The Warcraft III Strategy Thread...
 

Ok RTS is the genre I'm most weak in so I'm always willing to learn new things. I just got Warcraft III and I figured I would start a thread where we can just share tips and strategies (I remember we did this with RTCW a while back). Maybe people can chime in with general tips on playing and also specific build orders/strategies with specific races. Also, mention what units you feel are the best and why, what spells, items, heroes, etc.

I hope I can learn a lot from this thread. :)

bump, I need help. :( lol

I don't even own this game yet. But since no one's posting any strategies, I'll just list some basic stuff on WC3 that are new and different from typical RTS games:

1. Each gold mine can only have up to 5 peasant/peon/acolyte/wisps. So don't send more than 5 guys to the same mine, it's a waste of resources.

2. Wisps harvest lumber without harming the trees, so the forest will never disappear for night elves. Use Ancients to eat the trees if you want to carve a path into a different area. Also, the siege machines (from each race) can also be used to clear trees.

3. Acolytes summons in buildings (like Protoss in Starcraft), you don't need to have it hang around while a building is being summoned. Undead gold mines need to be haunted before you can dig for gold.

4. There is an upkeep pentalty for using more than 40 foods. So unless you're lauching some major offensive, don't exceed it or you'll be suffering from reduction in the resources you bring in. [-30% resources at 41 to 70 foods, -60% resources at 71 to 90 foods.]

5. Heros are critical to your success. Always have at least one present at any type of skirmishes so the he/she can gather the experiences and gain levels.

6. Stretgic use of the items in the game [such as Town Portal scroll and potions], can be very crucial to your success in the campaigns, as well as in multi-player games.

7. Farms can serve other purposes besides adding food. Orc peons can enter the burrows (up to 4/burrow) to retaliate against attackers by throwing spears. Moonwells can be used to regain life and mana, the wells regenerate once a day. Undead Ziggurats can become town defense after upgrading to spirit towers.

8. As humans, sending extra peasants on an existing building/repair job will get it done much faster.

9. Powerful magic attacks, such as Blizzard and Starfall, can be interrupted and stopped if you can attack and stun the magic caster.

10. Some skills, such as Kodo beast's devour, or sorceress's polymorph, can be employed to eliminate a single powerful unit from the battlefield.

11. It is important to keep track of dead bodies as undead. Either reanimate as skeletons or scoop up using meat wagons. If you want to resurrect your own units, the time limit on dead bodies is 88 seconds. Flyers and heros does not leave a body.

12. The Huntress Sentinels can be a very useful scouting tool. It is permanently fixed on a tree, and the only way to stop the spying is to destroy that tree. This can be very annoying to opponents if you cast the Sentinel in the middle of a forest.

13. The elves' Ancient Protectors cannot attack melee units that are next to them. All Ancients can be uprooted to serve as attack units when no upgrades or units are in progress.

That's all I can think of right now.

PAL

Is that it??!?! ;) j/k Very helpful info

I've mostly been playing Orcs so I've only got suggestions for them.

As PAL mentioned, the burrows can be used as defensive structures, so it's good to build them near the entrance to your base. You'll want to build your war mill near that area too since the burrows are useless unless you've got peon's in there, so you'll want to keep you're peon's working near the burrows so they can be rushed into them in time to defend against attackers. If you have to run them over from a long ways off, it's going to be too late for them to be effective.

These burrows, while useful, are no substitute for towers. Build towers early and often in tight clusters of 3 or 4. The Orcs have a big advantage in that their towers are relatively cheap, hit land and air, and don't need to be upgraded like the Undead or Human towers. Clustering 2 groups of 3 towers near the entrance(s) to your base will keep off any attack party that doesn't have siege weapons.

I like to summon the blademaster hero early and take him out on recon expeditions with a party of about 4 or 5 spearsmen. First, go around and kill any easy "natives" to level him up. Get the clone and invisibility spells first. The clones are excellent for scouting and during battle, they act as another grunt (eventhough they don't do damage, they do draw fire and take up space). Usually, I just use the hero and his clone up front as the front line, and direct the spearsmen at the rear to fire at one enemy at a time going from weakest to strongest. I can take out fairly big parties of natives quite easily like that.

