Post your favorite strategies vs AMAI here!

Yo dudes! Here's mine:

Dreadlord Necrowagon
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This one, I saw in three replays, and it is quite easy to execute.



TIER 1
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Build 2 Acolytes to mine gold.
Build a Crypt and Ziggurat.
When Crypt is done, start creating Ghouls, up to 5, harvest lumber.
Build 1 more Acolyte (the builder and upcoming shade)

Use the Builder Acolyte from this point.
Build a Graveyard.
Build an Altar.
Build the 2nd Ziggurat and Shop.

When Altar is built, build Dreadlord.
When Dreadlord is created, select Carrion Swarm.
When Shop is built, Dreadlord buys a Staff of Necromancy.
When Graveyard is built, move your Ghouls to harvest near it.

Build the 2nd Zig and Shop.
Upgrade to Halls of Dead and build 3rd Zig.
Optionally upgrade your Ziggurats to Nerubian Towers.

Go to Graveyard, create 2 skellies, then Proceed to creep easy (green dot) creeps.
Create more skellies as you kill. Creep more. Then return to base when you can't creep safely anymore.



TIER 2
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Build Sacrificial Pit
Build 2 Temples of the Damned at the back of your base.
Build 2 Slaughterhouses at the front base's towers.
Build another Zig. Upgrade it to Nerub Tower.

When Sacrificial Pit is built, create Shade.
When Shade is created, unsummon your Sacrificial Pit.

Slaughterhouses:
Create 1 Meat Wagon, 1 Statue.
Que Exhume Corpses and next Meat Wagon.
Que another Statue
Que another Meat Wagon.

Temples of the Damned:
Create up to 6 Necromancers (do not auto-cast Summon Skeletons)
Que Necromancer Adept Upgrade
Que Skeleton Longetivity Upgrade

When 1st Statue is built, auto-cast Essence of Mana on Necs
When Meat Wagons are built, auto-cast Pick Up Corpse, bring them at the Graveyard.

Upgrade to Black Citadel.

Creep your first Expansion: Move all your units near the expansion site (but do not engage the creeps. Select all Necs, press R. You have lots of skellies!!! Attack with skellies first on your first expansion.

Dreadlord should be Level 3 by now. Skills: Level 2 Carrion Swarm, Level 1 Vampiric Aura. Sell expensive items if you can. You need more gold ASAP.

Start upgrading Unholy Strength and Armor (for the skellies).

When attacked by enemies, use the same formula: Create skellies outside the battle (you want to avoid anti-Casters esp. Faerie Dragon).



TIER 3
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Temple of the Damned 1: Que Skeleton Mastery, 2 Banshees.
Temple of the Damned 2: Que Necromancer Master Upgrade, Banshee Adept Upgrade.

Slaughterhouse 1: Que 2 Abominations
Slaughterhouse 2: Que Disease Cloud, Que Destroyer Ability.

Upgrade Cannibalism.

Prepare next expansion.

Finish upgrading al Unholy Strength and Armor.

When Dreadlord reaches Level 6, you should have: Infernal, Level 3 Carrion Swarm, Level 2 Vamp Aura.


Repeat the standard:

1. Cast skellies off-battle, then attack. Protect your Necs & Banshees.
2. When hero is FF'd run him to the back near Statues.
3. When faced with Air Units, use Skeletal Mages and FF them. Especially Enemy Destroyers.
4. When faced with enough ground units, Carrion Swarm.
5. Bring badly injured Aboms at the back, Cannibalize at the wagons.


Counter their counters:

1. More Air unit enemies, build 2-4 Fiends with Web.
2. Dark Ranger Silence: Run your casters away at the back, put the Skeletons at the front. FF on the Ranger.
3. Casters: Make Destroyers. Maintain 2-3 Statues always (for Mana & Health)
4. Dispell: Just continue spamming skellies ^_^ Use Skeletal Mages to FF on their casters.
5. Annoying Heroes: When timing is right, cast Infernal on them.

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Always works! ^_^

I played 3 on 3 NE VS UD on Murgul oasis map all in insane mode except me :), it was so hard to beat the UD army, i tried several times and still my entire allies and me got wiped out.

Finally i found only one strategy that works. At first i only build moonwells and altar plus a store, and many many wisps to harvest wood, wtait until tier 2 while my hero cripping alone or with my allies.

As soon as entered tier 2, I built 3 Ancient of Wind and creating lots of fiery dragons, and i made only fiery dragons as my army.

It was hell lots of fiery dragons until its kinda hard to controll them, but hehe it scared the ud army on every encounters and drove them away. It gave sometimes for my allies to grow a big army, and then we could easily owned all UD base.

Fieries are good on blasting UD statues, but I dont know about UD they seems so confuse every time they see fierie dragons.

