Immediate rushed attack with initial units

[Klofkac]

For quite long time, my common playing style of Dune2000 was always to start building up a base and not to use the initial units for anything but defending my base from enemy attacks. I was doing some offensive not sooner than I had fully built base and enough units produced to be able to (at least partially) destroy enemy base.

However, lately I discovered, that in some missions I have so many initial units, that I could use them for a rushed attack immediately after starting the mission, in order to destroy some enemy key building(s) and gain some siginificant advantage for the rest of the mission. Or, in some rare cases, even win the mission without building any buildings at all. It also brings more experience and fun by thinking up the best strategy how to take advantage of the initial units, rather than playing the common way.

This strategy is possible in most of Atreides missions, because there you get overally much more initial units than in Harkonnen or Ordos missions, and also Atreides missions are mostly easier than Harkonnen or Ordos. So I will talk just about Atreides missions here. I played all the missions on Normal difficulty.

Mission 1: Just build wind trap and refinery and sell construction yard to get 1000 credits. Then you get 2500 credits and win mission pretty quickly. You can send units around the map to kill enemy units just for fun.

Mission 2 (A2V1): This mission can be won without building any building. You can beat enemy just with initial units, altgrough it's a bit harder and needs some practice. It's possible in V1 where you get 5 trikes, while in V2 you have only 3 of them.
As you start mission, sell construction yard to get 4 more infantry and send all units straight down. Approach enemy base slowly, so that you encounter enemy trikes guarding base one by one and won't get much damage. Then destroy all buildings, keep your units far from buildings to avoid explosion damage. As you destroy all buildings, enemy will go berserk (and also enemy reinforcement arrives about that time). Wait for enemy units to approach your units, they can be taken down easily if enough of your units survived.

Mission 3: Just build a wind trap and two refineries (without concrete) as near to spice as possible. Once you get 4000 credits, sell construction yard to get 1000 more, and you have 5000 and win the mission even before stronger enemy attack.

Mission 4: This mission can be won without building any building. I can say this mission became legendary for this, as it is even easy to beat it this way. I discovered this quite early.
Use all your units (there are lot of combat tanks) to attack enemy base from the west. Destroy turret and then key buildings (heavy factory and barracks) as fast as possible. Then kill guarding units near the outpost. Take down rest of buildings (wind traps, silos, ...) and be careful about enemy reinforcements in their base (destroy all units as soon as they are dropped). Use units you got by reinforcements to protect your base from enemy reinforcements near it.

Mission 5: You do not have very many units here, but you can produce some units immediately in light factory and barracks. As you start mission, start producing light infantry and trike and upgrade barracks. You can produce about 3 extra trikes and 10 infantry (light + troopers). Send all your units against Harkonnen. Kill guarding troopers on the way and gather your units on the spice field to the south-east of enemy base. Enemy units will start approaching your units, kill them to get rid of most units guarding enemy base. Then enter enemy base from the very east entrance (you can at least destroy one gun turret) and approach enemy refinery. Make sure at least one of your engineers survived and send that engineer to capture the refinery. Once captured, let enemy destroy the refinery. If you are extra lucky, you can capture the refinery along with harvester and get extra harvester this way (unless destroyed on its way to your base). Or if VERY extra lucky (did not happen to me) you can use the second engineer to capture heavy factory. The main point of this tactics is, that enemy for some reason will NOT rebuild the refinery, and they will not have any source of income. They have 15000 credits from the beginning, but as they will start building lot of units they will eventually run out of money and won't be able to produce more units. That's a big advantage for you, as you will need to deal with just limited amount of units. But note that this is quite hard to do and requires luck and retrying more times. After you get this job done, you still have enough time to capture smugglers starport.

