Warcraft 1

[MilesBeyond]

I'm addicted to Warcraft 1.

I don't understand why. Its gameplay is pretty rudimentary. Its UI is frustratingly dated. It is, in every conceivable way, inferior to Warcraft 2. And yet, there's something magical about it. I can't stop playing.

My basic assessment of the game's strategy is this: It's a sort of rock-paper-scissors thing where Archers/Spearmen beat almost everything, Catapults hard counter Archers/Spearmen, and Knights/Raiders hard counter Catapults. Conjurers/Warlocks mix things up a bit. Water Elementals and especially Daemons are badass, but come super late.

Catapults are ridiculously powerful, but personally I dont like using them because they can cause insane collateral.

My thoughts on the differences between the races:

Archer vs Spearman: Archer. Yep, an early Warcraft game with a statistical difference between units! The Archer has one more range than the Spearman, but the Spearman has one more damage than the Archer. In the campaign, I definitely prefer the Archer. That extra range is hugely helpful. In battles large enough that the enemy is pretty much guaranteed to come into close contact with you, I suppose Spearmen might be better, but I can't see that happening outside of multiplayer and I can't imagine WC1 has a particularly thriving multiplayer scene.

Cleric vs Necrolyte:

Healing vs Raise Dead: Healing. Unlike WC2, Healing is actually a pretty great spell here, and far more mana-efficient. Raise Dead is pretty awesome too, and Skeletons are great fodder for absorbing enemy fire, and can be sent ahead as scouts. But movement speed is so slow in this game that replacing dead units can be a significant time investment, which puts Healing ahead by a hair.

Far Seeing spells are identical.

Invisibility vs Unholy Armor: Unholy Armor. Invisibility is very powerful (and very annoying to face), but it can be pretty niche, and requires some planning. For example, sending four invisible Conjurers behind the enemy base and having them flank the enemy with waves of Water Elementals can be devastating, but it also requires significant investment. Unholy Armor can be slapped down anywhere and immediately turn the tide of battle. Plus four Daemons with Unholy Armor can go through pretty much anything, and is a great EZ mode way to plow through the last Orc campaign mission. Although it occurs to me that I probably haven't experimented enough with Invisible Catapults yet...

Conjurer vs Warlock:

I don't know if Scorpions and Spiders are 100% identical, but I do know that they're almost 100% useless. Moving on...

Rain of Fire vs Poison Cloud: Rain of Fire by a landslide. Far more consistent and far more powerful than Poison Cloud. The only thing Poison Cloud has going for it is that it's cast and forget - a Warlock can summon one and then scurry away before the enemy can investigate. It also covers a much smaller area, which means that it can be more useful in a battle as its less likely to hit your own troops - but it still has a nasty tendency to either wander towards your soldiers, or away from the battle entirely. Some people overlook these spells entirely to conserve mana for the major summoning, but they can be very effective, especially when combined with support casters: Invisible Conjurers to hide and scorch the enemy base, or Unholy Armor Warlocks to smother the enemy in poison and walk out unmolested.

Water Elemental vs Daemon: Daemon. Daemon, Daemon, Daemon. Don't get me wrong, Water Elementals are pretty great, and in some ways better because they're ranged and so are less likely to fall victim to the game's atrocious pathfinding. But Daemons are ridiculously powerful, ridiculously healthy, and pair very, very well with Unholy Armor.


I feel like this gives a general sense of the game's balance: Between Archers and Healing, Humans have a good early game edge, and need to use that to try and cripple the Orcs before Unholy Armor and Daemons can come out, at which point the Orcs dominate.

 

[RuySan]

I liked W1 much more than W2, and the missions without base building spiced things a lot.

When W2 was released I already had played C&C and the game felt way weaker and more simplistic because of that. Besides, I may remember this incorrectly but weren't the differences between the two factions in w2 mostly cosmetic?

 

[Gunnar]

Water Elementals are way better than Daemons from what I remember. The ranged attack makes all the difference. Aren't they also a cheaper cast?

