How to beat INSANE AI in WC3 in easy to follow steps - WC3 

Hi, Grubby, I picked wc3 back after 20+ years (I couldn't beat easy AI back then) and was able to beat Insane AI in just 3 weeks by every race thanks to your videos.

Just want to specifically shout-out whoever is editing your videos and creating the thumbnails is doing a great job

28:04 ladies and gentlemen, we got him.

Yeah that's definitely not the "classic" AI I experienced when I played the game day and night (usually 12 player FFA with insane AI about 20 years ago): 1. Old AI basically had a maphack. If you expanded, you paid heavily. It was ridiculous in FFA for a while, so maybe that's why they took it out (imagine 12-player FFA, you expanding and suddenly 11 CPU-Players rallying around your expo. Even though they fought each other, it was nearly impossible to establish an expo). 2. They also never TPed or used Items to my knowledge, but they constantly produced units and harassed as soon as you encoutered them the first time. If you lost the first engagement, you usually lost the game as they put the pressure on from that moment. It trained me greatly to evaluate the armies and my chances in the engagement. 3. They crept. Not nearly as good as a human, but on big maps they would easily compensate later creeping with a huge army when they left. And that was way before the 10 minute-mark. I hated getting creepjacked as just as I mentioned above: when they saw you, they hunted down your base. Even if you TPed out and they had no reason to know where you TPed to, they followed you. 4. They focused on hero, but else focused on units. You needed quite some APM in FFA to not get obliterated, which made it a great fundamental micro training and forced you to balance your own unit composition depending on your own and opposite races. It was a great way to tinker on counters and I often stopped games to evaluate my further options. You can still experience that behaviour to some degree in the current campaign on hard. AI attacking outposts/expos without vision prior, stalking your units in some maps, ridiculous unit compositions forcing you to focus on your mission goals and not waste resources with opposite bases if you don't need to destroy them and so on.

I was one of those guys who started warcraft 3 after tyler 1 tournament, and loving the game so far !

OMG Can`t believe you finally made it, it made me wonder if we can challenge you to beat 1v11, gl!

One of the game updates broke the AI. They used to do a lot more and produce a lot more back in the day. Unfortunately the AI has been broken for like a decade. Some of the campaign missions are broken too.

since the big patch, when reforged came out, AI insane is not what it used to be. it is acutally quite easy to beat compared to the old days

The old AI was a lot harder. If you could beat the the old insane AI you could actually beat quite a lot of people in Battlenet and have quite a nice win rate ratio and get those cool icons. Those icons used to mean something special. I used to play ladder games and custom game all the time

Has been a lot of fun dusting off my old copy of WC3 and relearning everything since I was a kid because of your vids. Thanks for these types of videos and excited to potentially be your next bronze league hero 😂

17:48 still learning stuff about wc3 after all those years episode 487 : when illusion staffing a water elegegle, the summoning animation is played

I don't have reforged and it seems the AI is a lot easier in this video than what I'm playing against.

someday they'll find a bunch of bodies buried in Grubby's garden and he'll look directly at the police and simply say "mi scusi! mi scusi!"

I have always been a casual in this game. Never played online (though I played some LAN games). My favorite way to play it was just with the AI in Insane playing in teams of two (usually four teams). On 1v1 I beat the Insane AI, not through good management and micro because I suck at it, but by booming and then training high-tier units I knew the AI has trouble dealing with. Some things I remember about the Insane AI: - Some maps were buggy and the AI wouldn't move if they spawned in certain spots. - Humans were the strongest AI, but a bug sometimes made them get stuck in tier 1 making them easy to kill in those cases. - In some maps, the AI has a fixation in a certain spot and ALL of them would go and attack that spot. If you or your ally happened to be in that spot, it was GG lol. - AI tended to retreat even if they had a big army if they heroes were losing HP too quickly. I wish there was some update on the AI behavior, kind of like in Age of Empire II HD, where the AI does not cheat, but it is legitimately good.

My comment was lost. You can also play a better version of AI, called AMAI. It can tower rush, rush, be passive, buy mercs tavern heroes, chat, accept commands as an ally, and resign earlier ;)

Before patch 1.31 AI is actually pretty active and attacks you early and creeps early and even fast expand...but for some reasons after 1.30 AI becomes broken and stays in base...not offering much of a training...

with your bronze league videos i've started playing melee i appreciate these lower level video's so much and i'm sure a lot of people do, since your bronze league hero video's i've started practicing melee as well it was such a good decision to show people that there are a lot of new players trying to get into the game just like them so they aren't scared away by the sweat lords.