This accomplishes a few things. First, it levels up my hero and makes him actually useful since they're barely worth the trouble until level 6. Second, it explores the map and gets me to the various mercenary camps, goblin traders, and so forth. If the map has gold isolated on islands, I hire a zepplin as soon as I can since getting to those mines first often makes all the difference. Third, killing the natives gives me the artifacts, some of which are extremely helpful in making your hero even more powerful.

Back at the base, I build up a small defensive army of a few grunts, at least 6 to 8 spearsmen, a kodo beast (mainly for its drum area effect, but it's always tremendously gratifying whenever you can have it swallow an enemy whole). The important thing is not get into high upkeep. In fact, I suggest limiting your number of burrows initially to 70 food units to make sure you never go over the limit. In fact, if it's possible at all, I suggest not even going into low-upkeep territory until you've secured at least one other gold mine on the map.

When I expand to new gold mines, I'll usually bring peons. While one is building the town hall, I have the other 4 building towers. I usually rely primarily on towers for defense of outlying gold mines since they don't count towards upkeep, they're fairly inexpensive, and they'll hold out against most attacking forces long enough for me to get my units over there (often attacking my attackers from behind).

The main reason I like the blademaster hero is because when you get to the middle and late stages of the game, he's awesome for guerilla attacks. His invisibility spell means I can run him around just about anywhere on the map with impunity. When I spot a few units clustered somewhere too far away from other help, I'll have him attack, first with the whirlwind, then summon the clones when that's expired. With a level 10 blademaster, I've taken out a group of several footmen and 2 knights that way. As long as I'm careful to not let him get surrounded and always keep enough mana in reserve for the invisibility spell, he almost never gets killed.

These guerilla tactics are extremely frustrating for opponents. Early in the game, when I'm sending out clones for recon, I'll have it attack any enemy units I see. When my opponents kill it, they realize that it was just a clone and after this happens a few times they often stop bothering to attack it. So later on, when I have the real blademaster in there, sometimes they'll be a little slow to respond. A couple times, I've had guys say "damn, I thought it was another one of your f'in clones."

Anyway, I've had pretty good luck with those tactics, YMMV.

All great tips. Thanks guys.

My main problem is micromanagement. How do you guys battle? Do you just get a group of X number of people, then attack one person in a group, then move on to the next? Or do you get one guy to attack another, another guy another, etc.?

I have been playing one game a night on the LAN and am slowly getting better.

Here are the critical things.

1. Gold supply- expand early and expand often. Get those gold mines. It doesn't pay off to be a porc in this game. If you do, you will bankrupt in a corner. Also make sure you are pulling in at least 10 gold per timelength. Keep an eye on that upkeep. Don't have any upkeep if you have less than 2 mines, and if you have high upkeep, you better be attacking in the next two minutes and kill off some units.

2. Keep moving - you are given town portals for a reason. you should keep most of your army mobile, either attacking creeps or attacking enemies the whole game. If you are attacked and are far from your base then TP over there and fight them off. Also, don't be afraid to run. If you watch a replay of a good player, you will see that they are always fighting back and forth, as one side loses its attack force, the other presses the attack. Those 5 units that you ran away with can save your city. Once again, don't camp your base or build masses of defenses. 2-4 towers per settlement is plenty to give you time to stop the attackers. If you camp in your base, you will end up with a lvl 3 hero fighting level 10 ones. YOU WILL LOSE