 

[MilesBeyond]

Water Elementals are way better than Daemons from what I remember. The ranged attack makes all the difference. Aren't they also a cheaper cast?

Not totally sure on the casting costs. One of the disadvantages of some of these older games is that the mechanics aren't always transparent. I've found some pretty complete stats here and there but they seem to be missing out on specifics for casting costs and movement speeds. The second in particular I'm interested in, since I'd like to have a more concrete idea of how much the upgrades speed up Knights and Raiders (lol instead of doing work I'm obsessing over minute stats from a game no one plays anymore. Yay).

The big issue with Water Elementals is Catapults. They're ranged to begin with, which is an issue as it means they tend to remain stationary while fighting and make for easy targets. Also, Daemons have enough health to survive a Catapult blast, Water Elementals don't. A single well-timed Catapult hit can totally wipe out an Elemental strike force. And, of course, Daemons have access to Unholy Armor. You can cause some real havoc with Invisible Water Elementals, mind you, but it's not always as devastating.

 

[Gunnar]

Water Elementals are way better than Daemons from what I remember. The ranged attack makes all the difference. Aren't they also a cheaper cast?

Not totally sure on the casting costs. One of the disadvantages of some of these older games is that the mechanics aren't always transparent. I've found some pretty complete stats here and there but they seem to be missing out on specifics for casting costs and movement speeds. The second in particular I'm interested in, since I'd like to have a more concrete idea of how much the upgrades speed up Knights and Raiders (lol instead of doing work I'm obsessing over minute stats from a game no one plays anymore. Yay).

The big issue with Water Elementals is Catapults. They're ranged to begin with, which is an issue as it means they tend to remain stationary while fighting and make for easy targets. Also, Daemons have enough health to survive a Catapult blast, Water Elementals don't. A single well-timed Catapult hit can totally wipe out an Elemental strike force. And, of course, Daemons have access to Unholy Armor. You can cause some real havoc with Invisible Water Elementals, mind you, but it's not always as devastating.

It's been years since I played the game but I don't remember needing more than 2 water elementals at a time to wipe the AI. They move faster than Daemons, you can move them inside the catapult range. I believe they also attack faster than Daemons? Anyway you can handle the AI by massing archers on every level and then releasing the Summon at the end to finish it, whichever one you have should be enough to finish them off.

 

[MilesBeyond]

It's been years since I played the game but I don't remember needing more than 2 water elementals at a time to wipe the AI. They move faster than Daemons, you can move them inside the catapult range. I believe they also attack faster than Daemons? Anyway you can handle the AI by massing archers on every level and then releasing the Summon at the end to finish it, whichever one you have should be enough to finish them off.

Absolutely. It really is kind of a moot point since both will fall to the AI pretty easily. I suppose I would say that Water Elementals are stronger but more frail, so I suppose which is better depends on your preference. I like Daemons for the way you can just send four of them in to one base and let them run rampant and focus on the rest of your army as it attacks another base.

 

[vota DC]

Both daemon and water elemental require to use ALL your mana to summon them.

I liked W1 much more than W2, and the missions without base building spiced things a lot.

When W2 was released I already had played C&C and the game felt way weaker and more simplistic because of that. Besides, I may remember this incorrectly but weren't the differences between the two factions in w2 mostly cosmetic?

Magic is totally different in W2 and give different combo. Only two units are different: death knight have more range than wizard and ranger deal more damage while berserker regenerate.
In W1 there is
archer vs spearman
cleric vs necrolyte
conjurer vs warlock
scorpion vs spider
elemental vs daemon

Also there is a ton of land units and some are a variant of standard unit (brigand = footman/grunt with less health).
Instead of spider and scorpion they could make you summon slime....that really is a distraction for enemy, expecially AI.

 

[MilesBeyond]

Both daemon and water elemental require to use ALL your mana to summon them.

