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Since SC2's announcement, other RTS games have gone into second plan or disappeared completely from this boards. I thought it might be nice to bring this one back from the grave and have some reasonable discussion going.
What I want to show you, is how stuff that many BW fans loathe (heroes, items, creepcamps, upkeep) plays a big part in WC3's macro game.
Before we start, I'd like to clarify 2 things:
1) This is not a WC3 vs BW/SC2 bashfest, please keep that in mind
2) By "macro" I don't mean the mechanical aspect of it (producing, teching, expanding) but the decisionmaking process behind it (what, when, why).
Part 1: The Third Resource Type
Unlike common thinking, you have 3 resources in WC3, not just 2. Gold and lumber are important, but the third one is the hardest to obtain and more often than not crucial to player's success or failure.
I'm of course talking about experience here. It is essentially a resource, which you can:
a) gather - by killing stuff
b) spend - to level up your heroes, making them stronger and opening new options
c) deny - by preventing your stuff from dying.
It is vital to the gameflow in WC3 just like any other resource type, and quite big part of gameplay focuses on gathering and denying it, making for some interesting mind-games (more on that later).
I put it in the beginning, so it would be easier to understand the following parts as it is one of the focal points for them.
Part 2: Heroes
Heroes play pretty big role in WC3, different for every army as some tend to rely more on them (Undead) while other rely more on their units with heroes playing a supportive role for the most part (Human).
They are a way to gather and spend the aforementioned third resource type - experience, and this involves many crucial decisions which aren't always easy.
1) Should I get heroes?
Usually, you want at least one hero with your army, although Axslav proved in his game vs Grubby that sometimes you can do without them. We will not go into hardcore here and assume that you should.
The real question here is: how many of them? Should you stick to just one? Would 2 be better? Or maybe 3 of them is the way to go? Is it worth it to tech to a higher tier for another hero?
2) When to get heroes?
Timing here is rather important. You always need to consider the expense to benefit ratio. Will purchasing a hero (which costs a significant amount of resources) give me the advantage I need or can I withold with it some more and buy something else instead?
3) Which heroes to get?
What options does a certain hero open for me? Which other heroes he works well with and which hinder him? What hero(es) does my opponent have? What's enemy's army composition? What is he likely to get? What can my opponent do to counter it? Does my hero need high levels to be effective ("breakpoints")?
As you can see, each initial questions opens up some more and all of them are important and should be considered carefully.
Part 3: Creepcamps
Creepcamps are mini-expansions which let you gather a small amount of gold and various amounts of experience, perhaps some items as well as open some important options:
1) Access to an expansion or a shop
2) Creepjack possibility - which can give you big advantage in combat even if your army is considerably weaker than your opponent's
Primary role for creepcamps is seen in the gather/deny experience meta-game, in which you are trying to gain advantage over your opponent. Creepcamps can only be cleared once so by neglecting this possibility, you keep it open for your enemy.
Clearing a creepcamp also opens up a lot of questions:
1) What kind of force do I need to clear it?
2) What are the odds of enemy creepjacking me?
3) How much time is it going to take?
4) What is the possible gain?
Again, we're entering the cost to benefit ratio with a multitude of variables included.
Part 4: Items
Items are also a big part of the macro game. They're vital to both heroes and units and open up a lot of interesting possibilities. But let's look at them from the macro perspective.
1) You can sell them for gold, which means that if a certain item is not of great benefit to you, you can always sell it for a boost to your income
2) You can buy them, which means you sometimes need to choose between purchasing units/tech/heroes and items. You must carefully consider which would be more advantageous for you in specific situations.
Items tie up to the entire hero and creepcamp thing too, as they can make heroes more effective, chance of getting specific items is higher at certain creepcamps etc.
Part 5: Upkeep
Ahh, one of the most loathed things about WC3, the upkeep which keeps increasing as your army size does. It is actually a big part of the economical warfare in this game. It is a tool that forces you into thinking about your economy and the current global in-game situation. Namely, is my economy better than my opponent's? Is it beneficial for me to enter higher upkeep?
