Emperor: Battle for Dune

Game versions

There are multiple versions of this game:

• 1.7: Has no gameplay changes but adds attack move order(CTRL+Shift) and double selecting group centres the camera on the group.
• 1.8: Has two game balance changes of Atreides Air Drones speed & armor decrease and Harkonnen Devastators doing splash damage with their plasma bullets. It also adds features to the interface such as picking a ready building with "E" and setting rally point for refineries and construction yards.
• 1.9: Adds the map editor.

Unless the balance changes matter, 1.8 or 1.9 should be chosen for a speedrun because of features added and non-helpful bugs fixed.

Objectives in standard missions

Objectives in the first, battles chosen on the map and homeworld missions in the campaign is to destroy the enemy base by destroying all buildings(Exception in next sentence) or making the enemy AI retreat. Destroying windtraps is not mandatory. Cutting power slows down unit recruitment, but not base building speed and also disables turrets that require power.

The enemy AI retreats when their last spice refinery is destroyed and these conditions are fulfilled:

• Game time is over 10 minutes.
• AI hasn't got enough money to build a refinery.
• Random chance. (~50%)

Retreating takes 3 minutes or when 10 enemy units are moved to the retreat point. AI sometimes ignores it or moves all units to the point at speed of the slowest unit. Enemy carryall with a loaded harvester counts as one unit. Advanced carryalls and Ordos Deviators can be used to move enemy units to that location.

Tips for a speedrun

Rush

In standard missions rushing to the enemy base with starting units(use reserve forces) before it builds up is the quickest way to win a mission. This cannot be done on capital or homeworld missions where the enemy base is built completely.

AI priority glitch(Wall encasement)

Unit AI choose to target units that have higher priority. Walls have the lowest priority. If a unit or a building is encased inside a wall. Enemy AI will try to destroy the unit/building inside first, but will only fire if the target is in sight(Air units might fire). AI will continue trying to destroy the unit unless something of a higher priority comes in firing range. This would stop the enemies continued advance on your base.

APC base takeover

House Atreides and House Ordos both have APC's. Atreides has the stealth APC while have Ordos have the fastest one. Having an APC loaded with a scout will enhance their vision to that of the scouts. Load engineers into the APC with what to take two key buildings:

• Construction yard
• Vehicle Factory(Can rebuild Construction yard)

Without these enemy is forced to use infantry, air units and/or the spaceport if it has any of these. It also poses a possibility to take out the enemy base from the inside.