Unnecessary concrete slabs:
You do not need to put concrete underneath an entire building. If the building has a dirt patch, just cover the actual building portion and leave the dirt patch on regular sand. This will save on spice and the number of concrete slabs to be built.
Avoid Atreides airstrikes:
When fighting the Atreides, build a line of missile towers. Build the missile towers all around your base to avoid airstikes from the Atreides.
Hidden unit:
After winning the last mission with the House Harkonen, the Emperor speaks of releasing the Saudukar in the FMV sequence that follows. These Saudukar are the infantry units that make up most of the Emperor’s light infantry. They are the ones that wear the helmet with the black “visor”. To be able to use this unit, you must attack the Emperor first on the last mission with any house. The Emperor is the purple base/fleet. Bring an engineer to the battle when you attack him. Then, take control of the Emperor’s palace. You can now build Saudukars from your barracks.
Easy victory:
Do not attack the enemy, let them come to you. When you start, do not build Weapon Factories. Instead, build Cannons and Missile Turrets. It is a good idea to build Trikes and Quads to act as scout lookouts. Try not to build too fast or you will run out of money when they attack. The most important thing is to not put all of your defenses in one place.
Use the following strategy as the Atreides for an easy win. :Defend your base openings in later, harder levels, by blocking off all entrances except the main, largest entrance. With the others, build a double wall to provide cover. Now, with the central entrance, build across it, block by block, not with gun turrets, but rocket turrets. In order to hit the enemy Missile Tanks, you need to match their distance, and for the units that cannot hit far, pummel them with many rockets at once, killing them before they get there. Build them across all but one block (a gate), so your units can get out. Then, proceed to build up an army consisting of Rocket Soldiers, Grenadiers, and Riflemen; Trikes and Quads; and Combat, Missile, Seige, and Sonic Tanks. At least 100 Units in all. 30 Soldiers will do fine, mainly rocket and grenadiers to destroy turrets and buildings for your vehicles. Also build a Secret Squad consisting of 25 Fremen (have machine guns and rockets to deal with soldiers and vehicles/buildings; will be the enforcers, dealing with stray opposition. These forces will come during the main attack, while enemy forces are distracted by Sonic Tanks, Group Square, etc. Try to find a no-turret zone to enter the enemy base) and 20 Engineers (what the Fremen are defending; can convert enemy buildings. While the main enemy forces are being slaughtered by your own large forces, sneak in, kill any stray enemies, and convert their Construction Yard first, then Barracks, Heavy Factories, Light Factories, and finally Wind Traps to kill all power). Now build up Special Reinforcements, and perhaps a mop-up crew consisting of 50 different soldiers.
Base defense:
While defending your base during a skirmish, if you completely block off one of the entrances to your plateau, the AI will just ignore the walls and go to the other opening. This is good because you only have to focus on defending one area. If you completely block of all entrances to your base, the AI will proceed to destroy your walls. Sometimes they may choose to attack one blocked opening because of the distance and width of the plateau you occupy.
Using Fremen:
On the Atreides missions where Fremen are available, send about six Fremen at a time to cover areas of prime targets. Have them stay still until enemy defenses are low. Fremen are hard to spot when they stay still, so you can build massive attack
squads.
Open combat:
When you have built a big enough army for a successful attack, make sure to use the team hot keys that are described in the manual for the best efficiency when in a dog fight. Once all the units in the attack force have been highlighted, start to move each team at a time to different points among the map. Keep in mind that some units are much faster than others, so make the different points relatively close together — make sure that the faster units wait for the slower ones. If they do not it would defeat the purpose of bringing all the units in a team. Even if you make teams with the same units, the ability to click from one group to another during battle is far better than to keep highlighting each group of units when you want to control them. Once in battle you can rotate from one group of units to another and focus their attack on focal points in either the opponent’s army or base structure (large heavily defended units and structures such as a construction yard, heavy factory and repair facility, etc.) This strategy results in quicker more effective attacks with less of your units lost.
Gun turrets:
At the start of a battle, build up lines of gun turrets instead of wasting time with building up large units that get killed and decrease your score. Build up gun turrets and work on defense. Soon after your enemy starts getting killed by your gun turrets, build up a large army and get ready for an attack. It is recommended that you fix your gun turrets often.
Tanks:
The battle tanks from each house have specific strengths. The Ordos have the fastest tanks. The Harkonnen have the strongest tanks. The Atreides have tanks that are moderate in both speed and strength.
Avoiding worm trouble:
Worms can be annoying, especially at the beginning of the game when you want to harvest a lot of spice. They simply eat up your harvesters. A very effective solution for this is to create a group of Troopers (five to ten should be sufficient). Worms are very susceptible to missile attacks, and do not survive very long. Better yet, they are not very inclined to surface and chew up infantry. Put some Troopers around your spice-rich area, and let them do their work. Put them on some rocks if available. They will shoot up the worm and kill it in no time, allowing your harvesters to continue their work without disturbance. A couple of Rocket Turrets or Missile Launchers also helps.
Getting sufficient amounts of rock:
To get a sufficient amount rock, in practice mode(which can be found in the multi-player option at the main menu; you should have tech level to 7), send a Trike to look around. Also, look for the amount of Spice nearby. If you have a sufficient amount of Spice and Rock, find a place for your MCV. If you do not, press [Esc], select “Abort Mission”, and reset the campaign. Repeat this process until you are comfortable with your environment. Do not look for another place without resetting the mission, as it wastes time and your enemy or enemies can find you and launch an assault.
All outpost map seen:
As soon as you start building up troops, send a Trike to look around. This will let you see most of your map, depending on how far you got with the trike before it gets blown up. This will help you find the enemy and all the bases. Do not worry if a couple trikes get destroyed as they only cost 200 each.
Getting your troops to other patches of land:
Build all of your buildings, troops, etc. Then, build a Heavy Factory or a Starport. Next, buy a MCV (Mobile Construction Vehicle). Take the MCV to another patch of land that you cannot access with concrete. Use the MCV and deploy it wherever desired. When doing this you can build all your buildings, Refinery, Heavy Factory, Barracks, etc.
Practice:
Go to multi-player mode. There should be a button labeled “Practice”. You can play single-player in multi-player mode. Also, you can set custom parameters for the game, similar to skirmish.
Destroy yourself:
To destroy yourself in combat, hold [Ctrl] and click one of your own structures or anything else you own. Note: The first object you click on has to be something that can shoot.