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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