Guardsman upgrades vs fighter upgrades. Units balance.

[takreem]

I played two mainline dwarven campaigns (Hammer of Thursagan and Sceptre of Fire). And I don't exactly understand the point of guardsman line upgrades.

I'm not sure if this is the place where I should post this. I found discussion about very similar topic here:
http://forum.wesnoth.org/viewtopic.php? ... =guardsmen

but it was inspired by multiplayer games and was dealing mostly with level 1 units and I have problems with the level 2 and level 3 versions in comparison with dwarvish fighters

Judging from the descriptions and list of abilities Dwarvish Guardsman (and its upgrades) is a defensive unit, somewhat lacking in offensive capabilities. And Dwarfish Fighter is a front-line melee unit, reasonably sturdy and being capable of powerful attacks. Beyond any doubt fighter is a better offensive unit and guardsman is superior at defence. But is it the case with their upgrades? I did some math and came to the conclusion that actually not. I will spare you the details of my calculations and present only results, but if you wish I will show the appropriate tables.

Dwarvish Stalwart vs Dwarvish Steelclad
Before upgrades guardsmen defend themselves virtually always better than fighters. But improved steelclad defends better in hills and mountains. Stalwart generally is still a better defender, but by a significantly smaller margin than before.

Dwarvish Sentinel vs Dwarvish Lord
After final upgrades DLords and DSentinels are almost even while defending against blade and impact damage and against very rare magical impact damage. And Lords now defend better:

- against all attacks on hills and mountains (like steelclads)
- against all magical (70%) special attacks
- against non-magical special (arcane/fire/ice) attacks on almost all types of terrain

Sentinels are significantly better only when resisting:
- piercing attacks on all types of terrain (except hills and mountains)
- any non-magical attack on flat/forest/sand terrain.

Like their level 2 versions, when DSentinels are better, they are not better in a way guardsmen were better over fighters.

Considering all of this it strikes me that level 3 sentinel as a unit doesn't have almost any sense at all. It is offensively weak and is reasonably good at defence, ok. But Lord at level 3 is versatile tough unit which excels at offence and is generally as good and in many cases even better at defending than dwarven army's specialist defender! On top of all that Dwarven Lord requires less xp to advance. Both are equally slow and both have almost equally strong ranged attack. Sentinels could be really better only under very specific circumstances - defending against cavalry on flat terrain comes to mind (at level 3 they are no longer better against drakes). Generally sentinels completely lack flexibility and, as a result, usefulness.

To sum it up, at least from the single player point of view, I find the first guardsman upgrade debatable, and the second one utterly useless. Was it intended, are Sentinels underpowered or maybe DLords defensively overpowered? Maybe it is reasonable to change some Dwarvish Sentinel stats to make it more useful?

[Maiklas3000]

Steadfast.

[takreem]

Steadfast.

? I don't know what you mean. If you suggest I didn't include steadfast ability in my calculations, you are wrong.

Or if it is the topic already raised multiple times, I'm sorry, I didn't find it.

[Maiklas3000]

I had thought you had not remembered to take "Steadfast" into account. Compared to Sentinals, Dwarf Lords take more damage from blade weapons on hills, which contradicts your statement, "Lords now defend better... against all attacks on hills."

Sentinels excel at defending in castle terrain. Both the Guardsmen and Fighter lines get 60% defense there, but on defense the Sentinel's resistances are 60/60/40/20/20/20 compared to 40/40/30/10/10/10 for Lords (blade/pierce/impact/fire/cold/arcane.)

However, I would agree with you that Sentinels are basically brittle. I strongly favor Dwarf Lords in dwarf campaigns. The one offsetting advantage of the Guardsmen line is the Guardsmen themselves. Despite their high cost, they are often a good buy when you are facing a major assault while holding either a castle or open ground, IMO. This is partially because Guardsmen have higher hitpoints than Fighters. If the Guardsmen level up, then you are stuck with units that aren't as good as Steelclads/Lords.

[Velensk]

I've still always thought that the guard line could use a boost. It's not quite as bad now that Dwarf lords ranged attack isn't as good but it's silly that the fighter upgrades both deal half again as much damage and are either nearly as tough or tougher.

[takreem]

I had thought you had not remembered to take "Steadfast" into account. Compared to Sentinals, Dwarf Lords take more damage from blade weapons on hills, which contradicts your statement, "Lords now defend better... against all attacks on hills."

Sentinels excel at defending in castle terrain. Both the Guardsmen and Fighter lines get 60% defense there, but on defense the Sentinel's resistances are 60/60/40/20/20/20 compared to 40/40/30/10/10/10 for Lords (blade/pierce/impact/fire/cold/arcane.)

Ok, now I understand. But you are wrong. You forgot that steadfast ability has the effect that, quoting the wiki:

"unit's resistances are doubled, up to a maximum of 50%, when defending"

which means Sentinel's real resistances on defence are 50/50/40/20/20/20.

Lords on hills are hit by blade attacks 40% of time and have whopping 40% universal resistance against them. Which means on average out of each attack worth arbitral 100 points of damage Lords will be affected only by 0,6*0,4*100 = 24 points. Sentinels have smaller 50% defense on hills, but 50% resistance (after applying steadfast). Out of 100 points of potential damage Sentinels are on average affected by 0,5*0.5*100 = 25 points. It is clearly more. And it is more points of pure damage, even before scaling it by the hit points differences (remember that Lords have 79 HPs and Sentinels only 68).

My calculations show that Sentinels don't particularly excel at defending in castle terrain. Guardsmen do (as they do actually everywhere), because of their resistances and higher HP than fighters. But Sentinels lose the latter trait and as a result in castle terrain they are only negligibly better against blade and impact, slightly better against pierce and worse against special non-magical (and like everywhere else they are still worse against all magical attacks). "Negligibly" means that intelligent, strong Dwarvish Lord defends in castle minimally better against blade and impact than strong, quick Dwarvish Sentinel.

[StandYourGround]

Don't forget also that the Dwarven Fighter line often gets the Healthy trait, which helps offset their marginally weaker defenses, making them even more so a better unit.

[Velensk]

Guardsmen can be healthy too. So can thunderers.

[firefox]

The 10% less defense on hills and mountains is balanced by the 10% more defense on flat, forest and watery terrain.
I don't think anyone has noticed this so far.
I agree that the Steelclad/Lord is more powerful in the mountains, but the Stalwart/Sentinel makes a superior performance on most other terrains, where dwarves are generally bad.
So the "upgrade" of the Guardsman line is the increased flexibility of unit placement.