Strategy Help: Getting Back to WarCraft III: TFT

Cafe Society
1

I’ve played all the WarCrafts and yes, I’m there at 8 in the morning waiting outside some store for the free t-shirt, poster, etc. when a new one comes out.

(Yeah, I’m the only girl there and all the young, nerdy boys stare. ::sigh::slight_smile:

Anyway, I beat III when it came out, but more than half way through III: TFH I ended up going back to school and have been away from it for months. But I wanna get back to playing cuz I really enjoy it.

My problem? I don’t feel that I have a strategy - at least not a great one. And I’ve been barbecued (to put it nicely) when I have attempted on-line play.

Maybe I’m wimpy. I think my biggest fault is that I’m a hoarder. I like to sit there building my little buildings, upgrading all my weapons, amassing my enormous army while fending off puny attacks. And usually, then and only then do I move. I tend to not enjoy losing or almost losing battles, so I sit around until I know I can slaughter anything or anyone I choose.

I do well enough, but I will like to be a better, faster, quicker, risk-taking player.

So, does anyone have a favorite strategy? Not necessarily some long and drawn out plan, but little things you do to make your game play better with quicker victories. Also what race and heroes due you tend to favor? (And please don’t say your Undead all the time… What fun is that?!)

Thanks, gamers!

2

I tend to go orc. Humans require too much micro, and I can’t seem to play night elf well.

Use your favourite build strat, then go creep hunting with a few grunts and either a Shadow Hunter or a Tauran Chief (I tend to get both early).

I’m sorry, but you have to creep to gain enough experience for your heros, no ifs or buts about it. That’s probably why you’re getting creamed. Scouting is a bit of a problem with orcs, but the Witch Doctor’s sentry wards help.

Late game, I tend to go in with a mixture of Tauran Chiefs (or upgraded orcs, depending on how many I have left), raiders (for their nets and seige damage), a couple of spirit walkers and witch doctors (healing wards).

3

Glad to see more WC3 players on the board. I will certainly help you in any regard you need on this. I don’t hover on the boards a lot, but I will check up on this thread from time to time.

  1. Single player is nothing like online play. There is no comparison. You cannot use single player strategies on b-net games.

  2. First off: pick 1 race to concentrate on to get the basics down. I played a lot of custom 1 player games, the ones not in campaign, to figure out how to play Night Elf well before I played b-net Night Elf.

  3. Figure out a darn quick opening strategy to get the most amount of beginning troops as quickly as you can.
    3a. My Night Elf beginning build as of TFT 1.14b:
    Three wisps to mine
    Build three wisps
    One wisp build altar, one wisp build well
    Next wisp out in mine
    Next wisp make Ancient of War
    Next wisp in trees, next wisp in trees
    Wisp making well finish- to mine
    Make atleast 5 wisps on trees (I prefer 6)
    Wisp making altar finish- make new well
    Make one archer, one hero
    When have enough- wisp from trees to make Hunter’s Hall
    When next well finish, build up archers until Hunter’s Hall finish
    Wisp back on tree from Hunter’s Hall
    Start making Huntresses
    (I can do this in my sleep, it is fast as heck. I also have a quick huntresses opening strategy.)

  4. Why are you sucking in b-net games by turtling? Simple…
    4a. Rush or hero-rush is the name of b-net games. Teching hard can get your team smashed. It is nearly impossible against a decent team to turtle until “you are ready.” While you are doing nothing, they are killing creeps, getting items, expanding and possibly killing off some of your troops.

  5. Use the short-cut keys. Learn the short-cut keys. Love the short-cut keys. Be the short-cut keys. If you wonder about the wisdom of this advice, read the past four sentances one million times. Seriously, this separates a 1-10 level player from a 15-25 level player.
    5a. The backspace key will get you back to your base in a hurry.
    5b. Ctrl-1 will group one group of troops to quickly be controlled by just pressing 1, or Ctrl-2 for 2, etc…
    5c. Keep like troops with like and Ctrl group them together. Don’t put Taurens in with Headhunters for instance.

  6. Learn the armor types and understand how they work together. Throwing 10 knights versus 30 archers is bad. Why? Look at armor types.

