Warcraft: Orcs & Humans/Strategies

This is the guide for tips and strategies for playing Campaign and Multiplayer of Warcraft I: Orcs and Humans.

Single Player

 * 1) Train a lot of archers/spearmen, since they are ranged and can take out close combat units (especially with fully upgraded arrows). Later, get daemons/water elementals.
 * 2) Good formation of troops are important. Some good formations can be seen in the sidebar to the right.
 * 3) *Always be wary of catapults. Have Raiders/Knights ready to run them down. If you can, try to keep your formations back from the fog of war so the catapult doesn't destroy your troops before you can react properly.
 * 4) Build your base where gold and lumber can come quickly and effectively. Not just for the first gold mine, but more so for all the gold mines. This typically means expanding in the back or side of your base.
 * 5) To get gold and lumber effectively:
 * 6) *Train peasants until the gold production comes in so you can build a spearman/archer nonstop, this will vary on the location of the gold mine. A gold mine far away will require more peasants.
 * 7) *Lumber will be needed early for buildings. Gradually work your way toward 3, maybe 4. But once most buildings are built you only need 1. 2 if you start building a lot of catapults.
 * 8) Use a formation and a raider/knight to draw out the opponent's defenders. When all are drawn out, attack the base with your remaining units.
 * 9) When attacking an outpost, take out the unit production buildings (Important->Least Important) Barracks, Church/Temple, Tower, Town Hall.

Orc Strategies
Grunts are useful in the early game when before having access to spearmen and you need a few extra military units to defend the base. Don't use them unless transitioning gold mines and need to conserve gold, but you might as well build spearmen for the extra 50 gold.

Spearmen are the core of your army. Spam these guys.

Raiders are your main hand to hand combat. Use them to take down catapults, sorcerers, and any other targets that may be a threat. Later in the campaign when invisibility is an issue, place raiders at the front of choke points to protect your spearmen from taking unnecessary hits.

Catapults should be used in pairs. Place them so they fire on archers as they stop to fire on your troops. Excellent for buildings and choke points.

Necromancers don't seem to be useful, but they can be worth their while. The raise skeletons effectively increases the hit points of your troops by drawing fire and targets away from the enemy. While the enemy attacks these skeletons, your troops remain unharmed and the spearmen and catapults can rain fire on the enemy. Dark vision is valuable so you do not waste the hit points of your troops in exploring. Unholy armor is great as well, to turn the tide of a battle. Use it on strong hitting troops like raiders, daemons, and catapults to win battles that you'd probably lose otherwise. catapult v catapult with UA preserves your catapult. Also sending a raider or two after an enemy catapult with UA and hopefully you can get them back so you don't have to suicide raiders protecting your troops.

Warlocks spiders are similar to raise skeleton just a lot weaker and don't last as long not creating the same buffer that you get with skeletons. Spiders are useful for scouting, and with enough of them, just overwhelming a particular target, such as a catapult or conjurer. Cloud of Poison is ok, for chokepoints. You see them coming, and then spam the choke point. Unfortunately, when you get this, you have to fill the chokepoints with your troops to prevent invisibility attacks on your base. So the cloud may get too close to your base. Then in the end you have Daemons that are better than either option anyway. You produce warlocks till you have at least 8 and you have a nonstop army of daemons to beat any human resistance. Against the computer you're pretty much set once you have 4 warlocks because you have your defense. Get 4 more to create your offense, and you're unstoppable.

A further note, some might say just get spearmen and ignore all the casters until missions 11 and 12, but some feel that casters add more to the game so they choose to use them. It probably is more efficient though to just use spearmen. Once you are on 11 and 12, you're trying to get your warlocks as fast as possible.

You don't need multiple production buildings, but 2 barracks can be helpful on some of the later levels, but again not essential.

Multiplayer

 * 1) Usually (and you should too), the players send a Peasant/Peon to scout ahead into enemy territory to see where the opponent is.
 * 2) *Send it off angle, so the opponent does not know where you came from.
 * 3) *Example: Player 1, Orc has his outpost at the South, while Player 2, Human has his outpost Northwest. Player 1 will want to send his Peon up North, then head West, so that way he can fool Player 2 into thinking his Outpost is West of his. Player 2 should send a Peasant South, then East to fool Player 1 to think that Jeff's outpost is West of Ethan's. However, doing this requires previous knowledge of where the possible starting locations are.
 * 4) It is not advised to use ranged units on catapults. Use close combat units, like Footmen/Grunts or Knights/Raiders.