The peon is a unit from Blizzard Entertainment's Warcraft series of games. It is the basic non-combat unit for the Orcs, gathering resources and building buildings. They are built at the Great Hall, and take gold back to it. Peons can cut down trees to get lumber, which they then return to either a Great Hall or a Lumber Mill. Finally, and most importantly, they are the only unit which can build Orc structures. In Warcraft III they gain the ability to hide in Burrows and defend the base. The peon is usually the first unit built by an Orc player in a new base.
That's not the whole story, however, as 'peon' has been adopted as a general term for the resource-gathering and structure-building unit in Blizzard RTS games, in a similar manner to the use of town hall. The various units referred to as peons are, in Warcraft, the
and, in Starcraft, the
This is inordinately useful when giving
general advice, as the basic play mechanics of these units are very similar. It is also used when comparing sides in the later games. Usually, you need more peons when playing as
Zerg than as
Protoss in
Starcraft, for example.