Zileas' and Nanogirl's Team Game Basics

Difficulty: Moderate
Type: Theory
Last updated August 11, 2002


Introduction

Zileas – I've never been a huge fan of team games, mostly because it was harder to play them competitively with Starcraft due to the lack of a 2v2, 3v3, or 4v4 ladder. However, in addition to having team ladders, Warcraft 3 has a number of features that greatly promote team play and reduce the learning curve to become competitive. This guide doesn't describe what these things are, but rather, provides a basic set of rules by which you can win.

Nanogirl – Zileas may not like team games much, but I found that team games are a lot more fun than single player competition. I originally began playing team games about four years ago and had a very bad shock – I was horrible at team games! In the ensuing years, it became a source of fascination for me to determine the key factors of being an effective team player. While this won’t be the definitive guide to playing all team games, I hope it helps you on the way to becoming more successful in your team games.

Starcraft versus Warcraft 3

This has easily been the most notorious topic since Warcraft 3’s beta and subsequent release. We can all agree that Warcraft 3 is different than Starcraft in solo play, but it becomes a completely different world in team games. In Starcraft, some teams were known for dividing the map into half and playing two 1v1s. Or in a rush situation, a player could hold the attack by choosing his defensive position at the top of a ramp or in a choke and using defensive structures. While it was not optimal to play solo in a team game of Starcraft, it was still possible at most levels of game play (and a 1v2 could even be possible with a minor difference in skill levels). However, the gap in the skill levels required to solo a team game in Starcraft to Warcraft 3 has widened by a large margin – if you plan to solo it, you better hope your opponent doesn’t know how to creep.

The closest possible comparison to the two games would be the “Hunters pro match”, aka. teams of three or four getting as many zealots to the middle as possible in a microwar for power. If you are just a few moments late or you hesitate for a split second, you could invariably lose the battle. This type of battle is much like that found in Warcraft 3, except the latter has spell casting heroes that are worth several times any individual unit. These heroes upgrade akin to an RPG, gaining power and spells and becoming more deadly as time passes. In Starcraft, it would be similar to meeting in the center, and then having a high level hero descend into your base, much deadlier than when the battle began.

Basic Team Play Rules

Teamwork
The big difference between winning a 1 on 1 and a team game, simply put, is teamwork. When you play a game on battle.net versus another team, they will invariably pose a threat if they have good teamwork. To put it in perspective, suppose you played 1v1 as if you were 2 players not cooperating – suppose split your army into two halves, and basically had them operate individually. Would you win?
Of course not...
And this is the #1 reason teams, even of the best players around, often lose out to "newbs" who have good teamwork, but are individually weak players.

Play to Win as a _TEAM_
It is important to remember that you are playing to win as a team, not as an individual. Oftentimes, it is best to super-specialize in a particular unit type for the team's sake, rather than getting your normal diversified set of units you might go after in a 1 on 1. This is often related to leveraging your race's strength -- for instance, in the current version as of this writing (august 3rd, 2002), it is desirable for orcs to mass witch doctors and shamans, while night elves mass huntresses and dryads, and humans mass priests and knights.

It is important to remember that while you may play a supporting role in the game, at the end of the game it doesn’t matter if you have the high score or the most kills– it only matters if you won or lost. This can even mean sacrificing a base or two (or even all your bases) for the possibility of the crucial counterattack that wins the game. Being a selfish player means you will often suffer the bitterness of defeat, relishing in your high score and angered by your partners’ incompetence. Having the high score means nothing– a win on your record is what matters.

Playing Style
Much like a good relationship, partners need to understand each other and their role in a game. In team games, there are three basic types of people:

  • Dominant: The person who acts like the general, who tells people what to build and when to attack.
  • Passive: The person who follows the orders of a dominant person.
  • Supportive: Will be what the team requires, as either the dominant team member or the passive team member.

