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Emperor: Battle for Dune
Strategies, Unit Guides, Fun Things to Try

Written by James Simone. Version 1.4
This guide should only be found on GameFAQS, Neoseeker, and
DLH.net. If you see it anywhere else, be a kind soul and report it to me.



1/21/02
I wrote this because there are not too many people out there who actually have web pages helping people get better at Emperor: Battle for Dune. Even worse, nobody actually noted the fact that Emperor was a Real Time Strategy game
(RTS). See, the general idea I saw everywhere for Emperor was: Just build up a lot of spice until you can build a huge amount of units to wipe the other player out. Um.... hello, that's not STRATEGY! So I set out to write a strategy guide for Emperor. If you want me to add information, strategy tips, anything, just e-mail me with the additions at Jamirus9@bestweb.net. I accept criticism, questions, anything except flaming. I would appreciate it if people would help with my House Ordos and Harkonnen strategy sections. Thanks!

7/28/02
Whoa! It's been 6 months, and I still haven't finished the guide. You can blame a whole host of things- Me seeing the first Lord of the Rings movie and becoming completely involved with anything Tolkien, Star Wars, and a whole host of games: Jedi Knight 2, Battle Realms, X-Wing Alliance,
Medal of Honor, Zeus...but now I'm back to Emperor to help the poor masses of fans searching for help (or maybe I'm reading too much into this...hmmm...)

9/22/02
My first revision! It took GameFAQS almost two months to post my guide, so I had stopped checking in at the
Emperor site to see if I had gotten posted. All of the sudden, I started getting feedback. I checked the site, and, voila, there was my guide. Hurrah! Anyhoo, I fixed some grammatical errors, and added some tips against Ordos human players online: apparently they have better defense than I thought... I would also like to note that I will not be responding to emails. If you see me add in your tip, or fix a mistake of mine, that's about as much satisfaction as your going to get. Sorry, but I just don't have time for house calls. ("You know our motto, we deliver!")

9/23/02
Two revisions in two days! I'm pretty sure this won't happen too often...first off, I forgot about my thank-you section. I WILL be mentioning people who contribute there: that is, if you give me your name. Ben Bacon gets the first thank-you other than my original ones. I also fixed some more grammatical errors, and added the Atreides defensive buildings part, and the special ability. Don't be disturbed by my Halo quotes, as I love that game too, and will probably add one or more each time I revise. Of course, you'll see a lot of other freaky quotes too- ("My life for
Aiur!")...Or something like that.

9/25/02
To my pleasant surprise, I found an email from
Neoseeker in my inbox today. My guide will now be posted there, as well as on GameFAQS. And, thanks to those less than kindly people out there who take advantage of people, the computer that I use to check my mail now has yet
ANOTHER virus on it. Yes, that's right, we already had one, and we can't seem to get that one out either. I may not be updating for some time, as I may need to reinstall my OS.
So, you nasty, malicious people, are you satisfied?

10/4/02
October...another month gone by. As you can see, another site offered to host my guide. Hope all you German fans send me some good tips...

12/25/02
An update on Christmas? What's wrong with me? Anyhoo,
Dan D sent me several questions about Ornithopters the other day...I've updated the thank-you's section, and the
Ornithopter section in the Atreides Unit Guide.

Chapter 1: General Strategies, Tips, and Things You Should
Know

First off, things you should know. If you read the booklet that comes with the game, you'll see on the first page the hot keys. You should either write these down or memorize them (I have a Microsoft Strategic Commander, so I just assigned the important commands to the buttons.) Among the most important are:
R- retreat to base with selected units
D- for quick deploying with large amounts of deployable units
X- scattering infantry when they're about to be run over is a good idea
T- for selecting all of the selected type (hit once for onscreen, twice for all of those units on the map)

Believe me, those will help. Everything else you can do with the mouse. So, some general strategies for all the houses, and then some specific ones.

Never forget your infantry! In Dune 2000, as soon as you got vehicles, the infantry were forgotten. In Emperor, however, infantry are the life force of the game. Now, every house has what I like to call "special infantry," and these are usually the ones that you want to use. For
Atreides, there is the sniper and the Kindjal. Harkonnen has only the flame-thrower because they also have a specialty vehicle (inkvine catapult) . The Ordos have the
Saboteur and the Mortar Infantry. All of these can be used to your advantage. How to use them-

Atreides- Put the Snipers and Kindjal along the ridges leading to the entrance, and then some near the entrance itself. If you have a decent position, your infantry can finish off the enemy before they even get to the entrance!
Or, stick them in trenches and infantry rock along the way to the enemies so you can completely block assaults to begin with.

Harkonnen- well, flame-throwers don't have long range, but they're the only infantry who can survive a sniper shot, and one burst of flame can wipe out scores of infantry. I guess the best use for them is to back up assault tanks during raids.

