AMLA strategy

[Maiklas3000]

When you have only max leveled units (e.g., Dwarf Lords) around an easy kill, the question becomes which one deserves the XP. Intelligent units require 20% less XP to advance, typically 120 XP versus 150 XP. Resilient or healthy units get an extra +1 HP per level, but, as far as I can tell, this bonus does not apply to AMLA leveling. It also becomes progressively harder to AMLA. What is the formula for this? Is it more worthwhile to AMLA-advance intelligent or non-intelligent units?

In any case, for some campaigns, it's nice to have a few "uber units" that you can keep recalling, since you rarely have enough gold/income to recall all your maxed out units. Northern Rebirth is especially suited to creating "uber units", since there is an overabundance of XP to be had. Here is an "uber fugitive" I created in Northern Rebirth:

wesnoth - uber fugitive.jpg (16.21 KiB) Viewed 4436 times

A normal fugitive has 62 HP, while a strong, resilient one starts at 70 HP. The "uber fugitive" above has 79 HP - 9 HP more after being AMLAed 3 times. For an intelligent non-resilient fugitive to get to that point, it would need to be AMLAed about 6 times. So, it seems like it's best to concentrate on AMLAing units with desirable attributes rather than intelligent units (though I think for very large number of AMLA's the balance would shift to intelligent units.)

[uzy5o]

My calculations are done assuming a unit that maxes out at level 2. That way, resilient gives +6 HP, equal to 2 AMLA's.

An intelligent unit requires 2 AMLA's to match a resilient unit's HP. That requires 120+144=264 XP. The next AMLA requires 172 XP. A resilient unit requires 150 XP for its first AMLA. So not only does an intelligent unit require a large amount of XP just to catch up to a resilient unit, it actually always requires more XP.

So intelligent is never better than resilient when it comes to making these uber units. Level 3 units just makes resilient even better because it gives +7 HP.

[MRDNRA]

I generally try to avoid AMLA'ing units if possible, although in most campaigns it is bound to happen with a few units, such as my very recent run through of HttT on medium, I think Delfador AMLA'ed twice. However, if I was specifically aiming to AMLA units my preferences would be the key characters (such as, in HttT, Delfador, Konrad etc) and any loyal units first. However, looking back on my runthrough on HttT, although I didn't AMLA many units, then again, I also didn't recall all my lvl 3 units for the last level (in fact I preferred recalling all my dwarf lvl 2s and 3s, as well as recruiting some extra guardsmen!), so maybe it would have been beneficial to try to AMLA at least once another unit or 2, rather than levelling up to level 3 some elves which never got used again once they'd levelled!

[Skrim]

The best lvl 3 unit to give kills to if you have no still-levelable units around would be the Ghast. It gains 1 HP with every kill, so combining kills with AMLAs would result in massive amounts of HP in time to create an uber tank. Given that DiD is infinitely long, this could actually be done.

Otherwise, loyal troops aside, give it to units that would make the best use of the 3 HP - I'd prefer to give it to the weaker units since 3 HP is, for eg. a bigger gain for a 47 base HP Elvish Sharpshooter than it is for a 79 base HP Grand Knight. Low HP high-resist units and low HP high-evasion units would be better than units that are already high-HP tanks.

[HomerJ]

Otherwise, loyal troops aside, give it to units that would make the best use of the 3 HP - I'd prefer to give it to the weaker units since 3 HP is, for eg. a bigger gain for a 47 base HP Elvish Sharpshooter than it is for a 79 base HP Grand Knight. Low HP high-resist units and low HP high-evasion units would be better than units that are already high-HP tanks.

I like to throw in the Spectre. AMLAing him will give you the biggest gain in survivability.
Also applies to NR in this context.

Greetz
HomerJ

[Wookiechew]

Skrim is right.
In DiD (or maybe somewhere else) using the ghast's feeding capabilities, I was able to give it close to 20 kills, hence turning it into an uber unit.
In HttT, in the course of playing it several times, I have created a few uber units. For example, Delfador AMLA'd 5 times (trust me that was hard). A Grand Knight, AMLA 4 times.The was awesome

[Velensk]

Please stop reserecting multi-month old threads for no reason.