    • When two dominant players get together, it is often a struggle for power with neither emerging victorious. It is best to choose partners who compliment your style of playing so as not to have power struggles, or in some cases, confusion (where do you want to attack? I don’t know, where do you want to attack?)

    It is rare when two partners understand each other so well as to not even speak but just react and know what the other person is thinking. That is the ultimate type of team– one that has worked together for so long that they can literally read each other’s minds and don’t waste time typing. This generally takes a fair amount of time to develop though.

    Basic Facts of Playing a Team Game in Warcraft 3

    The Effect of Force Doubling
    Intuitively, you might expect that if you have twice the army, you'll do twice as well in battle, and lose half as much stuff killing creeps. However, this is actually not true – the effect of having a larger army is actually stronger. Doubling a force means you are actually 4 times more powerful, and take 1/4 as many losses in combat (assuming all units are in combat). This is because not only are you dealing damage twice as fast, but you are killing their units twice as fast, reducing the group of creeps or opponents’ ability to survive. This has several implications for team play:

    1) Stick Together!
    Teamwork means WORKING TOGETHER. A divided team is a team that has lost. Although it is ok for you to be separated from your team members from time to time, its important that you can easily get together if necessary, preferably without recall scrolls. However, if you DO recall to defeat a force, make sure you outnumber them at least 3:2 – that means if two people rush, and there isn’t static defense to beat them back, 3 armies should be there to defend. With more defenders than attacks, you insure the victory of that battle along with advantages such as easy leveling of heroes and destroying the enemies’ armies. Abilities like stormbolt and entangle will ensure that you get some kills to make it worth your while should they retreat.

    2) Troop Stacking
    In 1v1 Warcraft 3, usually it isn’t too difficult to make sure all of your units are fighting. However, in 2v2 and especially 3v3 and 4v4 games, it is VERY easy for a clump of units to block off other units’ access. The classic example of this is when one player has a bunch of melee units, such as grunts or footmen, and the other has a bunch of huntresses.

    The huntress player goes in first, blocking access for the footmen. It is much better if the footmen and grunts go in first, followed by the huntresses, because the huntresses can shoot over the footmen (tip: grunts can also hit over the heads of footmen). Another common example of this is when players have a large number of ranged units, such as riflemen or archers, and most of the other ranged units are milling about behind the units actually fighting (in a ranged versus ranged battle where only half the units are actually firing due to maximum range battles). The correct way to fix this is to force your units to actually move forward to allow more to join the fight, as opposed to just having units on attack move. Again, what works in 1v1 doesn’t necessarily work in a team game.

    The bottom line is: What good is it to have twice the force, if you are only using half of them?

    3) Focus Firing
    Focus Firing can be quite powerful in team games, particularly when used against enemy heroes. However, caution must be used. In particular, it is _very_ difficult to bring all units to bear on one target when a huge battle is raging. In general, you should be very cautious in using focus fire, even though it is extremely good if you can use it. It should also be noted that at times killing a hero is less effective than destroying the “normal” troops. The damage that a unit can cause along with their hit points and armor should be taken into account when choosing a target. After all, why kill a Demon Hunter with lots of hit points when archers are quick and easy targets that deal good damage?

    4) Areas and Auras
    All auras, and most areas are substantially stronger in team games. Auras are a lot stronger simply because there’s a larger number of units you can affect, on average, in any given situation. For instance, suppose paladin devotion is generally 30% too weak in 1v1 games (it may or may not be -- this is just hypothetical). In a 2v2 with double troop counts, you might expect it to be TOO strong (50%) instead.
    Areas are pretty similar in this regard. Having a more "Target-rich" battlefield means your areas can do a lot more damage – assuming they aren’t damage capped. For example, things like carrion swarm and chain lightning which have damage caps are not more effective in these situations.

    Team Strategy (Synergies): Plan before the game begins

    Ability Synergy
    Another important aspect of team games is that different races have unique abilities that compliment those of other races. For instance, brilliance aura is always a desirable pick in team games. Similarly, most buffs or debuffs are best used in combination together -- i.e. cripple + slow is REALLY nasty, bloodlust + inner fire is really powerful, etc.