  7. Getting the biggest baddest troops is not always the best ever. I had one guy on my team just go acolytes. Yes, he just made acolytes, the workers of undead. He had 50 by the time we rushed the other team. We won. Amazing but true. I’ve seen armies of just archers and ghouls defeat knights, frost wyrms and mountain giants.
    7a. Learn to use all the troops in your selected race. Spell breakers are great because? They are immune to magic and can take those skeletons the necromancers make for their own. Dryads own Chimeras. Why? Same thing, Dryads immune to magic.

  8. Like anything, WC3 is about learning, practice and execution. Being good is being able to do it all at once. Being great is about doing all the small stuff at the same time. It will happen to you, yes it can.

  9. When playing 3v3, 4v4, do not make 5 kinds of troops. Stick to one or two. One person go melee, one magic, one air, etc. When playing 2v2, make 2 or 3 types but try to have them work off of the same upgrades. When playing 1v1 rush like a mother and never stop attacking.

  10. Communicate with your allies. Make plans. Always attack together. Always help each other out. See exceptions in 11.

  11. Use neato terrific strategies to wipe out your opponents. One of my favorite: All attack one base at an extreme location (one side of board), when the enemy teams town portal in, town portal to the most opposite side of the board friendly town hall, run run run to the nearest enemy base (which should be farthest from one just attacked), destroy enemy base with relative ease since no one is there.

  12. Have fun and enjoy the game. Have more fun and don’t let the idiots keep you away from playing. Anymore, I just have a grand old time when my side just sits like a bump on the log. I give them words of advice and have fun dying.

  13. Was gonna stop with above but: Save and watch replays. Why did you lose? What did the enemy do right that your team did wrong? See a good opening build strategy that you like? Learn from wins and loses.

Anyway, there you go, my current account is BytopianDream as well.
Have fun,
Bytopian “I love butterflies (faerie dragons)” Dream

4

I prefer the original War3 over what the TFT expansion pack did to it, but the basics are the same either way (and in almost any similar game). Like almost any wargame of any flavor, being passive rarely gets you far along the path of success. The playfield represents potential, in the form of resources, important terrain, you name it. The more of that potential under your control, the more you deny to the enemy, and this results in opening more options to you and denying same to the enemy. From the start of the game, you have to constantly be thinking greed, power and domination. You can’t wait for the enemy to present you the perfect opportunity for victory, you have to create it, recognize it when it appears, and exploit it mercilessly.

Anyway, you’re asking for specific how-tos, and the only good answer is: there aren’t any. There is no hard and fast “do this, then this, then this” method to being successful, regardless of how many people prattle on about “build orders” and “this l33t fiends/necro strat”. Even in TFT, which is rather more simplified from the original version, rarely is the gameplay as clear as “rock beats scissors”; unit X may or may not beat unit Y depending on the terrain, timing, support units involved, efficiency of use, you name it. Once you get beyond a basic level, the gameplay is fluid and reactive: you have to be able to identify the key variables (which are themselves constantly in flux) involved at the time, usually on limited information, and manipulate them to your advantage.

Of course, this is all just useless theory if you’re getting nuked even at the lower rungs of the online matchmaker. Everyone has to start somewhere, and thus the best basic advice for starting players I’ve found is to emphasize the basic-basics:

  • Produce, produce, produce. When you’re starting out, it doesn’t really matter what you’re making, so much as you’re making a lot of it. Never have money in the bank, always spend spend spend. The biggest failing of new players is to get caught up in this or that and wind up stockpiling resources. Simply spending what you pull in as soon as you get it will get you over the beginning hump of a great many players.

  • Money is power. If you’re harvesting from more gold mines than the enemy, at the lowest level of the game, that’s pretty much an instant win right there. Secure and harvest from additional gold mines, start on another one before one runs out (not after) and keep your enemy from doing the same. If you start sucking down so much money you can’t spend it all, make more buildings for more production power and use your units: it doesn’t matter if you throw an army away when you can remake it in a minute while the enemy needs 3 minutes to recover their losses. You wind up with the long-term advantage.

  • Time is a resource just as important as gold and lumber. You should always be doing SOMETHING with your combat power. If you’re too timid to apply it to the enemy, go after the neutral critters scattered around the map. Clear a gold mine to expand to, a shop to purchase from later, or just beat up random creeps for the gold, experience and items they give. Just don’t get too attached to it: creeping is in itself a passive method of play and thus usually self-destructive in the long run…it’s simply less so than sitting around twiddling your thumbs.

