PLOTSJ.PUD Eight Plots: 2 coop vs. 6 CPU This is a modification of the plots.pud provided with the Warcraft II expansion set. It has been changed to a co-operative 2 human vs. 6 CPU player map. The computer players have been given additional gold in their starting mines, and the geography of the map has been adjusted to ease navigation (so the computer can cope). Percent Land: 98.27 Arable: 75.98 Mountains: 0.00 Forests: 21.27 Available Gold: 480000 Lumber: 348500 Oil: 0 Player Town Army Navy Air AI Red 0 3 0 0 Land Attack Blue 0 3 0 0 Land Attack Green 0 3 0 0 * Human Violet 0 3 0 0 Land Attack Orange 0 3 0 0 Land Attack Black 0 3 0 0 Land Attack White 0 3 0 0 * Human Yellow 0 3 0 0 Land Attack Neutral 16 0 0 0 Land Attack ------ Spoilers below ------- Do not read until you've played the level Me: Josh Levenberg jlevenbe@math.berkeley.edu http://math.berkeley.edu/~jlevenbe/ Darin: Darin Goldstein daring@math.berkeley.edu When Darin and I first played plots.pud, we were impressed by how well the computer players did. Standard grunt rush tactics met with minimal success. After a couple more games we did beat the level (figuring out where everything was helped a lot), but I was impressed enough to make a level based on that layout. To beat the original, I played defensively, building a mill and then towers. Darin built a barracks and he got most of the heat. While he was distracting the computer opponents, I set up towers at the expansion mine, moved my hall there, and started putting towers at all the other expansion mines. Once that was accomplished, the game was basically over. We could mine all we needed, and the computers foolishly killed all their peons walking past the towers. After trying several different starts on plotsj.pud, we eventually came up with this clever strategy: ignore the mine you start next to, it only has 15k. Instead move the two starting peons vertically towards the center to get to the expansion mine. This mine has 30k which is enough so that you don't run out and have to build a second hall before the first serious wave of attacks. In addition, its much easier to chop within range of the towers. I experimented with repairing the hall to speed up its build time. If you did everything right, the extra peon could chop 100 wood and repair for 50 gold/wood before the hall finished. If you did the lumber bug, you only needed one trip to the mine (while the lumber is being depositted) to get 550 gold and 250 lumber -- enough for the first farm. Its not clear that the 50 gold and wood don't help you more than the time the repairing saves (timing til the 2nd farm would decide it, most likely) -- but I think it gave me an edge. After a total of 2 farms and 7 peons (remembering that you need more wood when building a mill first), we both built a lumber mill. After the farm and a few more peons, we built our first tower in one of our neighbor's peon trail (we both headed towards the corner, but any adjacent neighbor would work -- maybe you'll like controlling the center). This "offensive tower" would take out all their peons after a single attack from a grunt (which it will survive without the peon sticking around to repair it). It seems that the second offensive tower came too late to seriously damage a second opponent, so I recommend skipping it. Instead, you'll need at least 3, preferably 5 defensive towers and at least 4 farms by the time the first wave of grunts comes. Hopefully your farms will be strategically placed to protect the towers. You don't really have enough farms at this point to block them in entirely, but with the mill, you can force them to walk around a lot before attacking the towers or peons. After the initial wave of grunts, I was able to rebuild my towers, make some more farms, build a barracks, and start staking out more mines. You'll still find yourself playing defensively for a while. In fact, when we played, Darin got into some serious trouble. I had to send all three of my (damaged) grunts down to help him. This is the bit where it would have helped to control the center since he was all the way in the corner. My guys were essentially eaten alive, but Darin tells me that they distracted most of the guys attacking. The ones who weren't distracted were taken out by his towers, and those who were distracted were taken out by the towers as well. Of course that was not counting the catapult and ballista -- those were defeated by peons. If there were more grunts attacking, or my distraction had been less successful, he never would have been able to take out the catapults. He was pretty happy to be alive. After that, I started setting up at a third mine and placing towers near all the mines in the center two rows I could reach. By the time I had almost exhausted my second mine and had a hall and three towers near the third, in comes about 9 level 5 ogres. The ogres head straight for my third mine, bypassing my second. This is both good and bad: most of my peons are at the second mine, but I'm going to need the third for almost all of my future income. 9 ogres are more than I can hope to defeat, so I sacrifice the hall, 3 towers and 2 farms at the third mine. While his ogres are beating them down (in a somewhat inefficient manner), I set up more towers at my second mine, and holler for help from Darin. By the time he arrives, I have 5 towers and I ask him to lure half of the remaining ogres into my trap. Darin's ogres and my towers chew up the computer's ogres in two bite sized chunks. After those two close calls, it was relatively straightforward: I cut off their gold supply with towers and set up at the mines as needed. Extra barracks and hordes of knights/ogres finished the job nicely. Bloodlust certainly didn't hurt either. Actually one of the computer opponents got bloodlust as well, which was pretty scary -- by then, however, we were built up and could take him on. Josh