    Resource Synergy
    In 3v3s and 4v4s, it is often worthwhile to have one ally do all of the expanding while staying in no upkeep. They in turn feed the resources generated to their partners as needed. I find this works best for Night Elves, because they can just mass ancient protectors as their army (no upkeep cost in the patch when this was written), have their miners protected from an instant raid (by the entangled gold mine), and do not have to worry about distance to the gold mine. Humans are also good as they can speed build, and because a 3-hero rush as human is often a good choice in team games (and eats up a lot of micro management effort in battle).

    Unfortunately, upkeep tax is still applied to the receiver, so if you take this strategy, its very important to avoid "double taxation", which the money grubbing AI may like, but which you will NOT like. Still, a common way to do this is to feed money to one ally to power units or power tech, and then, whenever they lose a major army, feed them money to rapidly recover. In this way, you can effectively mine for them at no upkeep while they are in high upkeep -- besides, you dont need a lot of money when you are in high upkeep anyway.

    Building Synergy
    Certain buildings are highly synergistic. For instance, Night Elves have mediocre static defenses, while humans and orcs have fairly strong static defenses that can be built anywhere on the map. Therefore in a team game, Orc or Human players should consider providing static defenses for Night Elves. Conversely, Night Elves have moonwells, which are EXTREMELY good for units in team game by reducing overall force casualties. In a long 4v4 team game, a good night elf player might make as many as 20 or more moonwells at various useful places around the map (offensive chokes, partners’ bases, etc.). Of course, good technique is required with shared assets such as these (i.e. don’t use them for mana recharge unless for an important spell like an ultimate), but they are nonetheless highly useful.

    But...

    There are several common pitfalls of playing as a team. Here are some of the more common ones:

    1) Fighting Against the Rules of Geometry can easily cause you to lose. In general, you want more surface area against then enemy than they have against you. This is best accomplished by hitting the enemy as they exit a choke point, be it an "elevated" choke point, or a normal choke point. It is VERY important to know when to fall back – if you can fall back a bit and have the enemy coming out of a choke point and into a normal area you have several advantages. Being in an open area while your opponents are still in a choke also affords you easier hero movement, less vulnerability to area effects, and greater ease retreating. Simply stated: if more of your units can engage in battle than can his, you get more hits per round and will deal more damage, thus giving yourself an enormous advantage.

    2) Fighting Piecemeal is a common error. Many players will attack an enemy one by one and get decimated. Another common one is to be continuously reinforcing an ally’s base as it is being razed, but because the forces trickle in, the enemy just destroys them one at a time. It is important to fight together, recall together, etc.

    Keeping Initiative (Controlling Game Flow)
    In 1v1 Warcraft 3, it is CRUCIAL that a player keep "initiative". This means forcing an opponent to react to one's actions, rather than reacting to attacks. In team games, it is much more difficult to hold initiative coherently. Additionally, passive turtling/creeping is not as effective in team games as it is in 1v1s. Because of this, it is crucial that you pressure your opponents while expanding as they respond (expanding confers a minor advantage of more resources added to the harrassment). It is not crucial that you even be fighting them per se, but having your army on their side of the map is generally desirable (assuming you have recall scrolls just in case). Additionally, feints can be EXCELLENT tools to keep initiative. The most classic one is a 2-hero "active probe" in the early game, where you fast hero rush someone primarily to see what they are up to and maybe kill a peon or two. The secondary objective though is to force one or more of their allies to recall in to help, and/or kill a hero. However, it is also crucial with this tactic to not to lose your heroes – otherwise the effort becomes a liability.

    Conclusion

    There are many advanced tactics and strategies that can be used in Warcraft 3 team games. This article hopefully has familiarized you with the basics– namely "Teamwork".

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