Rebalancing warcraft 2: orc edition

[Pandaprewmaster325]

You know if im gonna include campaign missions in the mod and make some unique units for some maps like royal guards for siege of stromgarde these would be footmen and knights I posted about it before my idea for these "king's guards" is one footman should be able to kill 2-3 grunts alone to make it more difficult in assaulting the city stats wise im not so sure im thinking about footmen with 75 HP 6 base armor and damage of a knight , the mounted royal guard (knight) will  be something along the lines of 120-140 health 8 base armor and attack of 15-20 I think these stats won't allow these units to kill off 2-3 of their counterparts but I really want to make such cool units these will be used in both stromgarde , and the siege of the capital city.

For the last orc mission it would need some overhauls like making the city walled off with much larger base multiple barracks huge array of towers question is  can the editor allow for such thing to happen without reaching the limit of units on the map as I heard that maximum one player can have units through the editor is 75 units per player.

[Mistral]

depends on how many players there is on map
max units in editor is 600
and its divided per each player
600 / 8 = 75
and even if some players have like 1-2 units map editor still not allows others to have more than 75
but its only when 8 players on map
if you got like 2 players you can place 300 units each

[Pandaprewmaster325]

depends on how many players there is on map
max units in editor is 600
and its divided per each player
600 / 8 = 75
and even if some players have like 1-2 units map editor still not allows others to have more than 75
but its only when 8 players on map
if you got like 2 players you can place 300 units each

Ahhh so it shrinks the more there is players well I think fall of stromgarde has like 2 players? And siege of the capital city has 4? Then 150 for each player? Well 150 for nation of lordaeron would be enough to place down many towers and expand the base.

[Pandaprewmaster325]

A thought crossed my mind about knights vs ogres matchup well instead of changing health or armor why not just make ogres slower? The most hilarious part of warcraft 2 is watching ogres who are like this massive towering beings with a belly that can absorb arrows and hits from swords and hammers like nothing running faster than the nimble human footman.

I don't think an ogre can run faster than a human knowing the difference between both weight , its either ogres have impressive leg workout routine allowing them to match the speed of horses or are naturally born as athletic runners.

Now to the real part without changing any other part of the game just the knight and ogre matchup only what could be done? Well someone proposed cost reduction for knights but ogres would still win and are more cost efficient too , counting they're always on bloodlust when they fight , but what if knights can escape unfavorable fights? That's what I think should be considered by reducing ogre speed to 10 , knights would be able to outrun or out maneuver ogres basically once bloodlust is casted knights who still have 13 speed  would run away and ogres can't catch them.

Well on paper that should be a good solution orcs would have to force humans into fights block off certain sections from the map to prevent knights from escaping this also would allow knights to be a more effective raiding unit compared to an ogre with 10 movement speed  , this would still take some skill from a human player to micro his knights well and avoid fights of course this is all on paper and not proven by tests or trials so who knows how things turn out to be?.

[Pandaprewmaster325]

So I had an idea the other day what could happen if you change buildings stats too? Here is what I came up with:

Orc buildings would be weaker than human buildings , human structures on the other hand would be way more tanky than orc buildings but why?

If you consider the story of warcraft 2 the humans are on the defensive for the most of the game the only time the humans go on the offensive is the final chapter of tides of darkness as such I believe story should be integrated well within the gameplay of a faction now the orcs on the other hand for the entirety of their campaigns are on the offensive all the time why would somebody always going forward build high quality defensive structures or fortresses ? You can say to keep certain parts of the front stable and be locations for gathering large armies but thats not really needed in warcraft 2.

So the orc buildings would be these hastily built weak buildings that are suitable for building on mass picture this if a human town hall needs 4 demo squads to be destroyed the orc one will need 3 or if a human barracks can be destroyed by 10 catapult shots an orc barracks would need 5.