You can play with upkeep in different ways, you can either operate on a small scale and not enter higher upkeep, allowing you for more item and tech purchases or consider one of the 2 things if your economy is good enough:
1) Flood enemy with too many units to counter and thus deal the decisive blow. (If you have better economy than your opponent, especially when it's a lot better)
2) Force enemy to enter higher upkeep in order to keep on par in army strength. (If you have similar economy, ideally when yours is a bit better as the upkeep won't hurt you so much)
Summary
I know that this thread doesn't cover everything thoroughly, I tried to keep it brief. I am also aware that it poses more questions than gives answers, but that's why we call it a discussion forum, don't we?
Anyway, feel free to post your thoughts on the matter, discuss them at length or, if you're up to it, expand on the basics I outlined here.
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you know, i've played a grand total of like 2 wc3 ladder games, both random, and despite better resource macro and micro always end up losing. now i know why 
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WC3 is actually more complex game than it seems at first glance. It has a pretty deep meta-game and a lot of tiny details that add up to form a full picture but most people just don't notice them.
It takes some experience and getting used to 
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Thank you for this post. Alot of hate from Wc3 is unwarranted, it's a great RTS. Shame lots of people can't grasp it because it's different from Starcraft.
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On September 13 2010 16:23 thedeadhaji wrote:Upkeep management seems so complex and fragile, but it's been an issue that has captured my attention since watching that th000 vs moon match (first war3 game I saw in 4 years )
If you get into it, you'll notice that upkeep is a pretty smart and interesting system. Since you can't have really huge armies in WC3 due to low max cap and units taking quite a lot of supply it's a way to make you think about getting expansion which would allow you to operate without hindrance with increased unit count. Without it, you could just max out your population out of 1 base and not give it a second thought.
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I agree. Wc3 is very complex, maybe on a level with starcraft. But starcraft (thanks to the korean scene) is far more explored. Competition raises the bar for all.
Maybe if wc3 (I'm just imagining here) would have been released before sc1, things would have been different.
I'm not saying sc1 is in any way underrated or doesn't deserve its status. Sc is a 100% RTS while Wc3 has some RPG elements in it.
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I love WC3 because there art alot more of those OOOOOOOHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH moments.
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On September 13 2010 13:12 Manit0u wrote:
1) Should I get heroes?
Usually, you want at least one hero with your army, although Axslav proved in his game vs Grubby that sometimes you can do without them. We will not go into hardcore here and assume that you should.
The real question here is: how many of them? Should you stick to just one? Would 2 be better? Or maybe 3 of them is the way to go? Is it worth it to tech to a higher tier for another hero?
Could you please direct me to that game? I'd love to see someone play a viable game without heros... especially against Grubby. I did a youtube search and couldn't seem to find it.
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Yes, wc<3 is awesome. There is nothing quite like the micro some of the pros pull off to save a hero at 1hp with a zeppelin with 10hp during the middle of some insane battle.
I've always wondered why warcraft3 did not get as much attention as starcraft. You point out some great points. I like the fact that you put experience as a resource; I never looked at it that way but it makes sense.
The main reason why wc3 does not have the same fanbase is in my opinion because from a spectator point of view things happen too quickly and if you don't know what to look for it can be confusing to watch. Especially the use of items, which is hugely important, is not visible to a new player and it may all be very confusing.
Startcraft, from a spectator point of view, is more straightforward; you can get a good indication of who is beating who by looking at the food count and the position of the armies on the map.
Starcraft and warcraft are two completely different rts's (which makes sense from blizzards perspective, too; why make 2 games that are the same, right?) and they are both the best in their genre (econ rts, hero rts)
I've played wc3 for years (not on any level worth mentioning though) and love to watch vods of the pros. It truly is an epic game.
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... although Axslav proved in his game vs Grubby that sometimes you can do without them.
Do you by chance have a vod for that? Or some guide about this strategy?
