Enemy harvesters are a pain in the neck. You blow them up and the game immediately replaces them at no cost to the enemy - (most unfair in my opinion). A while back someone came up with a method to 'disable' the harvester by letting it run over one of your infantry unit - which due to the game bug causes that particular harvester to sit there and do nothing for the rest of the game - thus destroying the enemy's economy. However, in some versions of Dune 2, this bug is fixed and no longer works, so a more creative method is needed. This method involves quite a bit of micromanagement, but can still be done at a relatively early stage of the game and quite satisfying to execute (I always find it fun to come up with new ways to trick the notoriously stupid Dune 2 AI - human ingenuity rules!)
First, get three of your light vehicles like trikes or quads to the corner of the screen. Line them up so that they forms a wall of vehicle around the the top edge. Then, set your quad/trikes to attack the ground in front of it (so as to prevent any of them from attacking enemy vehicles). Select one of the vehicle and have it move forward one square to create the 'trap door'.
Then, send out a scout to locate the enemy harvester (usually at a spice field somewhere near the enemy base). Eliminate all the guarding tank/unit if necessary but leave the harvester alone. Once the area has been cleared, send out a lone infantry unit and have it fire one shot at the harvester. The harvester will immediately stop whatever it is doing and try to run over the infantry unit. Immediately send that unit scampering all the way to your little trap, keep a close watch on the pair to make sure the harvester never gets too close. Infantry and harvester moves at the same speed so you shouldn't have any problem leading the harvester all the way back.
Lead the harvester into the trap. Then, once the harvester moves into the trap to finish off the poor little infantry guy who will most certainly be crushed (though his death will not be in vain), get the 'trap door' to close by moving your trike/quad to plug in the opening. Be sure to have that vehicle immediately attack the ground in front of it so that it doesn't accidentally destroy the trapped harvester which would cause it regenerate at the enemy base and ruin your little experiment. If you did this right, the enemy will now have one less harvester permanently! Repeat the same tactic for the other one if so desired - and once the enemy has been crippled economically, you can send all your forces to crush their base without worrying that the enemy will launch another attack wave at your base. Although this does tie up your vehicle resource, without harvesters, the enemy will no longer be able to produce any new units - so in theory you don't need that big of attack force to take out their base.
If you are still concerned about vehicle tie up, then another way of doing this is to create a wall using your base's building structure (creating an alleyway, for example), and have one quad/trike act as the trap door. You can even trap two enemy harvesters this way using only one quad/trike providing that you designed it well. In fact, you can even have one of your harvester act as the trap door (after all, why would you need to collect so much spice when the enemy isn't harvesting at all?). Make sure your trapdoor is far away from your base's rocket turret though.
Dune 2 is a fun game, but in my opinion, it's infinitely more fun trying to trick the dumb AI into doing stupid stuff. |
