Greetings to all.........

First, a brief introduction. I've been playing WARCRAFT2 for more than 4 years now. My old Kali Handle was Sun_Tzu (Yo Punkash, do u ever plan to go back?)
I want to share this new "Human Strategy". I'm quite busy nowadays with work, so I usually play at weekends against some close friends at battlenet, fellow veterans of the game. I'm trying to excel at the "human race"so I constantly use humans against mostly orc players. I hope this strategy would greatly be of help to fellow human players, and encourage more players to use humans.

One of the problems I've always encountered when using humans against orcs was defending against bloodlusted ogres, specifically if they somehow manage to get inside my base, whether my main or expansion. There are many ways they can get in such as: using sappers to break wall-ins or sneak up through hidden parts of trees, or a death & decay barrage before the ogremages get in to finish the job. Usually, even if you have many mages, in open ground against ogres, they'll surely die while only a few ogres would be killed (the mages would blizz on themselves when the ogres come closing in). Then, it's game over.

I found a unique solution. I call it the "Walled-in Mage" Strategy. Yes, you wall-in a mage somewhere on the side of a structure, similar to walling in a cannon tower. I usually wall-in a mage on the side of a townhall, the one nearest to my entrance. This way, he can be used to blizz ogres outside if needed. Of course, I have a 2nd mage specifically for that defense. You usually need 2 or 3 mages inside any base. With 2 mages, the walled-in mage acts as your reserve. When things go wrong on the chokepoint, your knight/paladins and mages can get inside and go near the wall-in mage, sort of as a last bastion of defense.
I've won games against many veteran orc players, both on old gow and new gow using this new strategy. In one game, I lost all my forces to bloodlusted ogres, then the ogres came pouring inside my expansion base. He tried to attack my walled-in mage, but his 9 ogres got blizzed before he could destroy any of the farms protecting the mage. Axolotl pointed out at Battlenet forum "100 mana of blizzard can kill 9 ogres". Needless to say, that one mage saved my base. I repaired the farms, gave me time to reinforce, counter-attack and win the game. One mage, now, more than ever, can truly kill 9 ogremages, when properly walled-in!
Think about it: that one, just one walled-in mage (specially with full mana), can save your whole base/bases much better than 3 or more mages in open ground combat against, say, 9 bloodlusted ogres. This would mean not only savings in cost, but also less time and energy needed on defense. It is just many times more powerful than a walled-in cannon (and greater range).

Hello Kith. It's been quite a while since those long posts we made regarding human strategies and tactics back there at Battlenet Forums. I enjoyed those, Kith. I'd like to have your feedback on this new strategy. Among all the elite human players of WARCRAFT 2, you're the one I respect the most. You know that well......... =)

P.S. There are, for now (till the orc players think of some more counters to this) two main things an orc player would do when faced with a walled-in mage. The first may be to attack by force of numbers, take a risk of somehow destroying a structure to get into the mage inside( a very risky strategy and chances of success are slim). The second option would be used more by a good orc player: He will retreat his ogres away from blizz range, then use death and decay on your walled-in mage, an artillery war ensuing.

Also, an orc player can wall-in his own death knight, and use the same strategies, especially when he's fighting a fellow orc player.

GOD Bless.......

Alex Chan

Don't forget, the orc player can also use his deathknights to death coil the mage, which is a nice, clean way to get rid of them.

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Noss

Your kidding about calling this new right?

However any good humans player would have exorsism to hold off the death knights. The key of the humans strategy is using mages to hold off ogres and paladins to hold off dks.

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Reikan

I don't know how much help this would be at an expansion. Usually the point of attacking an expansion is to kill the peons and destroy the gold flow (that's why you get an expansion, mainly, for gold). So if he just sticks a couple of ogres in your peon line, and you blizzard them, you kill all your own peons. Or, if you don't blizzard him, he kills them all anyway. I'm saying once they get in, you could be screwed anyway. So, you don't let them in. But then the mage doesn't need to be walled anyway.

That's why I always get the range upgrade on my archers. Any time someone tries the wallin mage tactic, I unleash a couple of level 5 rangers to take out that wily wizard.

