| "MY TESTICLES RETRACT INTO MY BODY AND BECOME EXTRA KIDNEYS AS A DEFENSE MECHANISM TO NOT GET MY WIFE PREGNANT SO OUR KID WOULDN'T HAVE TO ONE DAY DEAL WITH YOUR EVENTUAL BOOGERSPAWN." - DivvyO
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| AoS and Dude VS Kguy and street. Special report for the WarCraft Impaired!!!! | | | Author: | | | IP: | navpointXXXX | | Date: | 04/07/00 06:04 | | Game Type: | Warcraft 2 | | Labels: | none | | Report Rating: , # of Ratings: 1, Max: 7, Min: 7
Lifetime Rating for Agent_of_Sol: 7.0000 |  | Yesterday night I played a game of WarCraft II Battle Net Edition, and although it was not a really great game, I thought it would be a good introduction to WarCraft for some of you StarCrafters which have never experienced WarCraft. And those of you that have, well, I hope that you'll enjoy this report as well.
This report includes a large number of explanations and comparisons to StarCraft, meant to aid the WarCraft impaired. If you know WarCraft, feel free to skip them.
The game:
Agent_of_Sol and Dude45 vs Kguy and streetrider
And with that line goes all of my dreams of a perfect text-based 10, because Kguy was not this players name. I'll get right to the point. I forget the players name. Oops. Apologies to the player who is now not receiving the credit he should.
Anyway, the map is All You Need BNE on high resources, and it deserves a bit of explanation.
First, let me comment on resources in WarCraft. Instead of StarCraft's Vespene Gas and Minerals, WarCraft uses Gold, Lumber, and Oil. Gold appears in mines that any number of peons can occupy at a given moment. Each trip removes 100 gold and when a mine is emptied it explodes. Lumber appears in the form of large forests that can be gradually chopped at by peons for wood. Once a spot of forest has been chopped and harvested it disappears and the ground becomes passable to ground troops. Oil is harvested in a like manner as gold but from oil platforms constructed at sea. Suffice to say that you start with enough oil to build any tech structures and that oil need only be gathered on water maps in order to construct a navy.
That said, All You Need is a fairly small 8 player map with no water and start locations at each corner and top center, right, left, and bottom. That is to say, 12:00. 1:30, 3:00, 4:30, 6:00. 7:30, 9:00, and 10:30. Each start has a single 40,000 mine, equal in game terms to 8 mineral patches in StarCraft. Each start is surrounded by trees except for at a single choke which leads directly to the center of the map, and each start has another 40,000 mine hidden in these trees and accessible by chopping lumber or destroying it with Goblin Sappers or Dwarven Demolition Teams (these are suicide units similar to infested Terrans). Beyond these trees each base has a narrow open passage all the way around it, which also opens onto the center, on either side of the choke. Further out, exactly between each base there is a line of rocks (impassable except by demolition), each of which has another mine buried within it. With three mines an each base, All You Need has a great deal of money available, although little is directly accessible at the start.
You've probably noticed from my description of the map that in WarCraft map design is based around placement of trees and obstacles such as rocks, whereas StarCraft map design tends to be more open spaces.
To sum up the map, each base is surrounded by a ring of trees and a ring of rock, with both rings open at the choke.
Now, getting back to the game, this game came about when I bumped into Dude45, an old WarCraft II BNE buddy of mine whom I hadn't played with in ages. I created the game, and it took about half an hour to get two others because it was about 12 AM EST and so many people play on GOW (The temple of WarCraft), BGH (yes you heard that correctly), and lame games versus computers. I persisted in making this game because I was so looking forward to playing with Dude45 again. Anyway, after a LONG time the game started. Here are the spawns:
Agent_of_Sol red randomed to Human at 7:30
and
Dude45 black randomed to Human at 9:00
VS
Kguy (not his name) chose white Orc at 10:30
and
streetrider randomed to orange Human at 3:00
I'm now going to comment a little about the two races, then we'll examine build orders.