Magic is totally different in W2 and give different combo. Only two units are different: death knight have more range than wizard and ranger deal more damage while berserker regenerate.
In W1 there is
archer vs spearman
cleric vs necrolyte
conjurer vs warlock
scorpion vs spider
elemental vs daemon

Also there is a ton of land units and some are a variant of standard unit (brigand = footman/grunt with less health).
Instead of spider and scorpion they could make you summon slime....that really is a distraction for enemy, expecially AI.

That's not really a fair statement, there are substantial differences between Death Knight and Mages beyond range. The spells they could cast were pretty different and had a huge impact on potential strategy. You also left out what's probably the biggest difference, Ogre Mages and Paladins. Bloodlust is such a ridiculously powerful spell it's not even funny.

Also the difference between Scorpion and Spider exists but is pretty meaningless, considering either way four of them could be held off by a single Footman/Grunt.

But I definitely loved the neutral units you'd bump into. I also enjoyed how neutral skeletons had different art than skeletons that had been raised by the Orcs. And I also loved the idea of Fire Elementals, kinda fleshed out the world a bit and showed that Water Elementals weren't the only ones, just the only ones the humans could control.

 

[vota DC]

That is what I mean about "magic is totally different and give different combo". Statewise paladin and ogre are the same, the magic they cast does the difference. I think that magic in warcraft 2 is even more different: there is no "copy". In warcraft 1 you have far seeing and dark vision that are the same, in W2 even the scout spells have small difference. Also in W1 both factions have two summons. The only identical spell maybe is death and decay and blizzard but here come the combo to make the difference again.

 

[Lagi]

warcraft 1 => with this War1Gus
work well with GoG installer (not work at all with demo data.war file).

UI is great: right click works as default order
50x unit selection limit
stats dispaly
town hall can be build
resolution up tp 4x (screenshot below is 3x i think).
auto casting !! (if you auto cast wizard spells it CTD).
waypoints
production queue
queue with shift building of buildings

i think its rebalanced a little, because i remember footman was worthless in vanilla, but dunno.

Spoiler

unlimited peasants in gold mine. FUN overloaded

 

[Lagi]

with War1Gus someone pickup an old ore from the ground, and melt it into gold.


i have complete both campagin in war1gus

opensource have lots of great feature
save map position F2..3...4 - like in brood war with shift
alt+ I - nexty idle worker !!!
ctrl + V - view ports !!! screen below. I never use it in any rts before, its great. even thou war1 have tiny maps, and I have mega screen :D

alt+F - toggle fullscreen (current version always launch in window :/ )
-------
there are some bugs and some CTD.. but its all minor
some keys short cut not worked

rebalanced stats are great, i just start playing again w1 with vanilla stats - what an awful game. Just go for catapults, 1shot everything, no min range, 120 HP! more than knights.

rebalanced options nerf catapults to sane levels (min range, slower projectile, less dmg). Reduce absurd knights armour from 5>1. and give more supply demand for knight and catapults which is great.

after some games, I still think Footman are useless. Its a starting unit i get it, but late game there is 0 reason to produce this guys. You might say, they are to create meat shield, but why bother if for 2x footman cost you can have Knights who do more dmg, are 50% faster, more HP, and have more armor? ANYWAY, even if you need meat shields, then use minor summons -> instantly summon for free 5x scorpion/spiders that will eat enemy projectiles. Mana regenerate too fast to be taken into consideration here.

what need to be done is to make footman more cost/effective than knights => for same money Footman will beat Knights. Heresy? not necessary. Because you never have enough space for alll footmans. Plus knights have tons of applications because of theirs speed.

you cannot cast unholy armor on demon which is good.

thing that irk me is that Town Hall is cheaper than farms. I try to play without building more than 1 TownHall, but it dont help a lot. I destroy 1st TH, and build second one close to another mine.

playing with 1 TH at least fix following issues:

• its better to build TH than lumber mill for wood drop point.
• building farms make sens - REALLY its better to spam TH than farms for food supply
• building wall make sens - TH has 2500 HP!!! its the best wall ever.
• building road make sens - you dont need to build TH close to road

also this unlimited workers in mines.... feels odd after a while, you just shower in gold.