Human defensive structures (towers) would be also better than orc ones for each one human tower orcs need 2 of their towers to compete basically 1 human tower (guard tower) = 2 orc towers (also guard tower) this means human bases will be harder to siege meanwhile orc bases can be destroyed easily the pay off is orc buildings are cheaper and take less time to build.

You could reduce orc buildings armor and health for this while reducing their cost and building time , human buildings would get more health and armor too while taking slightly longer to build.

I didn't really think very hard about the concept of this rebalance of buildings but it would be pretty fun to try something like this  For example orc tower rush can be high risk high reward while humans can have much easier time pulling off a tower rush.

Humans can fight pretty well in their town while orcs if the enemy gets to town consider couple buildings gone.

One building I wouldn't touch would be farms as it is too cruel to make orc farms easy to lose imagine if  half a blizzard can destroy 2-3 orc farms entire strategies could be made to pop cap orcs.

Im not gonna include this in the mod as I think it would be too much , for me buildings are fine in this game and hardly need a change maybe the scout tower could be more useful granting more vision than guard tower or cannon tower.


This is just a theory or a concept thrown out there for people that enjoy theorizing about flipping warcraft 2 balance on its head.

[Mistral]

its good for custom campanign not for multiplayer, if humans get too strong tower rush then balance will be fucked up on to human side now

also if you say storywise human on def then what about beyond dark portal campanign?
you can say they got into portal basically without nothing they need build all from 0

so if you play campanign its can be good to have orc weak buildings in tides of darkness and on beyond dark portal its should be other way (only humans campanign though, in orc campanign they are still in offensive mode mostly)

if you really want to be accurate storywise though, you can just change stats in each mission so they more plot consistent, for example in orc final mission enemy buildings can be even more stronger (humans basically protect their final hope - the capital, its walls cannot be too weak right?) and etc etc

[Pandaprewmaster325]

its good for custom campanign not for multiplayer, if humans get too strong tower rush then balance will be fucked up on to human side now

also if you say storywise human on def then what about beyond dark portal campanign?
you can say they got into portal basically without nothing they need build all from 0

so if you play campanign its can be good to have orc weak buildings in tides of darkness and on beyond dark portal its should be other way (only humans campanign though, in orc campanign they are still in offensive mode mostly)

if you really want to be accurate storywise though, you can just change stats in each mission so they more plot consistent, for example in orc final mission enemy buildings can be even more stronger (humans basically protect their final hope - the capital, its walls cannot be too weak right?) and etc etc

Well the humans somewhat go into the offensive in beyond the dark portal but have to act in a defensive manner as the orcs press them hard thats stated by the narrator.

I think some missions could use unique buildings like lordaeron castle having an attack or something else.

The orcs in general are known for being aggressive more than humans add on it humans being better at architecture work and masonry as their buildings in the game consist of stone while orc ones look more like wood and other crappy material I mean the temple of the damned is bones XD.

I think humans having strong tower rush could balance out the game if humans win early game and orcs win late game that be fair also its not a problem ogre mage spam been the meta for so long why not give humans some unbalanced crap they could enjoy?

[Pandaprewmaster325]

I have been thinking about maybe not increasing the grunts/ogres gold cost hmmm not too sure about it in a way I want orc melee to be quality over quantity but I think you can do just fine if no cost is increased for the changes of these 2 units well the whole idea of the orc rebalance is to make faction gameplay center around grunt/ogre in a nice and subtle way to connect to lore and story of orcs relying on brute strength and such to get by.

Finalized thoughts and ideas will be made once I get to test these things when? If it goes smoothly the mod should be getting made around February or march 2025 , if we count the time I need to playtest warcraft 3 mod and its story not only for playtesting purposes but because I want to replay warcraft 3 story anyway , I think it should take a month or so to wrap it up and put it on hive.


Since warcraft 2 is a light game downlading should be no problem and getting it working is also smooth process my estimate to making this idea a real data mod would be 2 weeks hope I can implement everything I said in this and the human post really looking forward for it.