What's your Inital Recruitment?

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KunoNoOni
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Joined: August 17th, 2009, 6:11 am

What's your Inital Recruitment?

Post by KunoNoOni »

Granted I know this depends on the map your playing, but on average what do you choose?

I normally use Loyalists and depending on how close the villages are I usually recruit 2-3 Calvarymen, I like only choose them as they are 6 gold cheaper than horsemen. Then I recruit Bowmen until I find out what faction my opponents are playing. I don't normally use merfolk unless there is a good reason.

If I'm playing Rebels, I normally recruit Elvish Scouts, 1 Shaman and the rest are Elvish Archers. If I'm playing Orcs, then its Wolf Riders, Assassins and Orcish Grunts.

I don't really play with the Undead, Drakes or Dwarves. I've tried them out, but haven't found a good playing style for them yet. Especially the Dwarves, maybe I was just having bad luck with them, but I really wasn't able to hit with them.

-KunoNoOni
lostnumber
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Re: What's your Inital Recruitment?

Post by lostnumber »

I usually just max heavy infantry 8)
Yoyobuae
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Re: What's your Inital Recruitment?

Post by Yoyobuae »

I only play drakes. Which in turn means that the opponent always know he is facing drakes. It kinda makes it a bit hard.

It depends a lot on the time of day and the faction match-up:
- Vs Loyalist, attack at night (augurs, skirmishers), defend at day (clashers).
- Vs Rebels, attack at day (fighters, burners), defend at night (clashers, augurs)
- Vs Knalgans, attack at day (burners mainly), defend at night (clashers, augurs)
- Vs Northerners, attack at day (burners, fighers. not sure though), defend at night (clashers, augurs)
- Vs Undead, attack at day(burners or even glider for skeles), run like hell at night

So I guess burners for day (but then there's drake mirror. :? ) and clashers for night. After I find out the enemy faction, then I can add augurs, fighters, etc. Of course, I try to mix units a bit and take a guess at the opponent's faction. It doesn't always works, though. :lol2:

Something interesting is that drake fighters are preferable over clashers at day because they do 7-3 dmg and 6-4 dmg per strike respectively (non-strong). 7-3 turns into 9-3 while 6-4 turns into 7-4, that is 27 vs 28 damage total, while fighters are faster/cheaper. So to attack at day they are somewhat better because of this.
TheGreatRings
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Re: What's your Inital Recruitment?

Post by TheGreatRings »

I'll go with my usual (default era) recruit on Isar's Cross as Loyalist, since my others are probably more varied and this is the only one I can remember.

Loyalist goes to the best of my recollection like this (assumes I'm fighting random, Loyalist, Rebels, or Drakes, maybe Northerners. I would not use this vs Knalgans or Undead):

Leader=Lt or White Mage.

Recruits:
2 spearmen=28 gold.
1 merman=14 gold.
1 mage=20 gold.

Remainder=13 gold (so I can get another spear, merman, or bow next turn).

Spear men are cheap unit spam, but good against a wide range of units (most ranged units, drakes, cavalry in general). The mage allows me to deal with melee units the spears can't handle, and will be very useful if my opponent turns out to be Knalgan or Undead. Merman is basically a water spearman, and I think it can help reach one or two villages early on Isar's.

Vs Knalgans or Undead, I would probably recruit more along the lines of heavy infantry and mages.
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Darkmage
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Re: What's your Inital Recruitment?

Post by Darkmage »

Humm, since i use random for most of the games, i would say... on big maps mainly explorers(cavalry/gliders) and light infantry(saurian skirimishers or others quick) until i know my enemy and control villages while on small maps a mix of light infantry, heavy infantry( HI, clasher, grunt) any archer or healer(if not mage) and my 5-6 castle is full now.

Of course it has many variables but as you say, on average this goes.
Raliven
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Re: What's your Inital Recruitment?

Post by Raliven »

KunoNoOni wrote:
I normally use Loyalists and depending on how close the villages are I usually recruit 2-3 Calvarymen...

