Groucho

I know it's an old game, and that it's not for consoles (so nobody here has heard of it), but I just had to rant.

Background: back in the day, I played both Warcraft & Warcraft 2. I wasn't great, but I could occasionally beat my buddies in our regular LAN games. When Warcraft 3 came, I passed for a variety of reasons. Fast forward to today: I'm now an avid World of Warcraft player, and I picked up the Warcraft 3 Battlechest to get the "backstory" on what's going on.

Anyway, the single player campaign is giving me no problems. It plays mostly like a action RPG game rather than an RTS. On the missions where you do need to do some townbuilding, the computer enemy patiently waits for you to build your base, and never attacks with more than a handful of enemies.

However, I get into the regular RTS part of the game, and it's a disaster. In Warcraft 2 I could keep all the focus on my town, building up my army and my buildings all in the same location, with the occasional scout unit sent out for good measure. Not possible in Warcraft 3 since you also have to level up your hero, forcing your attention to be in more than one place at a time.

Maybe it's because I'm now an old man, but I just can't keep up! If I focus on my hero, my town gets overrun. If I focus on my town, my hero gets jumped. When I meet the enemy, they've got a huge army and their hero is at a high level. I've got a handful of Grunts and am at level 3 or 4.

It's getting very frustrating. I don't dare go online. Those 12-year-old kids will kill me in two minutes, and add insult to injury with the all the flaming and the "omg lol i pwnd u!!!!11! u suck!!!11!!one!!!" and such.

Noonan

The game was the same way for me. I could play the campaign without much trouble, but just a standard 1 on 1 match against the computer was a joke. I would get destroyed. It took me probably a month to win my first game, and it lasted over 40 minutes. I saved it just as proof that I did it.

Eelkram

It starts off that way until you get your build order down and get a few games under your belt. It may also help if you save your replays and watch what the enemy is doing vs what you're doing and see how they got the upper hand. Just hang in there, just takes some practice

murray731

Don't feel bad, I suck at pretty much every RTS.

fumanstan

I'm pretty bad too

Groucho

I tried that, and it was discouraging. Since I'm playing against the computer it can multitask flawlessly. While a big battle is going on on one side of the map, it's cheerfully assigning peons to continue building on the other side of the map. But, it did help. I'm able to build up my army faster now...just not fast enough.

Breakfast with Girls

It's weird. In RPGs and action-adventure games, I'll almost always pick offense over defense, since I take the "best defense is a good offense" approach. But the minute I am concerned with something besides my own character's well-being, I suddenly switch to "siege mode," where I try to build up invincible defenses before even worrying about offense. Naturally, this is the worst possible way to play an RTS, and so I am crappy at most RTS games that involve building fixed structures.

Eelkram

Oh my fault. I missed the fact that you were playing the computer. But yeah, that's the only thing that makes playing the computer hard is that it doesn't need any effort to multitask. Playing against people is really different, with experience and strategy counting a lot. It will take you a while to be able to beat a computer in normal mode, I know it took me a while to. And forget watching the replay vs computers, as it won't help much. My advice, is to streamline your build order by knowing in advance which buildings you want to build next, how many workers you need that early on, what small force you can field with your early food cap, and knowing where the early creep camps are to level your guys.

jrobinson

I never focus on defense in these games. It's a waste, just wipe your enemy as quickly as you can. Of course, if you make a mistake and lose your offense, you're fucked. In case you're wondering, I suck at Warcraft 3... but was a one time master of Starcraft, Warcraft, Warcraft II. I remember I used to be able to sign on and beat people well under 15 mins. Sometimes I could drone rush successfully. It was great. I miss the good old days

Groucho

This strategy actually worked well for me in Warcraft 2. I would build up a secure town with a big army, and wait for the other guy to sacrifice his forces on my town, then I'd go roll over his base before he could regroup. However, WC3 is specifically designed to thwart this kind of strategy.

Breakfast with Girls

Well, the problem with those games would be that they could last forever before anyone actually made an aggressive move if you had two players that did that. Hence, the change.

Eelkram

You can't just turtle in your base in wc3. You have to creep while you upgrade your base. Creeping serves several purposes: hero xp, slight gold boost to your economy, item drops. If you turtle, the enemy is getting xp, slight gold, and items. However, creeping if done incorrectly, will net you losses unitwise more than the gold you get from the creeps. If the computer is not attacking you, you can assume he is creeping. On small maps, you can usually make a good guess on where he'd be creeping at, and ambushing them while they creep might be something you'll want to try and do.

