Harkonnen Guide 1.0

Harkonnen Guide - With the last 2 patches, the game has been changed drastically again so a lot of details currently in the guide, especially for combat stuff, are essentially null. The general idea of Harkonnen should still apply in case you want to ready, but for more details i will need to update the guide eventually.

Introduction

Hello, this is a guide aimed at the Harkonnen faction. I will attempt to explain how harkonnen works in game.

I have seen some people use Harkonnen to a disgustingly strong level and while i am nowhere near that level, i should be able to shed some light on the faction and how it could potentially work, based on my experience and preferences.

Feel free to add your own spins in your gameplay and try various combinations that you like. Personally i am deviating on some details for each game i play(especially on developments), but this guide should serve as a general guideline.

General Idea of Harkonnen

The general idea of this guide, is based on Harkonnen early military while keeping your eco alive long enough to transition to a smoother mid game eco which will never run out until the game finishes.

Harkonnen macro skill should be on the high end of difficulty and will feel weird at first, but will give you amazing results when you get used to it.

Make sure to practice your early game build order vs Ai to get the hang of it and then start killing people on the MP side. If you focus on factions that struggle with their early military, such as Corrino, you should be able to see results.

Harkonnen military is based on producing a big mass of units, very fast, while sacrificing them for your benefit. So don't be afraid to dive and even lose your units(not mindlessly). When played correctly your pressure should be to the point of making your enemy panic, since they cannot regenerate for their combat fast enough in most cases.

You should be able to retrain fast and strong even in the early game where half the factions struggle with their military and it's the best time to push. Even if you don't want to early aggress, you should be able to have a big army with easy Heavy Militia for defence, to avoid any enemy rushes yourself.

Operations are also your best friend. Will explain further down the guide.

Councilors & Faction Bonuses

Starting with the faction main traits

• Oppression: You can oppress villages to double the production, which also have a chance to rebel each day. Will be explained a bit better further in the guide.
  
  
• Militia: More militia = More production, so make sure to fill your militia early.
  
  
• Agent Sacrifice: This allows the Baron to decrease cost and preperation time of operations by sacrificing agents.
  
  
• Brainwash: A chance to gain brainwashed agents when fighting enemies. They are the worst agents the game has, but they are mainly used for sacrifices.
  
  
  
• Councilors: Below you can see the available councilors for Harkonnen. My preferred councilors for early aggression is 2nd and 4th. For a more defensive approach, i suggest 1st and 4th.
  
  
  
  
  
  

Early Build Order

This section is the most important, it might be a pain to read, but bare with me. I will cover the early build order i prefer on buildings and developments. This is not a 100% order, but mostly an outline which can change depending on how the game goes.

If everything is ideal, i should be able to follow this order pretty consistently. You will also have a way easier time understanding everything here, if you practise a couple of times vs AI for 30 minutes.

Starting the game, we need to recognize what the Baron can do easily and what not. So our main focus should be to fix his early problems, in a way that allows him to utilize his early military without the economy going downhill.

• Biggest early game problems: Water and Solari.
  
  This can be said for all factions, but they need to be emphasized, because an early focus on military + military development will tank your solari upkeep and will delay the Filtration Systems a lot.
  
  Considering most people start with eco upgrades which include the Filtration Systems, it might seem challenging to start without it.
  
  Thankfully, both of these problems can be fixed in a viable way, so it's a good time to get outside of your comfort zone. It will help you understand the idea of early rushing, which can potentially include other factions as well for future reference.
  
  
• Best early game positives: Manpower.
  
  It's your best asset, use it extensively. When used correctly you can easily have a big army and 400+ manpower on reserve before 10k hegemony, or at least have enough manpower generation that does not prevent you from rushing people.
  
  This means, you can apply extreme pressure early on, or make your defences strong enough to make rushing enemies fall before your army while your eco is building up on the background, safe and sound.
  
  
• Development Order: I have two versions of it. The 1st version is geared towards heavy military tech to become an early aggresor, and the 2nd is geared towards a more defensive approach which will allow you to build a big military mass in the early game, to defend against potential threats in case you don't want to pressure someone and want some peace.
  
