Common multiplayer mistakes and tricks

[pg]

Mistakes -

1. Moving multiple units next to enemy units before attacking. Move and attack with one unit at a time. You may get lucky and only need to attack with one unit to get a kill. Then you can do other things with those units instead of having their turn wasted because you moved next to an enemy.

2. Leaders with strong attack are more vunerable to dying! What happens is they are likely to kill attacking units, especially if they are already hurt, letting them be attacked over and over again in the same hex until they die. Be especially careful with leader units like the Red Mage.

3. Don't bother attacking any defending full health unit which can heal/cure with only one level one unit. Exceptions exist to this but generally all you are doing is giving that enemy unit free xp. You get xp also but you will not heal.

4. Using, CTRL+R or clicking on your leader's hex to recruit units is not the best way to do so. You can choose where on your castle to recruit units easily. Just right click on the hex where you want the unit to spawn on your castle and choose recruit. This is useful especially for setting up your opening moves to get villages, or making sure your slow units are recruited at the front of your castle.

Tricks -

1. Don't attack when you are defending a village unless you can get a kill or are in an overly strong position numerically. The longer you draw out battles, when defending villages, the more it benefits you since your units heal. You also gain xp at a much faster rate since you are likely to be attacked by multiple units. This is another reason to last as long as possible so you get more xp and are more likely to level.

2. A unit 1 xp(or just a few xp) away from leveling up can be used very aggressively especially if it has full health. It is unlikey to die(it gets fully healed upon leveling) and can usually be sent in places regular units cannot be and survive. Similarly don't waste attacks on units 1 xp away from leveling unless you have a very good chance of killing them.

3. Move your front line units one hex off the front line, then attack with your farther away units. This is helpful since, if you can kill units blocking your way, then your prior front line units can advance farther to take villages, terrain or attack other units better.

4. When using level 0, or poison units in mass you want to drag out the game as long as possible. Level 0 units require no upkeep so the longer the game takes the more likely you are to have more money and win. With poison you want to drag the game out as long as possible because poison does damage over time. Just buying mostly level 0 units with a few poison units can be quite powerful(corpses and ghouls or goblins and assassins).

Feel free to add any mistakes or tricks you know of.

[Elvish_Pillager]

Mistakes: Attacking from bad defense terrain with no excuse.

Tricks:

1: When grabbing villages, be careful where you send them. You don't want them to capture all the villages in one area and then waste a few turns getting to a different area they haven't scouted. (Because of this, I usually have more income than my opponents, even if I use fewer scouts.)

2: Worship CTK.

3: Retreat with heavily wounded units, unless they have CTK. If the enemy has CTK on a unit, and it doesn't have any, and you can remove the enemy CTK by moving, do so.

4: Use scouts to fight. Either ganging up on enemy scouts, or attacking battles from behind, are viable strategies.

5: When using leaders to fight, have them do as much damage as possible, then surround them.

6-?: blah blah blah blah blah

[eugenelim]

2: Worship CTK.

What is CTK?

[Shadowfury333]

1. If you aren't going to earn enough money to get new units within the next turn, move out your leader, esp. if you can castle hop.

2. Never Rush.(period)

3. Extension to #2, leapfrog (move units so that there is another unti to back them up and protect them) as much as possible.

4. Move in groups. Since BfW has no Area of Effect attacks, there is no reason not to. If you do, then your opponent will have a harder time surronding your units, and you can form lines to protect your weakened units.

[Popito]

Tricks:

- Lure: Buy the cheapest guy you can and send him in the open, its an affordable loss and if it helps to take a few guys out from its nice defending spots. Its a high temptation to take these easy xps in the open without too much trouble.

- In medium-big maps use higher scouting ranges to hide units from the enemy at his flanks and if they stand a few turns without being detected can will almost surely get a shot over those injured retreating enemies. If you have ulfs and can use them these way and you may even get a shot to a happy overconfident spellcasting leader.

- Dont spend all you starting gold, leave a few coins (enough to buy any unit you can over a 20% of the starting gold) so you can react to your enemy's recruiting. This will decrease your upkeep and will let you choose best troops against the opposing troops.

- Try to be a balancing power. And delay your attack until you are sure you can win. And have in mind first mistake that follows.

Mistakes:
- Dont gamble, luck is not your ally.

- Dont try to look too much powerfull in first turns, people will think you are the main danger out there it doesnt matter you only have 2 units left, they will think you have thounds of them somewhere else.

[Elvish_Pillager]

CTK = Chance To Kill.

Mistakes:
- Dont gamble, luck is not your ally.

