Warcraft III help

[Klaus]

Hi, all!

I am playing through Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos and came to a dead end during the Undead campaign.

In the second-to-last Undead mission, you have to protect the lich Kel'Thuzad for 30 minutes while he summons the demon lord Archimonde. So I build several spirit towers and several spider-thingies (to take down the griffons and gyrocopters) and stuff, and I have a pretty decent army. Suddenly, when it's about 1 minute before the mission ends, the humans attack en masse. Even so, I should be able to resist for another minute. But as soon as I look the other way, the humans have destroyed my entire village, all units and is proceeding to attacking the lich. Needless to say, I am defeated with only 30 seconds on the clock (and this on Reduced Difficulty).

I don't want to use a cheat code yet, so I'm asking: anyone got any strategy tips on beating this scenario?

 

[Thanee]

Build a bigger army!

Massive amount of ghouls and whatever those dudes were called that collect gold, to get more wealth in shorter time.

Place HUGE amounts of spirit towers (as in several dozen) around the palace in bulks and have a good amount of troops in between the spaces between the bulks of towers, so the attackers have to face both the towers and the troops at the same time.

Keep builders ready near the towers, to replace them as soon as they fall.

It's probably a good idea, if things don't look too well, to simply retreat all forces to the palace area, hoping that they will hold up the enemy just long enough.

Or use parts of your troops to attack the enemy and then draw those troops away, in hopes to divert the enemy's attention away from the palace and send them on a wild chase (dunno if that actually works, but worth a try ).

Bye
Thanee

 

[Thanee]

Another good strategy is to build cheap and resilient buildings in front of your defense line, to keep attackers away (they have to hack through those barriers first). Needless to say, that this line must be almost airtight to work.

Another application of this is to have tunnels, through which the attacking army is forced to enter, so your troops can attack them at better odds, while they are streaming through. You will need units with a high attack range to draw them into the trap, otherwise they might just start attacking the barriers (which isn't necessarily bad, see above paragraph).

Bye
Thanee

 

[Klaus]

Thanks for the help, Thanee! I'll try that and will post results here.

That's a great avatar, btw!

 

[MarauderX]

I'm not sure I remember this one, but I think I built two armies and had each quick-keyed so that wherever they were attacked I could send my armies that much faster. I also built several extra fortresses to slow them down, as they have more hit points and can be backed up by the much weaker zigurats behind them, and had the acolytes on automatic repair. Once you see the time running out, move your acolytes into position so that the outer defenses will last a few seconds longer. I think the point is to slow them down and not launch everything at them all at once like you might normally do, as they will just keep coming. Thanee has some good recommendations as well, and hope one of the strats works for ya.

 

[Darkness]

Place HUGE amounts of spirit towers (as in several dozen) around the palace in bulks and have a good amount of troops in between the spaces between the bulks of towers, so the attackers have to face both the towers and the troops at the same time.

I wouldn't recommend that in this particular mission.

For two reasons:

• It's too expensive for what little gold you can gather. (It's a time problem.)
• The humans make extensive use of those nasty siege wagons in this mission.

Some things that helped me beat this mission:

• Attack the human siege weapons with units that do chaos damage (i.e., fel hounds, infernals). That's the quickest way to destroy them.
• Capture the mine in the southeastern corner of the map and increase your gold income. It's not always easy to defend, though, and I've also beaten the mission without this mine.
• Use your shades to see from where the enemy comes. Then, charge them - sending hordes of skeletons in front of your regular troops.
• Use lots of Crypt Fiends. They are a good unit and are especially handy to Web the numerous gryphon riders and flying machines the humans use.
• Keep your spellcasters (e.g., necromancers) near the fountain of mana while not under attack. Also keep meat wagons filled with corpses near your necros. (Again, skeleton hordes are handy to divert some enemy attacks from your real troops and also to wear them down. Crypt fiends or other ranged units can also easily shoot over the skeletons.)
• Save early, save often. And especially make lots of separate save games so you can go back to any point and change a strategy that you've found not to work as planned, preferably labelling the save games with (among other things) the time you've got remaining.
• At the end of the mission, all three enemy forces will attack, yes. So try to keep at least one of them occupied with skeletons or other expendables - or else clutter up the main room with the skeletons so the enemy can't kill Kel'Thuzad in time. Also, don't forget to heal Kel' with Arthas' Death Coil when he's under attack.

Well, I hope you'll find some of this helpful.

 

[Klaus]

In the end I just used the cheat (tried lots of towers and black citadels, capturing the side mine, using the spider-thingies, distributing the hellhounds and infernals to slow down the attackers and _still_ the humans came through with remarkable ease!).

We're now in the Orc campaign, which is much more fun...

 

[Thanee]

• It's too expensive for what little gold you can gather. (It's a time problem.)

I can't really remember getting into problems with the resources in that mission...

But I might just play it again, it's always fun to do so, if it is quite some time ago, when you last beat the game.

• The humans make extensive use of those nasty siege wagons in this mission.

Yeah, those have to be attacked, of course.

The big advantage of the towers is, that you still have a steady cash flow, since your income is only limited, if you have too many troops. So you can build up defense by keeping your troops in the 'green' level.

That certainly worked for me at least.

Bye
Thanee

P.S. Wait until you get to the Night Elves campaign...

 

[Klaus]

Please don't tell me it gets worse!

My wife and I are already getting frustrated at the current difficulty level! :O

 

[Psionicist]

Build a whole lot of towers. I had 7 upgraded ziggurats above and 7 to the right of the lich, as well as a whole bunch of em in the base. When I completed the level, I had exactly one tower left. It's all about towers.

Build lots of ghouls too, cannon food. Don't bother building frost wyrms, it's not worth it in the long run.