3- micro your troops. When you are on the attack, you are at a disadvantage. You are fighting against a defended (hopefully) base and have a much longer supply line (BTW, set your hero as a rally point). Unless your enemy is really bad, your troops will be overwhelmed eventually. make sure you do some permanent damage during your attack. Do this by using the groups and subgroups. If you cast death and decay or starfall, don't immediatly give a different order to your hero, or the spell will stop. Cast and then deselect that unit. Constantly use the tab button to switch to different spellcaster subgroups and cast stuff. As you wait for the spell to recharge, go to a different unit.
I also make a separate group for my mortars, raiders, ballistae and meat wagons, so I can have them attack buildings while my units skirmish.
If a unit is getting all the attention, take advntage of this. Make him run towards the back of your lines. This will either keep him alove, or if your opponent is stupid, will make all of his units chase after that 1 unit while you pound him
Also, prioritize your targets. If you are undead, kill those priests and dryads quickly. I always try to hit those expensive, weak support units if I can (exception, night elves) If you can cast chain lightning on those necromancers BEFORE there are bodies everywhere, you are in luck. Also, some of the creep groups have 1 creep leader who is 2 or 3 levels higher. Usually you want to get him first, but some higher level creeps have no special attack, and do just as much as the weak ones, so kill the weak ones first.

4- Watch and learn. Be an observer in a high ranking ladder match. None of the tips I read clicked until I did this, and now it seems intuitive. I recommend http://www.programer.ru/war3/replays.html
http://www.battlereports.com/
http://www.mrfixitonline.com/getPost...p?ForumId=1459

I have more. Tell me if you think this is useful

Since Belboz is partial to Orcs, I will list some strategies specifically for Orc units:

1. The more peons you stick inside a burrow, the faster it attacks. So a burrow with 4 peons will throw spears 4 times faster than a burrow with only a peon.

2. Orc units like peons, grunts, and raiders can steal resources once you invested in the Pillage upgrade. Everytime they attack an enemy building, 35% of the damage is converted to resources. By far, raiders are the best at utilizing the pillage bonus.

3. It might be worthwhile to upgrade the spike barricades just to stop enemies from attacking your buildings with melee units. This would force them to fall back to ranged and siege machine attacks instead.

4. Witch doctor's sentry ward should be used extensively around your compound and to spy on the enemies. This will stop invisible units such as Blademaster (wind walk) or night elves with shadowmeld from launching a sneak attack. Each sentry ward last 10 minutes of game time.

5. The main strength of Orcs is all about the hard hitting melee units, so Bloodlust is a very important spell to research as soon as possible. When set on autocast, the shaman will automatically cast Bloodlust everytime your units begin attacking the enemy, starting with the nearest one and going outward.

6. Before the wyvern riders becomes available, use raider's ensnare ability to take down air units.

7. To tell the difference between the real Blademaster and one of the mirror images, the clones will lose hit points twice as fast, and never cause any actual damages. Also, "dispel" type magic like purge can be used to damage the mirror images, since they are considered as summoned units.

8. Like belboz said, Blademaster is awesome when you use it for sneak attacks in enemy towns. The only ability that has a big casting delay for Blademasters is the Bladestorm, which has a cooldown time of 240 seconds.

9. Once you get Taurens, research pulverize ASAP to augment their already devastating melee attacks.

10. Statsis trap is useful for trapping enemies. If you cast stasis trap ward behind them, they will get stunned if they attempt to flee. The statsis trap takes 10 seconds to activate, and lasts 2.5 minutes.

11. Poison alone cannot kill a unit, the poison effect will only leave a unit with 1 hit point left. This is how Blizzard treats poison in Diablo 2 as well. Obviously, any attack after that will kill the unit outright.

PAL

A lot of good tips guys, thanks!

I'm learning a lot; I have to start watching more replays.

Buy those wands of negation! It works wonders agains dreadlords and keepers of the grove.


Orcs require the most micromanaging, undead the least.


Don't tower rush. It is really sad that blizzard went to so much trouble removing the "rush", and people still do it. It is an unsatisfying victory

What exactly is tower rushing? Is that when you build towers outside the enemy's base?

i have played a few lan games against my friend, and it seems like the winner is always whoever has the most air units. my friend builds nothing but gyrocopters and the other human flying thing.

are there any ways to counter this besides just building more flying units than your enemy? this game seems really unbalanced with regards to the flying units.

There are so many counters to the flying units though, most flyers are really expensive and light on the hit points anyway.

