Common Sense Compendium: Now with more General Advice

Share and discuss strategies for playing the game, and get help and tips from other players.

Moderator: Forum Moderators

User avatar
krotop
2009 Map Contest Winner
Posts: 433
Joined: June 8th, 2006, 3:05 pm
Location: Bordeaux, France

Post by krotop »

My little experience of the game makes me think of another point, not explicitely mentionned :

There are 2 ways to defend a position, hold it with the appropriate unit (ex : like thunderer in a mountain), or threaten it with your back line (ex : you want that village with your skeleton ? c'mon my burners are waiting for him). It mostly depend on your strategy : do you want your opponent to attack you on your best positions or be the 1st to attack on his weakest point ? The best players I met are able to combine both aspects.
Inigo Montoya
Posts: 199
Joined: November 27th, 2006, 2:29 pm
Location: Behind you

Post by Inigo Montoya »

Another thing that many players (including myself) often forget about: don't attack at the wrong time. Sending a lawful unit to attack a chaotic one at night is stupid, even if the enemy only has a few HP left. Generally speaking:

DO NOT attack at night with lawful units, or during the day with chaotic ones, unless it is VITAL to kill a specific enemy right away.

Try to maneuver your units so that battles are fought when the lighting is good for you and bad for the enemy (obviously doesn't work if both sides' units are the same alignment).

If possible, move your units out of attack range when the light is about to go bad.

And, if your units are neutral but the enemys' are not, attack when your opponent is weakest (obviously). If both sides are using units with the same alignment, my advice (and this is just a matter of personal preference) would be to fight when the light is bad for both of you - usually it is more important to keep your troops alive, than to kill the enemy.

Note that I mainly play campaigns, and very rarely play MP games. In a one-off multiplayer battle, it might be worth risking your units in order to kill the enemy quicker. But in a campaign, you really want to keep your troops alive at all costs - NEVER allow a unit to be killed if there's any way to avoid it (unless you have enough spare cash to recruit new troops - in which case these should be the ones that you sacrifice, rather than more experienced units)

Finally, remember that most healers are weak, and they cannot heal themselves - if they're anywhere near the enemy they should stay in a village if possible, with one or more tough friendly units adjacent.
I don't exist when you don't see me...
I don't exist when you're not here.

You bought a mask - I put it on.
You never thought to ask me if I wear it when you're gone.
User avatar
F8 Binds...
Saurian Cartographer
Posts: 622
Joined: November 26th, 2006, 3:13 pm
Location: Mid-Western United States

Post by F8 Binds... »

one other thing, that is blatently wrong: put a unit in bad terrain (unless unavoidable) WITHIN REACH of the enemy. i agree with the lawful / chaotic idea as posted by inigo montoya: example:

orcish grunt vs spearman
day- 7-2 9-3 = 14 damage vs 27
dusk- 9-2 7-3 = 18 damage vs 21
night- 11-2 5-3 = 22 damage vs 15
Proud creator of 4p- Underworld. Fascinated by Multiplayer design and balance.
I am the lone revenant of the n3t clan.
Spanner
Posts: 21
Joined: January 2nd, 2007, 4:47 am

Post by Spanner »

Newbie here who just finished Tale of the brothers, The south guard and is halfway through Httt.

I found the game very fustrating, I even had problems with the 2nd scenario of the tutorial!!! Very humbling considering that I have played many turn based games from Civilization to Master of magic, Xcom, Age of wonders, Heroes of might and magic series etc..

Still I think I'm starting to get a handle of things though I'm still learning a lot. Here's what Iearned so far. Please correct any misconceptions.


As one guide I read put it , Wesnoth is about attacking on the right terrain at the right time with the right weapons.

My understanding is that terrain affects chance ot hit, and right time/weapon affects damage.

As such Of the three, I consider Terrain most important. It's amazing the difference that an improvement of 10% or more defense makes just by consistently standing on the right terrain. If you don't get hit it doesn't matter how much damage is done.

Almost as important is time of day. I'm learning to dread the fall of the night when facing the undead. For weak or hevaily wounded units (that can't retreat) I just hold and stop attacking and hold, hope for the best untill light (unless it is like ranged units versus units with no ranged weapons so they can't counter attack).

Resistances I find of less importance so far, except against undead.
Another obvious idea I didn't catch on until much later is, if the guy has no ranged weapons, hit it with one that has so there is no counter attack. Same goes for the rarer? unit without melee attack like dark adept. Also some units like Dark sorcerer have much weaker melee units than ranged, so definitely attack with melee....

Formations are very important. It remains me a bit of Go or weiqi, you typically don't want a unit to be alone cutoff and encircled. Even the strongest unit alone encloed on 2-3 sides is typically a bad idea.

My favourite defense position is typically to pick 2 villages seperated by 2-4 hexes and form a straight line across it. Put elves on forest, other units on favourable terrain such as hills,forests or even mountains if possible, put some relatively weak unit on the village (or strong ones if it is the beach head that is subject to attack).

