I don’t know if I’m just a better RTS player than I was, unlikely given that Starcraft gave me trouble recently. But I had very little trouble with the Warcraft II campaign in remastered. It’s not just the economy rebalance changes which I did notice, but it seems like the AI does not attack as aggressively as they used to. The only exception is the last human mission which seems as hard or harder than I remember it. I’ve owned all three versions of the game and it has been years since I played, but I feel like the AI is going easy on me.
Warcraft 1 on the other hand, feels harder than it used to be. I remember the old AI was laughably broken, and now they attack constantly. Of course this becomes a non issue once you get summoners and heal spells. They’re so overpowered that conquering enemy bases without using your army feels trivial.
1 Like
Some of the balance changes reduced the costs of units and upgrades, so the WC2 campaign definitely is easier.
If the WC1 campaign is any harder, it is hard to tell with the addition of control groups and a larger selection limit.
Agreed, I feel the same way
I already said I know about the balance changes and that’s not why it’s easy. The enemy seems to attack less often and upgrade slower too. I also noticed it is harder for me to reach the Demigod/Thundergod rank by the end of the campaign. I understand the scoring system is based on kills and razings, but even after destroying everything in the game, I still can only get to Warchief/Admiral. This is definitely a sign that enemy is not producing as many units.
It’s a known bug since the initial release in 1995 that Blizzard did not bother to fix in the remaster. Just google: warcraft 2 ai not working after savegame.
The AI will stop farming wood and producing units. It’s very obvious in the later missions of Tides of Darkness and immediately when you start playing Beyond the Dark Portal.
Warcraft 1 campaign is very easy. I replayed the remaster in one day. You just have to spam archers with both weapon upgrades. Between 9 and 12 archers will demolish everything. Add a catapult later on and spam summoned units in the last 2 missions.
Starcraft is a breeze. The most difficult missions in that game are actually the Enslavers Dark Vengeance custom maps released separately.
Warcraft 3 is boring unless played on hard. The expansion has 2 or 3 difficult missions but nothing close to the Starcraft custom maps.
In Starcraft 2 I did all the achievements and played all the missions on Brutal difficulty. Some Nova Covert Ops missions were a bit challenging.
Warcraft 2 is definitely the hardest Blizzard RTS. Tides of Darkness is fine but Beyond the Dark Portal is frustrating. Try playing each mission in one shot without savegame functionality.
The known bug is irrelevant because as I said, it only affects the remaster, not the classic version. It is definitely less challenging now, as I am going through the expansion campaigns, and there are only a few exceptions where the enemy actually tries to attack me and not just send peons to steal my gold.
I’m in Act IV of the human expansion campaign now. The Orc campaign wasn’t that hard, and the human campaign was not that much harder. There were a few times I underestimated the AI’s aggression and had to restart because I lacked defenses, but usually only a tower or two plus your starting troops is all you need to keep your base safe. I am almost certain that the Battle.net edition was harder than this.
I can safely say that Warcraft II is nowhere near the hardest RTS, at least not anymore. Starcraft: Brood War is extremely difficult as the enemy sends frequent attacks and their base defense is very hard to penetrate. I have had entire forces of hundreds of units completely wiped out because I did not plan the attack carefully enough. This is not the case for Warcraft as you can almost always overwhelm any base with sheer numbers. Starcraft 2 seemed very hard as well even on normal difficulty, but only because there were way too many units and techs to keep track of.
The base campaign has always been pretty damn easy. The real difficulty is over in dark portal. Some of those maps are nearly impossible unless you know exactly how to cheese them.
Doesn’t reloading a save break the AI?