I'm am going to set you straight. Keep in mind this is what I think. You don't have to believe a word of it if you don't want to. I just want to let you know what I think. So far this list has no organization. I'll try to clean it up someday.

Last updated 5/16/96

• Lets start out with the units. Ignoring Magic for now, there are only a few differences between the Orcs and the Humans. When upgraded the Archers can do 3 more hit points worth of damage, and the the Axemen can heal themselves, after a LONG period of time, with Regeneration. The Death Knights have one more point attack range then the Human Mages. Other than that, ignoring magic, The Orcs and Humans are exactly the same. All the ships are the same, the footmen/Grunts, Ogres/Knights, Peons/Peasants, Catapults/Ballistas, Dragons/Gryphons, Sappers/Demolition Squad, are exactly the same. Don't let anyone tell you different. Whip out the Map editor, set it on default, and look at the unit characteristics if you don't believe me.

• There are no prices differences for making units at all. There only price differences are when it comes to Upgrades in the blacksmith.

• For the humans it's 800 gold, 2400 gold for offensive upgrades in the blacksmith. 300 gold 300 lumber, 900 gold 500 lumber for defensive?

• For the Orcs it's 500 gold 100 lumber, 1500 gold, 300 lumber for offensive upgrades and 300 gold 300 lumber, 900 gold 500 lumber for defensive upgrades.

• Human upgrades are more gold intensive. This is handy in the few levels where there is more gold than lumber such as nowhere to run. Orc upgrades are a mix of gold and lumber. I like that much better.

• Once you hit Fortress/Castle, that is when the Orcs and Humans become a lot different. And that is due to magic.

• Once the Fortress and Castle are up, then that is when the ground battle turns in favor of the Orcs. Bloodlusted Ogres can destroy 2-3 times as many Knights. Three bloodlusted Ogres and take down a tower in a few hits.

• Once the Castle is up that is when the Humans have to fight more defensively. They can no longer beat the same number of Ogres. They have to have more Knights or something else to help them in the ground War.

• I made up my mind who is better. I think it's the Orcs. Reasons: Bloodlust and Runes. Bloodlust triples the damage and ogre can do. It can do 3 times the amount of damage as a Knight. Through tons of tests and 2 months of playing that the Orcs are better.

• I've seen games won just because people had bloodlust. I have won many games because of bloodlust. One game I took 3 times as many Knights with Bloodlust. Another game, I killed a knight, two archers, and a Cannon tower with only 2, thats right 2 bloodlusted Ogres!!! 3 Bloodlusted ogres can take down a cannon tower so quick! I attacked about 15 or so powered up Axemen and a arrow tower with about 8 Bloodlusted Ogres. I killed all the axemen and the tower and only lost maybe 4 guys! That is why I have to pick the orcs. If your human enemy does not do anything fancy to counter the Bloodlust, you will get them for sure.

• If the humans can't defeat all my Bloodlusted Ogres then they don't have a chance. I just move in and take out the Mage Towers and then I don't have to worry about the Human's magic.

• Healing can't stop my bloodlusted Ogres. Blizzards and Slow are the only defense they really have against my Ogres. I just make sure, I take out the Mages first. It usually works great too.

• Let me tell you how cool bloodlust is. I saw a game where 3 bloodlusted Ogres had only 4-30 hit points left. They survived battle after battle because anytime a knight would get close, all three of them would take one hit and the Knight would be dead. So I really would rather have bloodlust than healing. If those Ogres were Knights they would have died a long time before they did. It was so cool the Ogre with 4 hit points survived the whole game!!

• When I found out that Bloodlusted level 3 (no regeneration, sight or 2000 increased range) Berzerkers do more Damage than level 7 Rangers, then that made me know for sure, that the Orcs are better.

• When the Magic starts to be made, then the Orcs have to really Watch out.

• Humans have way better magic. The Humans have an a better alternative to all the Death Knights Magic and some better Magic. That is why I have to make sure I get rid of the Mages. Once I do that, no one can stop my bloodlusted Orcs.