Leadership units can be behind supporting. Plus positioning healers such as elvish shamens and white mages to support units where you anticipate most damage to be done. After a while you get a sense which targets the Ai finds most tempting.

The Ai is good but it can't resist beating on such a formation, and when the light turns, I wipe them out.

I think the most difficult problem for me at the start was knowing how to advance. I tended to get units surrounded when they advanced alone, or I retreated a wounded unit and it still got attacked and killed.

I found it hard to guage what was the maximum range of enemy units.
Use of cltr-v is criticial but so far most guides don't seem to mention that? Or do you guys have memorised the terrain costs and movement rates of enemy units that you don't need this tool?
Spanner
Posts: 21
Joined: January 2nd, 2007, 4:47 am

Post by Spanner »

About tactics.

I also had the following huge misconceptions

* Friendly units could not move past each other.

* You had to make all your turns with each unit at one shot.

This meant I did not use tactics like

1) Moving unit with leadership ability one hex, attack with unit supported by leadership, move leader one more hex, attack with another unit supported by leadership, rinse and repeat, until you finally attack with the leader (assuming it ends up in a fairly safe position)

2) Switch by moving units in a line formation so they match up against their best opponents and/or move wounded units to a less vulnerable position (say on a village for healing) .

E.g You got a ranged unit (say elvish marksman) facing off a dark adept (powerful ranged attack) on one point of the line, and a melee unit (say horseman with charge that allows unit to counterattack with double damage) facing off a orcish warrior (no ranged attack, powerful melee) on another point of line. Don't attack, you will just get hit by the strong counterattacks!

Best move is to Simply trade partners. Move the ranged unit one step back, move the melee unit to the now vacated spot and attack the hapless Dark adapt (very fun with charging units) . Then move the ranged unit and attack the orcish warrior with archery.

Final result : lots of damage with no counter attack.

Same thing goes with moving units in a line to safe positions on the line, particularly useful for rotating wounded units on villages though that ends your turn for that unit.

Other tactics I'm still working on are putting healers chained together so they heal each other, using units to distract act as a diversion etc.
User avatar
F8 Binds...
Saurian Cartographer
Posts: 622
Joined: November 26th, 2006, 3:13 pm
Location: Mid-Western United States

Post by F8 Binds... »

spanner wrote:E.g You got a ranged unit (say elvish marksman) facing off a dark adept (powerful ranged attack) on one point of the line, and a melee unit (say horseman with charge that allows unit to counterattack with double damage) facing off a orcish warrior (no ranged attack, powerful melee) on another point of line. Don't attack, you will just get hit by the strong counterattacks!

Best move is to Simply trade partners. Move the ranged unit one step back, move the melee unit to the now vacated spot and attack the hapless Dark adapt (very fun with charging units) . Then move the ranged unit and attack the orcish warrior with archery.
a better idea, in my opinion, is to use the elvish marksman on the orcish warrior, lowering its hp, and then charge the warrior, killing it in a single blow. use this strategy against your opponents, because killing one unit is better than injuring 2. just note that ganging up on a unit is more successful the more units you use. Also note your units survive better when they can only be attacked from 1+2 directions rather than 3+4 directions.

Also: if you have problems with advancing, i can help. you won't always be able to attack from good terrain when advancing. let's say he has a line of orcish grunts on mountains. you must attack from the swamp next to it. (note this rarely happens) use mages to destroy most of the grunts, then move elvish fighters onto the mountains. when you advance most of the time, just take advantage of whatever you can: in httt, this means: ranged units (elvish archers/mages) on non-ranged units, melee units (horseman/elvish fighters) on weak melee units, (orcish archers example) good terrain vs bad terrain (forest, mountains vs grass, grass vs water, etc)
Proud creator of 4p- Underworld. Fascinated by Multiplayer design and balance.
I am the lone revenant of the n3t clan.
Spanner
Posts: 21
Joined: January 2nd, 2007, 4:47 am

Post by Spanner »

F8 Binds... wrote:
spanner wrote:E.g You got a ranged unit (say elvish marksman) facing off a dark adept (powerful ranged attack) on one point of the line, and a melee unit (say horseman with charge that allows unit to counterattack with double damage) facing off a orcish warrior (no ranged attack, powerful melee) on another point of line. Don't attack, you will just get hit by the strong counterattacks!

Best move is to Simply trade partners. Move the ranged unit one step back, move the melee unit to the now vacated spot and attack the hapless Dark adapt (very fun with charging units) . Then move the ranged unit and attack the orcish warrior with archery.
a better idea, in my opinion, is to use the elvish marksman on the orcish warrior, lowering its hp, and then charge the warrior, killing it in a single blow. use this strategy against your opponents, because killing one unit is better than injuring 2.
True killing is better than wounding usually, maybe my example with the horseman with charge is a poor example. Particularly since charge is supposed to be used with killing blows.

In any case I was thinking of a scenario where the 2 units are not side to side, say there is one or more units in between in the line facing up the enemy in a line such that

So you couldn't attack with both the ranged unit and the melee unit on the same target.