Sorry to say, but this strategy was the first major break-through in Human -vs- Orc war several years ago. It is probably the oldest human war2 strategy to date. hehe

Heheh, I didn't know you were Sun_Tzu. As in SC~Sun_tzu? Anyways....
Like Tarq said, its not all that new. I use to use it a lot in fact but as someone pointed out earlier, having them walled still won't protect your peons all that much. If he gets past your initial wall in, having the wall in mage might help you keep your base, but you won't have anymore peons, and you're basically dead then anyways unless you have more bases. =/
So just go with the initial wall in. If you wanna know what does wonders, just use 3 or 4 guards, inside your base or something. I dunno, guards are underrated. They work good for humans because they cost about 1050 gold and a bit more lumber, and they last longer than knights do against lust.
But anyways. Good strat Sun_Tzu, but its definetly not new. hehe


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-Kith-Kanin-

excuse me while i roll.....


okay back... hell i even used that shit on heat =[ gw man... thanks..


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Sypher
ICQ: 15393260

Yo guys, thanks for all the feedback. :-)

The point is, a walled-in mage greatly increases defense on both bases, whether main or expansions. In a real game, there will always be break-throughs against wall-ins. You can never be sure. One of the most important principles of military strategy is to always have a back-up plan, a last resort. When things go for the worst, this one walled-in mage would be better able to save your base by killing the ogres, or making them hesitate to go in your base. He is more powerful in this situation, than 3,4 or more mages just scattered around your base (they may kill some ogres with blizz but they'll die soon). Mages, on defense, tend to rely on chokepoints or wall-ins to blizz effectively. Without it, walling one or maybe even two would be a very wise option.

On gow, it's a formidable strategy to wall-in two cannon towers when taking the middle spot. If you use two walled-in mages instead, well, all those gold mines are yours!

Hey, guys, the main purpose of the walled-in mage is effective defense of your base, a second option, just in case your wall-in or chokepoint is breached. You cannot rely on mages or paladins to defeat ogremages (on the defensive) in open ground. They would hold only on chokepoints. He may not be able to save your peons, but he can save your base, maybe even some troops who go to his protection (wow). Which would you rather have? the loss of your peons and your whole base (game over), or the loss of your peons alone? :-)

Losing your peons doesn't always mean loss of the game. During games, where a hidden mage or hidden death knight kills all the peons in your exp., you can still recover and win. Losing your peons AND losing your base usually results in defeat, on the other hand. Hey, don't over rely-on him, he's not SuperMan!! (SuperMage?) No strategy is perfect. Suffice to say, you must have many expansions, as many as possible.

Reikan is right. Alternatively, I usually hide a few knights (2, maybe 3) somewhere on the trees outside a base. With proper scouting, they could kill death knights from out of nowhere, with or without exorcism. Also, assuming you do not have the resources, or time to make exorcism, I use "Death knight Assasination". I put up a flyer on temples, then hide my knights somewhere among the trees, this time near the orc's main base. Their objective: to kill any dk when they pop out. Then they could run away and try to do it repeatedly (you have to take your chance with the ogres). The best way to kill those dk, is to go on the offensive first, to bring the fight to them, instead of the other way around. If they're inside the base, wait patiently. They will have to go out soon, to join the ogremages in attacking you. While they're moving, hit them hard, with or without exorcism. The ogres cannot protect them effectively while on the move.
Yo Kith, thanks for the reply. As far as I remember (quite a long time), there were at least 3 of us, different players, going for the name of Sun_Tzu (He is a great general, that's why :-)
Do you plan on doing an update on your best-selling "Humans Strategy Guide"? (so many demanded it, it sold like pancakes). Heh...

Oh Tarq, thanks for the info. So, who thought of this first? Do you still remember the player/players?

Peace.......

GOD Bless,
aLeX

what a dumb stupid strategy. when you play humans vs orcs you are always on defense. the only thing you do to attack is blizzard peons. if im the orc player you wont be mage bombing my ogres, you wont be sneaking invisible mages past me, and i will be dking the shit out of you with haste. and as for walling mages like cannon towers, while your wasting your time making your nice little setup the smart player is going to be ripping your expansions apart.

my newb loser ass used that when i was like 2 month newb. i would think a death coil would be a simple solution

The main point is that..you aren't going to have dks. Paladin kills dk. Simply put..Mages kill ogres. What does that lead an orc player with? Nothing? Speaking of which..how are you going to stop an invisible mage? You can't really wall them off..unless its a map like maze. Most people don't even try humans because they sucked with them as newbies, and they won't even try them again. Summoner, anything you have said you can do with humans. This isn't a slam and its not meant to be. I would just like to see how you can stop an invisible mage. you obviously can't hit it while its invis and theres about a million different spots it can come out of, so towering is a stupid idea. Patrol is a stupid idea with ogre magi, because then they become seperated and thus they die. Being humans means using your brain and being able to mage effectively. Hes using his brain here and trying to come up with counters to the typicall orc strategy.

