Warcraft II: Beyond The Dark Portal - Cheats, Tips and Tactics

Warcraft II is very much a unit-based game. It’s in the training and use of units
that success or failure lies, and in sometimes coming up with an unusual
combination that’ll leave your opponent floored. So here’s the complete run-down
on how to get the most from your fantastic army. It’s organised unit by unit.
Where both sides have pretty much identical units, they’re covered together, and
where individual cases need explaining they are. Explained. Individually.

Peons/Peasants
Yer bog-standard Serfs, their primary use is in collecting gold and lumber and
building things. If a fight occurs near them, move them all away to safety
immediately. Always try to keep your Peons behind other units. One of the more
useful things that Peons do is repair. If one of your buildings is under attack,
instruct a Peon to repair it while the attack is going on. As long as you keep it on
the other side of the building from the attacker, you’ll find that it’s perfectly safe
and will seriously slow down the rate at which the attacker causes damage.
Indeed, get two Peons repairing a building and you’ll have made it practically
indestructible. It’s also possible to use this facility to speed up your building by
sending Peons to repair a building under construction. Be warned, though: this
will substantially add to the cost in both gold and lumber.

Orc Grunts/Footmen
These characters are your basic foot soldiers, and you’ll need a few of these at the
start of each level. As soon as you can though, you should stop producing them
and concentrate on some of the
other more useful units.

Trolls/Elven Archers
These are the missile units. In hand-to-hand combat they are quickly
overwhelmed. Always keep them behind Grunts or Ogres (Footmen and Knights
for the Elves) in battle. If you group them with these other units, keep a fairly
even mix. When you move to engage the enemy, the Trolls or Archers will stop at
a distance while the hand-to-hand specialists move in. In the case of the Trolls,
it’s worth producing lots of these early on, as later you’ll be able to buy
regeneration for them.

Both Trolls and Elves should be upgraded vigorously. On later levels they
become the best defence against the heavy aerial threat posed by Dragons or
Gryphons. A couple of well-trained units can be very effective, especially if you
distract the aerial invader with some cannon fodder. Get a Footman or Grunt and
run him around underneath the flying nasties. He’ll probably survive for quite a
while and your missile chuckers will benefit from the easy target practice
provided.

Catapult/Ballista
More destructive than the Trolls or Archers, these are also missile-only units.
They’re very slow, however, and in defence you should always keep them back
from any front-line areas, only bringing them forward when an enemy appears.
Their greatest use comes when attacking, because of their exceptional range. With
reasonably careful positioning, you’ll be able to take out enemy towers without
any danger to the catapult. When attacking with these units, always keep some
foot soldiers nearby. If the catapults come under attack, move this squad in to deal
with the attackers. Then pull them out again and let the catapults do the major
damage.

Goblin Sappers/Dwarven Demo Squad
Surprisingly effective, these units self-destruct when instructed. You’ll find that
two of these will take out most enemy buildings. Like the Peons, though, they
should be kept away from all combat. Keep them in some safe corner until you
need them. They can also be used to carve routes through to gold mines or forests
by blowing up mountains. It can be well worth using a couple of these to make a
journey for your Peons shorter, giving you quite a significant long-term time
advantage.

Ogres
Ogres are very tough hand-to-hand fighters. As soon as you can, stop producing
Grunts and switch to these. Later on you’ll be able to turn them into Ogre Mages
and research spells for them. However, if money is tight this is one thing that can
quite easily be dropped from your schedule. The Death Knights get much more
effective magic and the Ogres don’t really get all that much tougher when you
make them into Mages. Keep a careful eye on your Ogre units, which tend to be
rather head strong and are likely to charge off after retreating enemy units when
you don’t really want them too.

Knights
Knights are great shock troops and, as with Ogres, as soon as they become
available you should concentrate on producing them instead of Footmen. Unlike
the Ogres, though, they get great magic when upgraded to Paladin status, and it’s
well worth spending the money on research. Two spells in particular are hugely
useful. First Healing: it can make sense to keep your Knights with healing safely
out of the way and just bring units to them to have them healed. This is especially
useful when combined with Gryphons. The other invaluable power that Knights
get is exorcism. Use that to pick off any Death Knights you come up against.

Mage
Like the Death Knight, the Mage should be kept out of close fighting. The Mage
has great destructive capability with its Fireball spell - just be careful there are no
friendly units in the line of fire. The other great spell in the Mage’s armoury is
Invisibility. Cast it on a Peasant and get him to walk calmly into your enemy’s lair
and build a Guard Tower. Or cast it in on a Peasant in combination with Flame
Shield and get him to wander unnoticed among your enemy’s army, wreaking
havoc as he goes. Or cast it on some Dwarves and get them to blow something up.
You’ll have great fun with Invisibility, the only drawback being that it doesn’t
fool death Knights, so make sure that your paladins have exorcised them first.