Unlike StarCraft, where the three races are all different, in WarCraft the two races are identical in everything except spells and graphic representations. Also, it is not balanced. Certain spells are better than others, and the best is bloodlust (cast by Orc Ogre Mages), which nearly triples the attack power of units it is cast upon. Ouch. The other single best unit is the Human Mage, whose Blizzard spell is a Psi-Storm that affects buildings as well. Ouch. Orc Death Knights have a similar spell, Death and Decay, but it is widely believed to be inferior, as allegedly it does more damage to buildings than Blizzard does and less to units. I connot confirm or deny this however.
A word on the tech tree: Both races have a tech tree similar to the Zerg, in that the central structure must be upgraded periodically, and most combat units throughout the game come from the barracks. If you think about unit costs in terms of StarCraft equivalents, WarCraft structures are fairly cheep.
Before we get started, I should also mention that WarCraft is a game of melee units. Ranged units exist, being Dragons/Gryphons (over priced flyers which die too easily) Death Knights/Mages (better used to cast spells), Catapults/Ballistas (equal to Reavers as powerful units that are easily killed by melee units), and Trolls/Elven Archers (which are weak and should only be used to counter Dragons/Gryphons). Incidentally, each item on that list was listed as Orc/Human, the units being interchangeable except for spells.
On with the game:
High resources starts you with 10,000 gold, which allows you to do as much as about 1,000 minerals would in SC (from here on out WarCraft II is WC and StarCraft is SC). Not surprisingly, this allows you many options. Let's look at build orders, then we'll discuss opening strategies.
Agent_of_Sol: I did a 'light rush' (which I will explain the purpose of later) with a farm-barracks-farm build followed by a Blacksmith (equivalent to a Protoss Forge) for upgrades, a Lumber Mill to speed the process of harvesting lumber, and then I teched up to a Human Keep (equal to a Zerg Lair) for more powerful units. (Obviously I know my build better than I know the other players builds).
Dude45: Dude did a tech build starting with a lumber mill and a blacksmith, only then followed by a single barracks and Keep upgrade.
Kguy (not his name): Did a hard grunt build with a THREE barracks wallin with towers behind it for defense.....but did not tech fast.
streetrider: um.....well.....he did an early upgrade to keep. Pity he only built one Footmen first (Footmen/Grunts = cross between Zergling and Zealot, they are basic melee units with a price only a little above that of a peon), which he ironically sent to Kguy’s base. D’oh! streetrider depended upon Kguy to defend him, burdening his ally in a not very considerate fashion. Not a great team player.
Ok, I've pretty much given away the end of the game, but read on anyway, an abundance of interesting strategic comments follow. Let's start with a build order discussion:
There are many options in WC on high resources. In SC, a good Protoss player will usually do pylon-gate-gate-pylon as the most efficient power/economy build. In WC on high, there are four standard openings.
First, the two hall. In this strat a player uses massive starting resources to construct a second command structure in order to pump peons faster. Although dangerous, a player who pulls off this strategy without succumbing to an early rush will have a MASSIVE resource advantage.
Second, a wallin and/or tech. Exactly what is sounds like. You sacrifice an early offensive army but do build a powerful defense, allowing a slightly slower power that a two hall, but in much more safety.
Third, what I call a light rush. farm-barracks-farm, tech, this allows an early army to be pumped hard out of one barracks but does not totally sacrifice power and tech to the rush. Once economy develops a second rax can be added.
Fourth and last, the hard rush, or the smith first rush. Advisable only on maps which you know perfectly, and possible only on high resources, this is basically a build in which you build a smith first for early upgrades, so when your first military units pop out they are already level two. Rushing smith first out of two rax, it is possible to build a very strong early army, although your economy will suffer as a result. This is the current holy grail of rushes, now that Blizzard has changed the game from the original so that you have to build a Town Hall before a Barracks (In WC you start with only a single peon). I refer, of course, to the current impossibility of what many die hard WC players think of as the only ‘true’ rush, the strategy of using early resources to build a Barracks and a Farm and three Footmen/Grunts, and then killing the other guy while his Town Hall is still building. Not very sporting.
Of course, these builds can be mixed up, just as the aforementioned Protoss player in SC could do a pylon-gate-pylon-gas for more tech or a three gate build for hard Zealots, it's just that these are the four pure build concepts commonly employed in high resource games.
