Discussion about favored traits for each unit type

[myte7]

Let's assume the following situation: You will be playing a 1on1 match versus a human opponent on a random multiplayer map against a random faction with default xp and gold settings.
Now, if you could choose fixed traits for any of your unit-types in advance, what would you go for? Every unit of a given type (e.g. all Orc Grunts) will start with the selected traits. You may only choose from the pool of legal traits for a given unit type (no healthy Ghosts).

This is what I would go for:

Northerners:

Orc Grunt: quick, resilient
Reasoning: I use Grunts as high hp (per gold) night-time attackers. Fast advancement during dusk or a swift retreat at dawn are critical. Also, with only 1 MP for hills, quick Grunts often have a huge threat range.

Troll Whelp: quick, resilient
Reasoning: Trolls with 5 MP are so much easier to use. Resilience ensures their damage-soaking abilities are not impaired by the quick trait.

Assassin: quick, resilient
Reasoning: With Assassins rarely dealing finishing blows and having only one attack, the alternatives simply are inferior.

Goblin Spearman: dim
Reasoning: They still need two lvl 1 kills to advance, and sometimes you don't even want them to advance. Cleary the best trait they can get.

Naga Fighter: strong, resilient
Reasoning: This combination of traits grants a much needed hp-buff for the fragile unit - and with four attacks, a nice boost in damage.

Orcish Archer: intelligent, resilient
Reasoning: Intelligent archers advance absurdly fast, fast enough to incorperate leveling them into your multiplayer strategy. Resilience increases their odds to survive the process.

Wolf Rider: quick, resilient
Reasoning: Mainly used as scouts and as an annoyance, these traits improve their ability to steal villages or zoc retreats.


Undead:

Dark Adept: quick, resilient
Reasoning: Good threat range and some extra hp are just what this unit needs.

Vampire Bat: feral (fixed), quick
Resoning: This unit sucks at anything besides scouting and stealing villages anyway, so let's make it better at that.


Rebels:

Elvish Fighter: strong, resilient
Reasoning: Turns these pansies into formidable fighters.

Elvish Archer: dextrous, resilient
Resoning: 6-4 ranged is nothing to sneeze at and the extra HP is much needed.

Elvish Scout: quick, resilient
Reasoning: The other traits are just worse. Strong/dextrous won't turn them into good fighters and their advanced version is not particularly awesome.

Elvish Shaman: quick, resilient
Reasoning: What else? They are rarely employed as damage dealers and rarely deal finishing blows.

Mage: quick, resilient
Resoning: What else? True, leveled Mages are awesome, but in most situations it is not wise to feed them XP in 1on1 multiplayer, even when intelligent.

Merman Hunter: quick, resilient
Reasoning: They pretty much need to be quick to catch up with nagas and flying units.


Knalgan Alliance:

Dwarvish Fighter: quick, healthy
Reasoning: Quick should be quite an obvious choice for a 4 MP unit. I am favoring healthy over resilient because it helps against poison and reduces time spent in villages, both very helpful for a slow unit. On top of that, with proper formation (i.e. the fighter not getting ganked in 1-2 turns) healthy has the potential to provide more effective hp than resilient.

Dwarvish Thunderer: quick, healthy
Reasoning: See Fighter.

Dwarwish Guardsman: resilient, healthy
Reasoning: Makes them the best level 1 unit at defending key villages in the game. I rarely use these guys for much else.

Dwarvish Ulfserker: quick, strong
Reasoning: Huge threat range combined with a considerable damage boost. To me this is just the scariest combination of traits these guys can get.

Footpad: quick, resilient
Reasoning: makes them more annoying harassers and village stealers. Neither strong nor intelligent is really desirable in comparison.

Gryphon Rider: quick, resilient
Reasoning: as with Footpads, neither strong nor intelligent is really desirable in comparison.

Thief: intelligent, resilient
Reasoning: 15 XP to level makes them advance absurdly fast. They are squishy so relilient is providing a much needed hp-boost.

Poacher: quick, resilient
Reasoning: what else?


Loyalists:

Spearman: strong, resilient
Reasoning: q/r is a close second, but the combination of damage and hp s/r provides is pretty impressive for 14 gold.

Cavalryman: strong, resilient
Reasoning: This is a choice of style. I often use Cavs not only as scouts but to aggressively conquer and hold open ground. After their hp-nerf, s/r helps a great deal with that. Also, considering the unit's cold resistance, s/r helps with tanking the occasional Dark Adept shot - and in my opinion, Loyalists need all the help they can get versus Undead.

Mage: quick, resilient
Reasoning: what else?

Horseman: strong, intelligent
Reasoning: When I get a Horseman with this traits I like to build my strategy around leveling it up. Having a lancer or knight often results in a major advantage. Ganking three mid/low hp units should be doable in a lot of games.

Bowman: quick, resilient
Reasoning: meh

Fencer: strong, resilient
Reasoning: Perfect for a squishy unit with low damage per hit.

Heavy Infrantryman: quick, resilient
Reasoning: I also like fearless, but resilient helps at any time of the day.

Merman Fighter: quick, resilient
Reasoning: Need to keep up with and survive against Nagas, Gryphons, Merman Hunters etc.


Drakes:

Drake Burner: quick, resilient
Reasoning: You cannot afford to lose these guys. Q/r ensures a swift retreat and some extra hp.

Drake Clasher: strong, resilient
Reasoning: Makes them a walking tank. More HP than some level 2 units and very good damage.