-KunoNoOni
This is a mistake that less experienced players sometimes seem to make. On most maps, you really don't want more than one scout on your initial recruit. Yes, cavalrymen are good for grabbing villages quickly, but the problem is that with 40% defense, they are less than ideal for holding those same villages. Plus your basic spearman, which is great for holding villages costs 3 less gold which is 17% or so less. In some cases as drake, a good player may even choose to forgo recruiting a glider, especially if he gets a fighter with the quick trait because there is that much of a difference in combat strength.

Of course all this changes if the map happens to be really, really huge with a lot of villages. On King of the Hill, for example, if you are dwarves, you may want to have an intial recruitment of all gryphons. But such an opening recruitment isn't fitting for most maps that are usually played.
Yoyobuae
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Re: What's your Inital Recruitment?

Post by Yoyobuae »

Seeing some replays from an excellent ladder player (ps7) gave me a completely different perspective of how to play Wesnoth. Specifically the way he plays drakes.

What I learned is that it is not so much about having resilient or high damage or whatever units, but how can those units inflict cost-wise damage to the enemy.

A scout may not have the damage as other units BUT they have mobility. That 1 or 2 extra movement hexes can make the difference between attacking with 3 or 4 units at the same time, between making the kill and taking a village or failing.

"Speed kills". As weird as that sounds.

But I guess that applies mostly to factions with good speedy units (drakes specially).
Velensk
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Re: What's your Inital Recruitment?

Post by Velensk »

To a certain extent it applies to all factions.

My inital recruit depends on faction, mood, and map I have no intention of listing them all.
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csarmi
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Re: What's your Inital Recruitment?

Post by csarmi »

What you say has merit (too many scouts will be a problem, often better to lose 2/3g and recruit the right unit instead of trying to get the villages as fast as possible). Your example, however, is quite bad. Cavalrymen are very handy and it is very, very unlikely that recruiting two (or even three) would get you in trouble. That's not the case for most scouts, however.
Scipion121212
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Re: What's your Inital Recruitment?

Post by Scipion121212 »

Yep, I as loyalist (not on Isars cross or Weldyn Channel) I go very heavy on cavalry in initial recruitment, I usually get 1 horseman and 1-2 cavalry. These horsemans/cavalry each get me village 1 turn faster, so it is basically as if I would get horseman instead of mage and cavalryman instead of spearman for same price =) definately worth it imo.. Even if I find that opponent is loyalist =)
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singalen
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Re: What's your Inital Recruitment?

Post by singalen »

I just thought that one really interested in recruits could download a bunch of top ladder replays, and write a script to build some statistics, for every map, faction and era.
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Vendanna
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Re: What's your Inital Recruitment?

Post by Vendanna »

I think that your initial recruitment depends mostly of what you aim to accomplish, and diverges mostly for player preference.

As noted in the thread about "B.U.R.P.S"? with unusual recruiting, if you know how to play your pieces, you should win against a less skilled player, irregardless of what you recruited.

For me, if I'm facing random I'll probably aim for a general recruit that even if it isn't the ideal against known faction (like example recruit assasin against undead) it can help me to maintain the "Economic" warfare in my favor, which is probably the thing that wins you more games in the long run. (at least against the AI)
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Doc Paterson
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Re: What's your Inital Recruitment?

Post by Doc Paterson »

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anakayub
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Re: What's your Inital Recruitment?

Post by anakayub »

Criteria for recruitment, in general order of importance when I do play:
1) Unit cost - More units, the better
2) Overall recruit effectiveness - Are you leveraging your faction's strengths/a particular theme (e.g. HODOR)?
3) Unit diversity (more in random matchup, less significant in non-random) - Is your recruit balanced enough to deal with most opponents' recruits?
4) Efficiency in getting villages - It's best to get all in 2 turns after recruiting on most maps, sometimes 3. In general, the more "mobile" your recruit, the weaker it is (think Drake Warriors vs Gliders). But sometimes it's better to sacrifice village grabbing for a more powerful army.

During initial recruiting, I try to leverage the probability of getting quick units to help capture villages, as this negates issue 4 to a certain degree.

Apply these principles to each map you play. Not that I master it, but at least that's what I try to do.
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Imp
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Re: What's your Inital Recruitment?

Post by Imp »

With elves, I recruit all shamen and then play it slow.
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