Couple other things I've learned. Autocasting is almost always a good option. Anything that can autocast, I set it.

You can direct towers to attack specific things. I always seem to forget this, but going after spellcasters/healers with your towers is always extremely satisfying.

This only usually works when fighting the comp, but if you have someone on the front line getting trounced, run them back. Usually the enemy will just switch to hitting a new unit, then you can run them back in and bash away.

Cast cast CAST. My heroes are throwing spells in battle the second they become available. Chain Lightning, Entangle, Starfall, War Stomp...every little bit helps.

Anyone have specific tips for the Undead? Starting to play through their campaign, I'm beginning to be partial to them.

i'm an idiot. opening too many threads at once...

wrong thread methinks :)

Anyone have tips for the last mission in the game? Night Elves where you have to hold the Undead off for 45min. I haven't played it yet. Just got there but my roommate says its hard. I think I'm going to try building massive amounts of those Ancient Guardian tree things just for fun.

I didn't have too much problem with this one. The one that I had the most trouble with was the last mission with the undead. For this mission, the key is to know when to pull back and give up a town. Also they're 2 additional gold mines which you should start mining from right away. They're fairly safe since u will be attacked from the south. Towards the end when u are down to your last town, make a whole bunch of protectors.

Yeah, I had to go down to easy to beat the last level. Crazy! Getting those two other mines right away is important. Using Starfall is very important as well. I kept hiring mercs and bringing them down with Furion whenever I ran out. That made the humans last about 15 minutes. Then, I kept it up with the Orcs. If you keep bringing in new units and upgrading while building up a ton of money, you should be fine by the time they reach the NIght Elves.

XF

please elaborate on this strategy. I seldom get that far up the tech tree to get flying units. I find them overpriced and weak. Occasionally I will throw 1 frost wytm into my mix to paralyze towers, but that's about it. 12 grunts will do far more damage than 5 frost wyrms.

The only game that I sucessfully used flying units was a 2v2 map, I was night elves and my teammate was orcs. We decided that he builds only grunts and tauren, and I built only archers and flyers. Even then, my flyers attacking the back of their base did limited damage

Another question. Who uses invisibility often?

I don't, but my opinion on it is changing after An invisible blademaster walked into my base a did his spin attack right in the middle of a pack of troops.

The humans can also get it from the sorceror, but I never use it. Anyone ever try making a bunch of mortar invisible and march them to the back of an enemy base?

^ Invisibility really does work wonders. Of course, I only play undead now and I'm mostly talking about shades. I love these guys. Several things you can use them for:

1) put shades near other mines to see when your enemy is expanding. Also, if you can place them at a good location, you can give the enemy a tough time building a town hall, etc.

2) put a shade in their base to see what they're doing, who they're training, etc.

3) if you have a lot of shades, you can put them in certain chokepoints in their base to block movement.

4) have a shade follow an enemy hero to know what they're doing at all times.

5) with a lot of shades, you can surround things like meat wagons to prevent all attack against that unit. the enemy will probably think it's a bug or something. this requires a lot of micromanagement.

Just beat the last mission on the first try (on normal). I didn't use any mercs either. It wasn't nearly as hard as I thought it was going to be.

I defended the human base for around 15minutes with about 6 anceints and whatever units would trickle in from my base above. New wisps were used to make repairs. There really isn't enough time to make new ancients once the attacks begin.

After the the human base fell I used land mines and a large amount of ancients to block the lower passage into the orc base (most undead don't go that way but the top most ancients can help out on the top attacks at least). In between fights, I'd plant more mines. The biggest thing you have to watch out for are meat wagons picking off your ancients. I had a 50/50 mix of archers and huntresses to take them out (along with the summoned tree dudes). I didn't try making any flying units but that might have helped if you have the time.

