When invading, if possible head straight for the enemy Peasants mining Gold then attack them. This formation allows you to get plenty of hits on the Peons while they try to mine. The peons will walk right between the Ogres and Grunts which are placed on stand ground.

Go For the Peasants and Peons
When you invade, always kill the Peons first. When you attack enemy offensive units you're not really slowing the enemy down. They have created those units for the purpose of fighting and dying, but when you attack Peons that can be used to mine Gold, harvest Lumber and build buildings you are slowing down their economy. Whenever possible run past the enemy defenses straight to the Peons mining and harvesting. Split your forces sending half to engage the enemy offensive units using the other half of them to sneak in and kill the Peons. Although you will not win the battle against the enemy defending units if you kill the enemy's workers it will be worth it. The enemy will be forced to train more Peons which will eat up their resources or will forget to train more Peons to replace them which will put them further behind you.

Attack Peasants and Peons On Lumber
Rather than trying to kill the Peons on Lumber, tell a group of units to kill the Peons mining Gold, then take one unit and have it beat on the backs of each chopper. Hit one, then move on to the next Peon chopping Lumber. When the Peon is hit it will stop chopping Lumber and will have wasted any time already spent chopping Lumber. You do not need to kill these Lumber Peons, just attack each one once. Once you have killed the Peons mining Gold move on to the Lumber harvesting Peons as they will be most likely moved over to mining Gold after the attack if you let them survive.

Don't Kill Farms After Killing Large Numbers of Units
If you've just attacked a person and massacred all their army, don't attack their Farms because they will now have a huge surplus of food at that point. Destroying Farms is only damaging to the enemy when they are right at their Food limit. Instead find some other more important building to target.

Combat Takes Precedence Over Everything
Battles in Warcraft II require a lot of micro management. You often can't just tell your units to attack and move on to other things. You must control your units throughout the entire fight. Don't move the screen back to your town and start working on building. Watch! Make sure there won't be any opposition before taking you eyes off of the battle. The only reason you should leave a battle is to quickly train more units or instruct recently completed units to the battle. In these cases pick a good time to move from the battle and quickly return to the battle once you've finished giving new commands.

Kill The Town Hall, Stronghold or Fortress!
One of the ultimate damaging blows to the enemy is to destroy their Town Hall, Stronghold/Keep, or Fortress/Castle. While killing all of the Peons mining Gold and harvesting Lumber is a severe blow they can just train more. However, when you get rid of the Town Hall they can no longer build any more Peons in that location until they have rebuilt their Town Hall. Also, if you get rid of a Stronghold/Keep or Fortress/Castle you are cutting the Gold supply of all of the Town Halls the player may have by 10-20 Gold per trip depending on how high they have upgraded their Town Hall. If you are able to destroy their advanced buildings such as Ogre Mounds, Gnomish Inventor, Mage Towers, they can no longer rebuild them until they upgrade their Town Hall again. They will also not be able to create any new ones. Also it is a huge resource blow to the enemy as to get back in the action they will have to make another hall 1200 800 + upgrade it 2000 1000 While they are at Town Hall, they lose the +10 Gold per trip (20 for a Castle) from not having a Stronghold. After you kill the Stronghold, you quickly get rid of the Ogre Mound/Stables and that is often all you need to over power the enemy.

Killing a Fortress/Castle is even more damaging. 1200 800 for a hall, 2000 1000 to upgrade to keep/stronghold, 2500 1200 to go back to Fortress/Castle. They also lose +20 Gold per trip until they get back to Castle/Fortress.

Another benefit of killing a Town Hall rather than the peons is that you can do it quickly as it can take a while to kill Peons.

What Are Some Good Ways To Kill a Town Hall? Use 3-4 Goblin Sappers. 3 Goblin Sappers will destroy Town Hall, 4 for a Keep/Stronghold, 4 for a Fortress/Castle. Some good ways to do this is send in 2-3 Goblin Sappers and hit the hall. Then send in some guys to attack the hall. It's easier to use all Goblin Sappers but sappers take a while to train unless you have a few Alchemists. Bloodlusted Ogres are the best. You soften the hall up with a few sappers and then hit it with the Bloodlusted Ogres. Sacrifice your guys to kill a hall if you cannot out fight the enemy. Let them beat on your back. As long as you kill that hall it doesn't matter.

After you get rid of a Stronghold/Fortress, move in and get rid of the Ogre mound/Stables because they can't make anymore. Do the same with Mage Towers/Temples.