Drake Glider: quick, resilient
Reasoning: What else?

Drake Fighter: quick, resilient
Reasoning: A good general purpose unit and an awesome scout.

Saurian Augur: intelligent, resilient
Reasoning: Considering magic is potent at delivering finishing blows, these little guys can level ridiculously fast.

Saurian Skirmisher: strong, resilient
Rasoning: Their mobility is already good, but they are squishy. S/r skirmishers deal considerable damage at night and have decent hp.

[taptap]

Hard to discuss when you agree. In short: "quick, resilient"

[jakhtur]

Well of course quick/resilent is nice mixture, but i think you forget partly that quick goes with hp penalty.

I would say that strong/intelligent wolf is a tempting alternative. With 3 strikes its quite a good finisher (and strong trait gives him needed power), with intelligent trait it lvls pretty quickly. Lvl 2 wolf is one of the best lvl ups you can have. Fire dmg is nice, but slowing ability makes it incredibly useful. So i would say that wolf is not only for scouting and vlg grabing. The speed and 3 attack combined with low exp needed to lvl up makes wolf a good target for lvl up.

Troll - i would say that fearless/resilent or fearless/quick is also a mix that i would like to get. Trolls are often units that you leave during day as your line of defence. So its nice when troll can hit back a bit stronger.

Vampire Bat - i am not sure if quick is so good. Even without it its quick. Having resilent can be a difference between life and death, and having strong improves drain a bit (still i would go for resilent).

Elvish Fighter - dextrous is also a nice trait, 4*3 against melee unit is sth that you cannot ignore. Resilent/dextrous fighter when placed on the forest tile can defend pretty well retailating to any attacker and peppering with arrows every melee-only opponents.

Elvish shaman - not sure about quick, shaman has so low hp that every point matters. Strong would not only improve dmg but also hp - so it can be handy. Also intelligent can be very effective, as even one kill combined with some exp gained on defence in forest tile can make lvling up possible. And lvl up a shaman is even better then lvl up a wolf. From a unit that serves mostly as "slower" and "light healer" you get a fulltime healer or powerful magician that is so hard to attack on forest tiles.

Merman Hunter - i think its quick enough, strong adds some hp and can improve fighting ability. Intelligent improves chances of lvl up very much (and hunter is another unit that improves very much when lvl up)

Poacher - intellgent/resilent. Intellgient poacher lvl up as quickly as orc archer. With 4 range attacks maybe even quicker. And when lvled its so good on defending not-hilly terrains.

Drake Fighter - i would go for strong/resilent. Drakes need to attack, fighter is quick even without quick trait, and every extra dmg point is welcome. So is hp (but drakes have a lot of hp, so small addition is maybe less significant)

[Crow_T]

I like to have shaman that are quick/intelligent, because if you go the healer route its good to be able to keep up with other units, plus you can get a +8 healer faster, and if you go the sorceress route again you are fast enough to maneuver around battles plus have a chance to get to L4. Nothing worse than dragging a druid or sorceress behind a group.

As far as wolves go, I generally don't choose the advancement path that ends at L2 for intelligent units, I'd rather get to L3 faster.

[jakhtur]

@Crow_T
Well i think your opinion refers to single player game. MYte7 asked about multiplayer, which differs much. You hardly expect that your units lvl above 2nd lvl, whereas during single player campaign you expect unit to stay for much longer.

[Ank]

Generally speaking what ever i deem expendable should have the quick trait(so it can engage/disengage easier and there for survive longer) and what ever i consider level up material should be intelligent(some units are simply superb as lvl 2 or beyond so getting there faster is the goal) ... beyond that i guess support units should get intelligent(they need to be more reliable(more shots,better hp,extra abilities) as such the faster they grow the better) fighters should get resilient(sometimes 1-5 hp extra is all it takes for a unit to survive the turn and be safely retreated to recover... retreating a unit that is 2-3 xp from leveling is priceless... (when it returns it can stand and be invulnerable for a turn where ever u place it(so it can shield others and prevent breaches in what ever point on the line u see fit) and on its turn it gets to level up regardless of whom or what it engages....)

[Chief_Chasso]

Footpad: quick, resilient
Reasoning: makes them more annoying harassers and village stealers. Neither strong nor intelligent is really desirable in comparison.

I generally have to disagree with this. With quick, the unit gets 5% less HP, which almost negates the resilient trait. Footpad's have low HP to begin with, plus they have 7MP already- adding an 1 additional MP is basically inconsequential.

I prefer strong, resilient Footpads. Having the +1 melee allows this unit to defend well from both melee and ranged attacks. This definitely holds true as the unit levels up. Plus the strong gives 1 extra HP per level on top of the resilient HP bonus. These units are dodgy and hard to hit on most terrain types. Having the extra HP makes these units even harder to kill. They can hold a defensive position quite well too.

[myte7]

Footpad: quick, resilient
Reasoning: makes them more annoying harassers and village stealers. Neither strong nor intelligent is really desirable in comparison.

I generally have to disagree with this. With quick, the unit gets 5% less HP, which almost negates the resilient trait.

That's a funny way of looking at it. With resilient, you get to have some extra hp on a quick unit instead of an hp malus. How awesome is that?

[Swiss_Army_Cheese]

Skeleton Archers: Undead
Reasoning: The trait grants them poison immunity which makes them useful for countering Assassins. All the alternatives are just not worth having on my Skeleton Archers, because there are no alternatives.