• The only cool Death Knight's spells are Death and Decay, Death Coil. The rest pretty much blow. The whirlwind just sucks. Unholy Armor does not really last long enough to be useful. Raise the Dead is almost useless. It's just a mess around spell.

• The one thing that really bothers me about playing the Orcs is Exorcism. I can't get a Death Knight anywhere near a Knight without fearing Exorcism. Exorcism can kill a Death Knight in one Hit. Another thing I really worry about is Invisible Mages. That is impossible to stop.

• Since Orcs are have more powerful land troops (Bloodlust), the humans have to rely heavily on the Magic of the Mages. Healing won't cut it against a ton of Bloodlusted Ogres.

• I personally think it's easier to upgrade the Ogres/Grunts in the Blacksmith. I really never have the $2400 for the last weapon upgrade for the humans. I always seem to have the money and lumber to upgrade the Orcs.

• I actually won a game because of that. The human player could never get together the 2400 for the last upgrade. I had no problem coming up with the 1500.

• When you think about it, it is a lot easier to come up with the 2400 than 1500 and 500 lumber since it takes a lot longer to get lumber than straight gold. But I always seem to have enough lumber, but when I'm the humans, never enough gold. It really does not make any sense I guess.

• When there is tons of lag, Vermeer and I have discovered that the humans are way better than the Orcs. This is because you can never get enough guys bloodlusted at the the same time to do any damage. The Bloodlust will start wearing off before you can even get your guys in and attacking.

• Also, Vermeer and I have noticed that Blizzards/Death and Decay do way more damage. The guys will just stand there and get pounded to death.

• If the humans get a bunch of paladins, mages, and know what to do with them, then the Orcs are screwed, especially in water levels. I have found myself, in a few situations, unable to do anything against the massive mage Defense. Ricardo and this other guy played the Mage defense game on Fierce. They had a ton of Mages and Paladins, and they would just wait for invasions. They would never attack. I found there wasn't so much I could do against that. It would have been much better to be Humans for the invisible mages, polymorph. Orcs are definitely weaker on the sea when It comes to magic. Bloodlust can't stop Polymorph, Slow, and Blizzards.

• Really it doesn't matter who you play until the fortress/Castle level. Most games don't make it to the castle level so you can do fine with the humans.

• Actually, I think the Humans might be better on water levels because of invisibility, polymorph and the power of mages. Although, Bloodlust has sure won me tons of Water games. I just can't seem to play Humans on sea because bloodlust sure helps me when I invade.

• A good player should be able to play both.

• I find most of the good players play Orcs. There are very few good players that play humans all the time. Gotcha, and Ricardo are some examples. I personally think Gotcha is the best human player out there.

• I guess it comes down to a matter of choice. Which one do you like? It really doesn't matter who you play. I find that I can't play anything but Orcs. I love my Orc buddies :)

Really all the strategy you need for Orcs is Bloodlust. I have to admit that I rarely even get runes or Death Knights. So unless you make it, the Orcs are really not that strategy intensive. I have been just doing the same things for months. I get a bunch of Ogres, if the game gets that far, bloodlust and take them out.

Really the Orcs are much easier to control than the humans. Humans require the use of Rangers, Paladins, Mages all used together. All us Orc players need is Bloodlust. Just hit the B button and go in. Simple as that. Humans are much harder to control. It takes skill.

Humans require some serious strategy. I've found few players have what it takes to pull that off. Shaf, Ricardo, Nate and Gotcha are the only ones I've seen that know how to use Humans. Gotcha is the only one that seems to know the power of Rangers offensively.

Often It doesn't matter who you play. Humans and Orcs are really the same until the fortress stage. Most games don't make it to that stage so you can play either with little effect. Mages are so much better than Death Knights. Death Knights really suck. First the Death Knights spells really suck. The only useful spells are Death and Decay, Death Coil and Occasionally Haste. Don't let anyone tell you the rest of the DK's spells are useful because they really are not. Second stupid exorcism. Even if you get the DK's, you will get exorcized and there isn't a lot you can do about that.

