Warcraft 2 Campaign!! - Revisiting One of My 1st RTSs | WC2 P1
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 2 ต.ค. 2024
- This was one of the games that started it all!! Before Elden Ring comes out and consumes my entire existence, I decided to take a trip down memory lane and do the Warcraft 2 Campaign!
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I was a little too young when this came out and didn’t speak English yet. StarCraft was the game of my childhood. This was my dad’s fav game. And yet the look and sound of it has stayed with me. I think it’s one of the most beautiful games ever. All of the sprites are so colourful, memorable and clear! Chris Metzens sketches are gorgeous. The music I still listen to when I want to get pumped in the shower.
Same, brother! Warcraft was the first game I remember playing at like 3 or 4 years old on my dad's PC. Warcraft and Heroes 3, LEGENDS of games.
warcraft 2 music in the shower is crazy i'm proud of you
Isometric 90's games were peak. From WarCraft, C&C, TA, Diablo to Fallout, Balders Gate, HoMM, The Sims & Roller Coaster Tycoon, ALL GOATs.
isometric were like SC. WC is topdown, not isometric
I played Open Transport Tycoon Deluxe recently on steam for quite a bit and it is so much fun. I grew up with that game not knowing english and going by feeling.
Isometric is a very specific type of projection. Warcraft, Starcraft, Red Alert, TA and HoMM are all not isometric.
Man I love how zoo tycoon and roller coaster tycoon look compared to the newer ones. And the nice relaxing straight gridlines to build on. I actually cant play the newer ones at all.
They came a little later but: Commandos and Desperados
The midi music on a nice sound card is phenomenal still . Masterpiece . The game is GOLD , freaking GOLD . Cartoony graphics,amazing sound , amazing story. Just a piece of my history i will forever remember.
I hate to break it to you but Warcraft 2 music was originally on CD tracks. So your soundcard had little to do with how the music sounded.
“My brother and I played so much Warcraft 2 as a kid…” Sean and Nick confirmed as a previous child archon
its like you take turns playing the game and watching the other play the game. when you arent playing you're backseating. thats why sean doesnt mind backseating in this game. nick was backseating constantly
I played this last year for the first time in ages, and MY GOD is it hard (when you get to the later levels). I can't believe I used to play this as a kid. One of my most memorable games of all time.
As a low skill rts player, audio overlap wasn't a bug it was a feature. I remember games as a kid that were just a battery of things that animated when you click on them, so it was a positive that you could intentionally spam voicelines for the effect
As a kid, the red and white grey of the orc buildings just looked like a bunch of candy cane decorations to me.
I played warcraft 1&2 so much as a child that I would experience audio hallucinations of the voice lines and building sounds while in school. Zug.
I know the original experience hits the nostalgia, but even for 30 minutes I’d love for you to try chronicles of the second war which is an amazing Warcraft 3 remastered full conversion of Warcraft 2.
46:34 Makes me think of Age of Empires 1 since I remember I had this strategy... 1. Find a large forest. 2. Chop down a narrow path that ideally curves around deep through the forest. 3. Chop down a clearing deep in the center of the forest. (Can also use catapults for clearing things out). Make sure not to create any new entrances into the center accidentally. 4. Build a base deep in the middle of the forest. 5. The enemy will be so perplexed by what is going on that it'll be a long time before they find your secret base.
I also had it in Warcraft 3 where in the human campaign where you're defending a city being attacked from 3 directions I'd just build houses and stuff on the long road behind the city I was meant to defend... And like, there I would basically win the game because I would be hanging out with a few units as the undead destroyed everything... And I'd just be praying that they didn't find me before Uther arrived to save the day... Legit just like one peasant or something hiding out in the back... And then when Uther does arrive he's like "GOOD JOB ARTHAS! YOU DEFENDED THE VILLAGE!" and I'm just thinking "Don't lie to me Uther..."
So fun fact about warcraft 2 that I didn't know until I played through a bunch of challenge runs last year: Saving and reloading completely destroys the AI in this game. It just... makes the AI behave super weirdly, changes their attack patterns completely, makes them often stop training new units, changes their upgrade decisions, and often makes them forget to chop lumber.
It's a little ridiculous that I never noticed this as a kid, but I guess the AI just breaks in other ways often enough that it felt normal enough to me. Its also not a consistent glitch, as it has different effects depending on where the AI currently is in their script, and reloading a save a second time can change the AI to new modes. It also doesn't completely turn off the AI, just makes them... weird, so it's not always super obvious.