Mission 6 (A6V2): Use your initial units to quickly destroy Ordos starport. Send all your vehicles in front of Smugglers base and all infantry directly towards the startport through the infantry-only passage near right edge of map. When your infantry gets near starport (but not too close), send your vehicles closer to smugglers base (but not too close so that they won't get damaged much by gun turrets) in order to make some distraction and kill some guarding units. When Smugglers units are busy, send your infantry against the starport. Send light infantry first as a bait (they can hide behind wall which will protect them from the guarding tank), so that the two troopers can shoot the starport without disturbance. Two troopers are pretty enough to destroy the starport pretty quickly. Once done, retreat all your units so that they can protect your base from early enemy attacks. Destroying starport will give you advantage that you won't need to deal with enemy units delivered through starport (this is even said in the briefing). Duing doing this job, don't forget to build your base. A6V2 is much easier for this maneuver than A6V1.

Mission 7: Send all your infantry towards the infantry-only passage below the smaller Harkonnen base with Barracks. Meanwile, send one trike to approach that base from the upper side. Once your infantry garhers below the entrance, send your trike closer to enemy refinery (located on a small rock island) and attack it in order to make some distraction, so enemy will send their units against your trike. Then send your infantry through the narrow passage closer to the entrance guarded by gun turrets, but not too close to them. Choose one light infantry and get it closer to gun turrets so that they get busy attacking it, and then send a group of troopers to quickly destroy the left turret and group of light infantry to take down enemy infantry attacking your inuts. Once left turret is destroyed, approach enemy barracks and use all troopers to destroy it (but do not get too close to enemy siege tanks). Once barracks are destroyed, your job is done. The advantage is not very big, but at least this is some fun tactics. Note that if your unit (trike) gets too close to the refinery, there's a Tile Revealed trigger that will trigger very strong Harkonnen reinforcement that will attack you and may kill your base. Try avoiding this.

Mission 8: I already made a separate topic about this mission only. When you decide to start building base on your rock area, you will need lot of units just to protect your base as enemy attacks are quite strong. But in some other topic I read that you can rush attack against the small Ordos base and quickly destroy light factory and barracks.

Mission 9 (A9V2): Here you have lot of units and some pre-built buildings, so you have many possibilities how to start there. I think the best thing to start with is to rush attack against emeror's refinery, which is located outside the base and is not protected very well. After you destroy the refinery, destroy also some silos (at least half), it seems this trick prevents enemy from rebuilding the refinery. Alternatively (or if still enough units remain) you can attack one of the small Harkonnen bases to the west or east side to get rid of at least some key buildings. Meanwhile, do not forget to build your base (turrets) to be able to resist the first group of enemy reinforcements which is quite strong attack. Note that A9V2 is much easier than A9V1.

I did not try or care much of Harkonnen and Ordos missions, because as I said, you usually do not have that many initial units and the missions are harder.

Do you also have any good tactics for quick rushed attacks in the beginning of mission?

[X3M]

I can't recall much, except for that A4 mission. I too played that way the first time.
As for Ordos, there is one mission where you have to gather 15,000 resources. Simply sell structures once  you know you can make it to 15,000.
Another Ordos mission is where you get units through a starport. You have a lot of walls in that mission. Which can be sold.

[Cm_blast]

I don't rush, I prefer the "building everything available before going in". Some games are the exceptions like the original C&C (since you run out of money even before doing that) and maybe a game like Dark Colony, which you need to expand to get resources from another place; or the Rise of legends, mainly because that's a game about infinite resources but each copy of a unit produced cost more (and some buildings are simply too expensive). And probably AOE kind of games that takes hours to have everything... but I don't like those games anyway :P.

But I rush much more in dune Emperor... but that's because that game feels like you are playing a skirmish map.

But on Dune 2000, I only rushed on that mission 4 from the Atreides, mainly because you may loose if you don't go early. I was shocked when I send all my units at the first minute (because I lost, and got mad) and looking how my initial units could destroy most of the enemy base.

However, I don't like winning a mission so easily, or the "having advantage early"; it's not like this game it's hard to start with (except a few missions), so when I play this mission 4, I usually pick some of my units, for example, all the initial combat tanks and click on the sietch; once they are in position I set the "guard" command and build my base pretending that those tanks are owner by my ally, so I don't use them to attack (unless already won the map and there are survivors).

