StarCraft/Enslavers

StarCraft Enslavers may be found in the Campaign directory of the Custom Maps database, and is considered a veteran level campaign not because of any inherent difficulty but because the missions are time-consuming. There are only five stages divided into two paths – the first instance of path splitting in StarCraft, since the only case in which the Episodic campaigns use path splitting comes in Brood War's Emperor's Fall.

Enslavers follows the hunt for the "second-rate smuggler" Alan (Allen) Schezar, who has managed to establish multiple extensive bases as well as gain control over a Cerebrate. The question of whether to aid the Protoss being held captive by Schezar or to kill the Cerebrate results in a split path. In A, players ignore the Protoss plea and kill the cerebrate, leading to the last level's Protoss and Terran enemies. In B, players save the Protoss instead, leading to the last level's Zerg and Terran enemies. The B path provides players with Protoss allies in addition to the Terran forces, but also adds in the Ultralisk hero Torrasque, which is periodically resurrected. Both paths have a trick in the last level: in A, destruction of the Protoss Temple will prevent the Protoss enemies from Warping In additional units, while in B, destruction of the Zerg Cerebrate will prevent the return of Torrasque.

Enslavers I was released with the original StarCraft, whereas Enslavers II was released with Brood War. Thus, an argument could be made that you should play Enslavers I from the original StarCraft menu – and, therefore, that you should play it without any of the new Brood War units and abilities. This means that some of the strategies detailed here (particularly the Dark-Archon-heavy strategy for the final mission) might be considered "cheating" by more hardcore gamers.

Mission 1: Schezar's Scavengers
It's important to immediately move your units to the base location central to the gas and minerals, so quickly take your superior numbers there to clear the few marines guarding the area. While one SCV builds the command center, have the other build supply depots at the 12 and 9 o'clock positions (relative to the command center and at the same distance or so as the gas and minerals). These depots will operate as scouts in the immediate area, drawing the attention and fire of the raiding parties so you can move your guys in to surprise the attackers.

Immediately start your command center producing SCVs to gather minerals and take one SCV to build a barracks. Place the barracks and other buildings in a circle, filling in the gaps between the initial supply depots and the resources and each other. In other words, create a perimeter of buildings, and keep your men inside the perimeter. Get a second barracks and begin pumping marines and medics. Two or three marines per medic works fine. Begin getting all upgrades for the marines, and consider tanks to help take the base to the north. Go slowly, and keep your numbers up, but don't go too slowly or you'll run out of resources.

Begin to create a perimeter, especially where you see the enemy coming from, with marines, tanks, and turrets. After holding the east side of the map, you should have two bases with gas and another base with just minerals. You should have enough resources to build three starports. You can then run the rest of the map with 12 Battlecruisers (with minimal or no repairs), so at that point, the game is won.

Mission 2A: Playing with Fire
Immediately begin building SCVs and gathering minerals. Build a supply depot at 9 o'clock about three supply depot distances away from the command center. Begin making marines while making more SCVs. Consider a bunker to hold the first four marines just inside the supply depot. Build a second supply depot at the 4 o'clock position, where drops will be coming from, maybe a little closer than the first supply depot was. Build an academy (upgrade here) and a second barracks and more supply depots to form a perimeter. Build a third barracks and keep pumping marines and medics. Build an expansion at the gas to the east. When you have enough marines and medics for two groups with nine marines and three medics in each, and another two groups to leave one each at the main base and the expansion, scout to the west with them and take out the Zerg base there. Begin upgrading with two engineering bays, but don't wait for upgrades to go ahead and attack. As you're attacking, continue to pump around four marines and one medic from each barracks to reinforce your troops that die.

Build a second expansion there while upgrading marines' attack and armor. Begin building three or four starports, and take out the Zergs in the north for a third expansion. Here you decide if you want to attack the Cerebrate or free the Protoss. If you free the Protoss, you go to Scenario 2b where you have a small army with heroes, and have to free more Protoss with a small base wherever you free the first one. If you kill the Cerebrate, you have to go to Scenario 3a with no Protoss help.

To free the Protoss, take about 12 battlecruisers along the north side of the map straight into the human camp. When you get to the Protoss, you win. To kill the Cerebrate, start on the west side of the map and go straight at the Zerg camp.