  
  
• Aggresive Development Approach
  
  You should be able to have all military tech that are shown before 10k hegemony, so when mid game starts ramping up, you should be getting your eco upgrades. If you don't mess up the eco management early game for any reason(Negative resolutions will hurt you badly for example), you should be able to have a strong and big military to start bullying people into submission.
  
  
• Defensive Development Approach
  
  This order ensures that you can still have the extra manpower to make a big army + heavy militia in most/all villages in order to defend against early aggressors while you build up your eco faster.
  
  The defensive apporach, according to my experience, follows the same or similar pattern in village/base building in order to control solari + water easier. Feel free to experiment.
  
  
  
• Early Game Approach - Aggresive Development
  
  
• Start with 2 troopers, 1 cerberus + 3 ornithopters. The 3rd ornithopter will be watching over the harvester.
  
  
• Get 3 villages, put 2 militia in all of them, and add a crew to the harvester. Manpower should be barely enough to do all these + the 3 military units on the start of the game.
  
  
• My preferred villages after that spice are Plascrete + Research. If those are missing, i prioritize Rare Elements and last the fuel cells. This is RNG dependant, not much you can do about it.
  
  You can add 3 buildings to each village which include:
  
  1) Spice Village: Spice / Plascrete / Water
  2) Second Village: Plascrete / Water + Whatever you have available from the region or village trait.
  3) Third Village: Plascrete / Recruitement Office + Whatever you have available from the region or village trait or water if you have nothing interesting.
  
  If i don't get a research village, i usually build a research center anyway, but you might need to do some earlier pillaging to control your eco better. Your choice.
  
  
• Side Note: I do not recommend going over 3 buildings until mid game, it will tank your economy and water pretty hard. Don't forget to keep at least 10 water at all times.
  
  Exceptions: Maintaince building which i recommend to help control early solari better + Airfield/Missle Battery depending on state of the game.
  
  
• After your 3rd village, wait for the spice tax to be paid. You will have enough solari + plascrete to build your 1st Base Building while also having 3 buildings on each village already. This is extremely important and easy to do. Your first building should be the Recruitment Center on a SINGLE slot. This will boost your manpower nicely and will give you faster military tech.
  
  
  
• After the Recruitment center, you should be able to see your 2nd spice. Go on take it, don't be shy. Depending on your scouting abilities, you should be able to find your 3rd spice relatively fast as well.
  
  Might not work everytime, but you could have 5 villages with 3 spice from the early game. If not, not need to worry because the next Main Base buildings are about to fix your economy to allow you a 25-40 CP army depending on your state.
  
  
• For the next base buildings you want to take Command Post on a 3 slot line, and Administrative Hall on the other 3 slot line. I prefer the Command Post first, but either should work fine. As said above, these should increase your economy enough to allow you a bigger army. At this point, you could also start playing defensively if you want and just expand/build to your liking.
  
  
  
  
• For my 4th base building, i like the Intelligence Agency which will increase your agent speed even more. This is for aggresively sacrificing agents on early game aggresion. After your 4th-5th agent you can sacrifice your regular agents on the operations.
  
  You will have enough agents to unlock all the basic operations, so you don't need to wait for the brainwashed agents to come up. Even if you sacrifice your own, you will get another agent extremely fast because you already have 500% agent recruitment speed.
  
  
  
• As for the base buildings, you can choose to skip the last step of the Intelligence Agency. Skip it or not, make sure to finish your military district first, then your eco during mid game, and then whatever you have left.
  
  Basically this is the way i see it right now overall. As a finishing touch, i will point out the discoveries that are extremely important to your early game up until this point. Afterwards, have fun.
  
  
• Discoveries: They can boost your game, so you want to maximize them. My 3 priorities are:
  
  1) Military Tech: You rush military, this helps tramendously even without building many research centers. If you find eco tech, leave it for later when you have nothing more important. Most of the times, they eco tech should still be there since noone will steal it.
  
  2) Plascrete: I always use the plascete instead of finding sietches. You can find sietches with the Probe Set up operation, so plascrete will help you construct Base buildings faster.
  
  3) Intel: This is also extremely important, because you need to use plenty of operations in the early game(especially Supply). Constructing the intel building hurts a lot in the early game, but you can easily find over 400 intel from discoveries. Using your non-brainwashed agents early on to make your operations cheaper, as i said above, will be even more efficient as well.
  
