Tips for a new player

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

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ShadowDancer
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Joined: May 12th, 2012, 4:51 pm

Tips for a new player

Post by ShadowDancer »

I began playing Wesnoth a couple of days ago and I've been through the tutorial and the An Orcish incursion campaign. I've had no problems on medium difficulty but I still have some questions about the game.

I have noticed that since the player gets the elite units into action, he gets an immense advantage and can pretty much win any map of a medium difficulty. What other tactics are there that can give you an advantage and apply on all factions/sitations?

Also, how should someone fight trolls? I found the "Valley of trolls" the hardest map from the Orcish incursion campaign. Trolls have sustain, along with very high damage but are vulnerable to arrows. What else can someone do to beat them? Are they expensive? Does poison damage counter their heal hard enough? The only thing that works for me is bursting one of those living rocks so that they won't heal in the next round but that's not always possible.

Also, which faction is the strongest/weakest in your opinion? Which one is the most fun to play?

Thank you in advance.
alluton
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Re: Tips for a new player

Post by alluton »

Trolls regen and do high dmg. However they can defend well only on hills and mountains. On other terrains archers are good against them. Also spearmans are good during day.
"This game cured me of my real life addiction."
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Kymille
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Re: Tips for a new player

Post by Kymille »

Obviously there many discussions already on the forum you can look up.

First question: I think you'll find on longer campaigns it's important to resist the temptation to use an army of mostly elite units. Instead you want to continue to recruit and then level up newer units (then use everything in the final climatic battle.) This saves money and also makes you less vulnerable to losses. More generally you want to play close attention to terrain (such as, put elves on forest, dwarves on mountains, and lure the enemy into clear or water hexes.) Finally, I'd mention the importance of retreating when conditions are poor for you.

Second question: The shaman line is very important against trolls. A shaman or any advancement can slow the troll, so it doesn't do much damage. (Slow it before any melee units attack.) Even better, the sorceress [and higher levels] do amazing damage to trolls with their arcane attack. Indeed in general I now concentrate on advancing shamans when I play a campaign that features elves.

Third question: The developers have gone to great lengths to make the factions evenly balanced when two skilled people play each other. For example, the individual units of the orc faction are weakest, but they also are cheaper so you should be able to get more of them. On the other hand, speaking just as someone who plays campaigns and sometimes the AI in MP for fun, not other people, I think the Drake faction is the hardest to master. You'll find endless discussion of this on the forums.
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ShadowDancer
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Re: Tips for a new player

Post by ShadowDancer »

@ Alluton - That's probably why I found them hard to kill; I fought the first group in the mountains.

@ Kymille - I think I misunderstood the term "slow". I thought it was about making a unit unable to move long distances for a turn or something xD. It also seems I've underestimated Shamans a bit by using/advancing them for the sole purpose of healing. Didn't know the game has a Drake faction. It seems I should spend some time on what my units can actually do before rushing a campaign again.

Anyway, thank you for the replies.
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Crow_T
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Re: Tips for a new player

Post by Crow_T »

In my experience, when I first started playing I ignored the time of day, but now realize how big of a deal it is. Terrain is important, as is knowing your enemy- alt-s to check their coffers, and d to check unit strengths/weaknesses.
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perseo
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Re: Tips for a new player

Post by perseo »

ShadowDancer wrote: @ Kymille - I think I misunderstood the term "slow". I thought it was about making a unit unable to move long distances for a turn or something xD. It also seems I've underestimated Shamans a bit by using/advancing them for the sole purpose of healing. Didn't know the game has a Drake faction. It seems I should spend some time on what my units can actually do before rushing a campaign again.

Anyway, thank you for the replies.
Well, actually it makes half damage but it also moves the half of its movement points, which in a more advanced level can be even more useful than the feature that has surprised you.
BTW Open your BFW and press F1, then go to unit menu and look for your unit (in that case the elvish shaman on elven category), now looking on her attacks click on "slow" in the "special" column. Result of this incredibly hard process:
This attack slows the target until it ends a turn. Slow halves the damage caused by attacks and the movement cost for a slowed unit is doubled. A unit that is slowed will feature a snail icon in its sidebar information when it is selected.
If you do this while you're playing a campaign you won't see the units you haven't seen in this game, but if you do while you're in the main menu you'll see every unit. When I started I didn't like to see the advanced of my units and all the units in order to make it funnier... but it's up to you.
"I was pulling a barrow, when I saw a stalking horse
what a beautiful day!- he said- for visiting a red herring
and getting hoarse."
Working on this campaign: The septentrional tower
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ShadowDancer
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Re: Tips for a new player

Post by ShadowDancer »

@ perseo - Rushing a campaign means rushing a campaign. As soon as finishing the tutorial, I chose a well-looking novice campaign and began playing. Bad mistake obviously. Although I found no problems in finishing it really fast, I'd still advice new players to spend some time and see what terms like strong or intelligent or slow mean.

I don't want to see how all units are for the same reason you mentioned, so I'm just going to go though the extremely difficult process of spending some time reading what a mechanic can do while in game.
silion
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Joined: May 17th, 2012, 5:24 pm

Re: Tips for a new player

Post by silion »

Hello, can i recruit 2-level's units when my leader achieve 3rd level in scenario? When i played this game some years ago, I remember that was implemented.
But today when I played this didn't work...
HomerJ
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Re: Tips for a new player

Post by HomerJ »

silion wrote:Hello, can i recruit 2-level's units when my leader achieve 3rd level in scenario? When i played this game some years ago, I remember that was implemented.
But today when I played this didn't work...
Welcome to the forums.

Firstly, are you talking about multiplayer or campaigns?
Secondly, your memory does not seem to serve you correct, because it has never been this way since 1.2 (where I joined) and I believe not even before that.