God, even Grubby comes out with an AI related video... 2024 ladies and gentlemen

Grubby, you are one of a kind. I hardly have the time to write here, but I am fellow w3 player(very weak) but have the passion to explore and improvise. Love your videos, man. Much love for Netherlands, from Bulgaria!

Here is an idea: Grubby (50% HP) vs 2 Insane AI

I am at a loss for words! The AI was so much more active and aggressive when I used to play the old Reign of Chaos and Frozen Throne many years ago. I think that they've messed with the AI, they look so docile now!

Thanks for this video, I played campaign as a kid but want to get into skirms now. Lost to easy yesterday lol. I know im just being slow, its very overwhelming so far. Would love to see you break this down into more detail, like how you command units, when to go over supply limits and so on

Id never beat the insane ai before, but this video gave me the drive to give it another go. It actually worked! It was a lot nore clutch than your games, but producing units and not standing around really does work. Thanks grubby!

Thanks for the video I played about a year ago on my old copy before the deforge patches. In my memory the AI started creeping after a few minutes when the hero popped out and was much more aggressive. In the last they went back and forth and was only "fighting" your units about 10% of the battle time, while also literally idling at the end. I am pretty sure the deforge is part of the problem. I hope I don´t overestimate myself, but seeing the AI doing the willy nilly like this, I might be able to beat it too now.

I remember in Warcraft II when you used cheats in a mission after winning they gave you "Rank: Cheater", I miss those little things.

Its like when I played Dungeon Keeper as a child and maps seemed extremely hard, after I came back during corona times to that game for fun, with all the information about the game, those maps took me only around 1/3 of the time before.

I could be wrong but judging by the AI's creeping patterns in game 2, I believe the AI will only creep in a way where it is impossible for it to get harassed while creeping. The only times the AI creeped were when you were too far away to stop it. Also, when it tried to creep the expansion and "lost", the Lich had full HP yet it was the only unit that went back to base while the ghouls stayed and died. I think what happened was that it started to creep when you were farther away, but it took too long and when you were no longer too far away to interfere, it decided it needed to return to base with Lich to avoid getting harassed and killed. However, I'm not too sure why it decided to leave the ghouls there instead of pulling them back. I wonder what the AI's creeping patterns would look like if you were to stay in base all game or if you don't have any hero or units.

Doing some testing; There seems to be certain triggers that can be canceled for Insane AI, probably any of them for that matter. So timing attacks although powerful and do damage can also seem to stop or reset triggers.

The AI gets warpten and resource cheats, but not god mode (naturally, it'd do nothing if everyone had it) nor does it need map reveal; the AI can see the entire map the whole time without cheats. Example: in the first match, when Grubby cleared its natural expansion, it immediately sent an acolyte to haunt it. It knows it's been cleared. (Edit: ok he just said the same like 15 seconds after I wrote this; he seemed to imply earlier that the AI sees the map because he turned on the cheat) This is how AI in games works in general; it's very hard to make an AI that would see the same a player would, and could make decisions based on what it sees. Instead, the AI sees everything, and is just made to emulate behavior close to as if it only saw what a player would see.

The APM comments were hilarious. I am at 80ish most games, haven't tried insane AI yet, but I beat normal easily now

Pretty sure reforged AI is broken (worse) than the original, especially if AI gets NE

Working through the campaign on hard. Shellacked the elven army. Elven woman shwoman. I watch grunby 💪. Make one control group of full spiders and 3 necros to show up fashionably late. Ez

Great video! I have played about a dozen games and starting to win some against the AI. Really like the priests on a separate control group gonna use that on my next human game.

POV: You're a new player and Grubby roasts you for 30 minutes XD

Oh this is very helpful! But I already figured out 1 particular strat after 100s of attempts 😂 I just go pillage upgrade, 6 to 8 Grunts, 3 Headhunters and TC. I pushed instantly to the AI base as soon as I hit Lv 2 or trained all the units I needed. I beat AI insane like this only once against Undead. 😂😂

I remember back in the day i managed to beat three insane AI opponents at once. I was so full of myself i went online thinking i was gonna own the world, and got my asses handed to me by pretty much everyone lmao. PvE and PvP are like two completely different games. I think skirmish AI should at least try to imitate online play to get people used to that.

Returning after 20 years. Been practicing against insane.. and for the most part it does nothing.. but I’ve seen them both actively creeping and attacking me with a huge army after I reached T2… but I think it’s after I scouted them that it triggered something. I’ve also seen them creep without me scouting them, but usually they creep a little, expo and stay in one base.