  4) Warriors: Aren't bad either.
  

Army Features

Let's get the most important part of Harkonnen army out of the way.

• Gunners = Best ranged pure dps unit in the game+ best armor shredding.
  
  
• According to my calculations, in a realistic late game fight which includes buffs from:
  
  Military Base + Main Base military district + Barracks + Military Factory + Drug operation = Ecaz Knight Champion DPS(without Epic Quest)
  
  Their downside, is that since they start basically as an explosive unit, so their range is lower than the traditional ranged units such as the Sniper, Musketeers and Rangers. Gunner range is 20, sniper range is 50, to serve as an example.
  
  
• Disclaimer: Since this is a very delicate part and misinformation can spread easily, there is a humane chance that my calculations are off somehow. I tried to do a fair calculation on multiple units, and this is my conclusion. Since we don't have ingame DPS calculations to help us, i might be wrong somehow. Also, things may change in future balance patches.
  
  
  
  
• Troopers: Good early game unit that become stronger when losing health. Your early game can rely mostly on these guys.
  
  
• Cerberus: Dies easily, spawns 2 smaller cerberus units. Good for synergising with Executioners, Sleeper Agent Operation, and be annoying on the enemy player. Early to late game armies can include a few of these, depending on your liking.
  
  
• Stealth Probe: I prefer not to recruit this one since you need to sacrifice CP, but it can increase your army power when it dies and can be upgraded to detonate on death. Use to your liking.
  
  
• Executioners: Your main core on mid-late game. Good tankiness, can stack good damage with their passive + Adrenaline Addiction development + Heal on ally death. Can synergize well with Cerberus + Sleeper Agents.
  
  
• Hapry: Your basic air unit. Can destroy enemy armor.
  
  
• Overlord: Your advanced air unit. It produces up to 5 small ships that fight, and can produce them at double the speed with the active ability. Its main purpose is to synergize with your executioners when they die. Heal + Power and can activate Adrenaline Addiction for the other ground units as well.
  
  Armory Upgrades:
  
  
• Gunners: Gattling Gun + Concentrated Explosives. These upgrades ensure your gunners will be killing machines while they shred armor easily. Don't worry about their base power decreasing at first, it's still better than before in pure DPS. They do lose their aoe damage though, since the weapon is no longer explosive. Amazing against bases.
  
  
• Alternative Gunners: Better Ammunitions + Red Fluid. The DPS is considerably weaker than the above version at first, but their passive has a bigger impact. Low HP gunners have almost the same DPS as above, but with aoe damage included still which can be strong in fights.
  
  The downside, is that if they die too fast they will not be able to dish out a lot of damage compared to the above version.
  
  
• Cerberus: I like Tempered Sword + Red Fluid. Gives them good damage, and since them dying is their purpose, you don't care about the negative that much.
  
  
• Executioners: I like Tempered Sword + Padded Shielding. Feel free to experiment with the dual sword as well, since they can heal passively in combat.
  
  
• Troopers: Whatever you like. Personally I don't use them late game that much, i usually forget about them. Red fluid might be a good choice for mid game+ if you recruit them.
  
  
• Stealth Probes: Same as above. I would certainly use the detonation if i used the probes more.

Operations

Operations are your best friends. Use them all the time, even in your sleep. Sleeper Agents can do it and so do you.

Bad jokes aside, using your 4th councilor to sacrifice agents will help you get them cheaper and cheaper permantently through out the entire game.

It can also supply you will a lot of solari for the early game which will be important. Combining this early game logic, with what i said previously(Intelligence Agency) will make it more efficient, faster, but a bit harder on the management.

These are the best 5 operations that i personally prefer.

• Supply Drop = Can be used effectively all game
  
  
• Combat Drugs = Can be used effectively all game
  
  
• Sleeper Agent = Can be used effectively all game
  
  
• Scavenger Team = Can be used effectively up to mid game. Later in the game it can still work, but your eco should be skyrocketing and you will want the slot space for more important operations that include dealing more damage to the enemy base, or making your enemy train units 80% slower.
  
  
• Toxic Vapors = Can be used effectively from mid to late game. You can use it in the early game as well, but since it's a bit more expensive and intel starting the game will be harder to find, you will probably need the other operations first.
  
