Whether to attack with lawful units when adjacent at night

[Kirsten]

When I'm playing lawful units, and I have a bad guy who's among my forces at night, and I want to occupy a hex adjacent to him to keep him from attacking a weak and important unit that I otherwise can't move out of his range: Is it better to go ahead and attack the bad guy, even though it's night? I.e., are there advantages to attacking first that outweigh the disadvantages of the night attack? If I move adjacent to the bad guy, waiting for sunrise to attack, I'm afraid his subsequent (nighttime) attack on me will be more damaging to my unit(s) than starting the fight at night would have been, but I don't understand yet the relative advantages/disadvantages.

[Dugi]

Let's assume that the good guy is a Spearman and that the bad guy is Thug. They both do 24 damage at twilight if all attacks hit and the enemy has no resistances or weakness to their attacks. Let's neglect the effects of rounding.

Each of them does 18 damage during unfavourable time of day and 30 damage during favourable time of day. That means that the one who has the advantage does 66% more damage than the other guy.

Now closer to your problem. There are several bad guys, several bad guys, each of them can retaliate properly. You deal the same damage during retaliation as when attacking, so if you don't need to hurry up, fight only in retaliation and attack actively when it is your time. Of course, if more bad guys are approaching or of they menace some units that would suffer a lot from their attack and you cannot block them, you might need to attack them anyway, but you should estimate how much will the attack help you.
In many cases, there will be different terrains around, so I suggest you to take cover and start a defensive fight in some forests, hills, mountains, etc and leave these places after that the time of day gets favourable. It might be even good to flee from the enemies when the time of day is not favourable (most quickly moving units will not damage you too much) and attack them when it gets favourable (but you must estimate the value of the villages you give up this way); this is a really good thing to do during the main confrontation. Better avoid most of these techniques when playing versus a real player, because people cannot be tricked to easily.

[GunChleoc]

Akso, check if the bad guy has a ranged attack. If he doesn't, you might kill him even at night if you have enough bowmen or ranged spellcasters, and he has no chance of retaliating.

[zookeeper]

I.e., are there advantages to attacking first that outweigh the disadvantages of the night attack?

No, attacking first doesn't have any inherent advantages or disadvantages unless weapon specials like charge or berserk are involved. If you need to kill the enemy quickly and/or you don't mind your units getting hurt more, then attacking at unfavourable time of day is sometimes a good idea.

Of course there's some special situations, such as when village or healer healing, the slow special or near-leveled units are involved.

[Dunno]

charge or berserk

Or marksman, or first-strike
Aside from these, the only advantage attacker holds is choosing attack type (melee or ranged).

[Crow_T]

I want to occupy a hex adjacent to him to keep him from attacking a weak and important unit that I otherwise can't move out of his range: Is it better to go ahead and attack the bad guy,

You can also just position a unit to block, and don't attack. I used to try to attack all the time, but sometimes just laying out a defense to only counter attack and protect is a smart tactic, especially considering it sucks up a round from the advantaged side.

[Pentarctagon]

Moved to the Strategies and Tips forum.

[tr0ll]

Another factor not mentioned above is that if a unit is injured to the point it looks easier to kill, the enemy AI will often attack it instead of a healthy but weaker unit. You can use this to divert attention from your "important" weak unit, ie using up your enemy unit's attack; this tactic is also handy when there are multiple anatagonists on the field - injure one of them and the other antagonists often prefer to go after that one instead of your healthier units. This doesnt stop further enemy units from attacking the one you wanted to protect if there is still a way to get there of course.

[Kirsten]

Thanks to everyone who's posted.

I really appreciate the variety of points you all raised. I knew the question wouldn't be simple, but y'all have done a great job of addressing the different factors in ways I can understand.

I am quite new to BfW -- and it's my first RPG ever -- and I'm learning skills I wish I'd started learning a very long time ago.

Cheers!

[pauxlo]

Please note that Wesnoth is not a RPG (role playing game), but a TBS (turn based strategy) game, with some slight RPG aspects added (such as level-ups). (There are addons which makes the game much more RPG-y, though.)

[Kirsten]

Thanks! TBS it is. I really am grateful for the correction; I'd rather stop showing ignorance sooner rather than later.

[Aelaris]

I.e., are there advantages to attacking first that outweigh the disadvantages of the night attack?

No, attacking first doesn't have any inherent advantages or disadvantages unless weapon specials like charge or berserk are involved. If you need to kill the enemy quickly and/or you don't mind your units getting hurt more, then attacking at unfavourable time of day is sometimes a good idea.

Of course there's some special situations, such as when village or healer healing, the slow special or near-leveled units are involved.

Actually, there's always an advantage if your attacks have the chance to kill the baddie before it uses all of it's attacks. (This is generally more pronounced for units that have a few strong attacks than units that do many weak attacks.) Also, with a few possible exceptions this only matters when the defender is wounded (which... happens pretty much every game, but not all the time within each game).

So if something is going to die in one hit to your guy, then you might as well attack, rather than it getting one free swing in before eating your large chance-to-kill.

Of course, there tends to be more than one unit, so you're probably going to wind up in a bunch of full combats anyway.


So in short, yes there is an advantage, but the fact that your enemy does about 166% of the damage you do means that in practice this is generally a horrible idea. Of course, the essence of strategy is to be able to judge which case is the exception.