How to Beat Bloodlust
Ok, I have said this numerous times in the past, but I feel the need to say it again. Bloodlust is the most dominating spell in warcraft 2. Nothing can quite match the ability to take nine ogres into an enemy force, bloodlusted, and take out 20 or so enemy knights. Bloodlusting your ogres causes them to do triple damage. Triple! How often have you, as a human player, gotten that sinking feeling as you watched 9 bloodlusted ogres rip through your defenses and your town, even though you had an equal number of troops? Bloodlust is just huge advantage. Pound for pound, the ogres have more muscle than the humans, once the castle/fortress stage is reached. I get tons of email regarding "How is it that you can beat bloodlust?" Well, this is my best attempt to answer that question.
For the purposes of this discussion, I will assume that the combatants are one orc player and one human player, and that the two are roughly equal in ability. I will assume that they reach the castle and fortress stage simultaneously, and, up until that point, have mined comparable amounts of gold. In other words, you're equal players, and I will assume that the orc player is an agressive, bloodlust-using direct-attacking orc-type. (This is not an unreasonable assumption). And I will assume that the human player knows how to use his mages, knows how to magebomb and that the speed is good enough such that reaction time is possible between seeing an attack coming (i.e. hearing bloodlust in the background) and being able to react, especially with mages.
Now, we'll start out with the basics. If the orc player builds nothing but ogres and the human player builds nothing but knights, who do you think is going to win? Equal numbers means death to the humans, unless they can somehow prevent the orc player from being able to cast bloodlust. The only way the human player could have a chance is if he stays completely on the offensive. It's much harder to cast bloodlust in a defensive situation. But if the human player can stay offensive, that is the only way he has a chance. That, plus attacking the gold suppply, in that situation, would be the only way the human player has a snowball's chance in hell.
If it's the orc player that's on the offensive, and he's using bloodlust, the game will be over very shortly.
So, as you can probably see, the human players need to build mages in order to have a chance. Mages posess the few ways to truly stop a bloodlusting orc player.
The most obvious of these is slow. If the game speed is set low enough and there is little lag, (the way the game should be played) then the human player should have time to react with his mages and cast slow on as many enemy ogres as is possible. When building mages, I always always keep a couple in my town in preparation for this eventuality (in my town, that is, or wherever it is I believe will be attacked next). Now, I'm sure you've heard, that a slow, bloodlusted ogre can still take a knight 1 on 1. This is true. What may come as a surprise, however, is that 9 level 5 knights will take out 9 slowed and bloodlusted ogres. This is simply because in a larger fight like this, there is more running around involved, more ganging up on individual units in order to take them out more quickly. There is a lot of running around involved, instead of just fighting, and since the ogres take a longer time to run from one place to another, 9 knights will take 9 bloodlusted, slowed, ogres.
So Slow presents one of the few direct ways to counter bloodlust. Another is massive magebombing; if you can keep your opponent on his heels, preventing him from getting any large gathering of ogres, then you have a chance. For this, however, massive recon is an absolute necessity. You need to be able to find ANY possible magebomb targets (which include any groups of 3 or more) and get to them right away. Magebomb 'em while they're bloodlusting, if everything else fails. It's better than the alternative.
Another good thing to do is to have a few demo squads sitting around in your base. What I like to do is this: as soon as I have the resources, I build two gnomish inventors. One of them builds nothing but fliers for a while, and the other builds nothing but demo squads. Then, after my recon is suitable, I switch both of them to demo squads. And in addition to taking out enemy buildings with them, I keep a few of them around in my town. When 9 bloodlusted ogres show up, 2 demo squads can stop that attack in its tracks. Demo squads are extremely useful, and very underused, as a means of taking out units. As with magebombs, bloodlusted ogres hit by demo squads die just as fast as non-lusted ogres.
For any of this to work, however, good recon is essential. If you can't see the attacks coming then all this is useless. You need to know exactly what is coming in at you, and then you need to know, and be able to do, what you need to do to stop it.
If you're truly desperate (i.e. you have 1 mage without enough mana to magebomb, and are being attacked by 9 or so ogres) then flame shield is a worthwhile option to try. If 9 enemy ogres are in a group, cast flame shield on the middle of them. Unless your enemy is on the ball, it will kill or seriously hurt a bunch of them.
if you're playing on low resources on a land level, put your efforts into taking out the enemy fortress. Read my braveheart story; although MadCat didn't take me out, he sure as hell took care of my bloodlust:) In any case, 4 demo squads to the fortress and two to the blacksmith will render your opponent ogreless. (though this works both ways).
Really, though, the best way to counter bloodlust is to do it indirectly. Most Orc players are scared to death of mages. I know I would be, if I were playing me :) Their tactic is to take out the mage towers as quickly as possible. They know how mages can so easily take out the gold supply. They know how invisible mages, if you can get to that point, are nearly impossible to defeat. So they use bloodlust's big advantage to neutralize this.
Now I'm sure you've probably noticed this: if both the human player and the orc player get to the castle/fortress stage at the same time, and both have a lot of troops, the human player is pretty screwed. Follow my reasoning. All the orc player has to do is to get an altar of storms up, upgrade their ogres to ogre-mages, and research bloodlust. Then, all of their existing ogres become pure killing machines. The human player has to get the castle upgrade, build 1, 2, or 3 mage towers (I usually go for 3), begin training mages, and research all the useful spells before they have any sort of force. While the orcs get bloodlust right off the bat, for all their existing ogres, the humans have to start from scratch. So this is a huge advantage for the orcs.
To counter this, as a human player, requires that you know what the hell you are doing. First, you need recon. As soon as you see the upgrade going to fortress, keep an eye on any and all enemy ogres. Watch for them to become level 6 ogre-mages, which signifies that they have gotten the upgrade to ogre-mages but have not yet gotten bloodlust. When you see this, ATTACK! Launch as full-forced of an attack as you can muster, even if the orc player has more troops than you do. Take as many of his existing ogres out of the equation as you can. Make him start from scratch as well, and you have a chance.
Let me put it this way. Before he gets bloodlust, his ogres are going to be equal to yours. But after he does, they'll be almost 3 times as powerful as yours. So take as many of them out as you can before this happens. Then, he's rebuilding his ogres, you're rebuilding your knights, and you've got some breathing room with which to build mages.
Remember, though, that mages alone won't stop bloodlust. Unless you have knights for backup, you're screwed. 3 ogres can go in and take out 6 mages, if they catch you out of mana and off guard. Don't let that happen to you.
All in all, bloodlust is a huge advantage. To anyone without a lot of experience with war2 (been playing for over 4 months, I mean) and who really cares about winning, I would recommend playing orcs. You're more likely to be able to go in with a ton of bloodlusted ogres and kick some human butt than you are to be pulling fancy tricks with your mages. If you have the patience, however, to learn how to use your mages like a true Jedi Master.... er ... you know what I mean .... then you can kick some ogre rawhide ass.
