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different units in. Usually near spice fields there is some infantry cover, and that's exactly where you'll want your infantry to go. Scout ahead with Fremen, then put your troops into action with formation move. Well, what are you waiting for? Load up those APC's, soldier! You must remember, however, that unlike you, the computer isn't (that) stupid, and if there is another spice field available, it may run there. You may need to spread out a bit, or use two different groups to cover the spice fields.
Before we get to the last trick, I'd like to put in a few different things that can help you, and are fun to try.
My favorite is the APC defense. If you are playing online, this is perhaps the most fun thing to do. Get about 6 or 7
APC's near the front of your base. Situate them so they can ambush any enemy groups, then turn off guard mode. When the enemy comes calling, wait for them to get to the required point, and then turn on guard mode. You might say this is pointless, since the odds of destroying anything other than the occasional infantry unit, but you'd be wrong. Against a computer, this is only mildly disconcerting, although you can use the distraction as a way to buy time as you scramble units for defense. Against a human, however, it's a whale of a different story. This can throw even the most hardcore player into confusion, and although our APC's will still be exterminated, if you have Kindjal and Minotaurus', you can pick off a whole lot of units with minimal damage to your actual defenses. Another great thing to do is to airlift a repair vehicle and mongoose (or Minotaurus) to cliffs that the enemy would be only able to reach via air.
If this cliff is along a path that the enemy uses often, you often get the satisfaction of watching your unit pick off other units with no actual damage to itself. Of course, there are some tricky line of site problems on some cliffs, where it looks like your unit should be able to hit something, but it can't. This is especially useful if you can also airlift an APC with Fremen Warriors and the like.
Unfortunately, don't think that you're the only person who can do this. In one of the levels against the Harkonnen, I had the unfortunate chance to meet up with two missile tanks up on a cliff. Before my mongooses and whatnot could get close enough, all the good units were already destroyed. That is also an advantage for you, though-
Cliffs increase the range of your unit a bit, but the real boon is on the defensive- units have to get really close to the cliff to even fire at you. Last but not least, slowly inch some APC's into your opponent's base...loaded with
Fremen! Mass chaos guaranteed!
Finally, an old classic that many players figured out, but I thought I must include- The Advanced Carryall Strike.
Heard of it? Maybe you have. If not, here's how it goes...once you get to a mission that let's you build
Advanced Carryalls, build about six of them, then start training 10 engineers, 2 APC's, and four vehicles of your choice (at least one Minotaurus) Then, assign the Carryalls numbers 1-6, then have them pick up the APC's (with the engineers in them) and the vehicles. Now, go to the place you want to strike. My personal favorite is deep in the enemy base. Then rapidly hit 1, left click, then 2, left click, etc...until you finally have all six carryalls heading towards their base. You might want to have them move to a spot that's guaranteed not to get the Carryalls shot by turrets first, though. Once your units are dropped in, make the engineers run to the construction yard, and factory, having the other units back them up. If you get these two buildings, it's all over! This works very well with Hawk
Strike, since you can easily capture buildings if there are only turrets to defend the base. Keep in mind, if the defense is light, and you capture the construction yard, that before you sell it (which is the logical thing to do) you should build a factory, or barracks. There's nothing more satisfying than using Devastators against the
Harkonnen.

Of course, successful offense is one thing, but what if you're the defensive type? Well, defense is much easier than offense...or is it? Well, for Atreides, defense is easier to set up. Start off quickly by building snipers, then upgrading your barracks for Kindjal. As I said before, stick them along the ridges heading towards the usually two entrances to your base. Then, start building mongooses.
Once you have a decent unit defense, you should build a couple of wind traps, and then some Machinegun Posts. After you upgrade your Construction Yard, build Rocket Turrets to help out your Kindjal and Snipers, and then a couple at the entrances to your base. You shouldn't build too many rocket turrets, however, because you'll waste room on wind traps for power. It's very easy to get sidetracked in the beginning by building Machinegun Posts, but I only recommend several of them at entrances where infantry raids are inevitable. Because of their short range, Rocket
Turrets, and/or units behind them must back them up. (putting the units in front of the Machinegun post would negate the use of them since the units will kill the infantry first)  Other than these fixed points, use you own strategies for defense, but try not to use more than two defensive strategies at the same time: i.e.- You want your infantry to cover the ridges, but then your also sticking light infantry in infantry cover around your base to harass units who get to close, while heavily defending the main entrance to your base...does anyone else see how pointless (and how many units you would lose) that this is? Try to have several strategies to use for defense, then use them accordingly per level or mission, choosing ones that will help you use your surroundings to your advantage. Of course, the trick to some missions is not to defend your base, but your opponent's base. This works well with missions with the Fremen (if you're allied) because they're cloaked. I once found two trenches located conveniently at the two entrances to the computers base. I stuck 20 Fremen (mostly Warriors, maybe 8 Fedaykin) per trench. The Warrior would take care of the infantry, while Fedaykin handled vehicles. I held off entire assaults that would have leveled my base! However, conditions have to be pretty good for defensive things like this to work,
However, defense may be intimidating to newbies, even on easy mode, because if you decide to bulk up on your defensive strength, the computer will use the only strategy it can- periodic medium assaults that will annoy the heck out of you because these assaults generally aren't aimed at your destruction, they're just done to weaken your defenses. The computer uses these assaults to postpone your actual discovery of their base, or to stop you from bulking up on units for attack. This works because instead of retaliating at a computer's attack, players begin to rebuild their defense. And this pattern happens over and over again until in a normal game you have built up enough units to pour forth from your base and completely wipe out the computer. Once again going back to my original point...that's not strategy. The thing with Emperor is that it's one of the first games to use free-form computer thinking. In Dune2000, you could play a game once, then restart it, and know exactly what was coming. In Emperor, every game is different. The computer actually "thinks" about what to do, depending upon what their scouts find you doing. Unless you're really, really bad at exploring, you will notice many scouts trying to get into your base, or near it. The computer will then decide on a course of action, depending on what the scouts find you doing.

