of this map, many players still can't play it. What's more, they usually think they can. I have probably played this map about 25 times IWL, and have only about a 40% win rate on it, although my record is much better now. I must have lost on this map to AD about 4 times! It is a good map for humans,
since lust will generally never be a factor. So next time you challenge and someone picks high res, consider this map.
How to Play X Marks on High: I will ignore low and medium, they have completely different strats. High is generally the popular res level for this map anyway. Building: Build in this order: TH, farm, mill, farm, repair mill, yard, yard(repair), farm, foundry(repair), farm. Be sure to wallin. Some people to grunt rush, a simple wallin will thrawt them, and your jugs can pick off his guys which can't get into your town in time. As soon as your foundry is built, build 2 battleships. After they are done, immediately build 2 more.
Common Mistakes:
Build a single shipyard. There is no way you can get your battleships fast enough, play me if you don't believe me.
Build a barracks before you build 4 battleships. What a waste, you don't want to wait at all for battleships#3 and #4. If you build a barracks, you won't have the gold and/or lumber to do that. Build your barracks after you got your 4 battleships.
Build an oil platform before the naval battle is over. Get real, you are swimming in oil, don't waste the wood.
Leave your first 2 battlships sitting around your shipyard. Foolish! As soon as they are built send them immediately northerly towards your opponnet, checking out the top island for signs of early colonization. Some fools will try to take over both islands quickly on high, a good strat for med or low res, a horrible one for high. If you build properly, their transport should just be disembarking for the bottom island and will run into your 2 battleships. Also with naval superiority you can destroy much of their stuff on their home island slowing them down, and then take over either top or bottom island at your leisure, by parking your battleships of the coast to defend your troops, tower and/or ballista, whatever is appropriate.
If there is no northerly expansion, sail over to his yard. If you see only one yard, you can pretty much consider the game won. Most commonly you will be facing 2 ships. Basically this 2 on 2 battle comes down to who controls their ships better, one thing I hate about this map. So here's how to do it sucessfully. The big secret: Attack Ground. You can hit a moving ship for full damage if you click attack ground on him. You will have to click it off right away but use this to attack moving ships. Needless to say, pick on one ship to kill first. Also keep this technique restricted to Dalaran players, alot of people still don't know it, let them figure it out for themselves. I still remember the first IWL I played since the restart, Copycat picked High Res, so I picked X Marks. My 2 battleships caught his transport sailing from the to island to the bottom to take it over. It was moving fast, but with attack ground.. Kaboom, Kaboom, no more transport. "Good shot" he wrote. I wrote "Hehehehe" and kept the attack ground secret. :)
Win or lose the opening naval battle, you are going to send your next 2 battleships to your enemies island regardless. If you lost the naval battle
don't despair, you will have 2 ships coming. It is quite likely that your opponnet wasted his resources building oil rigs or barracks, and won't have 2 more coming anytime soon. Send them over and destroy. Happy Hunting!
