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When I get the WC3/TFT "Battle Chest", how should I proceed with the installation as newbie? I'm completely new to WC3/TFT and RTS-games in general, so I want to play through all single-player campaigns (WC3 + TFT) first before I make some matches in the Battle.net.
1.) Should I install BOTH games right from the beginning (WC3 and the TFT expansion) or should I install WC3 first, play its campaigns and then upgrade to TFT and play its campaigns? I assume you can play the WC3-only campaigns in unmodified form, even if you have upgraded to TFT?
2.) The new 1.16 patches are rather huge in download size (I'm currently using a 56K dial-up modem again). Do I need to download BOTH the latest 1.16 WC3 (17 MB size) and 1.16 TFT (34 MB size) patch, or is it enough to download the latest TFT patch in case I've installed both programs right from the beginning (see my first question)?
And a question about the official WC3/TFT strategy books that come with the "Battle Chest": Are they good guides (excluding the fact that the various statistical infos and numbers for the units change anyway from patch to patch)?
"Man only plays when in the full meaning of the word he is a man, and he is only completely a man when he plays." -- Friedrich von Schiller
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1: The order shouldn't make a difference playing the campaigns from what I've played. The armor types for sure are different for regular and frozen throne, so at least that doesn't change, but the tomes do. Strategies for campaigns on normal stay the same. On a side note, frozen throne and regular have different desktop windows.
2: don't know about this, it might change some of #1's answers. You might need the patch to do the whole frozen throne orc campaign.
Strategy question, they are pretty bad, look around the internet for better strategies.
I may be dead, but I'm not old (source: see lavcat)
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If you're new to the game, watch a few high level replays. Try www.replayers.com for some nice ones.
People may disagree on how valuable watching that 701st replay is, but there's no question you can learn a huge amount from watching, say, 12. Get a smattering of the races, mostly for build orders, hero and skill choice, and just random tidbits like rally-flagging your hero and whatnot. Learn what to fight with what, in a general sense. The intuitive counters aren't always the best ones.
Strategy guides are always awful. Don't even bother.
Jester
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jester Wrote:Strategy guides are always awful. Don't even bother.
The civilization 2 test of time one was all right, but the blizzard ones stink. Why do they have to be so bad??(actual question)
I may be dead, but I'm not old (source: see lavcat)
The gloves come off, I'm playing hardball. It's fourth and 15 and you're looking at a full-court press. (Frank Drebin in The Naked Gun)
Some people in forums do the next best thing to listening to themselves talk, writing and reading what they write (source, my brother)
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Well, consider:
1) Target audience must be new to the game.
2) New people to the game mostly appear shortly after its release.
Therefore...
3) It makes economic sense to publish the strategy guide with the game, to catch the optimal number of newbies.
4) It takes time for solid strategy to become apparent from the point the game is completed.
5) Modern games are rarely finalized more than a month before going gold.
Therefore...
6) Strategy testers have little time to play the finalized game (even without considering patches) before being required to finalize their guide.
7) With insufficient time to formulate effective strategy based on experience with the finalized game, their strategies are going to be (almost literally) half-baked at best.
So, to compensate for half-baked strategy, they fill them up with their best guesses, obvious junk, and mission walkthroughs.
If games went through a longer gestation period, and developers took advantage of that, we'd have better guides. Better game design would also help immesurably. But "market forces" (read: laziness) means we'll never get to see that in our lifetimes.
Jester
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1) The campaigsn don't teach you much, except about the units and the original campaigns will be useless if you are going to play TFT as there have been many armor and damage changes etc. You will learn better by just playing or watching replays. Conclusion is: install both immediately.
2) If you install both you only need to download the TFT patch which should be about 21 MB, I'm sure that is the size that it was when I downloaded it.
As for your third question, there is no better way to learn than to play and the Bliz strategy guide is not particularily good.
Happy RTS'ing
SD
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The campaigns are good for the story, but I think they are a waste of time if you want to learn to play the game. You may want to play a few custom games against the computer, but of course, the best way to learn is to watch real players in action. :)
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Keep in mind he is new to RTS games in general. Yeah you can learn to swim pretty fast by jumping in the deep end, that doesn't mean you should. :ph34r:
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Thanks for the tips. Regarding the official WC3 and TFT strategy books, it seems that the reviewers at Amazon.com think that the books are rather worthless for WarCraft "professionals" but nevertheless a good introduction if you're absolutely new to the game and RTS's in general ..
"Man only plays when in the full meaning of the word he is a man, and he is only completely a man when he plays." -- Friedrich von Schiller
07-24-2004, 09:45 PM
(This post was last modified: 07-25-2004, 01:44 AM by Griselda.)
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