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Hungary11304 Posts
I followed wc3 quite a bit. I think the complexity of the resources, especially creeps, also lead to the perceived "stagnation of maps". Since the allocation would be so complex (which race can creep which camps faster than another one, which item drops completely unbalance a certain game stage, etc.), you would rather keep the old, proven ones, instead of introducing new, highly imbalanced ones.
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The reason that the map pool stagnated is simply because Blizzard hardly ever offered new maps. In the brief time that wc3 Korean pro leagues existed a great deal of maps were made. Many of those maps were interesting and well balanced, but the pro leagues died and Blizzard only incorporated Goldshire into the map pool. And even that map was only in the 2v2 map pool. Furthermore there were a number of imbalances in the old maps which didn't seem to bother Blizzard. UD vs OC @ Lost Temple for example was absolutely ridiculous.
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On September 13 2010 17:22 slappy wrote:Show nested quote +On September 13 2010 13:12 Manit0u wrote:
1) Should I get heroes?
Usually, you want at least one hero with your army, although Axslav proved in his game vs Grubby that sometimes you can do without them. We will not go into hardcore here and assume that you should.
The real question here is: how many of them? Should you stick to just one? Would 2 be better? Or maybe 3 of them is the way to go? Is it worth it to tech to a higher tier for another hero?
Could you please direct me to that game? I'd love to see someone play a viable game without heros... especially against Grubby. I did a youtube search and couldn't seem to find it.
Axslav is the only one who tried this and went into ladder to get to the top level without heros.
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10387 Posts
I wish there were more things like this, its hard trying to learn WC3 when there's hardly any guides to follow at all, just reps and VODs..
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I think it's complex and wonderful game, but it also had way too many little details for blizzard to balance and control. Matchups occassionally degrade into extremely defensive towering and there are moments with at least seemingly very little dynamic. Hero choises are extremely stagnant in most matchups and lucky item drops have pretty big effect on games.
I mostly think that 4 races, 4 heroes on each and such focus on small gameplay details was just too much of a combination. Blizzard simply couldn't get everything fixed without breaking a dozen other things. On good moments it's a beautiful game, but to balance it out it also has got more than enough bad moments that leave it one step below Starcraft in my books.
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Erm your post reads more like a beginner's guide to WC3 macro. >_< If you play WC3 now you will quickly fall into the standard units/heroes/creep patterns and then the macro part of the game quickly becomes simplified.
On September 13 2010 19:15 ArvickHero wrote:
I wish there were more things like this, its hard trying to learn WC3 when there's hardly any guides to follow at all, just reps and VODs..
http://www.youtube.com/user/WCReplaysVideo
Is a pretty good source of VoDs with audio commentaries, but it's true that there's not many written guides about the game.
MYM has some pretty good guides too: http://www.mymym.com/en/article.html
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You can play in a style that somewhat resembles macroing in sc:bw in Warcraft3's FFA games. Typically you will need 2-3 production building of each kind (at least) when you transition into late-game and the battles are very quick when almost anything can die in 1 second.
In FFA games the upkeep mechanism also plays a more crucial role; far more important than upkeep in 1v1.
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On September 13 2010 16:51 Pawshter wrote:
I love WC3 because there art alot more of those OOOOOOOHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH moments.
Starcraft has just as many
it's just in WC3 it's more like those Dota/Hon moments whereas in Starcraft it's an army getting carpet-bombed with psi storms
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I love WC3, its one of my favorite games of all times. A lot of people dont like the upkeep/hero system but I thought It was a great addition. Not for every RTS, but It forces you to get out of your base to gather that extra resource, XP. It also made a lot of strange strats a lot more viable, which made the game more interesting IMO.
On a side note:
I havnt played WC3 since I got the SC2 beta, and I was watching some VODs of WC3 the other day and I was amazed by how slow it seemed next to SC2. Battles in SC2 would have been completely over by the time the first unit died in WC3, but I never felt WC3 was slow at all when I played it.
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EPT
