Post your AMAI Strategy Guides here!

I am writing this as a strategy guide how to play vs AMAI, especially for those who got used to how Blizz AI plays and then overwhelmed with AMAI the first time (I, for one, experienced that).

My guide is based on my observations how a lot of Warcraft III players play as far as the real-life replays I viewed are concerned (including the recent Season 2 replays at the Blizz web site). For 2v2 and 1v1

Eat Buildings, Eat

• Avoid battles in the confines of your opponent's base especially if they have a lot of natural defenses in place.
• ... But you can dance outside the base and wait for your enemy to go outside the base.
• If they are too defensive and don't want to go outside, find a building that you can attack safely, without getting too much harm from towers or burrows. Usually these are: Shops, Barracks, Farm buildings.
• This should be enough to entice your enemy to go out and fight you. And if ain't enough, just continue destroying the buildings.

Learn from AMAI: Use Fountains of Healing

Example for Human at Lost Temple:

• Build Altar, then build Archmage. When Archmage goes out, pick Water Elemental and scout for your opponent's base.
• While doing that, build mass Footmen from your Barracks. The first Footman should be out before your Archmage gets out, and use it to scout the opposite side of the map.
• The key is to find your enemy immediately, because you will harrass him early with mass Tier 1. Before the night sets in, start walking to your opponent's base while still building Footmen.
• Fight! Be sure to fight just outside the enemy base. See Eat Building, Eat, above. Focus-fire the units, micro all-you-can.
• Pay attention to nearly-dead Footmen or Archmage. Use that ALT key often, or the Unit Group panel. When you see one, click the unit, right click the minimap's location of the Healing Fountain. By this time it should be night, the creeps are sleeping, it's safe to use the Fountain.
• Continue fighting until you get all your units nearly-dead and retreat to the fountain. You should have no casualties. You are saving a LOT of gold here. I managed to kill many archers and still got my 9 Footmen alive, healing at the fountain.
• Finish healing, then strike your opponent again! Kill the units, or hero. Then destroy farms or barracks to prevent them from making more.
• Before the morning comes, make sure you have no units left in Healing Fountain so that they don't get killed by creeps.

Variant: If there is no Fountain of Healing, click the nearly-dead units, and right-click the back of your base. For Human, you must have an Arcane Vault ready. After collecting all nearly-dead units, use a Scroll of Regeneration. 100 gold will give you massive HP healed!!!



How to deal with escaping nearly-dead units

Or the title should be: The counter to my "Use Fountains of Healing" strategy.

So you are using focus-fire to kill that Tauren, but it manages to escape death. Instead of running after that Tauren, use one of the following:

• Death Coil
• Chain Lightning
• Storm Bolt
• Level 3 Shockwave
• Blink + Shadowstrike
• etc...

The kill will always be worth it! I love this being done in the replays I watch with a Death Knight. A Farseer escapes, gets far, but still got PWNED by a Death Coil.

This is better than running after the units. In a battle, your enemy will get free hits if you spend time running. So just shift to focus-fire another enemy unit instead. Leave the final killing blows to your heroes.



Random Tips

• If you are attacked by AMAI and feel you can't win the fight, you TP out, right? There's an alternative. If you feel you can nuke a Hero, do so, and AMAI will be forced to TP out, saving you a losing fight, and buying time for you to build the counter units.
• The reverse of the above: If you feel you can win the battle, kill the units first then kill the heroes. You don't want your weak enemy TP out early. Relish the walking Experience Tomes!
• In maps with a lot of gold mines be prepared anytime for AMAI to build up to 100-food-worth of units (High Upkeep). So you must do the same whenever you can. The general rule is: 1 gold mine in your hands, you can go for Low-Medium Upkeep. 2 gold mines, Medium Upkeep. 3 gold mines, High Upkeep.
• Pay attention to your gold counter. If you have a LOT of gold, but a few units, you will probably lose to AMAI who spent gold and have more units than you have.
• If you plan to tech than build more units early, be sure to distract your opponent and harass.

Nice post.

Few thoughts to add on scouting. Peons work well, they're cheaper and give less XP to the enemy if killed. Footies, archers, etc., especially the first couple, are better used for early creeping. Speedy Human militia can build a scout farm after doing a bit of recon. Wisps can gather lumber anywhere while providing extra eyes around the map. Farseer's wolves make excellent scouts throughout the game.

Or. You can check other creep camps during early creeping yourself, sending units high and low what have you. Finding fresh creep corpses will tell you the direction of AMAI's home base. I don't believe AMAI 'creeps out of order' to avoid this type of detection, like many players have learned to do.

Creep jacking AMAI is a very effective form of harassment. With practice, you can anticipate or predict where AMAI is likely creeping and ambush them while they're at it. Block their avenue of escape, press them into a small creep area lined with trees, or against a fountain ringed with trees (like echo isle) or up against a shop (like goblin merchant on lost temple). Get a quick hero kill then wade through the rest of the army while its tries to retreat, right through the middle of your forces. At worst, you can force a TP, which is always a good thing.

Lastly, if you can spare a few units, or a stray hero, camp the route between a fountain or yellow/red creep camp and AMAI's base, then ambush red lined units on their unsuspecting way to get healed. They usually travel alone