Tactics for Dune2k

[Boba Fett]

OK readers,

I was persuaded by a freind to start this topic so I'll do just that. I'll start posting stuff which I think will come in useful for anyone playing the game and I request everyone reading this to post any strats u have on this topic.

[Boba Fett]

Firstly, I've never played multiplr so don't start telling me that I should try these trix in multi. These are only for single players.

1) For defence, use mainly a row of missile tanks intermingled with trikes/raiders and a row of seige tanks behind them. It'll usually be sufficient.

2)If you wanna use r-turrets, Keep a row of them on the border of the opening of ur base, followed by the above rows.

3)If atr, don't depend too much on ur sonics. Use them only for offense.

4)If u feel compelled to use sonics, Use them in a well spread out arc formation, other wise they'll end up "zoiiing"ing themselves.

5) If atr, dont worry if u see even a deva coming. By the time it'll reach u, ur r-turrets, missiles and seiges would have taken it out. (provided u follow 1)

6) Always wall up ur entrances with only a 2tile space in the middle.

7) Keep inf at the openings of the wall, for uncloaking u know whats.

[Boba Fett]

8 )Keep infantry behind your defence to reveal any cloaked unit attempting to enter your base.

9)Keep trikes/raiders and infantry between your buildings to destroy any cloaked unit that infiltrates your base defences.

10) [Hark, Atr] If your unit gets converted, command units like combat tanks and trikes which fire rapidly but do not do too much damage to attack the converted unit. The unit will convert back quickly, and will also not be too damaged.

11) [Ord, Hark] Keep a 4*4 concrete between your important buildings and build 4 rocket turrets on them to protect your vital structure against Atreides air strikes, which can be quite a nuisance if they strike just before an enemy attack force reaches your base.

12) Keep missile tanks near your not so needed buildings (Eg- If you have 5 heavy factories, keep rocket turrets around the primary factory and missile tanks in between th rest) to take out ornithopters.

13) Any infantry rock you see outside your base which lies between you and the AI should be filled up with troopers and infantry, with 3 missile tanks behind the rocks. This way, enemy attack squads will suffer sever damage and might even be wiped out before they get to your base. The missile tanks are very important because any moment a siege tank might arrive on the scene and then aaaaaaaaah go your infantry.

14) The more damaged your unit, the more time it will take to return to your side if it gets converted. Therefore, always keep your units well maintained.

15) Always build repair pads near your openings. This way, your defending units will repair and be ready to fight faster, as the repair pad will be near them.

16) Everywhere your base protrudes, Keep 3 missile tanks and 1-2 seige tanks, depending on the size of the protrusion. Light-medium armoured units ( Trikes, quads, raiders, infantry, sometimes sonics) will not harass you too much.

[ken124578]

I'll sticky this for awhile...

Keep'em coming ;)

02-25-03: I just changed the numbers in front of every tip, it's not a big deal so i'd changed this post.

[Boba Fett]

17) If you have a lotta money, build 5-6 quads, and take them harvester hunting. With this squad, you'll probably be able to take out 3-4 harveys. As you get better, the number will increase. As soon as you see something heavy like a missile tank, sonic, deva etc, move the quads away. You do not want to lose them. They're quite useful for this sort of task.

18) Building a lot of rocket turrets in your base has a lot of adv. later on. As their spice feilds get depleted, the AI will start mining near your base. Their carryalls will fly over your base and your r-turrets will be kept quite occupied. This way, you'll reeeaaaaallly slow down their credits.

19) In any mission where you get allies, be sure to tak eout the enemy r-turrets as soon as you can,. This will enable the mercs/smugglers to enter the enemy base and keep them busy for a while.

20) A r-turret is no match for a squad of troopers.

21)If you feel compelled to build a row of r-turrets, throw in the odd missile tank, as r-turrets are outranged by missile tanks.

22) If you see troopers approaching your undefended r-turrets, quickly send in squads of infantry. They're great against any infantry, plus a squad of light inf is cheaper than a trike and does more damage.

Due to my annual examinations drawing closer, I may have to stop sending stuff for a while. If I do stop, I'll be back on the 17th of march.