Dude, one of the key points was that we could build anywhere now. In Warcraft 1 you could only build near roads.
Best sound track ever. Used to listen to it as a kid, still do as an adult. So good.
The DOS version in particular since you had your choice between CD audio and nostalgic SoundBlaster MIDI.
Hey I love it so much I got it on vinyl. Kind of a rare vinyl to come by too. Warcraft 2 is my favorite RTS
having just played SC1 again there so much of that same feel, thinking about the tristram theme too, old blizzard had such amazing music
I used the "disco" cheat so often to get the special track to play.
@@Jekubman ironically enough a version of Mechanical Man from C&C.
1:05:24 The corpses were a mild resource in 2, also. Death Knights could raise them as really bad skeletons, lol.
Suddenly realizing how much the Orc narrator sounds like Fozzy Bear...
The soundtrack arround 7:20 is the same as Hearthstone's when you're looking for an opponent!!
The unit quotes from this game wormed their way into 6-year-old me's head and never left at any point.
To some this music sounds familiar, even though they’ve never played Warcraft before.
That’s because the song is still used in the retail version of WoW.
It’s the song that plays when you go into a pet battle.
It’s sorta a little Easter egg.
Can't wait for the Human campaign with the music that was later used in Hearthstone when searching for an opponent!
Back when Blizzard made good games
Love those nostalgia vids man. Also it's pretty crazy how well Warcraft 2 aged for it's time. It's still a very much playable game with iconic voice acting and beautiful music despite it's age.
Insta like! Took hours to install back in the day. The game was spread over 4 floppy discs :D
Ny first RTS game aswell, I remember playing it when I was 6, I actually didn't complete the campaign because I didn't know I needed flying machines to detect subs!!! Haha
Having never played the game, I never once realized that the hearthstone matchmaking music was actually from WC2!
Yes! I got this game handed to me by my dad after a painful orthodontist visit in ‘95. So many good memories. Can’t wait to watch this whole series!
“We love oil and murder uraagh!” 😂😂
The voiceover/"narrator" was done by Bill Roper, I'm pretty sure. Legendary, peak 90s voice acting.
And of course the soundtrack was done by Glenn Stafford. If you want to hear a modern WoW track that would be right at home in Warcraft 2, look up "pride of the seas"
So... this might sound stupid, but does anyone else hear the Push It (by Salt-n-Pepa) riff every time the "Orc 2" music comes around?
this catapults me back, the amount of care given to this game so long ago, i wish blizzard would have just stayed the path, they stood for quality, always an instant buy, but nowadays i cannot even look at their games, they have become so bad
You're an absolute hero for playing this! After a day of insufferable project management hassle in the healthcare sector. This is a gem!
_Warcraft II_ was peak RTS, in my opinion... everything afterwards was (needlessly?) more complicated.
hell yeah WC2. back when Blizzard still had a soul. you can just feel the love and care put into every part of this game that you dont see nowadays.
I will never forget the excitement of playing this in the computer lab at school during lunch break. This was THE game growing up
I can't believe that Day9 and I had the same "first RTS" experience in the form of Warcraft II. Day9 says how nostalgic it is for him to be playing it and all I can think is "Oh yeah. Me, too." This game was, quite literally, my childhood and just seeing the missions and the maps again makes me so nostalgic.
You can’t believe that a gamer, who you’re watching because you also like games, grew up playing the same very popular RTS game that you did? I can believe it, it seems highly probable.
@@citizenhal I always thought of Warcraft II as the clunky beginning of the Warcraft series (though, of course, I know about Warcraft I.) I always thought that if anyone would play the Blizzard RTS', Warcraft II would be skipped in favor of Warcraft III or the Starcraft games. I also do know that Day9 has played these games, and I have watched them, but, like I said, I didn't expect him to play Warcraft II because, prior to watching this video, I didn't know he loved it so much. I didn't think anyone would want to play Warcraft II. That's my logic. But thank you for the passive aggression.
Love day9 and rts❤❤
Please play the Beyond the Dark Portal expansion too!
10:27 Blizzard with the Steiner math.