My final stand was made with as many ancients as I could make. You get a decent break after the orc base falls so you can make a lot...and you have to. I had all three bases sending wisps in to make ancients. I had a small force to take out meat wagons but the ancients did most of the killing. The big dude showed up just as time ran out and didn't get to do any damage.

the guy i'm talking about doesn't bother to build barracks. he just goes straight for the gyrocopters, and all my land units that can't attack air die. and he makes so many that i can't even select my men in battle, because i can't see them

Am I the only one who finds the computer in skirmish mode a lot harder than the average battle.net player?

enthused, the game is balanced specifically so that one unit can't be overwhelming. Sometimes, an attack like that will work against an experienced player if it catches him off guard, but it's not a strategy that's going to work more than once.

Assigning units to hotkeys is essential to playing this game well. If you have all your archers/spearsmen/riflemen assigned to a certain number, then you'll be able to select them even if they're buried beneath swarms of flying units. Also, you want them all to target a single enemy unit at a time. Even if you haven't assigned them to a hot key, if you double-click on any one unit, you will automatically select all similar units in the area into one group.

Anyway, if you know for a fact that he's skipping the barracks, why are you holding off on attacking him? Take a hero and a handful of grunts/footmen/ghouls and kill all his peons.

yeah, but teh computer cheats

One thing I found really useful in Starcraft (I'm guessing it'll work for WCIII) is using hotkeys on some of my important buildings. That way, whenever you need to summon more soldiers/peons/attackers you just press the hotkey to go directly to that building.

can anyone explain how the won/lost record is kept?
I've played a few "Custom Games" and a few "team match" games, but the outcome does not get reflected in my record with the /stats cmd. When does a win/loss get reflected into your record?

They just posted the ladder rules: http://www.battle.net/war3/ladder/rules.shtml

Also, this might help:
(from the faq http://www.battle.net/war3/ladder/ladderfaq.shtml )
-David

Just a tip for selecting same-type units, double-clicking is often difficult when units are running across the screen, because you'll often miss the second click. Getting in the habit of control-click (which does the same thing) will be more effective.

Argh!!! I want my new computer from Dell to hurry up and get here so I can play my WCIII :( I've got the game, but no computer to play it on.

If you play as the Alliance, you have to exploit the heck out of invisibility, as that is one of the biggest advantage for humans! With the sorceress, each and everyone of your units (with the exception being a few odd creep units) can become invisible. And you can essentially turn your whole assult force invisible and just show up at the enemy door step. :D This is a great way to punish opponents who does not bother setting up sentry for invisible units.

Conversely, you should always look out for this tactic when playing against Humans.

PAL

I actually think that an one-dimensional gyrocopter rush is quiet easy to counter. The answer is easy: build all ranged units.

I think your error lies in the fact that you actually build melee units. Since the other guy don't have any, neither should you. All you should raise are the archer type units. The weakness of the archer units is that they can't take the pounding from melee units, which you don't have to worry about in this case.

Looking at it purely from statistical perspective (all base stats with no upgrades):

Gyrocopter - 2 food, 220 gold, 60 lumber (350 hit points). Does 20 ground/27.5 air damage at a cooldown rate of 1.5/1 (lower cooldown means faster attack rate).

The ranged units from all 4 races are below:

Rifleman - 3 food, 240 gold, 30 lumber (520 HP). Does 21.5/21.5 damage at a cooldown rate of 1.5/1.5.

Troll headhunter - 2 food, 160 gold, 20 lumber (280 HP). Does 25/25 damage at cooldown of 1.95/1.95.

Elf archer - 2 food, 150 gold, 10 lumber (260 HP). Does 20.5/20.5 damage at a cooldown of 1.5/1.5.

Gargoyle - 2 food, 220 gold, 30 lumber (400 HP). Does 17/51.5 damage at a cooldown of 2.2/1.4.

Assuming that both sides used similar amount of resources, so it will be 15 gyrocopters vs. 13 riflemen/20 headhunters/22 elf archers/15 gargoyles. The ranged units should come out ahead every single time. This does not even take into consideration that gyrocopters is higher up on the tech-tree, and need to research the gyro bomb in order to attack ground units. If we do, then the ground ranged units would get a level 1 upgrade in weapon and armor. Also, the gyrocopters needs more than double the amount of lumber compared to the ranged units, which we will neglect for now. If the battles are compared individually...