BTW- Did any one see the holland-india match (cricket) ? Man, holland plays well. I hardly thought they'd be able to take more than 2 wickets, but boy, was I wrong. They really licked us.

[Boba Fett]

23) Keep 2-3 squads of troopers and lite inf in your spice feilds along with 3-4 missile tanks on guard mode. Nothing will harass your harveys for a long time.

24) (atr) Use 6-7 sonics to punch through nme (enemy) defences b4 sending in measles and seiges. If you send them in first, ur sonics as well as nme defences will blow em up.

25) If you aren't 2 finicky about your losses, send in 2-3 squads of troopers before an attack to destroy enemy turrets at their entrances.

26) As soon as you find any enguarded building near the entrance, send in a squad of enginners. When the building is captured, build concrete around it as well as a barrack. Produce more engineers and capture nearby buildings. Then finish them off with troopers.

27) I find a squad of quads much better to use against a sonic/seige/missile tank than special/missile tanks as they fire faster and can retreat quickly too.

28) (atr, ord) When destroying a deva using quads, first learn the time interval between each of the devas shots. Then tell your quads to attack the deva. Every time the deva is about to attack, press the x key (scatter). The deva usually recharges its cannons again. Meanwhile tell the quads to attack , and scatter again. Quite good if you are getting bored.

29) Remember, whoever controls spice, controls Dune. So keep raiding enemy spice feilds.

[Boba Fett]

30) (atr, hark) Make sure you have plenty of missile tanks in your defence as they will be able to destroy deviators before they get too close to do any damage. If one of your devas/sonics gets converted, it could really do some damage.

31) (atr, ord) Space out your buildings. If you build very close, Harkonnen DHMs (Death Hand Missiles) can do a lot of damage as their payload will fall on many buildings. If your base is spread out, only one building will take a lot of damage.

32) When you send an army to attack at the same time that the AI does, those 2 armies are bound to meet. Well, the AI will never attack you except when you provoke it, ie, don’t fire at the units that cross you. Your defence should be able to take care of it. Whenever you send an attack group, set their target and let them reach there without doing anything else.

33) (ord) When using saboteurs, remember, the more the merrier. Sending one sab at a time will do you almost no good, as picking off units one by one is easier than many at a go. Send in at least 5 sabs together. This will increase your chances of succeeding.

34) (ord, atr) When using cloaked units, try and stay clear of inf, as they are excellent against inf as well as are the best revealers.

35) (ord) Send your sab to blow up only those buildings which do not have inf and trikes near them. If there is no such building, wait at a secluded corner of their base till you find that the inf have moved away. Then attack.

36) (atr) Fremen make excellent scouts, when used well. NEVER send fremen into enemy bases and start scouting in a hurry. First, position them at the entrance. When you find that there are no inf there, send them into the base through the corner of the entrance. Slowly move them about the base. As soon as you see any inf, back away. Move your fremen only in areas that are devoid of inf. Trikes can pose a problem too. Don’t worry about tanks. Your fremen will remain cloaked unless you take the too close to tanks. If your fremen does get revealed, the odds of him surviving are not too good. Once he is uncloaked, every unit will pounce upon him. So scout VERY carefully.

37) (atr) If the AI is too strong, you might want to use a diversion. Now, there are many good ones, but I feel that fremen are the best. Send in a fremen. Slowly move him around their base till you reach the other side. Then tell him to force fire at the ground (ctrl+click). Or tell him to attack a nearby unit/building. He will uncloak, and all the AI units will rush towards him. That will leave the entrance clear for you to attack with your tanks.

38) When fighting the emperor, do not try to crush sardaukars as I think they damage the unit that crushes them.

39) At the start of the game, you will find that the AI sends a lot of engineers. If one of your buildings, esp. construction yard, gets captured, the game is practically over. This makes the engineer so potent that it is advisable to kill engineers and then attack other units during an AI raid. Later on you can stop doing this when you upgrade to sonics /devas /sieges. But at the start of the game, it is a must to have a lot of infantry guarding your base.