Mission 2B: The Rescue
This is an interesting mission. You're given a force of Protoss units and must use them to raze a Terran base, build your own base on its ruins, and repeat twice more. It's also notorious for its difficulty, but it turns out that if you approach it the right way it's one of the easiest in the whole campaign.

The key is to know which base to attack first. Red and purple are both impenetrable with the units you start with; don't even try approaching them, you'll just get wiped out. Brown, however, in the south, is not well-defended. So when the mission starts, hotkey your various forces and then send them up the ramp to the left and around the high ground, moving west and south. Have your Observer go ahead so you don't accidentally walk too close to brown's Siege Tanks. When you see them, prepare your units for an attack. If you take advantage of your heroes' abilities, you should be able to take down the base. Put your single Archon at the head of your troops, to draw the enemy fire, and hit it with a Defensive Matrix from your Science Vessel right before sending your units in. Target the two Siege Tanks and Bunkers and take them down as quickly as you can; keep an eye on your Archon, because you will probably need to give it another Defensive Matrix early in the battle, after it gets hit by some tank fire.

Once that front line is taken out, you can move into the base and take out the few Marines, Firebats, and Goliaths scattered around, and slowly raze their buildings. The priorities are the unit-producing buildings nearby (two Barracks) and then the Command Center. Once those are out of the way, you can take your time clearing out the Supply Depots and other junk; soon, though, you should send your remaining units down the ramp to the south to destroy the Statis Cell and release Danimoth, an Arbiter hero. Danimoth will be extremely useful early in the game; it will take you a long time to build up defenses, but Danimoth can keep your units cloaked to give you an edge when red and purple start to attack. Once you have Danimoth, you can send your units up the ramp to the left and destroy the remaining Factories and units, keeping them cloaked so the leftover Siege Tanks and Goliaths there can't harass you. As soon as you can, take the two Probes you were given with Danimoth and set up a base on the ruins of the Command Center you destroyed. Right off the bat you will need a ton of Pylons to make up for the large number of units you started with, and you might want to construct a second Nexus closer to your vespene gas, which is quite far away.

Once you're up and running, the mission becomes significantly easier; you can just build up your base and army like normal. The majority of attacks you'll face will come from the north (red), and some from the east (purple); most can be fended off pretty easily with a combination of cloaked units and a large array of Photon Cannons. You will also want to build at least a few cannons behind your minerals, as red sometimes tries to send air units back there. If you need space to build more buildings, the lower ground where you destroyed the Statis Cell earlier is spacious and safe.

This base does not have a lot of resources, and there are no other resource patches on the map except in the bases you need to destroy. So, you will need to get started relatively quickly on building an army to take out either red or purple and steal their resources. It's easier to take out purple first, as the red base is on higher ground behind some ramps that both Archons and Reavers can't navigate well. Purple is easiest to approach from the south (go east from your base, destroy a Barracks and Missile Turret, go down a ramp, and proceed north along the eastern edge of the map); approaching from the north is dangerous because they have multiple bunkers and Siege Tanks, but if you come in from the relatively undefended south you'll force their Siege Tanks to move and you can take them out more easily. Do not empty out your main base entirely while attacking purple, because red will occasionally send a Battlecruiser at your base. Once you destroy the purple base and release Mojo (a Scout) from the Statis Cell, you can build a new Nexus and start harvesting some much-needed resources (if you like, you could mind-control an SCV during the attack and set up a Terran base here – it's not really necessary, though, since you would have to climb the whole Terran tech tree, and in any case you don't need much more power to take out the red base). You probably don't even need a whole lot of defenses here; red more or less leaves this base alone, and the few units that do stray in are taken care of by your attack force that's sitting around here.

After replacing your fallen units and doing whatever else you like here, you can proceed west from your new base, across a gravelly bridge to the northwest, and take out the red base using whatever tactics you prefer. By this point red should be pretty quiet; once you get through the bunkers across the bridge, red will have precious few units in the base to welcome you. The base falls pretty easily, and you can destroy the Statis Cell in the northwest corner of the map. You don't need to destroy everything; once the Statis Cell is razed, the mission will end.