Why Attack a Blacksmith First?
The Blacksmith requires Oil to build. On low resources land maps you have only a set amount of Oil. If the Blacksmith is destroyed you can only make 1 or 2 more. If you destroy a few of them and the enemy upgrades their Town Hall they will find themselves without Oil. In some games the enemy finds they do not have enough Oil left to build another Blacksmith and they are forced to fight with Grunts instead of Ogres as Ogres require a Blacksmith. On water maps the Blacksmith is not as important as Oil is often freely available.

Why Attack an Ogre Mound Rather Than a Blacksmith?
While taking out a Blacksmith stops the Ogres/Knights just like killing an Ogre Mound or Human Stable does, the Ogre Mound has less hit points. An Ogre Mound has only 500 which is almost as easy to kill as a farm while a Blacksmith has 775 Hit Points. That is almost as many hit points as Barracks. If you have played a lot of Warcraft II or have done some research, you have noticed that Barracks are much harder/longer to kill than Farms. When the enemy is sending reinforcements from another town, training more troops you can't stop or an ally is sending help you have a limited amount of time before your attack is repulsed. Anything that will allow you to do more damage in a shorter amount of time will be worth it.

Attack Me? Well Then I'll Attack You!
If you have an army out there going to attack your enemy's town, and somehow the enemy gets past your units and attacks your village, then head straight to their village with your force. Usually what will happen is your enemy will get scared and bring their units back home to protect their village. Once you have killed all their Peasants, head back to your village to attack the guys in your town. Don't let the enemy attacking your village destroy any good buildings. If you go to the enemy's village and find you can't take it, head back to your own village. Another thing that might happen is the enemy will destroy your town while you destroy theirs and it will come down to who has enough left to win the final battle or who has enough to rebuild somewhere else.

If you return to defend your town rather than heading on to attack theirs, they have the advantage because they are doing damage to your town and possibly workers while you're doing nothing to them but possibly defeat units that were intended to die anyway. It's better to let your town go and have a chance at doing as much or more damage to the enemy town. If the enemy town is too well defended you should return to your town as quickly as possible.

If you see you have better ground troops INVADE! Don't waste any time and hold nothing back. This has always worked so far for me. But you can't delay invading and you can't hold anything back. You don't do anything lame like keep a few guys back at your town for protection. Maybe those guys you kept were all that was needed to over power the enemy.

Cleanup
Make sure you destroy everything in the enemy's first town. While you are destroying the first town, start looking for their next one. If they are good, they will have one or more. Be sure to destroy every building in their first town including Farms. Some people leave important buildings such as Farms alive which allows the enemy to continue to make units at their new expansion towns. If you destroy all of the Farms they will be forced to build more Farms rather than advanced buildings which will allow them to get back on their feet such as Lumber Mills, Blacksmiths, Ogre Mounds and so on.

Suggested priority attack orders

Units

• Death Knights and Mages
• Goblin Sappers/Demolition Squads
• Catapults/Ballistas
• Towers
• Archers
• Knights/Ogres
• Peons/Peasants

Town Hall/Great Hall Stage

• Towers - however if you can go around them, do so
• Barracks - Set up a 2on1 or more to make sure they can't train more units
• Blacksmith
• Town Hall
• Lumber Mill
• All Farms

Keep/Stronghold Stage

• Towers - however if you can go around them, do so
• Goblin Alchemist/Gnomish inventor - This will prevent them from building sappers to kill your attacking army.
• Barracks - If they only have one. If they have 2 or more, skip down to the next one on the list.
• Stables/Ogre Mound - This will prevent them from building more Ogres/Knights. Killing the Blacksmith might be better if they have not upgraded to level 5 yet. You probably want to attack the Stables/Ogre Mound instead because it only has 500 hit points instead of 775.
• Keep/Stronghold.
• Lumber mill
• All Farms

Fortress/Castle Stage

• Towers - however if you can go around them, do so
• Dragon Roosts/Gryphon Aviaries - To prevent air attacks.
• Mage Towers/Temple of the Damned - To prevent Blizzard and Death & Decay
• Goblin Alchemist/Gnomish inventor - This will prevent them from building sappers to kill your attacking army.
• Barracks - If they only have one. If they have 2 or more, skip down to the next one on the list.
• Stables/Ogre Mound - This will prevent them from building more Ogres/Knights. Killing the Blacksmith might be better if they have not upgraded to level 5 yet. You probably want to attack the Stables/Ogre Mound instead because it only has 500 hit points instead of 775.
• Castle/Fortress
• Lumber Mill
• All Farms