Emperor: Battle for Dune - Harkonnen Level 06

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Jimbatron

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Published on March 9, 2024 10:56:08 PM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLf53z8Sb7w

Game:

Emperor: Battle for Dune (2001)

Duration: 11:43

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6

With the new Dune movie released, I thought I'd upload some old videos of a playthrough of the last licensed strategy game for the franchise released in 2001 (although stylistically it looks more like the David Lynch 1984 film than the descriptions in the books or the visuals from Denis Villeneuve's version).

Strategy overview:
It's an off world mission where you have a limited amount of funds to build a base and troops. Although this gets topped up occasionally, it isn't enough to build an overwhelming force. To make matters worse, if you pick Gunseng as I do, you are severely outnumbered, and an all out ground war is extremely unlikely to end in your favour. But you only need to destroy the palace to win, and it's poorly defended against an air attack. So focus on enough defence to hold off attacks whilst you build a squad of gunships.

0:00 Map
The Atreides attack the Ordos, and the Ordos attack one of my territories. As this doesn't affect my advance to the Atreides I resign the territory to simply avoid having to play a random defence mission.
0:25 Opening Cutscene
At the end of this you have to pick for one of the brothers to side with. I pick Gunseng. They're both evil, but Copec is a drooling imbecile and makes the mistake of threatening me, which I don't react well to. Ostensibly, the tasks seems harder, but if you follow the strategy above, it's actually easier.
3:51 Game Start
I deploy the construction yard, and blockade the gap in the fortification wall to the northwest with what vehicles I have, and use my infantry to start uncovering the local map. I upgrade the construction yard to be able to build guns turrets, then a factory to build combat tanks. I then build a barracks and start training troopers for anti air defense, and construct a hangar.
6:20 Air attack
Copec sends a couple of gunships to attack the vehicles I have blockading the gap in the wall. I retreat them towards the troopers. This deals with them. Then an additional MCV arrives (useful if you lose your construction yard, quite possible as shortly you will have a death hand sent your way). I move this inside the wall as I want to use that to bottle neck any attacks coming from the northwest. I upgrade the hangar to produce gunships. I put in an order to create 7, which should be enough to win
7:58 Death Hand Launch Detected
You need to check what gets hit by this. Quite often as here, your construction yard will be targeted, but it can survive the hit, so make sure you repair it. Other structures may need to be rebuilt.
8:10 Incoming attacks
The Troopers deal with the air attack. There's a moderately large ground attack. I have my troopers behind the combat tanks and together they fend it off, but I lose a couple of tanks and I order replacements to be built. Extra funds timely arrive as I'm running out of money
10:45 Attacking the palace
I've now run out of funds, so I have to attack and trust it works. I send the gunships down following the river (as there are no air defences there), until they are directly east of the palace, then send them west in a straight line to attack. Note Copec has 4 Elite Devastators, and 2 Elite Missile tanks guarding the palace - do you fancy beating those on the ground? Fortunately, they aren't fast enough to bring down the gunships before they do the job.
11:25 Victory

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