Mission 3B: The Final Blow
This is a hell of a mission; if you didn't think the Enslavers campaign was insane, this is the mission that will change your mind. First of all, the enemy attacks begin sooner and are bigger and more frequent; you'll be spending as much time rebuilding your base as anything else. And if that's not enough, you'll once again have to face Torrasques (the souped-up Ultralisks who terrorized you in the final Terran mission of Brood War). But the Torrasques in this mission will make the Brood War ones look like frail grandma Torrasques. There, you had several minutes in between attacks, and it took the Torrasque a long time to travel from his base to yours; here, it is regenerated almost immediately after you kill it, and its base is relatively close, meaning that you will pretty much have a Torrasque at your front door all the time. On the positive side, since you play this mission with an allied Terran/Protoss force, you have one advantage you didn't have when you faced them in Brood War: you have Dark Archons and their mind control ability.

With that in mind, your most urgent task in this mission (after beefing up your perimeter of Photon Cannons and deploying a couple Siege Tanks, of course) is to research mind control and get a few Dark Archons building. Unlike the previous missions, this time you actually have the fortune of starting with a rather well-developed base, so you should be able to have Dark Archons before long. Don't just build one; the Torrasques come much faster than your Dark Archons regenerate their energy, so you will need at least three to keep up. Researching their energy upgrade will also help. Position an Observer northeast of your camp, along the path that the Torrasques take, so you can spot them early and have a Dark Archon ready in time; hopefully you can mind control it before your Siege Tanks hurt it too much. Proceeding in this way – building up your defenses and creating an attack force while mind controlling the Torrasques that attack you – should allow you to stay relatively safe, and build up a free army of souped-up Zerg. The base you start in has bountiful resources, so the need to expand is not as urgent as it was in other missions. In this early part of the game, the most important thing is being alert and multi-tasking well, as you will need to build lots of things and defend lots of entrances at once. The Zerg will be sending forays constantly into the northern entrances to your base, and the Terrans will attack along the bottom of the map, sometimes with Siege Tanks; both enemies will occasionally fly over the cliffs behind your base, in the northwest, so you'll want defenses there as well. Don't hesitate to use your heroes in defense, especially if your defenses aren't built up well yet; they're all expendable (you don't lose the mission if they die), and their beefed-up stats can significantly tip the scale of early battles, whereas in the later part of the game it's not such a big deal anymore – thus, you might as well put them to good use while you still can. One final point: make sure you have Observers a ways in front of every entrance to your base. The Terrans will start trying to nuke you not very long into the mission, and if you skimped out and only have one Observer then you don't have much chance of finding the Ghost before the nuke falls. So, it's crucial to have Observers and Siege Tanks at every entrance, especially the southern one (which is closest to Schezar's camp).

Eventually you will want to destroy the yellow Cerebrate and stop the Torrasques from bugging you (although you can wait until you've accumulated a dozen or so of them for yourself). You can construct whatever units you like; although Archons (since the base has two vespene geysers and you'll be burning through minerals rebuilding your defenses, you should have a surplus of vespene gas) and Siege Tanks (they do the same job as Reavers, but cheaper) are recommended. A dozen of each, plus your Dark Archons, should be sufficient to take out the Cerebrate. Send them out the northwest of your camp and up the path; you will have to take out a cluster of Sunken Colonies and a bunch of units before turning west across a bridge to head for the Cerebrate. For now, just focus on getting the Cerebrate and don't worry about finishing off the other bases closer to you; you don't want to have to deal with Torrasques at your front door while your main force is off attacking other bases. Once you cross the bridge, head west across an empty area and you will eventually hit the camp where the Cerebrate is; it will be a long and messy fight before you reach the Cerebrate itself. And because the Torrasque respawns so quickly, you will probably have to fight it several times within this base – each time you deal with it, it'll respawn again before you've made much progress. Hence the need to bring your Dark Archons along.

Once this base is razed, you should set up a new base on its ruins; keep your army and your Dark Archons there for defense, as Schezar will start to hit you pretty hard now that his Cerebrate is dead. Build a Protoss base here rather than Terran, since a single probe can construct everything rather quickly. (Or, if you're feeling adventurous, you could have mind controlled a Zerg drone during your attack and then build a Zerg base here – you'd have to climb a whole new tech tree, which is a pain, but then you'd have used all three races.) Just southeast of this position is an undefended mineral patch; there is no gas there, but an extra mineral source is nice, especially if you want to build a circle of Photon Cannons three layers thick around all your bases. This mineral patch is so close to your new base that units like Archons can run between the two quickly and thus defend both of them relatively well. That doesn't mean you should skimp on defenses at either base, it just means you can spread your forces thin for a few minutes while you're hurrying to set up. And again, keeping Observers and Siege Tanks ready applies here as well – the Terrans will often come across the bridge and try to nuke you. Your mineral base nearby will often get attacked by air, so keep plenty of air units and cannons around it.

