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How Units Pop Out of Buildings
A unit, being built from whatever structure it is associated with, has to come out somewhere. The same thing applies to a structure being built by a peon. The peon has to have a place to appear when he is finished building what he is building. If certain areas around a building are blocked, then the unit will pop out in the next available position. There is a definite order to where a unit will show up after being trained. Knowledge of the spots where units will pop out of a building from give a definite advantage to any player who knows this.

The first place the game tries to place a unit is the left side, absolute top of a structure. What does that mean? The following pictures will demonstrate this.

The unit popping order


The yellow number 1 on the grunt shows that, that spot is where the grunt appeared after being trained. The red numbers represent the order that other units will appear. The arrows around the outside of the barracks, show you the direction that new units will pop out. Units will always come out of the building in this counter-clockwise fashion. I will now build grunts until the entire barracks is surrounded.

The order, now with 6 complete.
Six grunts done. The next one will go in '7'.
Now with 16 done
Fifteen grunts complete. I bet you know where number 16 goes.

In all of the previous examples, the grunts went where they went, because all of the previous spots were being blocked by other grunts. Units are not the only way to block available spots. Trees, buildings, critters, and walls can all be used to block exit spots as well. Here is a little more complicated example.


Some other ways to block units
In this picture, spots numbered 1, 4, and 9, are both being blocked by grunts. However, spots 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, and 8 are being blocked by a farm, and a town hall respectively. Also notice that peon there. He just finished building the town hall you see there. The grunt was already blocking the first available space, so the peon actually ended up in the second spot, after the hall had been completed. The next unit that is produced in the barracks will obviously be placed in spot number 10. Another peon made at the town hall will appear under the peon that is already in the picture.


The same thing applies for a peon building a structure
A blocked barracks
The left picture shows a peon building a barracks in between some trees. A peon building anything, acts just like a unit that is being produced. When the building is finished, the peon tries to appear on the left, upper-most part of the barracks. The trees block the exit, as indicated by the x's. The 'o' indicates the first available spot available for the peon. Now look at the picture on the right. Just as we predicted. The peon ends up under the barracks because the trees are blocking any spot that would be available on the left side.
The peon is forced out the bottom=


The same thing applies for everything (except for shipyards)
The fact is, all units will pop out of all buildings in this manner . Death knights, sappers, dragons, peons, or whatever else you may be building (not boats though), will appear counter-clockwise like I have shown here.


An In-Game Example
So how does this help you in a real game? As you continue to read through these strategy pages, you will see that there are alot of circumstances where this information is useful. The following is a wall-in I used in a real game.
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Click to enlarge (35k)
Click for full size
Click to enlarge (30k)

You can see that I was using the barracks to pop grunts to the outside of my wallin. I decided that there was no need to build any more grunts, so I started to build a catapult for defensive purposes. The grunt blocks the one available spot on the outside of the wall-in, forcing the catapult to pop safely behind my buildings. [an error occurred while processing this directive]