40) If, like me, you prefer using a squad of infantry than a siege tank, remember that a siege tank is also very effective against lightly armoured units, as is a combat tank. Infantry are a little failing in this aspect.

41) Do not discard infantry as soon as you get better units like sonics and devas. A squad of light inf is practically the best defence against any infantry like sabs, sards etc. And of course, troopers do severe damage to any unit that takes them on. A squad of troopers does more damage and is cheaper than a quad, the same applies to a squad of l inf to a trike/raider. But light inf and troopers are useless when used individually. They are only effective in squads.

42) Before you send in an attack force, destroy the turrets at the entrance of the enemy base using a squad of troopers as turrets are absolutely useless against any infantry whatsoever. This trick may actually govern the fate of your attack squad, as turrets can do severe damage to any attacking squad. But if you don’t feel like using this tactic, make sure that your att. squad has a large number of units to make up for your losses.

43) (hark) When a deviator manages to convert one of the devas in your defence, the AI will most probably set it to self destruct. So in such a case, there usually won’t be enough time for you to convert it back. Due to this, you have no option but to destroy the deva before it manages to self destruct. Otherwise, you will lose 2-3 devas and many more will be damaged. So, as soon as your deva gets converted, instruct a lot of other devas to fire at it quickly. A lot depends on your speed.

[DRFsimmsy]

First decide to use habbanya erg with full units, credits and the other one whatever

have ai one to start with

now deploy con yard

get a power plant with one square block of concrete, with the top bit of the power on the concrete

do that again :P

get a refinery, build them close to spice so harvs don't have to go far

now get heavy factory and don't stop building harvs till i say :P

now 2 more refinerys (the units you started with will be enough to defend against their pathetic attacks)

now another power (in the fashion i suggested)

heavy factory

power

heavy factory (now start getting tanks don't stop building)

barracks (get rocket troops don't stop building)

barracks

refinery

power

barracks

outpost

power

starport

hi tech centre

power

ix research

power

light factory (don't stop building quads)

light factory

power

light factory

power

now just keep getting refineries, they key thing to remember is to not to stop building.

once you do this in AI, do it again for 2 if you like, it never fails until you try AI on hard with 5 opponents, maybe one day i'll tell how to do that, but i can hardly ever do it so i'll wait till im better or something

if you can get that base up and running as fast as possible then you might aswell start playing peeps online, cos with that strategy the AI gets boring VERY quickly :D

[Boba Fett]

1) (Ord , missions) When you finally team up with the mercs, although they are supposed to help you, the moment their losses go up, they turn hostile. And since their base is always on the same plateau as yours, they’ll wipe out your base in no time.

If your view is over the enemy’s base, or anywhere else for that matter, you won’t be able to react fast enough to prevent the loss of quite a few buildings. So to prevent such things happening, always make sure there is a good gap between your base and theirs. This means that you wan’t have place to build more than the basic buildings(w.traps, ref, hfact, brx) so build an MCV as soon as possible and occupy any mountain you see.

Then, clog up the gap between your base and theirs using the heaviest units you have (combat tanks), and keep and engineer next to every building they have. As soon as they turn hostile, your units will start firing, and this should give you enough time to capture every building they have. And don’t forget to capture the most important buildings (s.port, hfact) first.

2) (Ord) Since the most useful unit you can produce is the combat tank, be sure to build many combat tanks. Don’t waste too much money on your deviators and raiders.

3) (Ord) Basically, once the map has been scouted, quite a few people tend to forget about trikes/raiders. I agree about trikes, but raiders still can be used as an excellent distraction/anti-inf factor. I admit, a squad of light.inf work much better than raiders against infantry. But if you, like me, prefer a mechanized defence/attack force, you might want to try mixing raiders in your defence.

But don’t use too many. Later on, the AI starts sending tanks, so the raider just occupies the tile where a better anti-tank unit could be.

4) When using deviators, remember, a converted unit doesn’t stay yours for long. I think its loyalty towards you lasts for 20 secs (Rather like someone I know!!).