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I am a fag

Give him a chance, you dont have to criticize anything anyone says besides axotoli, and kith.
You could move that mage around,and box him in other places, so they dont know exactly where he is to coil or decay him. Now im sure a lot of smart @sses are going to say, how you going to move him, youll have to destroy a farm, no just lumber him out. Like he said, its a last resort. Not a game winning strategy

Hello all.......

Kith, you suggested using 4 or more guard towers, placed near the peon line. I believe a combination of srategies would be good. The guard towers would protect the peon lines, while the walled-in mage would protect the towers as well as the base. The ogres who attack the towers to get into the peon lines would be blizzed to shreds, added to the hits of the guard towers (since bloodlust does not affect armor, the offense of bloodlust will not be of much use to the ogres in this situation.), and you have very dead ogremages. ;-D The orc player will have to hesitate and get additional artillery (death knights). Paladins = Dong!

Of course, this is still the second option, the prime defense is the wall-in or chokepoint of paladins with mages behind.

Thanks Kith for the towers suggestion. This would work also for the middle spot. It would give humans an equal chance to beat orcs on any type of ground/terrain, both on narrow ground and open ground.

Yo Summoner. If you can defend well against the main offense of the orcs, which is bloodlust, especially now with the power of walled-in mage/mages, then the orc is in trouble. He will be forced to make more death knights, which is what the human would want to happen. With towers, paladins, walled-in mage/mages, chokoepoints, an artillery war (blizzard vs bloodlust) would be in favor of humans because of exorcism.

You could wall-in a mage as soon as he pops out. You don't have to wait for blizzard spell to finish. You usually will have mages first, while waiting for the blizzard spell to complete.

I'd like to correct an error on the part near the end of my post. It says an artillery war (blizzard vs bloodlust), etc.
This should be (blizzard vs death & decay).

Thanks

GOD Bless.......

Umm, paladins don't kill hasted dks. Simply put. Unless the human player is in control, dks will rip the shit out of him. I doesn't matter how many flyers you have, all i need is to distract you, while my dk hastes up and does his work. haste = 50 mana, invis = 200 mana. and yes, to stop invisible mages you can wall further up. like if you take 11 as an expansion, and you started 12, and he was at 5 maybe. you wall both far right sides, and the top of s9. this leaves only the middle for him to go through, which you can defend. maybe even take it, forcing him to concentrate his resources on taking that down. i think its pretty damn dumb to say that if two exactly equal players played a 1on1 that the human player would win, because i'm positive the orc player would win 100% of the time. Humans just suck. You can use your brain when you play orcs too you know.

Exorsism can hit hasted dks, its just, no one uses it. You don't even have to click on the dk just on the area its in. Another thing being that most people don't use their fucking brains when playing as humans. They will blindly attack lusted ogre mages like the fucking idiots that they are. Hell, most humans players don't even use holy vision which more than makes up for flying machines.
There is a counter for everything in this game, and I don't see bloodlust as an imbalance.


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Reikan

DKs are doomed if you have exorcism. If you have ex and don't stop DKs, that's your fault. I believe bloodlust does give orcs an edge. Silly not to see that. I agree on the lack of use of holyvision, the spell is extremely useful and I've used it for years. Who ever said they can stop invisible mages must be playing some pretty horrible mage users. The humans have some things in their favor on certain maps like HSC and maze. For the most part orcs just have the ease of use factor, and YES you CAN play orcs and use your brain like Summoner said. You can also have a difference of opinion without cursing eachother out. Be cool to eachother War2ers. Don't hack, play war2, be cool regardless of outcome. Hell take your vitamins and say your prayers too.

I have not said one thing to curse at someone else, although I do use cussing because it attracts attention. I can wall off dks just as if I were orcs and walling off invisible mages. Any smart player who has invisible is going to find a way in, and there is no counter to that. Orcs require less brainpower than do humans. Why? Lust..if your going to blindly charge something lusted you are obviously going to lose. People stereotypically build the strongest land units they can and forget about all others. Lets take into consideration what happens when you have no dks:

Tower are more effective.

Peons are still somewhat safe, although runes are still a factor. You can wall off an ogre easier than a dk though.

Less gryphon defence.

I can go on about a million different things. But again I don't see bloodlust as an imbalance. I never said it did not give orcs an edge jza, its just now they are up to bat with humans. Can an orc player beat a humans player without getting lust? Think about this. If there are once again, two players of equal skill, and one is humans, gets fort and never gets lust, the other gets everything he needs, can he win? You can get mages so much sooner and cheaper than lust its absurd. Shortly after you get to make your first peon runs. Humans are more versatile than orcs. Orcs are straight forward and require less strategy. Lets face it, whats tougher, lusting up a group of ogres or sneaking the mage past countless obsticles and laying waste... Every dk spell has a counter...ua..polymorph...dkw/haste exorsism..