With the Cerebrate gone, the tempo of the mission changes; now it's simply a matter of staying alive through bigger and bigger attacks, while building up a few armies to take out Schezar's camp. The Zerg are not a big threat anymore – they will still attack you with little forays, but nothing that's likely to wipe out any of your bases. Between your three bases you probably have all the resources you need, but you are welcome to destroy the Zerg if you wish; they have a small base just outside your original base (you destroyed part of it when you crossed the bridge to get the Cerebrate), another base just beyond there in the northwest corner, and a final base in the lower center of the map, directly west of your original base's southernmost exit. That final base, even if you don't need the resources, can be a nice staging point for your later attacks since it's right at Schezar's front door, and if you still have a dozen or so Torrasques you can take them and destroy this little base almost single-handedly with them (along with some backup to deal with air units).

As for building up an army, make Carriers and build a few Stargates to do so, or use anything you want. Schezar's attacks, which get bigger and bigger as the mission wears on, will include two or three Battlecruisers each time; just like the Torrasques, you can mind control these and build up a free army. You can cross into Schezar's base on the eastern side of the map whenever you feel ready. On the safe side, have five groups of 10–12 units each: a group of Archons, one of Siege Tanks, one of Torrasques, one of Carriers, and one of Battlecruisers. Bring the Torrasques and Carriers in from the south, the Battlecruisers in from the east, and the Archons and Siege Tanks in from the north. This ends up being overkill: after using up all his resources and units attacking me, there won't actually be much resistance within Schezar's base, and in fact you'll find his base less challenging than Mengsk's bases on Korhal in Brood War (specifically, Schezar does not have so many Ghosts around to lock down your mechanical units). There are spider mines (so bring Observers), and a few units here and there, but nothing serious, so you probably won't need five whole groups. In any case, you'll end up mercilessly destroying his base at the end.

Once you destroy all the Terran buildings (this will take a while, it's quite a large base), you will have won the mission, and the Enslavers campaign. Schezar himself didn't turn up – that's what ../Enslavers II/ is for.

Mission 3A: Assault on Aiur
This mission occurs on the same map as the canonical final mission. The difference is that you control a Terran-only force, instead of an allied Terran-Protoss force, and you fight Protoss and Terrans instead of Zerg and Terrans. Finally, because there are no Torrasques to deal with, it feels a good deal easier.

Your two objectives are Like in The Final Blow, you'll probably do the first objective on the way to the second. Once you destroy the Protoss Temple, the Protoss will no longer be able to produce units and thus will be effectively out of the game. So in the beginning of the mission you should focus on building up defenses and preparing something to take out the Temple with.
 * 1) Destroy the Protoss Temple.
 * 2) Destroy all of Schezar's buildings (the red base that takes up the eastern half of the map).

Before you start defense, you'll want to be able to harvest quickly (and don't worry, no one will attack you for a couple minutes anyway). You have two vespene geysers and two mineral fields, like in The Final Blow, but only one set has a Command Center near it. So build a second Command Center near the other minerals and gas, so you can harvest quickly, and churn out a ton of SCVs. Once that's up and running, establish the typical sort of base defenses: for the first half or so of the mission, two Bunkers (with three Marines and one Firebat each), two or three deployed Siege Tanks, and a couple Goliaths at each of the three entrances should be sufficient. You can also build Missile Turrets along the northern cliff of your base (although you don't need a lot; you'll never face a large attack there) and around the three entrances.

To get to the Temple, you need to exit your base to the northeast, go north around the cliff, cross a bridge, and then go more or less directly north. But the bridge is defended by several Photon Cannons that make up the edge of a Protoss base (the rest of the base lies directly north of you, across the higher ground). You can clear a path by taking out those Photon Cannons and the Pylon; you don't need to take out the whole base just yet (and probably won't be able to if you try), you just need to clear a path so you can cross the bridge without being harassed. The most important thing is to remove the detectors. This can be done with Siege Tanks and Goliaths or, better yet, Battlecruisers (if you have them). Once the path is clear, you can pull back to your base.

