There are those who would like to believe that "the pen is mightier than the sword." Unfortunately, these people usually find themselves scattered about the landscape of the game, waiting for a death knight to come along and raise dead. In WarCraft II, an opposing faction, be it computer or human, would just as soon cleave your brains as talk to you.
On the other hand, another axiom, "knowledge is power," is a key in your quest for the ultimate PUDs. As a player of WarCraft, you should gather up all of the strategy and tactics that you can, always assuming that your opponent holds the same information. As an editor of WarCraft, your primary goal is learning how to defeat those strategies and tactics.
This section details the four general types of playing styles that you, as an editor, will contend with. Study them, memorize them, and be able to recognize their attributes at the slightest glance. In creating a PUD, you are not pitting Human against Orc or Orc against Human, but rather the player against yourself. If a player can find a way to make your mission look like child's play, then you must go back to the drawing board to find where you went wrong. Only by studying and understanding the audience for your mission will you ever be able to dominate it.
One more thing, don't worry if some of the suggestions that I make are unfamiliar or vague. Once you have progressed further into the manual, you may wish to return to this section to help evaluate some of your first detailed editing attempts.
The defend and horde strategist is by far the most aggravating player that you will ever encounter. The title alone says it all - the strategy involves finding a secure location and then mining and harvesting everything in sight, without alerting the enemy to one's presence. If you give these players a mission that starts with ten gold mines containing 500,000 gold each, they will gladly mine every bit of gold on the map before they even think about attacking.
This play style involves the heavy build up of a gold cushion before getting involved in the action of the mission. During this time, all effort is made to squeeze together all buildings and units, so as to avoid setting off any roving patrols or enemy scouts. Of course, some contact is inevitable, but little or no effort is made to determine enemy positions. In very rare instances, players may manage to get themselves a flying machine or a zeppelin in order to scout enemy positions. Unfortunately, this usually causes a defend and horde player to build up even more gold, as they size up the opposing armies and decide to `play it safe'.
The biggest threat that this strategy poses to a well-designed mission is the time frame involved. Unless you provide the enemy groups with a mind-boggling amount of gold, the computer player will eventually run out. As many of you may have encountered, once the computer runs out of gold, it will immediately send all peons or peasants to the nearest gold source. This usually results in most of the units being killed en route to the gold mine. Once the computer's supply of peons or peasants is destroyed, that color group is pretty much taken out of the game.
How can you prevent this kind of player from taking your masterpiece of creativity and turning it into a ten-hour bad joke? First and foremost, you must be very careful about the placement and contents of the gold mines in your missions. Only play testing can help you to perfect the gold levels needed for a good game, but use common sense in your initial attempts. If there is only one computer-controlled enemy and they have 50,000 gold to mine, you should provide roughly the same for the player. Why on earth would you want to give the maximum amount of gold (625,000), when the opponent will not even have a tenth of that amount? Providing the player with massive gold mines will very often bring out Defend and Horde strategists faster than anything. Think about it: if you are providing so much gold, it must be a really difficult mission! All the more reason to sit and stockpile, in their minds.
In general, if you wish to build around this kind of play style simply do not allow the slightest possibility of inaction. Shrink the open areas of the map. Do not cut the player off from the computer, make as many attack routes as possible. Keep the gold in each mine to a low level. By all means, make sure that the computer always has some means of striking against the player, be it by land, sea, or air. Another way to beat the strategy while also catering to it is to provide the computer such a large starting advantage that, if the player player does not respond to the threat, it will become too large to deal with at a later time. Some build up will be necessary, but eventually players will find themselves fighting a brick wall.
A much more common sight in the WarCraft II world is the slow-aggressive player. In fact, this is the most common play style utilized.
The slow-aggressive play style begins much like the defend and horde play style. Players pool their resources and begin to construct all basic buildings as quickly as possible. With the construction of a barracks, however, the style begins to differentiate itself. Rather than raise a standing army, players will use their troops to scout the surrounding terrain and test the strengths of their enemies, when found.