IF YOU TAKE MY BASE DAMAGE NUMBERS 63 1/3% CHANCE OF DOING FULL DAMAGE, AND YOU COMBINE IT WITH MY PIERCE DAMAGES 33 AND 2/3% CHANCE OF DOING FULL DAMAGE, AND YOU COMPARE THEM TO YOUR 1 ARMOR? THE NUMBERS DON'T LIE, AND THEY SPELL DISASTER FOR YOU AT THE DARK PORTAL!
Oh boy.. I am excite
My dad gave me this game (i still have the actual discs) the minuet i learned how to read. The core memories I have of playing the campaign and then later on against my mom and my dad in a 1v1v1 deathmatch multiplayer game...ended up being my mother who absolutely wrecked face. I'm not sure how she managed it because to this day when i replay the missions i cant, managed to reach GOD rank before the end of the game. Id pay full price for a remaster of Warcraft 2 and its expansion, without QOL improvements of course. The amount of times ive had to hit restart campaign because i couldnt win due to resource attrition made me realize that you have to be VERY conscious of how you play each one. You could really screw yourself early on if you dont plan accordingly.
Really hope Day9tv continues playing WoW and also finds things in WoW that give him the “Oh hey I remember that thing in WCII!!” Or “I remember that place I destroyed!!!” lol
When I first saw my older brother playing this, I thought it was a fun christmas-themed game, set at the north pole, with red and white striped candy canes decorating the entrance to Santa's workshop.
It's funny how day9 started gaming with a mouse only and later discovering you could use the keyboard, whereas I started gaming keyboard only and then started using the mouse with Warcraft 2.
The animation is pretty terrible, but the sprites themselves are gorgeous. 2D is so much easier to read than 3D. The more fancy graphics effects they add, the harder it is to tell what’s happening. This is *clean*
Where did the sheep line “bah ram ewe” come from? The only other place I’d heard it was the movie “Babe” but they came out just a few months apart, could it really be from “Babe”?
Yes Captain! You're the Captain! I've got your rocket launcher right here! I've got your rocket launcher right here! I've got your rocket launcher right here! You're the Captain! You're the Captain! Yes Captain! I've got your Captain right here! Yes Rocket Launcher! Yes Captain! You're the Rocket Launcher! I've Captain your Captain! I've got your rocket launcher right here! You're the Captain! Yes Launcher! I've got your Captain right Launcher here! I've got your rocket launcher right here! Yes Captain! You're the Captain! You're the Rocket Launcher! I've got your rocket launcher right here! I've got your rocket launcher right here! I've got your rocket launcher right here! I've got your rocket launcher right here! Yes Captain! I've got your Captain right Launcher here!
Ahh yes, brings me back to the windows 95 days where having a computer meant your family had made it. I spent hundreds of hours playing this and the expansion Beyond the Dark Portal. To think games back in the day even came with a free map creator! Loved making my own maps and playing them with hero units.
I recently discovered you as streamer through the WoW videos and I already love watching your content! ♥
The Orc voice that does the mission intros sounds like Fozzie Bear! XD
The audio overlapping is pretty funny honestly. Definitely helped out by the fact that the audio in this game is incredible, so I don’t get tired of hearing it.
such nostalgia for this game. the music was awesome. it didn't take itself too serious. it was so much fun
Wow this brings me back!!! I remember my older brother getting me into this! Always playing together on the weekends and building my own maps
When it comes to things like ships and aircraft, I think whether or not they add to the overall concept depends largely how they are used, and the scale of the map.
For example, If you have large maps, and use concepts like fuel, loiter times (for air craft) where if you deploy an Air unit they can't just hang out over the terrain, and would have to come down to refuel/repair, etc. Similarly with ships, and motorized land units, if you have to maintain supply lines to the front, how you deploy your units, and have differing order types such as Strategic vs Tactical. So if for example you wanted to make the DCS of the RTS genre, you could even do things like have hierarchical levels of player inputs, where a General player makes the overall strategy, tells other players where to deploy their units, and those players then handle the more micro deployment of units, and of differing services, such as Army, Navy, Airforce, etc, all having to have supply chains maintained, and those roles could be subdivided based on the number of players in the game.
Now for a WCII scale game, this does not make any sense, but WC, and SC to me are Arena games, where something like Civilization we know as 4X. However what I am describing would be an intermediate class RTS. Probably better suited for something that encompasses the best of both, and would be akin to a simulator.
