Tips against Drakes.

[Zmann]

My friend is convinced Drakes are overpowered. They may cost a lot, but they've got crazy movement, and can quickly capture a ton of villages to make up for it. On top of that, every single unit has a melee and ranged attack, and both are rather powerful.

Could anyone give us any Drake beating tricks? We tried the Imperialists with pierce, but it didn't seem too effective.

What, exactly, are the Drake's weakness, then? Hardly any units have cold.

[Shiver]

If the map style allows tier 2 units, getting multiple sorceresses or necromancers is wise. Other than that, I'm not exactly the person to ask.

[appleide]

for undead:

http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=11150

[tsr]

Drakes have one major disadvantage: they have never more than 40% defense.

If you learn to exploit that, you will soon be able to play a close game against drakes.

Due to the high HP and great movability it's quite important to make sure that you can actually finnish them off once you have engaged with them. Almost always move your units in packs (you should probably always do this, but even more so against drakes).

Another thing that I believe is more important against drakes, than other factions (except undead - where a lvl 2 archer should be your top priority) is leveling. Try to set up your fights so that you give as much xp as possible to a few units of choice, I'd go: archer, grunt, assasin and troll (->lobbler).

When I play northeners (my favourite faction, drakes are second) against drakes I obviously recruit a bunch of archers and goblins due to their pierce damage. At least one assasin and of course some grunts and trolls, but less than against other factions.

A typical annihilation of a drake goes something like this
- I pick a target based on where I can have as many units on good terrain (50%+) as possible and where I can send at least 4 units in to battle and one of them being an assasin (it is important that the assasin gets a 70% terrain hex due to its low HP)
- move in whit the least experienced units first (making sure that I will be able to ZOC-trap the drake)
- if I realise that I wont be able to kill the drake with the last unit that I can afford to send I try to send in an assasin instead to poison the drake so that I can be pretty sure to finnish it next turn.
- if the drake is killed by the units I planned with I see if there is a drake nearby that I can poison instead (but only if I can reposition my assasin so that he can't be targeted by more than 2-3 enemy units).

In this particular set-up time of day is very important so keep that in mind too. drakes love to fight during day, nertheners hate it.

But no matter what faction (except probably loyalists - I hate loyalist, can't make sense out of that faction) you're playing really hesitate to attack during day (moving in and ZOC-trapping without actually attacking can be a very effective weapon).

Oh, and please note that I'm not that a good player

/tsr

[Yogibear]

If you play on official standard maps, with standard era and standard settings (70% XP / 100 gold / 2 gpv), drakes should never be overpowered. Other preconditions have potential of not being balanced.

As tsr said, stay on good terrain if you can and get pierce (or cold if you are undead). So:

Loyalists: Spearmen and archers are your friends, cheap and powerful. A horse here and there could be really fearful for drakes. Just make sure it does not get killed.

Undead: Dark Adepts are you core unit.

Dwarfs: Thunderers are awesome against drakes with their low defense.

Northerners: Everything that got pierce, plus assasins as has been stated before.

Elves: Elvish archers and some fighters. No woses and no mages, make sure you stay on good terrain!

And just to add: This isn't all, once the drake player figured out the use of saurians, you need to adapt to that and it requires a different way of playing.

[Zmann]

My friends and I actually like playing 2 on 2 battles. Are there any good balanced 2 on 2 maps?

Also, my friend likes to play Imperialists, so any specific strategies for them would be great.

Thanks for all the answers so far.

[kshinji]

Loyalists, the're spellt.

[zookeeper]

Drakes' weaknesses? Pierce, bad defense.

Spearmen of any kind tend to do a lot of damage, and you'll most often (if you put any effort into it and the drake player isn't really good) get to attack them having 40-60% defense yourself while they only have 30-40%. Archers are less useful since almost all drakes can retaliate against ranged, but drake fighters at least aren't too dangerous for archers if you can shoot them from a forest, castle, mountains, etc.

You indeed don't get to use the cold weakness a lot unless you play as undead or drakes yourself.

[Zmann]

Loyalists, the're spellt.

Wow, yeah, Loyalists. I did that twice, didn't I?

[Flametrooper]

Loyalists: Spearmen should form most of your troop. Put them in front, using them to shield Bowmen. Bring out the Bowmen on the Clashers and sometimes Fighters. A good 1st turn recruit is: 2 spear, 2 bow, 1 horseman, 1 merman fighter. The merman for water control and it does Pierce; the spears and the bowmen forming your main core (Depending on what your enemy recruits, 3 spear and 1 bow sometimes works better, or vice versa); the Horseman you can use as a land scout, grabbing villages and picking off the odd lone Burner or Augur. Keep it alive and make a Lancer out of it, with which you assassinate the leader. If the drake player starts to use Saurians, a Mage can help, but be careful about this, and if you're money-tight, don't get it. Most often, Fencers, with their multiple attacks, are best for dislodging high-defense saurians. And the Augurs are just weak, let a spearman take them out. Keep HI (if you even got any, you probably shouldn't) away from them however.

[Becephalus]

My friends and I actually like playing 2 on 2 battles. Are there any good balanced 2 on 2 maps?

Also, my friend likes to play Imperialists, so any specific strategies for them would be great.

Thanks for all the answers so far.

I would recomend any fo he 2v2 maps which come with the game

[CuddleFish]

... other than the obvous *cough* pierce *cough*

the main thing is to keep your unit within support range of eachother

drakes have the ability to use their whole army to overwhelm half of your army, then they do the same to the other half

[Peitenimi]

Heres a replay of me beating up drakes with loyalists. I used only spearmen, bowmen, horsemen, mermen and 1 cavalryman (which was quite stupid).

[Clonkinator]

Just attack with pierce and cold as many as you can and get high defense (60% should be minimum) and beating drakes should be no problem. Note that adepts and ghosts are ecspecially effective against saurians and that drake without fire-attack.