Ordos- The saboteur used to be able to cloak, but I don't know if they do now. The best thing about them is well, their explosions! It does tons of damage to buildings, although mobile deploying is a bit harder. The mortar infantry's long range makes them useful in the same way as snipers. Stick them in ridges and infantry rock.

At this point, see, I saw my problem. I know too much about
Atreides! Sure, I know a little about the Harkonnen from all the time I've spent fighting them, but Ordos I'm clueless about. So I'm asking for support for my House
Ordos and Harkonnen chapters. Please help me!


Chapter 2: Atreides

House Atreides has several advantages over the other houses:

1.Excellent defense, held up by admirable infantry and repair vehicles to ensure your vehicles won't get killed.

2. Veteran infantry (Level 3) can reenter the barracks so the next guys who come out of the barracks of the same type will be at the next level. Send three of the same unit type in so you begin with Level 3 units from that infantry type.

Of course, there are also very special strategies specific to Atreides. My personal favorite strategy is what
I've dubbed "The Mongoose Strafe." It's really very simple, but works like a charm. Please note though that this is a great strategy against Harkonnen, it doesn't work as well against the Ordos because the laser tanks are fast and can fire on the move. Okay, here it is: find the enemy's base.
Get about six to ten mongooses lined up in front of it.
Then, get a couple of infantry to lure some of the enemy vehicles over to the mongooses. As soon as the enemy vehicles get more interested in the mongooses than whatever the bait was, let the mongooses get off a couple of shots, then hit R. That will make them retreat to your base.
However, the mongooses can fire on the move. If you're playing against the Harkonnen, as soon as their stupid assault tanks and whatever else gets into range, they'll be blasted by many, many mongoose missiles. Ordos is harder because their laser tanks have the same abilities (the mongooses do have range advantage, which is why I don't completely discourage this tactic against the Ordos, and of course I don't suggest it for Ordos because the laser tanks are too fast for firing on the move: They would completely outrun the enemy.)


Anyhow, that works, and my friends like it.
There are two other things to keep in mind with
Atreides- height advantage, and veteran infantry. Put simply height advantage raises a given units range, power, and defense. There are three types of height advantage
(Level 1, 2, 3) indicated by those red chevron thingies on the side of a selected unit. You can get level 1 height advantage by placing your units in trenches (now isn't that odd? I mean, aren't trenches below ground?) Level 2 height advantage is obtainable by putting infantry in infantry rock. There are also other types of infantry cover, which give your units height advantage. There's that stone tower ramp thing in Atreides level three if you pick hole-in-the- rock (I think that was the level) right near the Ordos base where you can set up mongooses and snipers (mongooses will only fit on the ramps though, everything else is infantry cover. Also, there are those picket mounds in some levels: these are infantry cover too. I think that's about it for infantry cover. One of the best things to remember about height advantage is shown in the third-to-last mission, where you're on the Harkonnen home world. I'm pretty sure the map is the same every time...but maybe it's not. Anyhoo, in my map, there was a little ridge that jutted out near the east entrance to my base. I placed some snipers there, with a mongooses and missile turret for punch. The snipers leveled up slowly enough, but once they hit level three, I brought three back to the barracks. After that, I had about ten cloaked snipers on that ridge. Let's just say no infantry ever challenged the front of the base, and even some vehicles got heavily damaged: Yes, that's how far their range was extended. I almost cried it was so beautiful.
Here's another little tip you'll find handy when facing off against Ordos- Ornithopters. Let's put it this way- Ordos has ONE unit that can fire on air units- AA infantry, and they're not even that good! Ornithopters can help in a lot of ways- clearing defensive emplacements- taking out the Construction Yard, Factory, and Barracks, and of course hunting down strike forces. In any level where you are up against Ordos, consider getting some
Ornithopters to take out the Construction Yard, Factory, and Barracks (in that order.) If you do that, the computer (or human) is pretty much defenseless: You can't live on reinforcement's forever. The other two methods are useful too, especially when you have some Fremen Warriors handy to take out nearby AA troopers. In fact, I believe that Fremen raids go hand in hand with Ornithopter strikes. And wouldn't it be nice if you could take out those pesky
Kobras before they get to your base?  Unfortunately, nothing is perfect: Ornithopters have the tendency to return to your base after firing off missiles. To get them to fire off their whole load, you will often find yourself clicking repeatedly on the target so that they listen. Well
I guess you can't have everything.
Now, for another one of my favorites: Controlling the
Spice. Don't let the fancy name throw you off, this one's simple. So simple the computer uses it against you to great effect, and the only thing you do is build another harvester! Bah! Strike back! Find where the enemy is harvesting their spice, and set off. Obviously, you will need some Mongooses- yes, shooting down the carryalls help.
For that matter, you might want to include some Air Drones.
Now, you can usually expect even the computer to try and destroy your units, so you will also need some defense.
Minotaurus', Kindjal and Snipers will fill that gap, although once again, your results may vary, so try to mix