However the following remarks:

There is an MP era that let's you recruit lvl2s with a lvl3 leader.
Also, in campaigns it's set by the campaign designer what units you are able to recruit during each scenario and to my knowledge this is not dependent on you leaders level.
There might be some UMC campaign that uses this feature though, maybe other users can confirm this.


Greetz
HomerJ
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Creativity
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Joined: March 5th, 2012, 6:00 pm

Re: Tips for a new player

Post by Creativity »

silion wrote:Hello, can i recruit 2-level's units when my leader achieve 3rd level in scenario? When i played this game some years ago, I remember that was implemented.
But today when I played this didn't work...
It's called the Age of Heroes, when you start a MP game you select that from the 'era' box.
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taptap
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Re: Tips for a new player

Post by taptap »

Obviously no mistake to rush into the campaign if you managed it. Shaman, sorceress branch is easily overlooked by beginners (I did at least) but if you level some, you will see how awesome they are (more reliable slow + arcane damage attack) and especially become at L4 and then recruit too many of them for the rest of your life :)
I am a Saurian Skirmisher: I'm a real pest, especially at night.
IK_German
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Re: Tips for a new player

Post by IK_German »

ShadowDancer wrote:which faction is the strongest/weakest in your opinion? Which one is the most fun to play?
This is a rhetorical question, I suppose. But I would recommend to play campaigns and download some add-ons to see every faction at least once in action, while advancing its units to T2 and T3. After that you should have a good feeling for the strengths (your enemy) and weaknesses (your faction) of each faction. Like now, you've seen, how strong trolls can be in action, so try a Northern campaign to experience their weaknesses. In many campaigns, Undead will just flood through your defense at night. That gives you the feeling: "Wow, really overpowered and nothing one can do!" but when you use them yourself in the MP or even in the Undead campaign and throw them against your opponent during daytime, you'll quickly discover their weaknesses.

My tip for a beginner would be: Play 2 or 3 short easy campaigns, then 1 or 2 expert or on challenging level. Try not to stick to one faction, but try to discover at least three or four different (like you know elves and Northerns now after just one campaign). Also, take some time to read the unit descriptions (rightclick on it); in most cases they explain the idea behind the given abilities of the unit.

As a strategic tip I would just say: Use 2 or 3 scouts to claim villages asap. Everything more than that - Time of Day, special abilities like slowing or even healing, army composition, counter units, using ranged or melee, terrain advantage and so on - is learned effectively only by playing. If you managed to get some decent T2 units, try to level some more at their side along a different branch just to learn about them.

If I remember correctly, some campaigns feature T2-units in later scenarios. But the level of your recruits is not linked with the level of your leader, though he usually has one level above the beginning recruits. And healers are of much more use in campaigns than they are in MP battles. If your human opponent is not too stupid he either will kill the healer right away, if possible (see imperceptible), or find a way to neutralize its effect (poison or simply kill a unit in one turn). Magic missiles are always a serious thread, though. :)
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ShadowDancer
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Re: Tips for a new player

Post by ShadowDancer »

@ IK_German - When I fought the undead for the first time I had the same impression as their damage increase/decrease is insane compared to other factions. I'm on the third campaign at the moment (Liberty) and I'm beginning to lean towards which factions I like the most as well as which ones I find the most potent. I still have to play through an undead and an Orcish campaign to form a good opinion on which is the best/worst though. One thing I've noticed is how important health sustain is and how much of an advantage a faction has when it uses healers/villages or some other form of sustain.

I completely agree on everything you say in the 3rd paragraph and I'd also like to add that, at least on the default campaigns, every available unit for recruitment is useful, even if it looks less potent than some others. Mages are super weak but can shred the undead easily. Sea units can be effectively used in scenarios with rivers of villages that border with water. Druids are useless in melee fights but bring heals and utility and can later use a nuke spell etc.

One thing I still have problems with is the turn limit. On most scenarios, I barely manage to finish the objective(s) before the time limit and I've lost a couple of times simply because I ran out of turns. What can I do to finish a scenario faster?
Last edited by ShadowDancer on May 20th, 2012, 2:01 pm, edited 1 time in total.
alluton
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Re: Tips for a new player

Post by alluton »

Finishing fastern: 1. Trying to take more of enemyes villages so he can recruti less units to slow you. 2. Engane fastern and try to crush enemy. 3. Effective use of units damage.( meaning when enemy has 10 hp you don't put level 2 guy to finish him) 4. Some good luck.
"This game cured me of my real life addiction."
-Flameslash
MRDNRA
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Re: Tips for a new player

Post by MRDNRA »

When advancing a units see what traits they have and advance them to the advancement that would most benefit their traits when there are 2 or more advancement paths available. For instance, say you have a strong elvish fighter. Now at level 2 both captain and hero have 4 melee attacks, but at level 3, the elvish champion has 5 attacks to a marshalls 4, hence I would choose to advance ANY strong elvish fighters to heroes. Also the same goes for the dextrous trait with archers, I wouild always choose marksman with an archer with dextrous, and strong archers (that aren't dextrous) would be advanced to rangers (at level 3 they have 4 melee attacks to a sharpshooters 2!). The exception to the strong archer to ranger rule for me is where it is strong and dextrous, in which case, marksman wins.

The same can be said for pretty much any unit with 2 or more advancement paths. Once you know how many attacks and what other traits are preferable for particular units (say, quick for healers and leaders), then you can use that knowledge to pick the best advancement possible. There will always be exceptions, and at times you may NEED to make a particular exception, but that is what I usually look for.

Also, like others have said, time of day, unit resistances and vulnerabilities etc, should never be ignored.
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