Dawn of Fantasy/Beginner guide for Orcs

The Orcs
Greetings to the fearsome race of Gokkholm. Urr! Some players will have trouble getting into the flow of the orc race due to their unique troop building style. They do not build villagers, they spawn; and they do not build troops, but train them from previous unit types. The orc race relies on looting to generate resources due to their lack a lot of techs to improve villager gathering. Orc units are overall weaker then the human/elf counterparts but tend to be faster as well as having more individual orcs in each unit compared to their enemies. For a list of the orc city and region traits, see here: Playable Regions+Region Traits. One of the advantages of being this fearsome race is that orc labourers can help build walls and buildings greatly speeding up contruction.

First up in your new orc city it's time to build a house and then send your villagers to chop wood. Now houses are more valuable to orcs then to any other race, because they act as drop points for resource. They also allow units to spawn when a player is offline providing a basis of troop material to be trained when needed. Because houses can't be destroyed but burned to 1 hit point and then repaired many orc players scatter houses across the map where they are harvesting resources. For the time being leave your Great Hut spawning labourers (the hammer symbol) until you have need to spawn marauders for either their archery unit basis or need a unit to hunt deer. The less units in your home city the faster buildings will spawn troops (Great hut,warg pen,goblin tent). Completing the first several quests should amass you a small starter army consisting of ogres/marauders/slayers/impalers and a hero. With these you can clean your homeland of creeps and clean up after battles/loot. You can use either your marauders or your labourers to loot. Continue to task new labourer units to wood chopping as orc buildings take a lot of wood. By now you should have completed the quest requiring you to build either a war hall or pyre. This will enable you to train slayers or impalers from your labourer/marauder force for a price. You will then lose your worker unit and gain a military unit which can be further trained into other units.

Because orcs thrive on looting always use your marauders/labourers to loot the slain after battles. Orcs gather both food and gold from corpes. Because orcs don't gather resources in a normal "go mine that gold node" sort of way, it often pays to visit the local map for gold on the limb. See here for more info Help I need gold!.

By now your town should have several houses and at least a couple of military buildings so it's time to build a warg pen. Warg pens can be tasked to provide a steady stream of wargs that can be eaten or sold or used as military units. To build orc cavalry units task a slayer or impaler to the warg pen and after they train they'll appear riding their new mounts. Orc cavalry is needed to prevent other players from picking apart orc troops from long range with archers. Many players quickly build an ogre pit but are confused on how to properly use ogres to prevent them from becoming high gold loot. Ogres are NOT used to rush in and tank without proper support. They will die as ogres strictly adhere to the counter unit system in DoF. They are very useful in flanking maneuvers but keep them away from spear type units. Spearmen are the bane of both ogres and cavalry as they get a 300% bonus vs those unit types. You can over run spearmen battlions but only if you outnumber them significantly and or have a much higher level of troop.

If you're lacking punch to your questing army at this point mercs from an NPC town are a good option. Any orc merc units you buy will benefit from any orc techs you research at your home city. Continue to build houses and war buildings as you expand your orc town. You will want several war halls and or pyres to be able to generate troops quickly should your home city come under atack. You will only come under attack after you've built walls so waiting to build them until your city is established is recommended. One of the last buildings you'll need is the berserker temple. It hold the techs to unlock the upraded walls and builds berserker infantry from slayers/impalers. Berserkers are the top of the line infantry for any orc player and capable of dealing massive damage to enemy troops. A charge of berserkers covered by ogres and cav is nigh unstoppable. Orc formations are critical to the success later in the game so be sure to research them once your town is thriving. Formation techs can be found in the war hall or great hut.

At this point your town has sprung up with the lovely urban sprawl that is gokkholm; your troops have been built and more labourers are ready to train; you've completed the first several quests and visited the NPC market for goods and troops. Now it's time to take the world of Mythador by storm!