It was fun, its really worth to try..

must be that evade thing that triggers some bug in the AI, like a unit targeting a fairi dragon when it evades the attack might go into flee mode instantly instead or something.

I guess that is also the same cause why AMAI flees after 6 necromancers cast a community of skeletons from 3 fully loaded Meat Wagons. :-/

@Shadowstrike: I'm saving your post is file coz I would like to try it at home! ^_^

Now I only have half the replay of this game if anyone doesn't believe me...cause we had to save halfway through due to one of the computers being unreliable at that time. My friend and I played 2 versus 6 AMAI (random, on normal) on the Dragon Falls map - which is not a standard map by the way. We won that game - my friend and I were both night elves, and we just holed up with ancient protectors etc, a PotM and a KotG with archers and huntresses, later going to chimaeras and hippogriphs. For those of you who know this map, we were both in the bottom right corner, and as you know, there is only two narrowish paths into that corner of the map - where we set up our defense.

I guess this shows a bit of stupidity that's still in the AMAI - cause our defense could have been easily overcome by air units - they could have cruised through to the middle of our base where we had nothing, and attacked from behind. Only the undead AMAI built air units - gargoyles - but too few, and easily taken care of by archers and hippogriphs. If that undead AMAI had gone frost wyrms....well, we would have been dead ages ago...as it was, we held out until all the computers' gold and gold mines ran out - ours ran out after the computers'. We attacked when that happened, and of course won the game.

@Rogue Knight
Some unit strength issues have been resolved hopefully making computers determine the correct strategy easily and should hopefully aid the types of units to build in strategies and improve situation to beat you RogueKnight. We are aiming to improve the strategies at somepoint but improving harrassing could also fix this issue.

@nonhacker and shadowstrike
some amai retreat bugs are being looked into, with one bug fixed but there seems to be 2 ways the system fails. First bug (introduced it seems in these latest versions) seemed to be one of the main causes of AMAI just getting stuck as units keep going 2 paces forward then back 2 paces then forwards 2 paces etc.

@Strategy Master: Thanks for the heads up! Here at home I tried using the Mass Faerie Dragons VS AMAI and VS BlizzAI. I won both of them, except it's more difficult to win in BlizzAI. Lich and Ghouls always try to kill my Demon Hunter.

what are the strategies against insane amai?

@MEM: I remember someone who posted of a replay vs Insane AMAI and still won. The map should be small, like Two Rivers, and you must continually harass your opponent's buildings while you tech. The key is to deprive the Insane AMAI of gold and lumber by killing or distracting the workers.

One other comment....when I play NE against an AMAI UD, the comp always takes mass necros against me....why is that? It always happens no matter what I do, and I have a lot of fun using wisps to detonate the raised skeletons - that's a good strat against the AMAI UD for all you NE players.....

Hi Guys! I enjoyed a strategy, which sometimes works in my Battle.net games, but is very effective VS AMAI:

"Fountainjack". In maps like Lost Temple where there are Fountains of Healing, always check it out after a battle where your opponent TP'd out or escaped. Most likely than not, you'll find a number of units, or even heroes healing there. If your timing is good, AMAI will send near-dead units there. FREE TOMES OF EXPERIENCE EVERYONE! And it works very well!

This can be further made effective by making sure you have ensnaring/stunning/slowing units/heroes. For Orc, I always get 2-3 raiders with ensnare, combined with Shadow Hunter with Hex, and Orb of Lightning Purge. Heroes run into the fountain to heal, much like it goes into a shop alone. There, you ensnare/stun/slow the hero. If you are lucky (the hero has no TP Scroll or Invul Pot), you get to kill it, and again, FREE GREATER TOMES OF EXPERIENCE EVERYONE!

Like I said, it works in Battle.net, too. And to further analyze this:

Humans with a Pally having Level 3 Devotion Aura, some healers, and Scrolls of Healing & Protection, have the greatest advantage when fighting a battle around a fountain. This is because healing is %-based. With high armor, you get high Effective HP (so each HP your units gain are multiplied because of armor!).

Another tip, and this is already widespread, some of you may already know this: Before healing heroes off-battle, temporarily take away from them HP-boosting items (like Periapts of Vitality or Belt of Giant Strength). This is because these items, while increasing base HP in absolute units (150 HP for Periapt), they adjust your current HP by %. In other words, you will heal more HP in the shortest time, then grab again your HP-boosting item. Same applies to Mana!

Ok, I got this idea from the BNet forums, and it would be great if AMAI would use it in fights:

*** Unholy Frenzied Lava Spawns

Get Firelord with Lava Spawns.
Get Necromancers with at least Adept Upgrade.
Before a fight, cast a Lava Spawn, then Necros cast Unholy Frenzy on them.
Fight.
When Lava Spawns split, recast Unholy Frenzy on them.
Attack for teh win! ^_^