Groucho

I understand completely. One of the guys I used to regularly played with finally caught on to what I was doing. So he did the same thing, I lost patience, attacked, and he won.

So, in the next game I quickly built a ton of grunts and swarmed. Caught him with his pants down and won easily.

Long before "zerging," there was "grunting."

msdmoney

I found the same exact thing when I first started Warcraft III, they definitely don't call it a strategy game for nothing.

There are several key things, but the key is actually accomplishing these things.

Creep early and creep fast. Your hero should be your first unit (besides peons or unless you are trying a diff strategy) and you should be building an altar and a farm immediately after you start. As soon as he is out start creeping. You need to know the creeps and their level to do this effectively (know the map). You also shouldn't lose units to a creep.

Scout, you need to know the strategy of your opponent and where he is on the map.

Know the quick keys so you can build/produce units while you creep. Also know your build order, atleast the basic build order so you don't waste any time.

Of course all these things are easier said than done, that is the tough part. Multitasking in this game is tough, and I often got overwhelmed. I always sucked at microing my troops too. It might help to watch a replay from a good player to see their build order, how they creep etc. I used to use warcraftstrategy.com I think.

I was never good 1 on 1, I could beat the computer, even towered them a few times, but 1 on 1 vs. players I was terrible. I played a lot of team 3 on 3 and that was fun online.

RoQuEr

I haven't played much since TFT came out and all the strategies changed, but I also sucked online/skirmish until I learned how to play. Once you learn, I could commonly beat 3 allied insane AI characters.

The most important things are to:
1. memorize a build order
2. memorize the maps
3. learn to micromanage your troops.

The incredible thing about this RTS game is that you can't win by just by having more units. By using special abilities, focus firing on certain targets, and dancing your own units around, you can decimate a larger more powerful army. Also, you can't mass build one unit because a balanced army will always be able to counter your unit's strengths, and take advantage of its weaknesses.

sigh. Makes me want to reinstall WC3



I highly recommend you try going online and trying out a custom game or 2. They can be great fun and usually aren't strategy related at all.

Get an idea of how to play by downloaded replays of ranked players.
http://www.wc3addicts.com/topreplays.php

DaveNinja

One way to always beat the computer is to find where his peons are working and kill them. If you can have a team of flying guys that hang out in the trees in attack the peons every once and a while you can cause the computer to stop gaining resources. They'll also spend every last resource making more peons. So attack the civilians.
I'm great at this game verse my friends but terrible against the 12 year old on battlenet. I have a nephew that is one of those 12 year olds and can always beat me, eventhough i'm good for an old man.

Groucho

No way #2 will happen. I have neither the time nor the inclination for it. There's simply too many maps. I'm working on #1, but I get confused/sidetracked easily. I'm also working on #3, which is a lot easier in WC3 thanks to the whole "subgroups" concept.

But I still suck. I enjoy the game, but I wish they had a turn-based variation.

Eelkram

Are you playing a specific race? Or trying different ones?

Groucho

Since the races are so different, I'm playing Human exclusively since it's the most similar to WC2. That way I don't confuse myself with the different strategies and units.

DaveNinja

Humans suck, same with Orcs. atleast for me. If i'm undead i can make a big team of those frost dragons that rule. Or if i'm night elf i make a big group of Hill Giants, flying acid shooters and ground shooters. These work great against my friends, probably not as great against the computer. Since it cheats!

Eelkram

Yeah, it can get confusing. But playing just one race to get familiar with its strengths and weaknesses is a good idea. I haven't played TFT online, so my advice will be strictly from a ROC perspective.