Something like this
RERRD
HSSA

H = Horseman
A = Evlish archer
S = other friendly unit.
R = other enemy unit
D = Dark adept
E = Some enemy unit with no ranged attack

You certainly would not want your Elvish archer to engage the Dark adept, when you could retreat the Archer, move the Horseman over and charge the dark adept.

Then you can move the archer over and shoot the enemy melee unit.
Last edited by Spanner on January 4th, 2007, 9:27 am, edited 2 times in total.
User avatar
Thrawn
Moderator Emeritus
Posts: 2047
Joined: June 2nd, 2005, 11:37 am
Location: bridge of SSD Chimera

Post by Thrawn »

editted the advice I found to be useful in.
Thanks :)
...please remember that "IT'S" ALWAYS MEANS "IT IS" and "ITS" IS WHAT YOU USE TO INDICATE POSSESSION BY "IT".--scott

this goes for they're/their/there as well
Sombra
Posts: 273
Joined: August 11th, 2006, 6:38 pm

Post by Sombra »

Thrawn perhaps could throw in some comments regarding the economic side of Wesnoth. On MP games it often seems to me that people underestimate the impact of even one village on your side can have.
User avatar
Thrawn
Moderator Emeritus
Posts: 2047
Joined: June 2nd, 2005, 11:37 am
Location: bridge of SSD Chimera

Post by Thrawn »

Added a section on Platypus' Colosseum, I've noticed a startling lack of thinking by people playing this...
...please remember that "IT'S" ALWAYS MEANS "IT IS" and "ITS" IS WHAT YOU USE TO INDICATE POSSESSION BY "IT".--scott

this goes for they're/their/there as well
thedarksavant
Posts: 11
Joined: December 21st, 2006, 7:59 am
Location: Spokane, WA

Some hints I've discovered and not seen elsewhere

Post by thedarksavant »

Ctrl-v is your friend. This is pointed out in the docs, but it's not emphasized enough, IMHO. Since I've started using it before every move, my success has gone way up.

A really nice feature I discovered by accident is that if you select a unit then mouse over that unit's attack types in the right hand window, a nice little pop-up will show you the resistances to that attack type for all the enemy units on the map. So now I have no excuses for attacking that skeleton with my fighter at night.
Doc_Rattie
Posts: 2
Joined: June 13th, 2007, 3:55 pm
Contact:

Re: Thrawn's Common Sense: New section!!

Post by Doc_Rattie »

Thrawn wrote:2.Pick your fights well
When engaging an enemy, make sure of the following things: either you can kill it or it won't be able to kill you (on his turn too), and that his other units can't kill you on his turn either. This can be accomplished by means of
Am I wrong or is there something missing at the end of the sentence ??
watch out, german with bad english!!
User avatar
Thrawn
Moderator Emeritus
Posts: 2047
Joined: June 2nd, 2005, 11:37 am
Location: bridge of SSD Chimera

Re: Thrawn's Common Sense: New section!!

Post by Thrawn »

Doc_Rattie wrote:
Thrawn wrote:2.Pick your fights well
When engaging an enemy, make sure of the following things: either you can kill it or it won't be able to kill you (on his turn too), and that his other units can't kill you on his turn either. This can be accomplished by means of
Am I wrong or is there something missing at the end of the sentence ??
It leads up to my next point. So the end of the sentence is the next number.

I can see why you would be confused though :)
...please remember that "IT'S" ALWAYS MEANS "IT IS" and "ITS" IS WHAT YOU USE TO INDICATE POSSESSION BY "IT".--scott

this goes for they're/their/there as well
User avatar
Thrawn
Moderator Emeritus
Posts: 2047
Joined: June 2nd, 2005, 11:37 am
Location: bridge of SSD Chimera

Post by Thrawn »

new section! krotop wrote something awhile ago, but it wasn't really noticed. I used it (after formatting and making small changes) in this with his permission.
...please remember that "IT'S" ALWAYS MEANS "IT IS" and "ITS" IS WHAT YOU USE TO INDICATE POSSESSION BY "IT".--scott

this goes for they're/their/there as well
ChibiDwarf
Posts: 42
Joined: October 12th, 2007, 10:53 am

Post by ChibiDwarf »

krotop wrote:My little experience of the game makes me think of another point, not explicitely mentionned :

There are 2 ways to defend a position, hold it with the appropriate unit (ex : like thunderer in a mountain), or threaten it with your back line (ex : you want that village with your skeleton ? c'mon my burners are waiting for him). It mostly depend on your strategy : do you want your opponent to attack you on your best positions or be the 1st to attack on his weakest point ? The best players I met are able to combine both aspects.
One more way to defend a position is to threaten him to take his turf if he leaves to take yours. Though this can only be done by mobile troops(gryphins, for example) but those aren't usually good at fighting, so it's important to check if your opponent can ZOC you.
(You won't know how annoying it is when you move your horseman to capture your village, only to let a gryphon slip pass it and constantly stealing your villages over and over again--one gryphon usually costs me a couple turns/units to corner it, and the cost is usually what I lack._
Post Reply