So, when you convert 2-3 units along with a devastator, quickly send the deva to an isolated area (it had better be close to where you converted it) , surround it with the other units (hurry!) and self destruct the deva …………….

Thanks to this trick, the hark will find a sudden lightening of their pockets and a sort of hole in their bank account (assuming they have one) in which their credits will seem to fall continuously !

Knowing how confusing this can be to some people, I’ll decipher the above para. A direct translation would give you “They won’t have too many credits” or words to that effect.

5) [Warning- I seriously advise against attacking with tanks before using troopers to blow up the turrets] (missions) When using tanks to attack the AI you’ll notice that they have walls which slow your attack, coz blowing them takes time. So, send a few siege tanks along with the attack force. The siege tank’s shell has a large area of damage. It can damage large parts of the wall, thus creating an entrance for the rest of your army.

Note- Troopers can also be used to blow up the walls.

6) A similar trick is to use a sonic tank. Position it at one end of the wall, count 5 tiles sideways, and tell it to attack the wall on that tile. Its blast will damage all the walls on the way ;)

[drahgoon]

let me tell you something i do i just capture the mercs base do it and see what they do it will suprise you cause they will still love you just dont get one of their windtraps if they have a r-turet cause it is one less for you to build and if they turn hostile you can destroy them easily

[Boba Fett]

If you capture the whole Merc base, how will it help? They won't be able to help you out then.

[drahgoon]

better then against you

[Boba Fett]

Just build r-turrets at the entrance of their base and keep sending periodic attacks with them, they'll never turn on you.

[drahgoon]

whats easyer building or capturing ??? i think it easyer to capture the mercs base for your self and you can do that idea but leave all the wind traps and the

r-turrets and the starport and they will still help you O0

[Boba Fett]

Naaa, I prefer their allegiance. After all, they do divert the other houses from you, don't they?

[King-Mega]

Ok. Nice tactics they could use some polishing though.

8)

[King-Mega]

Or just use the worms to your advantage.

8)

[Gert-Jan]

I like to send 10-15 stealth raiders to surround a harvester and then attack it. By the time your opponent has time to react the harvester is long gone and your raiders are back in stealth mode so it's very hard for him to attack them :P.

[drahgoon]

what if you dont have the stealth raider mod ??? what then ???

[nemafakei]

Use Fremen, or download the patch.

[DukeLeto]

Still does't work in the campaigns, though.

[drahgoon]

i know that and how are you suppoosed to use fremen in an ordos mission ??? tell my please. i guess you cant.

[King-Mega]

Draggon,

You can use fremen in an ordos mission this is how:

Step 1.Capture a Atredies Palace ( capture using Engineers use more than 1 because before 1 engineer gets there he will die so quickly ).

Step 2. Guard the palace with all your might ( well don't guard it with everything you have but guard it heavily).

Step 3. Produce Fremen ( best produced with Fusion v1.02 trainer ).

Step 4. Enjoy

8)

[Boba Fett]

Actually,Mega, you have to capture the construction yard and build an Atr palace in your own base. Capturing the Atreides palace will not be of any use at all as the Atr will blow it up.

What sorta defences will you use? If you send in units, you'll either blow up their base or surround the palace, in which case their units will kill you.

If you build turrets, they'll blow up the turrets as soon as they're made. And even if you manage to produce a fremen in their base, enemy units firing at your palace will kill 'em.

[Kyle]

Here's how I use the fremen (in Atreides missions): Send the fremen down next to the enemy base where there are no spice fields(this way no enemy harvesters will inadvertently run over them). Build up about 10-15 fremen down there. Then attack the front of the enemy base with some heavy tanks (sonics, missiles, sieges, and combats) and ornithopters. This will draw all the enemy troops to the front of the base. While your tanks and ornis are attacking send your fremen into the back of the base and head for the construction yard. If you're fast enough you can blow up their construction yard while they are still trying to hold off your tanks and ornis. (You can do this with engineers too and capture buildings but the only down side is that the engineers aren't cloaked.) You can also store a few fremen in the back of the enemy base to create a diversion when trying to send in engineers. ;D