[quote name='The Crotch']Can't help you with the downloaded maps, though. I've heard a fair bit about them, but haven't bothered playing them. I'm assuming cheesy turtle->mass capitol ships does not work.[/quote]
I've beaten both original SC and brood war but these maps are just insane. To give you an idea of how unfair these maps are, let me talk about the stage 2b (the one I just finished).
Your mission is to save 3 hero characters and the current heroes (2 of them) must survive in addition to the ones you save. Now you're given a standing army of 4 Dragoons, 12 Zealots, 1 Archon, 2 Observers, 3 Scouts, 1 Wraith (hero unit), and one Science Vessel (hero unit). Sounds like a lot, right? But imagine having to take out one computer (brown) while the other 2 cpus alternately attack in squads. Remember, you don't have a base established yet so you don't get to replace your units. You've got to make them last. Fortunately brown's hostage is a hero unit Arbiter. This is invaluable for your army's survival.
The first order of duty is to break out the arbiter from the stasis field. This is the easy part. Once you do, you're given 2 probes and 1000 minerals. You're still in brown's base so you've got to clear them out. But about 2 mins. into destroying brown's base (which you'll make your own), purple and red will start working into with tanks, goliaths, wraiths, and mass marines/firebats. It's a bit easier since the Arbiter is hiding your army and you can pick them off. Unfortunately, the Arbiter's shield gets depleted quick (thanks to goliaths/wraiths/marines/occasional BC so they're my primary targets) so I use the SV's D-matrix to extend the Arb's health. But brown's already got 2 tanks in siege near bunkers & towers so you've got to lure the tank out of siege mode so you've gotta hit & run with dragoons. As much as I'd like to rush in, the bunkers/tanks would rape my zeals before I could fully finish them off, not to mention red & purple constantly harassing me. So I've gotta do it piecemeal.
Once I've finally finished brown off, I can start my base. But, as I only have 2 probes, 1000 min, and no gas, I can't warp a lot of things in so I'm still vunerable and at this point, red/purple are actually starting to intensify and coordinate their attacks. By the time my base gets out one brand spanking new zealot, I'm already down to 3 semi-hurt Dragoons, 1 Archon, 2 semi-hurt Scouts, 2 observers, and 3 badly wounded zealots and hero units all in red. I miraculously hold out to reinforce my base w/ cannons using a combo of D-matrix on my Arbiter and Statis field on all air units while my army wipes out the ground forces (which, thankfully, is easy since they're invisible and the comp doesn't abuse the sat-scan).
Once I've got my minerals/gas up and my base is reinforced by cannons/zeals, I start pumping out Archons since they don't give you a lot of mins but gas is virtually unlimited. I finally managed to crank out 2 groups of Archons (and 2 Dark Archons to mind control an scv to repair my terran hero units) despite almost constantly being harassed by red/purple and bring my Arbiter along to keep them concealed. I choose to wipe out purple since my observers showed me that their tower placement sucks and spider mines were easy to destroy. They go down fairly easily despite red supporting them w/ occasional tanks/goliaths/marines.
Unfortunately, while I was wiping out purple, red finally did something smart and brought in BCs escorted by wraiths and decimated half my base before my cannons and remaining air units took them out. Fortunately, I was able to mind control an scv before demolishing purple to repair my terran hero units. After getting a terran expansion (thanks to my new scv) up on purple's base, it gets pretty quiet. Red harasses me in small groups and an occasion wraith/bc combo but for the most part isn't hitting me. When I build up a new arbiter and 6 BCs, I send them into red's base only to find red idling. I do a sat-scan and find out he's used up all of his minerals on units to harass me and red goes out w/ a whimper.
[quote name='inubu']If you go into the campaign editor, you'll see why they're so hard, especially on levels 3a/b. Aside from the AI level, they computer opponents basically have unlimited resources. For every 500 resources they collect, they are given a bonus of 5000. Towards the end of those missions, the computer seems like they can churn out Battlecruisers as fast as they can churn out zerglings.[/quote]
I just beat 2b today. It. Took. Almost 6 hours.
And I had to save my progress since it was so damn difficult not to mention the fact that I couldn't even build my first base until I was about an hour and a half in.