Yes Captain? You’re the Captain! ARG
The nostalgia is overwhelming. We only had one computer in the house. My older brother played the human campaign when it was his turn on the computer. I played the orcs during my turn. So many memories.
All the sounds bring back so many memories, this game is peak nostalgia for me
Hey I'm confused who is the captain?
I was 10 when this dropped. Playing over a 56k connection was wild.
Sure was. I remember for a few summers all I did was play this online and download a segment of coast to coast with Art Bell to listen to when i went to sleep off a file sharing network and it would take an hour to download the 13mb file
Popping the compact disk in the the CD player and cranking your sound system to max gives you the largest goosebumbs
So one thing about the AI in this game is it believes in proportionality. You can see it with how EXTREMELY angry they get when you send a whole bunch of units to their island vs how they reacted to the one single catapult.
One really fun anachronism about Sean's talk about how much of a leap forward RTS had come since Dune 2 is that things have come full circle in a way and Dune 2's interface and unit control - which has been wildly out of date since basically the very next RTS - has since found a perfect platform again in touch interfaces. Someone ported it to android, and playing dune 2 on a tablet genuine, unironically feels astonishing. I beat ALL THREE campaigns on my Samsung tablet. It didn't feel frantic or unintuitive at all.
I actually bet the limited unit control groups of WC2 with generally not super crucial to perform micro would translate to touch as well.
We need more novel RTS UI controls to bring the RTS to devices like phones and tablets. I'd argue that the much slower, single unit (or very small control group) design with select -> task -> target of dune 2 could be used in all sorts of touchscreen RTS.
for anybody interested, in my channel you can find out plenty of new generation WAR2 MODS. Plenty of playthroughs while testing the mods I've been doing since 2020, including playlists with proof of the featues. Please feel free to join the live broadcasts!!
These people didn't make Diablo.
Diablo was made by Condor. And only after they changed it from turn-based to realtime and added multiplayer, did Blizzard give it green light.
i would not be as good of a typer (because we did not have voice chat, or even shared ally vision in the first version of war2, so you had to type EVERYTHING like "THEY ARE RUSHING ME" quickly), as knowledgable about building PCs, nor had early coding interest (geocities HTML websites lol) without war2. i built a barebones PC kit from ebay when I was like 11 or 12 since it was all I could afford from saving up various birthday and chore monies. then the obsession led me to create websites for my war2 clans
this game shaped me into the tech leaning guy that ended up being my career and a core part of my entire life being interested in computers
Never played Warcraft 2, in fact I didn't know the existence until warcraft 3. I think the two first warcraft never launched in Brazil.
The game made me like RTS was Dune 2, the one made me love was Starcraft.
I still remember one guy playing Command and Conquer: Tiberiun Sun at store. He destroyed a android, but half of the android still crawl to attack. To me is cool even today.
The only C&C I played was generals, I want to rectify this in upcoming years.
> I don't like walls in RTS games
meanwhile, the prime meta in the pvp of every RTS is placing BUILDINGS as if they are walls, because you can't build walls outright
also, man. it's quite something to hear the quintessential starcraft guy say "yeah AOE2 is my favorite RTS". like, woah.
"Balance ruins everything" has had some really weird effects on RTSs, but also MMOs. I mean look at FFXIV. It's basically "a game like WoW". Does some things better, some things arguably worse, it's different, but it's very much a WoW-era MMO. And we've gotten to a point where the devs want the smallest pool of variables for designing endgame content. You can bring any tank, you can bring any dps, you can bring any healers (even if there's the shield + regen thing). But the downside is that even if everyone's rotation / priority is technically unique, nobody really does anything THAT distinct.
Contrast compare to older MMOs like EQ or FFXI. There were classes that could just flat out reduce a raid boss's autoattack dps (which tended to be a BIG part of their danger) by 65% or more with one spell. So you had to have at least one of those. You needed a class that could increase physical dps by the same amount or more, so you needed enough of them to boost your raid's damage dealers. You had some tanks that specialized in snap aggro, which was great for groups that rapidly pulled mobs for xp, but did you really need that in a raid? No, you wanted the hardiest, toughest tanks that - in trade - didn't have much utility. So in a raid, why would you want Rangers, Shadowknights, Paladins, Druids, etc... all these classes that had tons of non-raid use, but outside of niche things like a Druid's elemental resist buffs (so maybe bring ONE to a 40+ person raid), there really wasn't a point in bringing them along.