5

One strategy I’ve wondered about is to do the same thing with human Militia. The timer would probably prevent them from marching to your enemy’s base, but you could fix that by Mass Teleporting them in with an Archmage (assuming you can get the Archmage to 6th level). You’d use an invisible unit or a 1st level invulnerable paladin as the beacon. Militia would give you the most combat power per food, they’d help amassing resources before you attacked, and once the battle was over, you’d be able to immediately start your own base on the ruins of your opponent’s (assuming there’s anything still there worth defending).

Disclaimer: I’ve never actually tried this strategy, and I’ve done precious little multiplayer, so I don’t know how well this would actually work. It seems like it ought to, but I’m particularly unsure about how hard it is to get a hero to Ultimate Spell level.

6

I’ve toyed with the pure-militia army a fair bit. For starters, forget mass teleport. You need to get them on the offense before you’ll have anywhere near a level 6 hero, and what’s more, you need to be able to refresh the timer multiple times to mount a series offensive. That means a forward-placed town hall.

Militia are indeed the most powerful unit you can get per food, but they’re also extremely expensive in relation and produce very slowly. Furthermore, the way their power is split across many small units, and melee on top of that, means they start to have a problem with battlefield saturation, where many of them can’t even get in to be effective because the ones ahead of them are in the way…and let’s not even talk about what area spells like blizzard, carrion swarm, war stomp, etc, do to them. This means you’re on a time limit - you have to go before enemy heroes get too strong and, of course, before any air units can get on the scene.

Given the cost of getting a decent force of militia, and the cost of fast-building a forward town hall (and fast-build you must, else the enemy will be on it before it’s done) you pretty much need to harvest from a second (and even third) gold mine before starting the attack, and that also gets you more production power to pump replacements out once the leaders start dying. Using a few of your peasants to toss up offensive towers while the rest attack can give you some much-needed endurance, but you’ll be lucky if any ever actually finish construction.

It’s a fun (if silly) gimmick that can actually work if the opponent is fairly passive and/or doesn’t know much about conservative defense, but it’s not particularly robust in the long term sense, and isn’t effective on all maps. The only real reason to ever do it is for the joke value. However, it is much more competitive than acolytes or peons. The other workers don’t even vaguely resemble combat units, doing that is simply vindication of the theory of “at a low level it doesn’t matter WHAT you make, just make a lot of it”.

7

RitzyRae, will you marry me? Its a match made if heaven: you like Warcraft, I like Warcraft. You use SDMB, I use SDMB. You’re… human, I’m pretty sure I’m human!

8

I don’t have much to add to what anybody else has said because I think they covered most things, I poured in almost 400 hours into playing this on the USWest server but haven’t played for about half a year. I played almost exclusively undead with the Lich as my favourite hero (just to be different from eveyone else’s Deathknight first) in TFT and sometimes Human.

One thing is that I find team games are very different from solo 1 vs. 1, I mainly played team games because I liked the idea of having someone else to blame if things go wrong ;). But in team your ally can cover your differences while you concentrate on a certain tech/unit path, while in solo play you must make sure you have a mix to take on all things.

For helpful hints besides practicing online, I’d suggest skirmishing with an insane computer opponent at the beginning. You don’t have to beat it, as long as you can hold it off without building billions of defense towers you can probably take on most people online.

There’s also the joy of custom games like Tower defense and very strange RPG maps if you ever get tired of the same pitched skirmish battles over and over.

9

Thank you all for your sound advice. I am truly taking it to heart. While I hope I haven’t given the impression that all I do is sit around twiddling my thumbs (which I do not), I’m certain I could improve in many ways. I may not attempt an entire army of peasants, but surely I could creep hunt more and focus, especially, on leveling up my hero(es).

Now… :dubious:

I am human. Blond hair, blue eyes, normal vital organs. In fact, I’m quite sure about this. And while I admire you for liking WarCraft, I am married.

The only hope I can offer you is this: I tend to favor games like WarCraft, Baldur’s Gate and Heroes of Might and Magic. He likes Civilization and sports games, both of which annoy me. So (here it is so pay attention) should this become an irreconcilable difference, ending in divorce, I may choose to seek you out again here on the SDMB.