I still have the 2004 version. And at 8min they have an expanstion with 2 heros. One being lvl 4 the other lvl 2.

I beat it for the first time today, just now. I failed to do so before mostly because I was taking too long and letting them build up too much, but in the case of the win it was partially because I was using iseedeadpeople and saw the hero creep a really stupid spot and I went out and caught them. The next challenge will be to beat it without cheating and to beat it in every matchup combination, but now at least I feel like it's doable.

to be fair grubby.. if you click 50 times for a peasant to farm the same tree isnt really APM.. its just empty spamming

ROC AI is the hardest tbh(there are no shops to build in order to heal units). tft 1.26 AI is decent

Ended up picking up WC3 thanks to Eternal Strife. Been doing 3v1 insane AI for practice.. Obviously early game is very diff, but muscle memory for building/units is solid...

i have played many games versus Ai back when i was young. And they are very sensitive to any maps and stuff. They have pattern with every race where they start to creep with set amount of units. then they go to green camp then they go to expo and if its already cleared they bug out and stay in base and if the expo camp is too strong it will also not work cuz he will feed. The best map for this is the original RoC maps. For sure divide and conquer a 12 player map works allways !

I literally beat insane AI on my own before this video dropped, what timing!

I've been able to consistently beat Normal computers and Insane has been about 50/50, it's good to see how it plays, I might even use a cheat to witness it for myself. I've been trying to follow build orders via ones you have posted on your Discord, though I am definitely trying to get better with what units to build vs. certain races. I'm not sure if there's a good guide for that or not. Either way, thank you for the video, it gives me some more confidence that I just have to get better at jugging everything.

I was a a crappy casual RTS player for a VERY long time. I've learned a lot watching AoE2 and playing that game the past few years and now the same with WC3. I at least kind of know what I'm supposed to be doing even if I'm not very good at executing. That "supposed to be doing" factor is of course a giant chasm between a good player and a bad one, but a lot of the things you're "supposed to be doing" can be so unintuitive for a new player and can even go against what for instance the game itself implies/explains. An example in WC3 is each of the races having their own base defense mechanic (militia, ancients, ghouls, burrows), but 3/4 of those are ideally used in offense in basically every game. There's also foolishly bringing in real world logic like where you expect to have an archer group and an infantry group protecting them so the archers can sit there and shoot, but a lot of times just making all archers and kiting is more effective. WC3 is less intuitive once again on this front just because you have a weird array of fantasy units, and more variables to worry about like magic and flying, and it was never very clear to me which units are supposed to counter which units and why. Hotkeys can be very intimidating for new players, but became a lot less intimidating for me when I mentally connected it with using the same amount of buttons in other games (like playing certain pretty basic FPS games used like 15 keys, why shouldn't I be able to learn the same amount for an RTS). WC3 hotkeys were a nightmare, but AoE2's grid pattern made sense and helped it click too. I think the most frustrating thing is the set build order stuff. Picking up an RTS game with a bunch of unit variety and then learning that you have like two possible effective strategies and they don't use the unit you thought was cool can be a big turn off. Thankfully good RTS games like WC3 and AoE2 still manage to have quite a bit of complexity which leads to variety, but you still have to deal with a lot of cookie-cutter stuff and certain units being useless. Many have mentioned the insane AI from the older WC3 being more difficult, but we know Grubby would still just apply his game knowledge to beat them, even if it might need a slightly different approach. I'd be curious to see that. Unfortunately I don't think WC3 has a "legacy AI" button like AoE2.

The AI knows where u are regardless of cheat. In fact they always prioritize going after undead expansions first/ then night elf, then human/orc. no matter where they are on the map.

You can beat insane AI by towering up a lot and making a flying hit and run army to mess up their base. You can expand and tower up wheb they're tring to defend their base

just did the same matchup on Korea and the AI didn't struggle with creeping at all and has an expansion at minute 8 while in the video it made it at minute 15 lmao

Melee map creators taking notes on how to improve AI

pretty sure the reason grubby can't get low APM and others can't get high are hot keys. he hotkeys like crazy whereas a new player probably does little to none

I used to try to beat two computer insane without AI abuse (using standard pvp tactics) on Twisted Meadows back when I played (was without internet and tried to get some practice). But I never got good enough for it, always got overwhelmed.