I gamble all the time... this is very bad advice.

- Dont try to look too much powerfull in first turns, people will think you are the main danger out there it doesnt matter you only have 2 units left, they will think you have thounds of them somewhere else.

This applies only in a very restrictive set of games (FoW + more than 2 teams) and not all players would care if you're the most powerful, either. This isn't a common mistake and it's not even a mistake.

[turin]

pg's mistake number 4 is correct but incomplete. ctrl-r when the mouse is over a castle tile will recruit to that castle tile, same with ctrl-shift-r.

[pg]

2. Never Rush.(period)

Your other tips are good but this one isn't. You can win by rushing especially on maps which have low gold income and are smaller. It's very possible to win by rushing and I've done it more than few times successfully. Even on maps with higher gold income it's possible to win by rushing. In team games rushing is even more powerful. It's unlikely any one opponent can withstand a rush of 2 or more people, if you can attack his castle within a few turns.

When you rush you get the advantage of surprise. It's likely your opponent has sent units to all the surrounding villages and his leader is alone. You can either concentrate all your forces so it'll be quite hard for your opponent to mount an effective defense or attack from many sides. Rushing is particularly effective if your leader has leadership(so bring him along!). Saurian rushing is also strong because they have skirmisher and ignore ZOC allowing them to bypass defenders and go straight for the leader kill. I have yet to try fencer rushing but I'm sure it could work too.

The key to rushing is speed(bypass defensive positions) and killing the enemy leader. Don't worry too much about keeping units alive. Time spent healing is usually benefiting your opponent since he is likely to keep buying units for defense. Your main goal is to surround or get multiple units next to the enemy leader. Attack with your strongest attack even if that is also the enemy leader's strongest attack. You want to do damage as quickly as possible and kill him. I've won rushes where my opponent still had 10+ units spread out on the map(and was making decent income) but I only had a few left(the others all died attacking).

[Dragonking]

CTK = Chance To Kill.

Mistakes:
- Dont gamble, luck is not your ally.

I gamble all the time... this is very bad advice.

I gamble often too
Try to be with good relations with other players (especialy in ffa game). Fog of War makes your enemies blind what's going far far away, and you can easy turn strategic battle in psychological war - just when XX enemy gater units to attack you, say to YY player "thank u for giving me so many lvl2 units" Of course YY can say "where?" - the key is to make them sure that if they will attack you, they will be wiped out. It works

[Mkgego]

Use bats only for fodder (this word comes out in the translation page when i put the name in spanish...) and to steal enemmy villages.
Use them whisly...You can always see best moves from the enemmy and see where you can put the bat in order to secure it letting one hexe free between it and the enemmy...very useful...bats have so much movement!!!!

[turin]

CTK = Chance To Kill.
I gamble all the time... this is very bad advice.

I gamble often too
Try to be with good relations with other players (especialy in ffa game). Fog of War makes your enemies blind what's going far far away, and you can easy turn strategic battle in psychological war - just when XX enemy gater units to attack you, say to YY player "thank u for giving me so many lvl2 units" Of course YY can say "where?" - the key is to make them sure that if they will attack you, they will be wiped out. It works

most people like dave seem to think this diplomatic aspect detracts from the game. they prefer 2 teams to FFA.

[MadMax]

I know a good one: pay attention to the time of day!

It's crazy how many people ignore it and end up slaughtered.

[Elvish_Pillager]

It's crazy how many people ignore it and end up slaughtered.

There's also quite a number of those who choose Grassland over Forest when attacking with an Elf, with no other factors involved.

[pg]

Trick -

XP farming. This works when you have a high level unit which cannot do good damage vs your units. What you do is either trap it on a village so it continues to heal or if it's a troll/wose it can heal over time anywhere. The best way I've seen so far to do this is trap a wose in water and surround it with two level one ghosts. AFAIK a level two wose cannot kill a ghost in two hits even in daylight. So all you have to do is rotate ghosts in and out to heal. Each time you attack you will gain 2 xp since the wose is level two. In no time you will have a fleet of level two ghosts. This is probably much easier to do on bigger maps but it's possible on even tiny maps. It's really quite scary if you can do it right. You will have as many level two ghosts as you want.

[SaintDust]

-Sometimes letting an enemy unit level can work out for your good, because if you can kill it you get 16 xp instead of the standard 8.
The best times to do this are;
1. When you are totaly sure you have enough units to kill it.
2. When you can set up the kill for a unit you need to level.
3. When it is to far out from support and will not be able to retreat. Or a trapable unit.