To be fair however, I feel your chance is very slim as we really enjoy trying to beat each other at Mario Kart. :slight_smile:

And you know, you may still offer WarCraft advice even though we can’t be together…

10

A slightly self-congratulatory story with a moral at the end:

I’m not a good WIII player. I never was. I’ve never played on the expansion. But when it first came out, I messed around on Bnet some, and won about as many games as I lost. When I lost, I congratulated my opponent and asked for advice; when I won, I congratulated my opponent and offered advice if I had any.

In one game, I played night elves vs. a human player, and he asked me lots of questions about how long I’d been playing, where I lived, etc. I answered in short, noncommittal phrases that turned the question around on him (e.g., he’d ask, “Where do u live?” and I’d reply “nc; you?”)

Pretty soon he got to telling me that he knew an unbeatable strategy for playing night elves, and that he’d tell me about it when he’d beaten me (since he’d been playing a lot longer than I had), but that he couldn’t tell me now because I’d use it to beat him. I expressed short, polite interest, and attacked his base.

He complimented the attack, which he barely managed to fend off, suffering a few farm losses and massive troop losses in the process. My second attack, shortly thereafter, hurt him even worse, and he stopped talking so much. I pretty easily stopped his first attack against me soon afterwards, and then came in for the kill.

And then he started typing again. “let me win” he said.

WHAT?

After all that patronizing smacktalking to me? “sorry,” I responded.

“i’ll tell you the secret strategy,” he pleaded.

Naturally I ignored him, except to tell him I didn’t play that way. It took me about ten minutes to find where he’d built a single, lone farmhouse in a corner of the map so that he could hold on while he begged me for the victory; I only won the game by killing his last building off.

The moral of the story? Keep the smacktalkers talking smack: as long as they’re typing, they’re not playing the game :).

(I quit playing on Bnet soon after that: that tweaker was about par for the course for sportsmanship.)

Daniel

11

Ha! I’ll bet it was some 13 year old kid. Too funny.

12

Yeah – actually, it was when I realized the guys picking fights with me and spewing horrible racist/homophobic/sexist shit were probably less than half my age that I decided I really didn’t need to be there. :slight_smile:

Daniel

13

[ol]
[li]play with computer ai on normal until you can beat it within 30 mins everytime. [/li][li]get online and click the automatchup for 1v1. [/li][li]good luck and have fun. [/li][li]if you lose, save and watch the replay and find out exactly why. [/li][li]go to step 2. [/li][/ol]

one thing about warcraft iii is that it’s very important to micro-manage your heroes and units, very.

the best strategy i can recommend is to convince your husband to play as well and then discuss strategies. :slight_smile:

14

NoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Alas, I am Catholic. No dice.

One day the Xbox empire shall destroy you Mario! On that day, my Archnemesis falls!!!

Happy Anniversery to you.

15

Catholic and a Mario-hater? It was over before it began. :wink:

16

It’s all about playing. Use whatever advice we have on playing and keep playing. Play some more and have fun.

Don’t worry about the trash talking 12 year olds, I just ignore them and whoop their booties.

Personally, I like playing 4v4 randoms. It’s fun to play big games with people I don’t know. Even if one team mate acts like a complete moron, I have fun throwing whatever I have in a last ditch effort to win.

Decide what you like and have fun doing that.

Also note that custom games require downloads, which many people who start custom games hate giving out to “WTF OMG LOL!11111 N00B!111” So it is a good idea to find the various web pages out there that have them to download and do so. Some are fun, some are boring as all get out. YMMV as YTMV.

Bytopian “Yes, I tried to wisp rush” Dream

17

One point to be aware of: The insane AI isn’t actually any smarter than the normal AI. In fact, it’s a bit dumber. The difference is that the insane AI cheats. It gets double resources. So whenever a peon comes back from chopping wood, it’s +20 wood, and the gold mine gives 20, 14, or 8 gold, depending on upkeep. But the insane computer is programmed to depend on that, so they don’t expand to new bases as quickly.

So the upshot is that, while playing against an insane AI does present challenges, it doesn’t present remotely the same challenges that a human opponent does. So I’m not sure that it’s good practice for going up against humans.

And hey, BytopianDream, at least you were able to detonate any skeletons your opponent tried to use for defense.