Power Overwhelming Show me the money Operation CWAL ...oh wait, wrong game huh? On a more serious note as someone who's played broodwar most of my life and easing my way into war3 after so long the much smaller army size is quite different and almost hard to adjust to if that makes sense? Nevermind using a hero in an army haha. Happy big friday everyone, gl hf~

I beat easy AI the other day, time to step it up to normal. xD It's quite funny how when I'm watching the videos, there's so much time for everything in the start however in my own games I'm quickly overwhelmed. xD I try to remember all the bits of sage advice, like "just keep producing units" and "spend that gold." Edit: The bronze league heroes helped me build the courage to try an RTS again. =)

I'd be surprised if grubby could beat the INSANE AI.

me plays against normal ai, gets demolished grubby plays against insane ai, demolishes them easily

I was wondering what the heck I was doing wrong with computers on Insane, only to learn now that they get double gold.

Naahh I bet the insane ai at 1.26a is completely different type of ai compared to the ones in the video

Hi Grubby, could you make a creeping guide for beginners, talk about creep types, maps and creep routes and when to creep and when not to creep and which heroes need most creeping?

I just beat insane AI a few days ago for the first time! :)

Thank you Grubby, I have a 10% winrate against Insane AI 💀

If you beat Insane AI, try out AMAI AI. Its more better and plays more player-like strategies. If you beat the insane AMAI you are ready for bnet imo

i play alot vs insane u forgot to mention if you make expansion ai will imidiatly send attack to it. if you don't make expansion ai sems to ignore you whole game :D

AI also makes decisions based on what you are doing even though it shouldnt know. e.g. skip rax and fast tech - it will rush you.

Im playing on an older version like 1.21 an the ai does creep alot my games usually gets to late game and at that point i will usually lose But if i attack before ais tier 3 i will always win

Well after i came back to wc3 i tried in bot games to get used to the hotkeys before i make my way to pvp games again an insane ai is so free to beat compared to any pvp game in my opinion, i havent watched that video yet, but from what ive seen they creep super less you can simply beat them by power creeping and get your heroes far beyond the enemys power level and a simpel all in after that

28:33 HES FEEDING

You should try beating the v1.0 Insane AI. It’s much harder than the reforged AI

Grubby, you are the man. Keep up the good work.

Ahahaha. Been beating up Insane AI in WC3 for YEARS. They only really get scary when there are 3 of them as allies. Way to beat them is to build a tower wall... and then a BUNCH of towers in the back somewhere hard to get too... in like a 4 by 4 square. I like Arcane towers for this for scouting purposes. What this does is the Insane AI can see the whole map... and is a bit psycho about using Hero AoE on the MOST TOWERS POSSIBLE... so they will do stupid things to get to your 4x4 square... dying... ooming... ooming then dying along the way.

There are also third-party bots that play much better, it seems to be called AMAI. It would be interesting to see games against them. And especially elves against computer undead.

Very instructive and helpful! Any chance you could do the same, playing orc vs undead.

as a player vs AI warcraft lover for 15 years, i have an important clarification - the AI does creep. it is sometimes bugged though, and it loses to creeps sometimes like the 2nd game here. The thing is every AI is a coin flip. sometimes they are weak as peasants, sometimes they are formidable. and they usually have upgrades very fast

He makes it look so easy 😆 EDIT: This AI looks stupid compared to what I used to play with. I know normal AI used to creep, but it's been several years since I played.

Idea for challenge: win in rank match with unit group formation turned on. Thanks for video

omg grubby they are always rushing me! everything was fine for 20 minutes and then 12 wyrms! they are rushing me! lmao

I was going to post this as an addendum to another comment I posted, one way or another I can't see it, nothing remotely controversial in it anyways, here's the addendum when I played warcraft, the entire wc3 hero thing was a foreign concept for sure, and the idea that so much importance is placed on the hero I came from strategy games like command and conquer or red alert (which even had pseudo heroes like tanya, the commando, etc) starcraft had their heroes in the campaign, but they weren't disporportionally important to winning a level, and I think they might've had win conditions that the hero cannot be lost (same with command and conquer with tanya, or albert einstein or whatever) like jim raynor as a marine might be worth 4 marines max I'm guessing? jim raynor vulture might be worth 2-3 vultures? if I had jim raynor as a marine, and the campaign level had a base, I might just put the raynor in a bunker so there is no chance I lose him and lose the level in red alert it'd be like putting albert einstein or tanya in a apc (and there were dogs in red alert that could 1 hit units, so a medic doesn't help) anyways, every game was more units focused, and less punitive towards having a large army. the preeminence of heroes in combination with the tax system (I forget it's name of the top of my head - upkeep just remembered, which is no feat considering I've probably watched like 20 hours of your videos recently, I even wrote low upkeep below before I wrote this, and didn't even realize I had written the correct word) also wasn't the low upkeep originally started at 40 units? maybe I'm misremembering I always struggled with being willing to go into low upkeep (or whatever it's called when you get 7 gold instead of 10), although having two gold mines and being in low upkeep (7/10) didn't seem bad