As any race, you have to take into account your matchups.
vs orcs: Orc strength is in melee. This is further enhanced by their casters with bloodlust and shaman healing. Priests are essential here to backup your meat, to dispel bloodlust and their healing wards. Priest inner fire works very well with your meaty knights with their naturally high armor. A few sorcs would help if you can afford them. Polymorph some of their meat shields and get the casters. My advice would be to field a decent army to creep/defend and get your casters online.
vs Undead: Although their frontline isn't meaty early game, their damage output is really good. This would be the "zerging" race, with their abilit to raise an army in battle with necromancers. If they have necromancers, again, priests are your best friends. Just make sure you don't get too dispel happy and dispel strategically. I find that necromancers can end up summoning more than you can dispel. I find that sorcs greatly turn the battle in your favor with slow, while polymorphing their meat so you can get to their casters. The undead is very susceptible to slow, as their have no disenchant capabilities. Take advantage of slow/innferfire, as they will not get dispelled. Banshees gave me trouble, as there is no effective counter for them. They essentially gives the UD an instant kill upon using their control spell. +1 to their ranks, -1 to yours. This does have a considerable casting time, so you may be able to kill the banshees before they get the spell off.
vs Night Elves: Night Elves' strength lies in their ranged units. Mainly archers, dryads, and hippos. Of course, they'll need to field some meat shields to protect these damage units. Footmen with the Defend skill are great vs archers/dryads. For backup, i'll opt for rifles, and a few priests. Dryads have abolish magic, and will automatically remove buffs and summons. But, priests will be able to cast more inner fire spells than they can abolish. If you have sorcs, you can spam slow and it will outlast abolish as well. But if you want polymorph to stick, dont cast it right away as it will just get abolished. Knights are also good for getting to the ranged units, but keep in mind knights are susceptible to piercing damage.
vs humans: mirror matchup, this is the hardest matchup to plan for. It all just depends on if you want to be the aggressor, or react to their strategy. Polymorph and Inner Fire are easily negated by opposing priests. I'd say go knights/priests/rifles, as sorcs just become overcosted riflemen.

General Tips:
Flyers: I generally don't make flyers. I feel they're too expensive and fragile. As always, if the enemy decides to mass flyers, counter with sorcs for polymorph, and riflemen for damage.
Building Placement: Place buildings strategically to box in places where you want to place towers. This way, your towers aren't easy to get to, and can't be surrounded and killed easily.
Sieging: a couple of mortar teams really help a lot when sieging enemy bases. Just make sure to attack with your main army first before coming in with the artillery to keep the enemy off the mortar fire.

Hero choices:
Paladin: the weakest hero in my opinion. Hard to kill, but also can't kill. He is the best support hero in the game though, and very good at keeping allied heroes alive if he just stays behind the front lines. There is not a lot more frustrating on a 3v3 game with 3 humans rushing you with 3 paladins and they can stay alive forever.

Mountain King: A great choice when facing melee oriented enemy. Thunderclap is a great AOE damage spell that slows, coupled with slows from sorcs, will keep the enemy frontlines stuck and dying fast. Also good for stunning enemy heroes that try to teleport away with storm bolt. Storm bolt is one of the best hero nuking abilities in the game with great damage and a stun effect.

Archmage: Great for using blizzard on enemy ranged units. Ranged units are usually weak, and this can usually be cast on the enemy ranged/caster units without crossing the front lines. Be careful when casting on the frontline, as the frontline changes really fast and you could be damaging your own units. Water elemental is also a great spell. You just summon it and send it to battle. Water elementals are beefy, and have excellent damage. You can usually summon 2 before engaging a battle if you know you'll be in one. Just don't use this ability vs dryads, as it gets abolished immediately. Also note that blizzard will not work on dryads, so archmage is not really a great hero vs Night Elves. His brillianace aura however, is great if you have a lot of casters. And Mass teleport is an excellent spell if you can sneak an invisible unit into the base and teleport in with mortar teams for siege, or a small army to kill their peasants.

Remember, these are just what worked for me My general strategy is to go mass casters with humans with knights if I can afford it.

RoQuEr

A cheap way to win as human is to quickly build 5 or 6 of those siege engines. Have them focus fire on building and you'll take out half the enemies base.

Sorceresses are great for the humans. They can spam the slow spell which makes everyone less combat effective, plus they can't run away.

memorizing the maps aren't that bad. Recent versions of the game (1.14+ ?) even include creep locations and their strength on the minimap. Here is an excel file you can use for the 2 most popular single player maps.

Lost Temple
Plunder Isle

Once you know the optimal places to creep, you can level your guy much faster. For example, when you encounter a group of creeps that all use ranged attacks, send your footmen in with their shields activated, and they will take negligible damage.

Corvin

Hey, what do you know...I suck against the computer, too!

BeanDip0001

hey i've had warcraft 3 for a long time, do any of you guys play on battle.net. it would be fun to play other dvdtalkers on there instead of some random 12 year old who will kill me in 3 seconds. just an idea, i haven't played in a long time, but it would be fun it we had the dvdtalk group playing each other.

if anyone else thinks it sounds like fun lets post our battle.net names so we can add each other to the friends list.

darqleo

I know what you mean. I loved the campaign mode and it was pretty challenging for me, but I would get my @ss handed to me by the computer in skirmish mode. And forget about online play... too many people out their playing it 24/7 that just wipe the floor with ya, and I don't have that kind of time to put into it to get to that level. Which is one of the reason why I hate online games.