Gyrocopter vs. riflemen - The gyrocopters need to get within melee range to drop the bombs, the riflemen can fire away at a range of 50. 1-2 copters will be dropped by the time they get in melee range. At the end, the dwarven riflemen will outlast the gyrocopter because they have more HPs.

Gyrocopter vs. headhunters - Again, the gyrocopters need to get within melee range to drop the bombs, the headhunters can chuck away at a range of 50. 2-3 copters will be dropped by the time they get in melee range. The attack damage difference is 20 vs. 25, so the troll headhunters will still come out ahead, especially if coupled with bloodlust.

Gyrocopters vs. archers - The copters still have to get in melee range to attack, 2 gyrocopters will be downed by then. The damage potential is even at 20 vs. 20.5, but 22 elven archers will still outlast 13 gyrocopters. If the archers already have extended attack range then the outcome will be decided even faster.

Gyrocopters vs. gargoyles - This situation is the reverse of previous ones. The gyrocopters have an air attack range of 50, and attacks extremely fast with a cooldown of only 1, while the gargoyles need to get in melee ranges to do damage. By the time they close in, 2-3 gargoyles would have been downed. But at close quarters it's not even a contest, as the gargoyles puts out a devastating melee attack of 71 vs. gyrocopters' 27.5; plus gargoyles have much higher armor. The gargoyles would eventually come out of this contest way ahead.

The other common point in all the scenarios is that it's mechanic vs. organic units. The copters are air-borne and cannot be repaired. While some healer units nearby can heal the ranged units.

The whole gyrocopter rush idea is not bad, but as you can see there are counters available. If the guy would bother sending in a couple melee units along with the copters, it would have been a much better offensive move.

PAL

Has anyone been able to beat the computer 1 on 1? It's virtually impossible. I even turn off fog of war and still get my ass kicked. It seems like the A.I cheats by knowing where you are all the time. The minute I build an expansion base, it always attacks me!

~~ PAL ~~,

Impressive stuff! But I never want to play against you. Ever! ;)
I've heard that you should build towers first when starting an expansion base against the computer, but I haven't tried this myself (still trying to find time to finish the single player campaigns) so I don't know how useful this advice is.

-David

timewaster: It's definitely beatable. I haven't played Warcraft III in a while (I'm an FPS fiend :) and can't get enough of SOF2) but my 10 year old brother routintely beats the computer 1 on 1. I'm not trying to be mean or anything. I'm just saying it's definitely possible. I've tried a few times and the computer always kicks my ass. I have no idea how my brother does it. Some people are just better at RTS games than others. :(

I've beaten the comp on a 1 v 3 match. That's right, I took down three computers by myself.

Of course, they were trapped by trees and the AI malfunctioned.

But I still count that as a victory :)

Seriously, I have won a 2 v 3 comp skirmish, with one computer as my ally. True, the other computer took down two opponents, but I did take out one all by myself, so I can say I won a 1 v 1 comp match :)

--

On a strategy note, does anyone know how to use air units effectively, as part of combined arms? I know the gyrocopter rush mentioned above, but I don't play like that. On a broader note, what is the best way to micromanage your units? I usually divide my army into three parties, each led by a hero. If I'm doing a concentrated attack, I have all the melee units under one hero, ranged under another, and spellcasters under another. If I'm doing a flanking type attack, I divide them evenly between the parties. Then I have a fourth group consisting of artillery and light defense. This works really well on SP (I blazed through the campaigns), but it's proven less successful in skirmish. And there doesn't seem to be any place where air units can be effective. I usually attach them to one or more of the parties to fly cover, but they always seem to be blasted out of the sky before they can do anything.

Any thoughts?

It's OK, with Anonymous Matchmaking on Battle.net, you won't know it was me. ;)

Just to let you guys know, gamespot released a somewhat in-depth guide (nothing new really) for Warcraft III today: '

http://gamespot.com/gamespot/gameguides/pc/warcraft3/