I want Tips for Surviving the Mid-Game in Dune 2000?

[Eliza]

Hey everyone 👋

 I have been replaying Dune 2000 after years  & I am having a blast but I keep hitting a wall around the mid-game— once the enemy factions start rolling out tanks like there’s no tomorrow. I am playing as House Atreides  & my early game is solid—I can hold off rushes & get my economy going But once it turns into a longer battle I end up stretched thin. Either my spice runs out or I get picked off trying to defend too many spots at once. Also i have check this  https://forum.dune2k.com/topic/27837-release-smuggling-operations-dune-blue-prism-training2000-campaign/  

What are your go-to strategies for surviving & thriving in the mid to late game?? Do you focus more on defense and turrets? Or is it better to go aggressive and keep them off balance? Also, how do you manage spice when the closer patches are gone?

Thank you.:)

[Cm_blast]

On 5/28/2025 at 9:34 AM, Eliza said:

Hey everyone 👋

 I have been replaying Dune 2000 after years  & I am having a blast but I keep hitting a wall around the mid-game— once the enemy factions start rolling out tanks like there’s no tomorrow. I am playing as House Atreides  & my early game is solid—I can hold off rushes & get my economy going But once it turns into a longer battle I end up stretched thin. Either my spice runs out or I get picked off trying to defend too many spots at once. Also i have check this  https://forum.dune2k.com/topic/27837-release-smuggling-operations-dune-blue-prism-training2000-campaign/  

What are your go-to strategies for surviving & thriving in the mid to late game?? Do you focus more on defense and turrets? Or is it better to go aggressive and keep them off balance? Also, how do you manage spice when the closer patches are gone?

Thank you.:)

The first thing I will mention, just in case, is at what speed are you playing? This is because the original game had a more slower pace, but the moderms versions to work on moderms system will come at the max speed by default, just playing on max speed is already hard enough, and some people don´t even realize they are playing that way because that´s how the game comes by default, but only if you download and install the original game iso you realize that the intented speed is much slower.

I play on a slower speed, the "real time speed", where if the game sais "reinforcements in 20 minutes", then 20 in real life minutes will pass, while on max speed game rusn 2.5 faster. Just on this alone the difficulty increase a lot. The "real time speed" is moving the slider (on the in game menu) 2 points to the left.

If you still want to play at max speed: On my case turrets really help, having a few turrets here and there and then a couple of siege tanks makes that you can hold your base fine.

Now, it also depends on the mission, some people on some missions rush one of the multiple enemy bases (if there are multiple) since usually the small enemy base tends to have less defenses. With a big rush they kill the defenses and maybe take the refiney with that AI not having a CY to rebuild, in less than 5 minutes one enemy Ai cannot longer produce units.

Now, one last tip, if you have a good amount of units (no need to be as big to just go for the base) you may want to attack the enemy harversters, when you do that, the Ai may respond sending units, if those dies against your group of units you will remove potentiall attacks into your wave or your own harversters as you probably are more closer to them. Destroying enemy harvesters also slow them, not just because they gather less money, but because they will use the queue to rebuild harvesters, not building more tanks in the process. In the time they rebuild 2-3 harvesters and nothing else, you are building more tanks, so you can harass their harvesters even more and eventually their economy will sunk. 

I responded with the original campaigns in mind, but as you pointed to a custom campaign of mine I´ll say that you can do any of the both (turrets and/or rushing), but for custom stuff it heavily depends on the author and the missions, some require you to rush them or else is impossible, and others may have anti-rush measures that if you go too early maybe he got even more extra units or maybe have unlimited money or they get tons of reinforcements and the factories themselves are barely a treath... but for the most part if you can rush enemies withouth dieing too many units you may weak them. 

Ps: If at some point you want to try custom campaigns, although you are free to play as specific factions or certain story, I would heavily recommend this one.

I have done multiple campaigns over the years, which tends to be harder than the original campaigns, but I specifically made this one for newcomers or people that struggle with the original campaigns. A couple of missions may be on the same level or slighly harder than the originals, but for the most part this is one of the easiest campaigns available.

It is a tleilaxu based, you get a new unique building that will produce infantry and trooper to you by free, so for people that cannot focus on building structures, clicking on queues and moving/defending, having some free units even if they are infantry/trooper will always give you something to work with. It is a 20 campaign long, but I always sttructures my campaigns with low tech early, so the early missions take little time to win.