As players locate their opponents, they will continue to upgrade their cities to the keep/stronghold level, or even a castle or fortress. In general though, slow- aggressive players are not comfortable unless they have the capacity to build knights or ogres and have fully upgraded those units. Once the ability to build strong forces exists, the player will begin attacking, usually in the maximum group number of nine units at a time. A common desire in this play style is to hold complete control over every battle group and their actions. Using this idea of an advanced city area and a balanced attack, once the slow-aggressive player begins attacking he or she usually continues to build armies and fights until the end.
In examining the computer's playing style, it is easy to fall into the trap of believing that the computer is a slow-aggressive player. Do not let this happen! If you pit a slow-aggressive player against a perfectly placed computer player, the human will have to play nearly flawless WarCraft in order to win. The key to designing a good mission for slow-aggressive players is to provide some early challenges to city building and upgrading, without letting the computer go crazy and slaughter them wholesale.
A computer color group may occasionally exhibit the pattern of a slow-aggressive player - controlled growth, quick upgrades, and strong attacks. Despite this appearance, the computer is going to make every effort to act in its true fashion - fast-aggressive.
In a human player, this play style is characterized by a strong effort to remove at least one-player from the game within the first few minutes. There is a school of thought that says if an enemy can be removed quickly, it saves the trouble of an extended battle at a later time in the mission.
The fast-aggressive play style begins with a rapid construction of the bare essentials - town hall/great hall, farms, lumber mill, and barracks. The player will continue to create a small force of troops and then search the map, hitting the first enemy that he or she discovers. Little attempt is made to further city construction at this time, however a Blacksmith almost always follows (or immediately precedes) the barracks. The player will usually upgrade the weapon power of his or her troops during this first assault.
Along these lines, it should be noted that when fast-aggressive players are given a small army to start the mission with, they will have no qualms about sacrificing this entire squad in order to wipe a color group from the map. After the kill, these players will secure the area with troops, and then return to building up a strong city, much like a slow-aggressive player would do.
The danger in the fast-aggressive strategy lies in the damage it can cause right out of the gates. A seemingly well-balanced mission can be thrown completely out of sync if a fast-aggressive player takes out, for example, the red color group that was supposed to have strengthened the entire western region of the map. On the same note, you as the editor can help to unbalance a mission. If you greatly increase the starting strengths of the enemy players merely to account for the fast-aggressive players out there, you can very well make the mission unbearable for a defend and horde or slow-aggressive player.
With regard to the computer's internal attack program, we will provide an in depth breakdown in a later section.
If you should ever find yourself doubting the initial difficulty of your levels, it will be invaluable to have a fearless maniac strategist in your play-testing team.
Fearless maniacs are happiest when an editor gives them a barracks from the outset of game play. If they start without a barracks, you can wager good money that, resources willing, it will be one of the first things to go up. Upgrading the offensive units is also a very high priority for this play style, and you can expect to see fully strengthened footmen or grunts, archers, and trolls within minutes of the first order.
Attacking is the primary focus. The fearless maniac begins play very much like an intense fast-aggressive, but does not pause after the first kill to fortify his or her position. The true mark of the play style will be the number of barracks littering the game map. After knocking a color group from the game, the player very frequently constructs either a town hall or great hall near the dead player's gold mine to support further efforts. More barracks and towers also follow for protection. In addition, as fearles maniacs make advancements against a particularly entrenched opponent, they will usually throw up a few more barracks as they go, strengthening the front lines.
Little attention is given to building or fortifying a city area in the fearless maniac style of play. These players have been known to reach a keep/stronghold level merely to obtain the aid of knights or ogres. As far as castles and fortresses go, the player will have either beaten the mission or been smashed into a mushy pulp long before this upgrade becomes necessary.
Designing a mission that caters to this play style is not a difficult task. The fearless maniac will usually excel in any mission starting with either a large standing army, or any rescue of troops. Likewise, designing a mission to shut down this play style is equally simple. Towers, walls, archers, ax throwers, and low availability of gold availability will all put a major hole in the fearless maniac strategy faster than anything. The extent to which you use these spoilers is up to you. Just because you can render this method of play useless, does not necessarily mean that you should always do so.
Which one of these play styles is the best? There is no correct answer to that question. To truly become a master of WarCraft, you must realize that simply because you do not play in a certain way, does not mean that nobody else does. Designing a WarCraft II mission for, against, or even around the varying play styles will allow for much greater diversity in the missions that you create, and add longevity to your editing "career."