  
  
• There are plenty more of good operations, such as the Decoy Thumper. Feel free to choose anything your soul desires.

Important Harkonnen Notes

In this section i will write about a few important details that you need to pay attention to, when playing with Harkonnen.

• Pillage: Yes please. Feel free to pillage anything you want. Plenty of gold and intel after 5k hegemony.
  
  Instill Fear Development: This development is vital to your pillaging actions. After researching it, pillaging a village will not give you penalty on Authority, and will decrease 10% the already needed Authority to capture the village. So anything you pillage will end up way cheaper if you wish to capture later on.
  
  Arrakis Butchers Development: This development will allow you to farm manpower from militia and rebels. It's perfect for increasing your manpower exponentially in the early game, while also killing the militia way faster.
  
  
• Iakin Nefud Councilor: This is an important councilor that gives you the ability to train units 30% faster, for the entire game, while your level 1 units do not regenerate health but refund 50% of their cost.
  
  This allows you to easily spam big armies, even in the early game while your manpower is also being produced at fast pacing. Later in the game, some of your units might increase in level, which will stop them from giving a refund and allow them heal the normally.
  
  You don't care that much, because your manpower at that point should be very high, but there will still be units that are being refunded as they are sent to the grinder anyway. The 30% faster training will persist no matter what happens.
  
  Side note: Your executioners are being healed each time an ally unit dies. So in theory this councilor should prevent your level 1 executioners to be healed. So let's make it clear. It does NOT prevent them from healing. They heal normally so there is no conflict. They should only deny their healing, with the Red Fluid Upgrade.
  
  
• Oppressing: This is another important matter to understand, because it's easy to miss the negatives and panic, so allow me to explain how it works exactly. You can oppress manually using 20 manpower, but i will focus on the oppression building which you get from the economy tree.
  
  First of all, it needs 6 manpower upkeep to function as a passive oppression. So rushing it early game can leave a negative impact on your manpower. That is why, i prefer to have a Recruitment Office on the same region, to pay for itself.
  
  It starts off with 100% production on whatever your village output is, but every 3 days it applies a stacking debuff, that needs 10 days to leave by itself. The debuff is -20% production + chance to rebel. This means, every day your oppression is working, it will be decaying its production output.
  
  Each time the village rebels, it will completly stop working for the duration of the rebellion but it will reset the negative debuff, and start at 100% production once again. Your oppression building also allows your militia to fight the rebels, so you can do absolutely nothing and the rebellion will die off. If you oppress manually, the militia will not join the fight.
  
  Combining this with the Arrakis Butchers development, it can decrease the time for the active rebellion, making it go back to work faster and give you ton of manpower as well.
  
  So even though the production can be decreased over time, the overall outcome should be positive, but you also want your villages to rebel more often than not, to allow the production at full throttle once again.
  
  Personally, i try to use the Oppression Building with Spice + Recruitment Office + Intel buildings. Water + Fuel Cells are possible options as well.
  
  
• Panic Mode: Using this method will result in big fluctuations to your Solari/Fuel Cells/Water or whatever else you have. I have to mention you this, because when you feel comfortable with your +600 solari, it might suddenly go to the red or it could be barely hanging on. This is where panic mode can start.
  
  Early-Mid game, you might want to check how things are going just in case, but late game you should not be having a problem with this. Even if your solari goes temporarily in the red, you should be having thousands of solari stockpiled, so this is not a reason to panic. You will want to focus your panic mode against your real enemies.
  
  Water/Fuel Cell fluctuations can cause bigger problems than the solari though, so you might want to limit the oppression on these resources. You are the Baron, oppress in a way that satisfies you.
  
  
• Nuke: YES!! I approve the use of nuke. While right now the nuke isn't being used that much, i like using it with the Baron. Since your primary aim is to attack and kill people, the nuke can be devastating when used in succession. Tank your landsraad standing once, feel bad for 1 minute, then realise that the standing is already in the hellpits, so use the nuke again, and again, and again.
  
  Targeting enemy armies might be a bit hard to nuke, since they can avoid it, but targeting 2 villages close to each other and devastating them for days, is really funny and effective. A few lucky shots will eventually hit the enemy army as well.
  
  
• Landsraad game: Harkonnen can play the Landsraad game as well, but he needs time to build up good influence compared to other factions.
  