So I get it. People felt left out. Or raid tanks felt left out in group content. Oh your guild doesn't have enough of classes x, y, and z? Guess you're never raiding! Build raids so those groups can work? Well now a better build raid just steamrolls your content and the players complain about it being 2EZ.
But at the same time, classes now feel so incredibly homogenous and... boring? And encounter design, from dungeons to raids and even PvP, it all feels so... bland in the sense of what you do as a player in the raid, outside of specific set piece boss mechanics. This goes for WoW or FFXIV or almost any MMO released since WoW codified the "new MMO paradigm".
It's a tradeoff. And I'm sure it's way, WAAAAAY easier for devs to create content when they know every class will more or less (within a % tolerance that, to older MMOs would impossibly well balanced) perform almost the same as others in the same role in every encounter. But it also feels like something was lost. Back in the day "I'm an Enchanter" or "I'm a Bard" meant something. You had a wildly different set of features from any other class. You did things nobody else could do. Now? Does it really matter what you play? You do what every other class in your archetype can do, more or less. The visual effects are different. The cadence of your rotation is different. But you do the same thing, about as well, with very little to zero utility.
I guess an RTS has the advantage of there only being two to three factions or races to balance. As tough as it is, it's still waaaay easier than an MMO where players demand like a dozen classes to pick from. But even then like the video is pointing out (and I didn't quite realize it until this video), I had forgotten how many little details had to get left behind because every little RTS quirk (like disappearing trees from logging) is going to lead to a clever player realizing that if you raise your APM by 300, you can tunnel through them to open up paths to an enemy base or extra resource that nobody really intended.
And so now anybody that DOESN'T do that is at a huge disadvantage. So it becomes the new meta. But honestly the vast majority of people don't want to do that kind of thing and the game might risk falling off because the meta just isn't fun to play.
AQUA KNIGHTS 24/7!!!!! lol countless hours of joy playing bnet and making friends. never once met a single creeper on their either. i really miss the days of the irc style chat that came with bnet games. some people would just run a chat client and chat with people without even running any game
This idea of games designed to be failed is really interesting, because in today’s world the vast majority of games (with some notable exceptions like From Software titles) are designed to be ENGAGING, which means it needs to feel good even if you aren’t very good. I grew up in this era and I have kids of almost the same age I was when I was playing WC2. I think they’re pretty representative and there is absolutely no way they can persevere through fail-until-you-succeed game experiences like this. Hate to go all “kids these days” in the comment here - but we definitely lost something along the way.
This is interesting, I played Warcraft 3 and got rlly into that for awhile and also rlly into WoW in TBC and quite a bit since TBC (not lately though rlly) and also I read many books... Warcraft 2 I've seen some cutscenes and screenshots of the game, but I've never really actually watched the gameplay and gotten an idea of how it differs from Warcraft 3 aside from the obvious graphical/UI aspects... I'm also not entirely sure about what the story of Warcraft 1 or 2 is, iirc one of them has a lot to do with Medivh creating the dark portal as he is possessed by Sargeras, hoping that's in this one since I love Medivh's story (powerful insane mage + demonic possessed = 2 sorts of characters that I like together in one)... Idk if that's Warcraft 1 or 2 though and other than that, not very familiar at all with the story...
I used to intentionally damage some of my own buildings because they looked cooler with a fire on top 😂
BTW Starcraft 2 also has exploding critters... I saw a Harstem game where his opponent exploded a critter and accidentally gave away his units' position (because he must have been in range of the critter)
I think one of the big failures of water in games, is that a lot of times the maps are just a lot of open water and IF they have small islands etc, they arent worth doing anything with. So it makes big maps actually feel empty. The oil patches HELP in war2, with giving you a reason to have control of the seas, but I think it would be a lot cooler if they had other water features like some games have, Reefs/ocean mountains you could hide units it, with some slow VERY large range siegers.
I simpler change would be to make oil a more versatile reasource outside of ships. if certain tech required big oil costs then it would help to, but as is, you want JSUT enough navy to move your units around, and otherwise it isnt worth it.