On with the game then!!!
Let's remind ourselves of start locations:
Agent_of_Sol, henceforth known as AoS, human at 7:30 and Dude45, or Dude, human at 9:00.
VS
Kguy Orc at 10:30 and streetrider, know as street, at 3:00.
Dude sent out a scouting peon as soon as he finished his rax, and it went straight across to 3:00. Meanwhile I deployed two of my three footmen to scout 12:00 and 6:00, which were empty. The other team did not scout us at all. Dude found street just as he started his upgrade to Keep, with a single barracks and no army.
My scouts then found Kguy at 7:30 and although I was alarmed at his three rax build, Dude smelt blood and ordered a double rush on street. We each deployed three footmen towards street, which reached his base just as he started to construct towers. Towers have very few hits however, and as they were not hidden behind other buildings as they should have been our footmen were able to take them out easily, as well as the three grunts Kguy sent to help his ally, and we rolled on into streets base. I went straight for his mining Peasants, which brings us to a point of interest. Because in WC gold is taken from a single mine which Peasants enter and then leave, they tend to march in a straight line from the Town Hall to the gold mine, so a line of troops placed across their path forces them to go around. Not surprisingly, the Peasants continue to mine, walking right past the troops in their way. Not surprisingly, they die very, very fast. I, alarmed to find that Kguy's Grunts were already level three, withdrew my army to keep an eye on his base as soon as street's keep went down, and left Dude to finish off street. streetrider's parting comment was "no fair. you know the map." To which Dude45 replied "everyone knows this map." Looks like street was one newbie who didn't however, and he left the game.
About this time my keep finished, and I built a barracks for Knights, a heavier melee unit than a Footmen and the mainstay of the human army, as well as a Gnomish Inventor for the construction of Gnomish Flying Machines. Gnomish Flying Machines and their Orc counterpart, Goblin Zeppelins, are the observers of the WC world. No they don't cloak, but they are very fast moving and very cheep. On a map the size of All You Need BNE two Flying Machines are all the recon that you will ever need. Interestingly enough, I was the only one to build them.
Meanwhile, Dude upgraded his Keep to a Castle (equivalent to a Zerg Hive) and as near as I could tell Kguy just sat around. Then my Flying Machines found something very interesting.
Remember how each main was surrounded my trees? When I took my Flyers over Kguy's base I found that he had chopped through the trees at the rear of his base, and that his only forces were some towers at his choke. Remember those narrow passages around each base? Yup, you guessed it. I ran three Knights and two Footmen THROUGH THE PASSAGE, and although they took hits from his towers they survived. He knew what came next. When my forces made it around to the open rear of his base the lead Knight was met by five angry Peasants armed with pitchforks and axes. Knights>Peasents. So I killed his miners and razed his hall and then left my troops to smash on some farms while I brought two more Knights through the rear passage or 'back door' of his base. Just then Dude sent a Drawven Demolition Team (Infested Terrans, remember?) to damage Kguy's barracks and I sent in my combined forces to take Kguy's towers from the rear, so to speak.
As my forces returned to continue hitting on (so to speak) his farms, the standard rematch talk began, but as I upgraded my own Keep to a Castle I suddenly realized that I should probably send out my Flyers again to check for expansions, as Kguy seemed entirely too calm with the idea of his main going down for my comfort. I noticed two interesting things.
First, I noticed by glancing at the mini-map that Dude, my ally, had two running expansions and was starting a third! No wonder he hadn't helped much on the attack. Also, as I suspected, Kguy had a running expansion at 12:00 complete with a barracks and new Guard Towers. One grunt was standing guard. I quickly diverted my forces from Kguy's farms at his fallen main to his new expansion and razed his defense before moving on to his newly built economy. A fighter to the last, Kguy tried to slip no less than two Peons out of his doomed expansion but both were quickly brought down by my fast Knights.
It should be mentioned that in WC BNE victory comes when all buildings are destroyed and all Peasants/Peons are dead. If a player smuggles a single miner into a corner of the map he or she is still in the game!