  If you want to play the game earlier, try getting Cruel Reputation development. It allows you to gain a lot of influence from performing operations on enemy territory. Although it will have diminishing returns the more agents you sacrifice, it's your only "real" way to keep up with other players when they are alive.
  
  You could also play around with Feyd councilor who can corrupt resolutions, reducing enemy landsraad standing, to delay some governships.

Final Thoughts & Win Condition

As you can see, the Harkonnen military has great synergy from early to late game. He can be dominating enough in any part of the game.

Further boosting your synergies with the 2nd + 4th councilor will make you extremely threatening in fights. Harkonnen should be hard to manage, but getting used to playing like this instead turtling in your base until late game, is very fun and rewarding.

This guide mostly focused on the early part of the game. Going forward to mid-late game, just keep pushing forward, building, expanding, fighting. Nothing special compared to early game, keep doing more of the same.

And this is the part that hurts with the current state of the game. As it stands now, Harkonnen is not great at winning games despite his dominating military.

Every win condition is harder to reach compared to Smugglers/Ecaz/Corrino/Atreides - Hegemony and/or Governships.

You can threaten Governship/Choam/Hegemony victories, but for the most part you need people dead, so while Harkonnen can be played at a slower pace, it is preferable to be aggresive because late game is mostly running around trying to catch up against other factions who can win with Hegemony/Governship and usually failing to do so, unless you have great skill already.

Now, the end screen should look a lot like this for you. Most kills are from rebels though, but still it's good to be aggresive.



Last but not least, since your eco can be amazing for the better part of the game it might be a good idea to always be Choaming, as much as you can. It's a set up in case people start dying, and you don't want to be late to the party after 1 hour of gameplay already.

Have fun.

My first aggro experience(Optional)

In this final section, i will describe a few important stuff that happened to me the first time i tried to become an early aggressor. Optional read as said above, but important to keep you from discouraging.

The reason i am writing this, is because i made one crucial eco mistake and despite the many setbacks i had, i still managed to defeat my first enemy and recover in time for the end game.(Which ecaz won unsuprisingly)

• Fremen Spawned close to me, i had my first target.
  
  
• Decided to try early aggro, but was hit with -1 spice from the landsraad and the - solari from CP, so i had to delay a bit.
  
  
• Fremen attacked me first eventually, and it was time to retaliate.
  
  
• Made the huge error, of giving 30 spice for guild favor too early because i thought i had enough.
  
  
• Focusing on attacking my enemy, had multiple skirmishes, pushed my enemy back greatly, pillaging/liberating, got lots of manpower from the slaughter so i recruited big army again and again.
  
  
• That's when i notice my 1st spice tax was not paid, which tanked my economy even more.
  
  
• I could not figure out why this was happening, i totally forgot about the 30 spice for guild favor.
  
  
• Kept focusing on the enemy, trying to pull a base fight, my second spice tax was missed.
  
  
• Ecaz pillages 1 vllage of mine for free, 5 minutes later Corrino comes to liberate my Research Center village. So eco keeps tanking more.
  
  
• i Keep focusing on the enemy, since the early units only need manpower to produce, so i kept going without managing my eco.
  
  
• For the longest time in which this situation was present(around 30 minutes) i was in negative solari, which made my research 0, so my eco upgrades were delayed by a lot. Was trying to pillage and used the scavenger operation to try and keep up.
  
  
• When i finally managed to defeat the fremen, i finally figured out why my eco was so bad. Got back my 30 spice, didn't miss my 3rd tax thankfully and was back in full force pretty soon to start the end game.
  
  
• All these setbacks could had been avoided if i hadn't given that 30 spice. Was too confused and focused on my enemy to realize it, but i still managed to defeat my enemy.
  
  So don't get discouraged if things don't work out from the start, just keep trying. Harkonnen is not easy to play and win. That's why you don't see them that often.
  

[Karsk]

Games changed a lot is there any way you'd consider updating this?

[British Sisyphus]

looking forward to that update

[Thyrork]

Cheers for this, I know the .1 patch just dropped but it helped me with some fundamentals that i skimmed over and crippled myself with.

Reading! It will save your life!

[Kolopaper]

Glad you found it useful.

[Dragon Lord 117]

great guide i appreciate it