------------------------------------------

I think we all agree that would be nice if Ork and Human units differ more from each other. I think infantry and knights for humans should have more armor, and orc have more damage/speed.
Already spearman and archer are different, because spearman has less range. I think spearman could have more speed to compensate.

 

[vota DC]

In w1 footmen and grunts are less useless than 2 since they cost 400 only (like peons) and knights can't spell magic. But they are still useless. Also archers are more like Dune 2 turrets!
You can try to make grunts and footmen like those slimes you find in dungeon: less damage but very high armor.
Spearmen should have better rate of fire than archers. It makes sense since you throw a spear faster than reloading a crossbow.

It would be funny to create a new faction but It is always a pain to make an ai that use units that aren't supposed being used. There are many dungeon units unlike Warcraft 2 that has only daemons and hero units. I managed with Dark Reign because I changed Togran faction that wasn't a proper faction but used units from the other two but AI was already included.

 

[Lagi]

I love that you assume i will make a mod from this mod :D (is it called fork?)

its been a decades since i play w2.
nah... slime has 10 armor and 150 HP... this is not fun for the basic unit. Core unit need to be "default" boring, so everything else feels like a nice feature.
faster RoF, thats a good idea for spearman TBH.
3rd faction?

Spoiler

warcraft 1.5 Brood of Darkness

Lets pretend the AI is not an issue. Whom would that new faction be? undeads and demon are included in orcs. This would require some units shuffling. Like make orcs a proper savage, druids, monster faction. and create undeads from demons skeletons etc.

autism

hmm... anyway it would need some more units. and only with copy pasting we would not achieve any quality tech tree.



damage formula:
random ( min dmg, max dmg )

min dmg = piercing dmg /2 round down + max from [ (base dmg - armor) /2 round down or 1 ]

max dmg = piercing dmg + max from [ (base dmg - armor) or 1 ]

so archers and caster always ignore armor, because they deal piercing dmg.


for some reason if i launch the game from safe graphic mode, my change to max game speed works (otherwise dont)
script/menus/options/line 171
gamespeed = menu:addSlider(15, 275, menu:getWidth() - 16 * 2, 9, 16, 20 + 18 * 1.0,
this 275 was 75 max speed

attack speed and movement speed is adjusted in anim.lua
f.ex. line 351 {attackspeed = 10, the higher the slower the attack
speed = 10, movement speed higher the slower
attackspeed = 25,
coolofftime = 49, attack cool off

 

[vota DC]

For Warcraft 2 wargus I did two things.
Ogre had regeneration, 120 hp but very slow Speed (8) and pathetic rate of fire. Grunt instead had 11 Speed and fast Attack. So you used Ogre to absorb damage and magic while grunt for flanking and damage .
That mod was asymetric:
-knights were much stronger than grunts and Ogre and their healing was better but they had less mana (so less powerful exorcism) and Orcs had cheap Ogre so more bloodlust
-Grunts could win against footmen but footmen were very good to absorb damage.
-Trolls had fast rate of fire while archers were super cheap with more range and crappy rate of fire and health (they had 5+1 range)
-ballista was cheaper and faster than catapult but a lot weaker but could Attack Flying units
-skeletons never decayed and had regeneration
-Humans had Priest that could use some magic of paladin and some of the mage. It was quite strong in combat for being a magic characters.
-Necromancer was cheaper but only Raise dead and a cheap haste with long duration for peon
-Orcs had nazgul with 11 speed and stronger than a grunt in combat but very expensive.
-human destroyer had only 3 range but 11 Speed and was cheaper while human battleship was stronger and slower than orc One.
-Orc had both turtle and Hippo as submarine. Turtle only had 3 range and 5 Speed but didn't cost oil while Hippo was a faster and more expensive submarine and had regeneration too.
-Gryphon was cheaper and faster than dragon but weaker.