I don't like selling buildings to reach the quota either; I like to have all the buildings out and operative :P. Yeah, I am weird.

Edited November 1, 2019 by Cm_blast

[Klofkac]

Today I managed to speedrun Ordos mission 4. I did not need to build anything except one wind trap and barracks.

When you start mission, move all your starting units towards the "guarding gate" (that small section with walls and three trikes). Wait for your tanks to gather with your raiders and attack and destroy the guarding trikes. When all your units get past the gate, move them to the very right border of the map, and then go upper, just before the Smugglers base (but far enough so the enemy turret won't reach your units). Once all your units gather, attack the right-most gun turret and destroy it. Smugglers can send some infantry for defense, use your infantry to kill them. After the turret is destroyed, move your units inside the Smugglers area, but keep your units close to right edge of map, so the second turret won't shoot them. Then go towards the Smugglers outpost (surrounded by walls) and attack the wall. Destroy enemy units attacking your units, but avoid attacking Harkonnen harvester so that Harkonnens won't come at you. After one wall is destroyed, move all your units back to the right edge of map, near the destroyed gun turret, and let them destroy any Smugglers units going at you.

Meanwhile, during doing the attack, build a wind trap and barracks. Upgrade it and train engineer (and a few light infantry and troopers just in case). After the wall around outpost is destroyed, you can send the engineer to capture it. If everything goes well, the mission is won with minimum effort.

On 10/29/2019 at 5:30 PM, X3M said:

Another Ordos mission is where you get units through a starport. You have a lot of walls in that mission. Which can be sold.

You get 870 credits (in Normal) for that. But instead of selling all walls, it is rather advantageous to block the bottom-left entrance to your base with walls, so that enemy units won't come from that side.

On 11/1/2019 at 1:14 PM, Cm_blast said:

However, I don't like winning a mission so easily, or the "having advantage early"

Well, my main point here is to find new ways, possibilities and strategies how to play the game and challenge myself. I finished all Dune 2000 missions in the "common way" (building all base, then doing the big attack) dozen of times, so this style of game becomes really boring and repetitive. I actually pretty like and appreciate the original vanilla missions provided by Westwood, because I think, the game authors were actually thinking more about the strategy and giving alternative possibilities to the players (other than just "build base, big army, and kill everything in one strike"). I'm mostly talking about the layout of maps, terrain and enemy bases, where, apart from the main frontal access to enemy base, there's often also some "other way around", like some access from the behind side which is guarded less, or those famous infantry-only passages. The best example is access to Ordos Starport in A6V2, which directly calls for being attacked by infantry, as there's a quick passage to it directly from your base. And you can take it down with just 2 troopers you have as starting units.

I don't play custom missions and campaigns really much, unless there is something really very special and original. But I still like challenging myself and finding better ways to beat original missions faster and with more fun.

[Cm_blast]

3 hours ago, Klofkac said:

Well, my main point here is to find new ways, possibilities and strategies how to play the game and challenge myself. I finished all Dune 2000 missions in the "common way" (building all base, then doing the big attack) dozen of times, so this style of game becomes really boring and repetitive.

I know. I was pointing that, even if possible, I don't like do that... or at least not anymore (in games in general); I may rush a level if the game has a lots of them, but if not, then no.

Although this is not a rush, but the opposite, I want to tell, that I only win once the Atreides mission 9 withouth giving up the "splitted" base; I don't remember which version it's (one it's ridiculous easy); I remember that myself (and even my brother) we give up the top-part of the base (which have a CY, a ref and some windtraps, I think).

So it is not a rush attack, but a rush defend, because I rushed the MCV, I deployed at bottom and simply give up at all the top area (my brother literally sold the buildings).

Last time I played the game I wanted to win "the good way" and manage to protect both bases :P.

3 hours ago, Klofkac said:

I don't play custom missions and campaigns really much, unless there is something really very special and original. But I still like challenging myself and finding better ways to beat original missions faster and with more fun.

I try.