I have an old pc with the old warcraft 3 installed. Got on to try play some games with normal ai, got bum rushed to oblivion

me who has been playing the exact same build for the past week and hasn't beaten insane as human, was hoping to learn a new build now i just feel crap

i remember old insane wc3 ai was impsosible to beat

Grubby is being modest at the start "you've seen my 1 vs 3 play against streamers" when the series end with spoiler spoiler spoiler... he wins a 1v4

reforged must have screwed up the ai. I remember the insane AI creeping and expanding wuick

So then the campaign Hard AI must be much worse than the insane AI. Because I have to sweat my balls off to deal with their base. They keep getting units non stop, repair, rebuild. They focus siege all the time, not just heroes. etc. And in RoC I used to play vs AI normal and they creep right away, used to make footmen and put them between town hall and goldmine before creeping.

i hope this is as through as when you beat 13 insane ais on the same team

I have a question regarding micro - how do you manage damaged units with groups? I can micro damaged units out of battles but more often than not i ended up controlling them again as they are in the groups.

The Ai was definitely better at ver 1.26/1.27 and below even at normal the AI is actively creeping and moving around the map undead AI had 5-6 ghouls at base for lumber

For me was always hard cuz I never used hotkeys, no micro or macro. And that's feel like playing with shackles that limit you movement not having any knowledge of sorts. Cuz you don't but the ai has it.

Yeah Baby! Finally a way to beat my decade long nemesis!

Seems to me if you go 50 and 0 against insane AI, it will jump to a more difficult level. I.e. you can take a 4 position map, and vs 3 insane AI and win a few times, before it gets harder.

Not coping or anything, I know I am bad at WC3 (more of a SC guy, only play WC3 for nostalgia every other year). This is nothing like AI from pre-reforged. They do creep, they will fight you earlier. I used to be master in starcraft 2 so I don't play like a monkey. I can easily do hard campaign in WC3 , but insane AI smokes me. It's a monster compared to this. This is probably easier than easy AI from pre-reforged. Or maybe I'm just crazy, but I see other people say this as well.

Idk why WC3 has been hard for me. I can usually beat hard-brutal no problem in Command and Conquer games. Then WC3 I get mopped by normal ai’s.

Grubby computer ai is much worse in 1v1 type games. FFA or multi-player with multiple enemies "wakes up" the ai to be much less idle and gain substantially more hero lvls

There's manny insane computer behavior depending on what map you play and how manny insane are. In 1v1 it might be like this insane stupid not doing anything. But then there are those insane on different maps who attack you at minutes 10 with 2 heroes LVL 3 and like 12 grunts and 6 head hunters if they orc. Same for any other race they rush you and play very good and probably that's the insane computer people have trouble with. The one that rushes you has always more army then you , somehow better heroes and items and it already has an expansion really early on. On the other side of the spectrum there is the same ai when u start in a big map and they don't build nothing from the start. Same insane. I think if you really wanna see the behavior if Insane ai at max. Just make a much bigger map with you vs ai. But not in team like free for all. Same for you or the ai Insane and you'll soon find out what Insane ai people have trouble with

After watching this, im sure they used INSANE in a deragotory way. This AI is mentally unwell

Two weeks ago I did a practice match vs AI and tried DL fexpo. But the AI came and canceled my expo immediately. That was vs normal so if they just sit in base I’m being lied to.

grubby, you use all the hotkeys for everything. people starting out generally use mouse clicking and arrow keys to move the camera around, maybe like tab or f keys and like 3 control groups tops. because of this there APM is waaaaaay lower even though it feels like there doing a lot and because the time is waaaay later insane has resources and an army and crushs people

what if we use modern AI and train it on the top players replays do you believe it would be unbeatable? Imagine it be able to Micro 100 units individually that would be insane.

Old version insane Ai was very hard

Granted I’ve never played on insane before but when I play on normal I see the AI creeping every time with all four races. I can’t believe what I’m seeing in this video, every time I will meet their army in the middle somewhere while I’m still trying to creep. I’m not a very good player but it feels like I’m at least getting buildings down and my army maybe at the most a min and half slower on average then this. Idk 🤷

I remember AI insane being more difficult