In another mod knights and Ogre had 120 HP and deal High base damage but only 1 Pierce damage while grunt had 50 hp and high Pierce damage, grunts has something like 8 armor. Upgrade added only +3 basic damage. I don't remember the exact numbers, must check It.
As result archers killed grunts and grunts could kill knights in 1vs1 while knights were even more effective against archers.

 

[Lagi]

how did you make new units? priest, nazdul, hippo?

Footman still cost little less knights? 600 vs 850?
so priest reduce some spells available for paladins and mage? or can use the same spells?

 

[Arbiter]

Both daemon and water elemental require to use ALL your mana to summon them.

I liked W1 much more than W2, and the missions without base building spiced things a lot.

Magic is totally different in W2 and give different combo. Only two units are different: death knight have more range than wizard and ranger deal more damage while berserker regenerate.
In W1 there is
archer vs spearman
cleric vs necrolyte
conjurer vs warlock
scorpion vs spider
elemental vs daemon

Upgrade costs for Humans and Orcs were also different in W2. IIRC they are identical in W1.

 

[Arbiter]

I liked W1 much more than W2, and the missions without base building spiced things a lot.

Do you remember that Sunnyglade mission that you start without any Peasants and need to rescue at least one from an Orc base before you can start building your own? It was so difficult it got nerfed in one of the patches.

 

[Arbiter]

I'm addicted to Warcraft 1.

Imagine playing W1 and imagining that this dark fantasy world is also inhabited by Night Elves, Nagas, Worgen, Tauren and Pandaren.

 

[Lagi]

I liked W1 much more than W2, and the missions without base building spiced things a lot.

Do you remember that Sunnyglade mission that you start without any Peasants and need to rescue at least one from an Orc base before you can start building your own? It was so difficult it got nerfed in one of the patches.

that is an interesting mission indeed.

Spoiler

nice touch is that spearman, behind the wall. who will start shooting at your peasants when you rescue them

Not too hard though (in war1gus).

I find some of the orcs dungeon mission to be the hardest, because lack of healing. In general warcraft 1 is very easy, relaxing game - im a very poor player, but i manage to beat both campaigns in one go.

Imagine playing W1 and imagining that this dark fantasy world is also inhabited by Night Elves, Nagas, Worgen, Tauren and Pandaren.

yes, there is something pleasant in the monogamous race factions. They feel more believable? w2 from the very beginning with the eleven archers and gnomes feel odd to me. If they were a separate factions, then fine.
to precise i have no problem with that human use horses as mounts f.ex. or gryphons.

 

[Arbiter]

Let's not forget the prophetic phrase uttered in the intro: "welcome to the world of WarCraft".

 

[Naraya]

Is the mod configurable in any way? I don't want any rebalances, just higher res and other QoL features.

 

[Lagi]

show command keys - yellow letter on leftside ui panel buttons. Handy.
allow multiple town halls - dont recommend more than 1x town hall break the game. its not a starcraft you dont need expansion. you can always destroy own TH and rebuild it near nexy gold mine.
use simplified color scheme - make your units always blue, and enemey red, or something like that
rebalanced unit stats - turn off for OP catapults
fullscreen - game dont remember this setting. you need to alway manually tick it ON. Unless you made custom shortcut with -F parameter.
show orders - ugly line on map showing where units are going
show damage - floating dmg numbers - very handy
train queue - unit are produced in second, so handy to save you time clicking barrack units

and in video tab i personally played on 960x540 wide (3x wide)
simplified auto targeting - i have no clue what it is
block sight in dungeons - normally you see through walls. Nice
fog of war type - mmmm... not sure. i think its a graphical nuance around the black cloud edge?
max selection is how many unit you can select - i go 50 all the time. 12 unit starcraft-esque balanced command group - i dont care.
shader - if you like blur. for me only crispy pixels.


when you install war1gus, there is shortcut for War1gus (Safe graphics mode)
i dont know why, but if you launch the game by it. The game allow you to increase the game speed above the max limit set by slider in menu (75 units of "speed"). which is handy to speed up the boring build up or gathering resource phase, or walking in dungeons.