Mages are just the kings of the game. They have the invisibility, Slow, Blizzard and polymorph. Really flame shield isn't too useful. Sure I've heard all the uses for it but in 5 months, I've never even seen it used in a game. It's not because I'm not playing good players either. The only weakness of Mages is that they need land forces to protect them.

Humans need to come up with some fancy moves to counter Bloodlust. So far, nobody but the computer, Gotcha, Ricardo, and a few others understand what these moves are. Here it is. Slow. You cast slow on all the Ogres that run in. Slow cuts damage in 1/2. That still means Bloodlusted Ogres are stronger than Knights. Bloodlusted Ogres do 3 times the damage as Knights. 1/2 of 3 times is 1.5. So slowed Bloodlusted Ogres still do 1.5 times more damage than a Knight. You have to realized this.

Polymorph the Ogres is a load of crap. How many mages would it take to kill 10 Bloodlusted Ogres? 10. I have never seen anyone have 10 Mages with full magic in a real game. The only time you see that crap are on levels where it's hard to impossible to attack, or games where no one attacks and just builds up forces which isn't a wise idea. So all those entries that say I'll polymorph all your Ogres is a load of crap. If the Orc player was doing their Job, you sure don't have any more than 4 Mages max.

Really I've only seen people polymorphing my Ogres on Sea levels. That is because usually people unload exactly 6 Ogres and it's not that hard to get together about 6 Mages and polymorph. I've never seen a bunch of Mages polymorphing my guys on land. If they have that many mages, then that means they have spent little money on Knights/Archers to protect those mages. So it's usually as easy as running in and killing them.

I have a surprise for you. Us Orc players only do so well because we play at high speed games on Kali. If the game was set at a few notches below top, the humans would be much more powerful. See with the speed we play now, the human player could have tons of mages but since the game is so fast, they can't control them fast enough. That is why it's rare that all your guys get slowed or get polymorphed. Usually, unless the player is sitting around waiting to be attacked, they don't see your Bloodlusted Ogres in time. By the time they see them, it's too late. You want to play a seriously strategy intensive game, play with the speed at the very bottom. We actually played a game at the slowest speed setting. Although the game took really long to play, it was great. There was perfect response and control. I would play slower games if I ever got a chance. Slower=More Strategy.

If the games comes to a long haul battle on sea, the humans will win. Humans can do the invisible hit and run Mage attacks. There isn't anything that us Orc players can do against that except kill those transports. Gotcha, Warpmaster and I played a 3 player FFA on sea. Gotcha ended up almost winning the game. All he used was hit and run. I couldn't do anything about it. He pops out of the transport, Blizzard's then runs. Or he pops out and polymorphs. He also pulls the pop out Exorcism. I couldn't do a thing about any of that because I didn't have any ships and he did. I couldn't kill the transport. So he used the hit and run to wear down all my guys. If I tried to Death Coil the Mage, he would just go home and heal. No damage at all. Healing because really useful at that point. Much more useful than bloodlust. I've gotten into about 4 of those games now. I lost or had such a hard time simply because Mages are better than DK's. That is when Polymorph is better than Death coil. Taking out someone in one hit is much more useful in that situation. Really there isn't anything you can do with your DK's. You D&D and they heal. You Unholy armor and they just polymorph you. You launch a whirlwind and they laugh at you thinking newbie :) You raise the dead and those crappy skeletons just get Exorcized or beat up easily with Paladins and/or Rangers. Those are the situations you don't want to get into as an Orc player. That is what happens when you don't attack.

Healing would be much more effective in a nice slow game with no delay. You can heal during battle. If you have played the Orc campaigns vs the Computer you see how well the computer heals during battle. I think a human(real) player could do that if the game speed was lower and there wasn't any delay. Then that, combined with slow and some Rangers would kick some Ogre hide.