Goblin Zeppelin/Gnomish Flying Machine
With no combat ability whatsoever, these units are just spotters. They’re very
handy for sussing out enemy strengths and weaknesses, but their major use comes
when the enemy produces submarines. Add one of these to any naval group you
create and they’ll be able to spot the otherwise invisible subs, allowing you to
attack them without being spotted.

Death Knight
The Death Knight is an awesome creature, but not really suited to hand-to-hand
combat. Try to keep them slightly away from the fighting and particularly any
Paladins. Probably their greatest power is to animate the dead. With the judicious
use of a couple of Death Knights attached to any raiding party you can turn all the
enemies you defeat into skeleton soldiers at no financial cost. As the enemy gets
weaker, you get stronger.
Also very effective is the Whirlwind, but only when cast on very dense areas of
the enemy’s defences. Unholy Armour is great if you give it to a Sapper unit and
then send it, now invulnerable, to blow up an enemy building or army. It certainly
gets rid of pesky Mages quickly.

Dragon/Gryphon Riders
These great aerial beasts are the finest weapons available. No longer do you need
to build ships to transport your men around. Now you can just fly somewhere and
attack it. Their only real disadvantage is that if grouped they tend to destroy
friendly units with over enthusiastic fireballs, and even each other, but keep them
as loners and they won’t go far wrong.

Naval Tactics
The Troll Destroyer and Elven Destroyer are fast, manoeuvrable ships and still
useful when they’ve been superseded by the bigger and more powerful Ogre
Juggernauts or Battleships. The larger ships are much slower and take longer to
respond, so always keep a blend of different ships in a naval group. That way
you’ll be able to react more quickly to any threat. The Destroyers are also capable
of hitting flying opponents, which makes them indispensable at sea.

The Submarines make a great addition to any naval group as well, but can also be
used very effectively as raiders in groups of two or three, especially if combined
with an aerial spotter to watch out for any Towers or flying creatures that are
capable of noticing them. Sending Subs out in advance of a large navy is a great
tactic, as you can pick off enemy ships before they’ve seen you.

One final piece of advice. Towers are very effective against naval units, and
you’ll nearly always lose ships when attacking them. But you can use a Transport
instead. Put three Footmen into the Transport and rush the enemy Tower. Land
the Transport as close as possible to the Tower, then release your Footmen, who
will attack it and remain safe because the Towers can only attack units at a
distance. Move the Transport out of harm’s way until the job’s done, and then
send it back in to pick up your heroes.

Sim Citadel
The layout of your buildings can have a crucial effect on the outcome of any
attack, so take some time to think about where you place them. Always make sure
that your Peasants have as short a route as is possible to the Town Hall or Lumber
Mill, for instance, and build Barracks as near to the front as possible so that your
troops have less distance to travel into battle.

Towers are an extremely effective form of defence, particularly as they can be
easily repaired when damaged. What’s not so obvious is that they can also be very
handy in an attack. Building a string of Towers behind enemy lines will certainly
give them something to think about.

Although you can’t build walls yourself, you do have an option to create very
effective barriers by using Farms. Farms are not crucial buildings and are pretty
cheap to produce. If you want to block off an area against repeated attacks, build
a wall out of Farms and then place Towers just behind it. The enemy will come
along and attack the Farms, leaving you in peace to pick them off. Then when the
attack’s over, repair your Farms. Using this tactic it’s possible to just sit back and
absorb all that the enemy can throw at you until he’s exhausted all his resources.
Keep an eye on how much gold is left in his mine by using your aerial spotter.

Filthy cheat
There is a quite splendid array of cheats for Warcraft II. These are just some of
the more useful. To use any of them, press the ‘enter’ key. Then, when the
‘Message:’ prompt comes up, type in any of the following. A word of caution
though: some of these cheats (particularly the production ones) give the enemy the
same benefits. This is thankfully not true of the invincibility. Typing in the same
cheat code a second time will turn the cheat off.

IT IS A GOOD DAY TO DIE: Makes all your units and buildings invincible,
except for a few magical attacks.
GLITTERING PRIZES: Gives you 10,000 gold, 5,000 lumber, 5,000 oil.
VALDEZ: Gives you 5,000 oil.
HATCHET: Speeds up the production of wood so your Peasants or Peons get a
unit in only two chops.
MAKE IT SO: Dramatically speeds up all building.
TITLE: Increases the speed of your units.
NOGLUES: Disables magical traps.
SHOWPATH: Displays entire map.
THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE: Shows the end sequence and
finishes the game.
UCLA: Shows ‘Go Bruins!’ message. For no obvious reason at all.

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