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At any rates, I played Dune II for the first time because I heard so much about it. It's very different from, err, Dune (the first videogame), but it
figures as a nice complement ("A nice complement, huh? Dune II won awards in 1993 you dumbass!"). Hmm, ok, it was more than a complement. Let's say it invented its own videogame genre. Either you will adore it or you won't.
But I find the videogame wasn't hard at all to win. Ok, I had to restart about 3 times on Mission 8, but once I got what I was doing wrong, Mission 9 was much easier (except I used saves about twice early on for the Death Hand attacks).
Thing is, a lot of people expect or desire Dune II to be fast and frantic. They want battlefield action and after they cry that they can't finish the late missions. I browsed some of the strategies here and somehow I didn't see anything close to what I did, which made everything sooo easy.
It's a simple 3 notes rule: Economy - Defense - Patience
In the late missions (let's presume you all had it easy through the first 7),
you have either low amount of Spice available, or low amount of possible structures to built.
In both cases, you need to spread, about in that order: refineries, turrets, a starport, and a repair facility. You don't really need much more, but you need a starport to get the most Harvesters possible, fast. In the meantime, building rocket turrets and repairing them often, added with a few tanks bought at the Starport will create a strong defense line. You need a defense
line so strong that you don't need to even worry about it.
Then, you need a Palace to use its free weapon ASAP. I find that if you play Atreides, the Fremen will destroy the most quantity of units while you simply defend your base. The Harkonnens, it's a joke how it's easy to win with them. Ordos requires more strategy and are the most fun. Saboteur are VERY useful and fun, but you need to help them.
Next step is buying carryalls (keep checking the Starport) so you can have your units repaired. If you don't spend too much on Factories and Upgrades until you have plenty of credits, you should be fine with a Starport, but save sometimes in case the Starport freeze on you (or..it WILL let you down if the Windtraps are not working fully).
In Mission 8 you will loose Spice pretty fast and why it's important to choose carefully what you are ready to pay for, and create an "army" that you won't have to replace (because you won't have the credits to replace it). Better to buy lots of Turrets and keep defense destroying a good portion of the enemy for a while.
In Mission 9, credits is not a problem. The problems are lacks of availability of stuff (units and space to built), and... missiles. For the missile you need to spread your base with lots of empty space early on (build in diagonal), and then send a MCV start a new Construction Yard. This is your best bet.
You will eventually get enough money to rebuilt anything lost easily, but keep the essentials, don't go for the fancy base that has everything. For the availability of space, you will notice that if you take your time, and use the Palace weapon aplenty, you will start receiving much less visits to your base. That's when you can start to destroy your own Turrets and the Windtraps needed to power them. You can build Silos instead, or other needy structures, like the Factories. The Starport is is not rich in Units, but with patience you will get more than what you need.
When the battle is advanced, it's rather easy to send a small group of a couple launchers and some tanks to destroy, first, turrets one after the other,
or at least the ones that prevent you from going "behind" the enemy bases.
You start from an extremity and pave your way in, or you may want to go directly to the palaces but then you need more tanks to attack defense
units. After that, take pauses when a unit is sent by a carryall for repair, and let your Palace weapon do some more jobs for you. As you advance like this,
everything is so easy that you can take time to harvest more spices (building silos as soon as enemy structures are down). You can also try fancy stuff like letting Ornithopters destroy the whole enemy down (buying them one after the other).
All I'm saying is I thought the videogame was easy to win. I didn't expect the Death Hand and the heavy attacks on the late missions, but then I thought "ok, all they're asking is that I take my time". And indeed, if you take your time (you only need to rush about refineries, harvesters and turrets in the beginning), it's rather easy.
Talkie
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