Three Resources
There are 3 resources that you must harvest when playing Warcraft 2. They include, gold, lumber,
and oil. You will find gold and lumber, located throughout almost every map that you play. Oil is harvested from the
water, so you will only see it if you are playing a water map.
Along the top of the playing screen, is a display that shows your current resource levels. It will look something like this.
Gold
Gold is always collected by peons. There are a few things that are necessary before you can collect gold. First of all, you must locate a gold mine.
Without a gold mine, you obviously cannot get any gold. Secondly, you need a completed town hall, or great hall. A peon will go into a gold mine to collect gold, but then
needs to be able to bring it somewhere for it to be useful. Every time a peon makes this trip, from your town hall, to a gold miine, and back, you will receive an additional 100
gold to your resource supply. A gold mine also has a certain amount of gold in it. Each time a peon makes a trip to the gold mine, the total amount of available gold left, will decrease
by 100. If you left click on a mine, it will display how much gold is left in it. You can tell a peon to go get some gold by right clicking on the mine.
As you progress in the game, you will upgrade your Hall, to a Stronghold or Keep. Once you have this completed, you will receive 110 gold for each peon that brings in gold. And even further on in the game, you will upgrade to a Fortress or Castle. Now you will get 120 gold for each trip a peon makes. The gold mine will still only decrease by 100 per trip, however.
Most units, and upgrades in the game are gold intensive. Gold will be the resource you collect the most of in every game you play (hopefully). The more peons you can mining a gold mine, the more income you will receive. Build your town hall as close to a gold mine as possible, and make sure you are mining it with ALOT of peons. As a new player to this game, I suggest you continue you building peons the entire time. You heard me. Build as many peons as you can each game. Just go with that rule until you have more experience in multi-player games.
Lumber
Lumber is the second most used resource. Again, a peon is the only unit used to harvest wood. This simple act is achieved by highlighting
a peon, and right clicking on any trees found on the map. The peon will begin to chop wood in the area you 'told' him to. It takes a peon 51 chops
to finish gathering the lumber. Once he is done chopping, he can bring his load of wood to a town hall (or upgraded town hall), or a lumber mill.
The more peons you have chopping wood, the more resources will be brought in, just like harvesting gold. You have to be a little more careful with lumber however.
Two peons can be chopping the same tree. Once the first peon finishes, the second peon will have to start over on a new tree. A complete waste of time.
You will receive 100 wood everytime a peon brings wood back to a hall, when you have no lumber mill. However, if you do have a lumber mill completed, then you will receive 125 wood regardless of where the peons bring the wood.
Oil
Oil is the least used of the 3 resources. In alot of games you play, you will not need to harvest any oil at all. Oil is only found in the water, and can
only be harvested by oil tankers. Oil tankers can be built from a shipyard. Once you locate a patch of oil, an oil tanker must construct an oil platform.
Once the platform is done, you can begin to gather oil. Each trip that a tanker makes from the shipyard, to platform, and back, will increase your oil supply
by 100. You can have several oil tankers harvesting oil out of a single platform, but an excessive amount (7 or more) will cause them to get stuck.
Just like every other resource, you can increase the amount that is brought in per trip. This is done by constructing an oil refinery. Once the refinery is completed, you will receive 125 oil for each trip that a tanker can make.
Everything costs resources!
Buildings, units, upgrading, and even repairing all cost a certain amount of resources. As you gain more experience, you will quickly learn the exact cost
of certain buildings and units. Just remember that everything you build will cost you. The more resources you have coming in, then the better off you are.
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