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Reikan

i didnt make that previous post =/

I know I should leave this alone but... hey.

The comment about humans having to play defense against orc players. If they want to be assured of a loss true. If they want to have a chance and winning , in fact human players must be very aggressive from the start.

I agree orc player can use their heads too. However, it is optional. They can fall back on lust and win most games. For the human player it is not optional to think. Get a little lazy against even a half good orc player and your dead.

It's like the "Ham and Eggs" breakfast story. The chicken was involved to the breakfast but the pig was committed. If you are going to play human, you must be committed. I think that is why so few people play human.... it takes a lot more energy to do the same thing.

Reikan and Jza shut the fuck up. I would like to see you even win 1 game out of 100 vs me choosing humans =(

Humans <<<< Orcs


Period. Enough with this subject.

No thats not enough with this subject...

What you have proven to be Summoner is that you are an ignorant dumbass, who had no part in this conversation. You have tried to say that mages are lame, paladins are lame, and you haven't been able to do it very well. You talk trash like a preraped 12th grader Summoner, do kindly stfu in all regards. There are several human counters to lust, because of exorsism, but there is no orc counter to invisibility. Even if you wall in all it takes is one flaw. And enough of that yes..if you are too stupid to conceive this I can see that I am wasting my time.

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Reikan

Chan dont talk on this forum like we are a bunch of ignorant fuking morons. I wont even read your shit posts anymore becasue they are just too nerdy. Get some dignity and pull out the pocket protector .

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"dot dot dot"

[This message has been edited by Harsh (edited 10-25-2000).]

I understand why your name is Harsh. Don't be so harsh, Harsh! LOL

I wrote the strategy knowing fully well that most of the people here in Axo's forum are highly skilled, experienced players of the game. This is a "Strategy & Tactics" forum, if you've forgotten.

If you're just jealous of people, or just need the attention so much that you flame people who don't even know you or haven't done anything against you, I suggest you just shut up.

This forum was made by Axo and Kith for smart discussion. If there's a moron here, it's clearly "you". Go join another forum like "Please notice me" or "Somebody talk to me" forum. LoL! :-D

Reikan are you good? Please, go brag about your human skills on gowbne fastest in the war2bne usa-1 channel. You don't even compare to anyone who posts in this forum. You are a no-name nobody. Stop posting like you know what you're talking about, I am so much better at this game than you are, it isn't even funny.

Let me just say a few things.
In a realistic game, you won't have exorcism. It costs too much and takes too long to be useful. You can use slow just as good as exorcism. If you see a dker thats hasted comng for you, you just slow it and its mince meat. I've done it plenty of times. Its quite funny. =/ As for lust. Lust tends not to be as big a factor depending on how the game is going. In a drawn out game lust won't be much of a factor. It'll come down to dking expansions and blizzing. The reason for this is both players will have lots of D, so that a big lust hit would just get owned. What does tend to be a factor though (though most of you "smart" orc players don't use it), is runes. If you run 9 ogres and rune the shit outta a humans gold its damn hard to stop. You can't polymorph 9 ogres. =/
Invisibility is godly Summoner. You can't stop invis on Gow. On other maps, like maze you can stop it. Because you CAN wall far out. But on Gow its really hard unless you put mass guards, so he only gets like 2 casts off. Even two casts of blizz will kill like 5 or 6 peons. Which is a lot more expensive than a mage. 11 is good if you build the hall way back off to the left after chopping the tree, and have 2 guards out by the edge of the trees. 2 can be good if you wall the bottom with a farm and a rax or something, and then choke the entrance with 4 ogres. But the problem there is that I can send 2 mages invised (and I have done this before)....blizzard the entrance until 1 ogre dies and walk the other invised mage inside.
The only problem with humans that makes them somewhat imbalanced is when you need to get a new expansion right away. If the orc player has every mine scouted its really hard to get that expansion. You need to send yer whole army to ane xpansion just to get it going, and that can leave you open at home. But its all conjecture anyways. Most games can be won before fort anyways, just all depends on who's doing what, and from where. So in closing....
Don't be Racist, all men are equal. =/


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-Kith-Kanin-

wasnt falkentyne the only player to always use humans, and he was good with them?

note about invis mages -

Not sure if its a glich, or part of the game, but a couple times, if i have patroling ogres they will make the mages visible again if the mage walks within like 2 tiles of it...

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Sypher
ICQ: 15393260