Rather than risking a frontal assault on the Temple, it's much easier to nuke it. It has no detectors around it and can be taken down with two nukes. Attacking head on, on the other hand, is dangerous: it looks like it's only got a single Arbiter watching it, but that Arbiter is hiding a large group of Dragoons and a couple Carriers. So get a Nuclear Silo or two as soon as you can, and a Ghost to launch your nukes. (Although you have two Command Centers already, don't put Silos on both; you will probably need a Comsat Station for early Wraith and Ghost attacks. So, even though it's tedious, it's probably better to build a single Silo and build a new nuke after using your first one.) Two nukes will destroy the temple, along with most or all of its defenders. With that done, the Protoss will be crippled, and if they make one last desperate attack on your base they will nearly be out of units.

Now you can secure some more bases (you're probably low on resources by now) by mopping up the Protoss. The nearest base to you, north across the high ground, can be taken easily with a combination of Battlecruisers and Siege Tanks dropshipped up onto the cliff. The Protoss will probably lose almost all their remaining units trying to defend against this. There is another base in the northwest corner of the map, past the Temple, which is undefended save for a few Photon Cannons; your Battlecruisers or Siege Tanks can take it easily. Finally, they have a large but equally undefended base in the north-central part of the map (where the Cerebrate would be in The Final Blow). You can set up mini-bases here (you don't really need anything but Command Centers and defenses) and gradually move your defenses from your original base to these more outlying ones. When you set up a base directly north of your original one, you can move most of your northern defenses to the bridge because that's where attacks will come from (the enemy will have to walk past there to get to your main base anyway); when you set up another base in the north-center, over the big Protoss base, you can move those defenses to this newest base, since your other bases will be left alone. You'll need to keep defenses in the southern and middle entrances to your main base, however, as they will get attacked for the entire game.

For your defenses once all the bases are set up, put as many Siege Tanks and Goliaths as you can in the north-central base, along with a few Missile Turrets and the Science Vessel hero (Schezar tries to use nukes a couple times); in your original base, keep your usual setup of three or four Siege Tanks and two Bunkers at each of the central and southern entrances. Let your Battlecruisers roam around the map, because they are quite helpful in destroying Siege Tanks before they can reach your bases – since Battlecruisers are so slow, keep them more or less in the middle of the map so they can get to any base more quickly. If you can eliminate the Brown base in the south-central part of the map (directly east of your original base), your defensive job will get much easier. Once you have sufficient forces, the brown base can go down pretty easily to Battlecruisers, Siege Tanks, and a couple judiciously placed nukes.

With bases and defenses set up, the mission becomes simply one of attrition. Schezar's forces will hit you with a couple hard attacks, particularly in your north-central base (Siege Tanks, Battlecruisers that like to use Yamato Cannon on your Battlecruisers, and Ghosts that like to use Lockdown on anything they see), but once you survive a couple of these he'll pretty much start idling. While you're defending, you can also build up your attack force. You can beat the mission with three groups: Battlecruisers, Siege Tanks, and Goliaths, with each group as close to 12 as possible. (If you hit the psi limit, you can empty out some of your unused Bunkers in the northern part of your original base and kill those Marines or send them on a kamikaze mission.) With those troops ready, you can go and enter Schezar's base through the opening in its southwest wall – it's a good idea to send your Battlecruisers in first to take out the Siege Tanks stationed all along the walls.

Once you're at the front door of Schezar's base, the mission is pretty much over. Your forces will overwhelm him, and most of his troops will die defending that front door – after the initial battle, his base will be nearly empty. He probably won't have any Spider Mines around the perimeter of his base like he did in The Final Blow, although he seems to have more Ghosts. Once into his base, you just need to go around and destroy all the buildings, which takes a while. If you're having a hard time finding them all, you may have missed a pair of Command Centers secreted away in the northeast part of the base, or a Barracks surrounded by Missile Turrets south of the base and a bit outside the main wall.

Once all the red buildings are destroyed, victory is yours.