However, I had killed all of Kguy's Peons and he could not stop my group of Knights from razing his expansion and then finishing off the farms at his main. To his credit, Kguy did not leave the game until his last structure had fallen. He did, however, comment on street's ability. We needn't repeat that here
*WHEW* Ok, I've been writing on and off for two days now, but we're almost done. We've come to the infamous postgame.
Stats are not surprising. I won in kills, because I killed all the miners, and Dude won in just about everything else, due to his huge number of bases and the fact that he razed all of street's base.
Total game time: about 30 minutes.
Now let's critique each players game:
Agent_of_Sol (me): I played a fairly good if conservative game. It should be mentioned that I did not expand because in WC, unlike SC, there is no such thing as resource saturation. Resource intake in based on number of miners, not a miner-to-mineral ratio. And my initial mine of 40,000 never ran out. (That's how you know that I should have played more aggressively). Typically on All You Need BNE when my initial mine runs out I start to chop to the secondary mine hidden in my tree line (remember that?) AND take an unoccupied main. I had GREAT recon, and my attacks were well planned and executed but let's face it, the other team just sucked. (More on them in a minute).
Dude45: Dude's changed a lot in the three hundred or so games he's played since I last played with him. (Yup, you heard that number right). I remember him as always rushing HARD. This game, he did rush early on to take out street, but then sat back, preferring to power and let me do all the fighting and dying. No doubt he realized that the other team was being defensive, and went for map control. I just wished he'd supported more of my attacks.
Overall rating for Team Old Friend (Team names are only now being disclosed because they would have given away the ending): Good. We could have played a lot better, but we knew what had to be done and we got it done.
streetrider: Street had two problems. First, he should have know this map. All You Need BNE is the first map in the default map directory for WarCraft II BNE. That is inexcusable. Second, his build was a little TOO gutsy. Unless you are SURE that your opponents will NOT RUSH you HAVE TO BUILD SOME SORT OF EARLY DEFENSE. That's common sense. In defense of streets, however, he could have done worse. There are players who just sit there with one Peasant for five minutes before building their starting hall. The speed of street's rush to Keep indicates that he wasted no time, and was willing to take risks, the marks of a player with potential. A little more practice would help him know when to moderate his risks.
Kguy (not his name) (remember that?): Kguy wasn't very with it. He knew his early build, but he simply did not apply any pressure. A strong rush out of his three barracks could have crippled either Dude or I early on. Then Kguy had a long period of time before we attacked him and he did not produce a huge army OR tech past Town Hall at ALL. Hmm, you know what, maybe he wasn't at his computer. No, that can't be, because when I entered his base his Peasants attacked my Knights (Peasants do NOT attack unless ordered to). I guess that he just sucked.
Overall rating for Team Suck: Poor. They never launched a single attack at our bases. Every would-be offensive force that they built was intercepted on neutral ground or in their own bases. In their defense, I've played worse players, but these guys sure aren't Shlonglor and T-Mac (two great players from the early days of the original WarCraft II on Kali. Shlonglor (a.k.a. GFraizer) now works for Blizzard as webmaster.
Lessons learned: Only that it's hard to get a rating of 10 on a battle report.
A shout out to each of the players:
To Dude45: It was great to play with you again!
To Kguy (not his name): Sorry I forgot your real name! But then again, maybe you don't mind so much.
To streetrider: Sorry I was so harsh in this report. You've got potential, you just need some more refinement.
Now comment fools!!! er...I mean...uh…...oops.
If nothing else, comment on why WarCraft II is still interesting but not played much. I think that I've demonstrated that it is somewhat different from SC and has it's own merits. If you disagree, COMMENT!
Or, of course, you can e-mail me at csegal@rocketmail.com if you have a comment that I simply MUST hear, or if you want to challenge the not-quite-master to a game. (I also play SC, but VERY poorly. I know my strats (From where? From Battlereports.com of course!!! And yes, I am blatantly sucking up to the raters), but I just can't play the game!! How frustrating!).
Oh, by the way, this game never reached the endgame. I guess that I'll have to write another report so we can get into all of the interesting strategies and can be employed there.
Until next time!
Now all I have to do is correct this beast and post it, and then see the money roll in. Or not. Maybe I could bribe the raters...
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