Atreides Vs. Harkonnen, Atreides Vs. Ordos, General Tips, and Unit Guide
Using information like this, you should be careful not to let yourself gather offensive strike units near the front of your base. If scouts see that, the computer will gather a task force large enough to damage or destroy your attack units at the front of your base. Or, if you're against anything but Atreides, you might here that voice say "Missile Launch detected," or even worse "Chaos
Lightning detected". Chaos Lightning is worse in my opinion, since it affects turrets, although it's not like a missile wouldn't destroy the turrets anyway. If this happens, then its back to repair and rebuild. Keep your units in your base until the moment you are actually ready to spew forth. Then, especially if you are attacking with more than one unit type, you may want to use formation move (hold J while telling selected units to move) so that the units will pace themselves to the slowest unit in your group. While this sounds stupid, consider this:
If you were to mount a light sandbike and mongoose assault on the enemy's base, and you needed this attack to be precisely timed in order for it to work, which would you prefer?
1. Having the sandbikes arrive first and get blown to smithereens by laser tanks/assault tanks...or
2.  Using formation move so the sandbikes formed a protective escort around the mongooses, and arriving at the enemy base at the same exact time to wreak some havoc.
I pray you chose number two............ anyway, moving on. The
Waypoint Command, another new addition, is also very helpful. Or, maybe not. By using the waypoint mode, you can set up your own patrol lines for your units. This is more useful with vehicles then infantry, but some people don't like it, because the paths get bogged down when using more than one different types of units are in one.
However, when you just use one unit type, waypoints become a viable option, especially with mongooses, because the fact that they're moving greatly augments their abilities: firing on the move is once again helpful.
Now, I'll lay down some stuff for Atreides vs.
Harkonnen. First of all, let's point out your advantages-
The only unit that can fire on the move for Harkonnen is the Devastator, and that's only the tiny missile launcher, so hit and fade attacks are quite useful.
Secondly, you've got the range that Harkonnen doesn't, seeing as how only the Missile launcher and Inkvine catapult have long ranges. Unfortunately, these two units make up for everything. Level three Inkvine catapults have a range that should be illegal in all states other than Nebraska, and level three missile tanks can take down a mongoose in a single salvo. So, what do you do? My friend came up with an excellent strategy for taking out
Inkvines, and the best thing is, you only need one mongoose! Simply get the mongoose in range, than start ordering him to move left to right, right to left. Your mongoose will be able to easily hit the Inkvine, since it can fire on the move, but the Inkvine won't be able to hit the mongoose since it's little toxic canisters don't home. Haha! For missile tanks, remember that they have
VERY light armor. Hit it hard while it's still moving, and chances are it will be overkill. The rest of
Harkonnen units aren't really that hard to deal with, although you should watch out for flamethrower infantry.
They can survive a sniper shot, and can wipe out a ton of infantry units with one burst of flame. The same applies to the flame tank. Also, watch out for Buzzsaws when you play against human players, as they will likely try to ruin your spice. I find that the Harkonnen computer is a bit more aggressive than Ordos, so watch out.
Fortunately, you also have time as your advantage- many units for the Harkonnen take a long time to build, so you can be sure to do a good amount of damage to them if you strike right after they do. Lastly, watch out for the Gun
Turret- it does way too much damage in too little time.


Ah, Atreides against Ordos...life is good. Ordos lack a lot of things, including offensive punch. Oh sure, they've got cool APC's but that's about it. Their two most dangerous units are the Laser tank and Kobra. I'll make it clear now- I hate Kobras! They make my blood boil when they attack right outside of your unit's range. When you are hit with Kobra's, hit back hard with Sonic tanks and Minotaurus', and quickly. Often if you aren't quick with the mouse, most of your infantry will be dead before you can strike a blow. Most infuriating is there is a difference between your unit's range and their automatic defensive strike back thingy. Minotaurus' CAN hit Kobras if the Kobras can hit your units, but unless you order them too, they won't. Laser tanks are thankfully much easier to handle. Oh sure they're fast, and if you're defense isn't watertight, you'll often see them blow by firing at your defensive units, then wreaking havoc in you base because you forgot to put at least one Rocket turret near your construction yard. Thankfully, they have many shortcomings, which s why they're so easy to handle- long recharge rate for firing, can't run over infantry, ineffective against infantry...a couple of Kindjal will send these babies running home whimpering, if they're not blasted to bits. Plus, Ordos has a huge weakness that is only slightly exploitable in other Houses. You see, when you do enough damage to an Atreides or Harkonnen, they slow down a bit. If you do enough damage to an Ordos unit, they will slow down A LOT!! If an Ordos unit becomes critically damaged, and attempts to run, it most likely won't get far. You may have wondered why I haven't listed the Deviator as a fearsome unit. It's really quite simple why I didn't- Deviator's have so little armor and range, that if they actually got close enough to fire a