Played this as a kid. Still good fun for me to run up every once in a while. Wanted to play multiplayer with pals forever, but even the friends of my that are into retro stuff think the game is a tad too... Stark? The look and sound is like very sharp and in your face if that makes sense. It's very saturated and the sounds are a bit piercing. To me I'm just very charmed by the sheer quality of it all. It's a taste thing. But I will say the game still looks amazing, to me.
My favorite unit was the axethrower. Justice for the trolls :)
my brother playing war2 on ps1 "the game looks way better on play station" me being like.... yea youre dumb.... the only thing ps1 version had over pc was there was not group limit so you could just draw a box around all your dudes and go attack. my brother got a pc shortly after then started saying how much better war2 looked on pc.... classic brother mentality. you could have the exact same product but his is better than yours.... because its his.
To this day I am a bit sad we do not have playable Ogres in WoW. In Mist of Pandaria they could have just released Pandas for Alliance and Ogres for the Horde. With the Ogres from Shangrila an Ogre Monk would have made all the sense in the world.
Day9 continually building workers when he has 9000 gold but refuses to build a second barracks so he can train grunts to support his catapults... Yea he's definitely gone back to playing as he would as a kid 😂
Funny thing about orc mission 6 is that you can just rush all the way to the end past enemy units with your main guy and win it as you are slightly faster than everything else.
Still better pathing than Dawn of War!
Never stop building workers? Funny thing, I always found 5 gold gatherers and 2 woodcutters to be sufficient per each Town Hall regardless of side or rank...
Does anyone else default to seeing the Peon's art box as a sultry green lady peon looking facing left, and glancing back towards the right? Where one of the horns is its mouth and she has a very large nose/rhino horn on the far left of the art box? It takes conscious effort for my brain to register the intended dopey looking peon art.
that's all i can see
Combine an Arrow Tower with fully upgraded Axethrowers/Archers, and you may never have to worry about coastal defense again... 😀
The nice thing about these "annihilation rounds" was that farns counted. So you could leave one enemy farm perpetually on fire and plunder every resource on the map, then go back and finish killing that farm to win the round. 😀
Ahhh, back when all the audio was recorded and put on the CD in WAV format. I use to put this CD into my stereo, skip track 1 (data track) and jam out to the soundtrack.
Regarding your mouse acceleration issue, you might be able to fix it by going to the video settings and changing the scaling method from "screen fit" to "integer". The size of the window will change slightly but it seems like it solved the issue for me.
to me, warcraft 3 felt very crowded not having water and boats, and logically it makes less sense. Fantasy has boats. War 2 felt much more open and grand playing.
I've been playing Wargus almost every day recently. It's an open sourceish version of Warcraft 2 with some modern niceties like widescreen, etc.
I learned that my optimal size for a "do-anything army" in this game was 41 people. So build enough farms to feed that many, and we were good to go! :)
SC2 and WC3 may be better games, but the music in WC2 and SC1 are unbeatable in terms of quality. Old music is just something else.
I still remember all the cheat codes.
glittering prizes
make it so
every little thing she does
deck me out
it is a good day to die
I can type “it is a good day to die” fast enough to save “Lord lorthar” on the flying stage. The next stage still says “Lord lothare is dead”.
Love watching you play of warcraft 2, but the whole video I'm like: Go build guard towers all over the place for defense haha
Human Campaign Mission #5 was always my favorite... the Orc side really didn't seem to have an equivalent.
the audio clips are just so good lol
"This is a single player game made in 1995, I should not stress too much", dude this game will kick your ass, especially the expansion. If you like pointing out flaws so much of old games, why don't you play Total Annihilation from 1997 and start pointing out features that modern games don't have but TA has?
When world of warcrft came out I always thought ppl were talking about this, far superior, game. 😂
Control groups were part of the original game. It was a keyboard command. You could have groups of 4.
What do you mean unit ranks were aesthetic!? If my marine has 50 kills, he was obviously the marine leader for the rest of the game!
I played this after the fact, I played SC1 first.
"It one-shots? IT ONE-SHOTS?!" - Day9, after his 15% health remaining Ogre got hit.
47:18 the resources in stormgate looks horrible. But it is sci fi, so it does not have to make sense. Dune 2 was awesome, harvesting that spice while under the threat of the worms :).
The problem you describe as "supply blockage" is why I like playing on High resource custom maps.
Maybe you'd consider it cheating, but I hated Fog of War and always turned it off in the options menu...
I almost always played the Orc side in this game, because their dialogue is funnier than the Humans'...