How not to play undead

joshudson · Post by **joshudson** » October 29th, 2007, 1:38 am

I found this gem in Google's cache of wesnoth.slack.it. It would be a shame to forget it.

In the hands of a good player, undead can beat anything. They can beat elves in forest, dwarves in mountains, Woses in forest, Loyalists on plains... anybody. You just need to know how to do it. Never believe that undead are underpowered. They are they best faction, when you know what you are doing.

You rule the world by default

Vampire Bats can seize all the villages on the map, literally. The only ones they can't capture are those guarded by units. Unless the opponent has several units guarding each village (a MAJOR waste) then even Vampire Bats can swoop in and kill a lone unit on a village. It is simply impossible to defend against a swarm of Vampire Bats well enough to secure anywhere near half the map.

Walking corpses are cheap walls

If your income is greater than 5/2 of the number of units the enemy has, you win by default. Walking Corses are impossible for any level 1 unit to kill regularly in one turn. Thus, it takes about two unit-turns to kill a Walking Corpse. It also takes only 5 gold to recruit one. Thus, if you have 5 income for each enemy unit, you are undefeatable. Your army cannot even be halted; Walking Corpses have reasonable attacks, and will seize villages even without Vampire Bat aid.

Armies marching towards you cannot stop you

Vampire Bats and Ghosts can assassinate enemy leaders even if an army is between you and them. If they commit forces to their own defence, their force is divided and you can strike the attacking army. If they simply defend, you control all the villages. If the enemy leader comes with that army, then generate infinite armise of Walking Corpses and Vampire Bats, surround them, take all the villages, and wear them down eventually.

Every unit has an Undead nemesis

You just need to attack them with what they are.

Spearman, Bowman, Horseman, Fencer, Elvish Fighter, Elvish Archer, Elvish Scout, Elvish Shaman, Mage, Orcish Grunt, Merman, Orcish Archer, Saurian, Wolf Rider, Naga, Gryphon Rider, Poacher, Dwarvish Thunderer: !! Skeleton

Bowman, Elvish Archer, Orcish Archer, Poacher: !! Skeleton Archer (also devastates some units the Skeleton does)

Heavy Infantryman, Troll Whelp, Thug, all those stupid Drakes: !! Dark Adept, Ghost

Wose, Elvish High Lord: !! Ghoul, Vampire Bat

Orcish Assassin: !! Any undead unit

Thief, Dwarves on plains: !! Walking Corpse. (Thief: kinda hard to backstab, Dwarves: powerful, but just go around them)

Dwarves in mountains: !! Ghoul

[/quote]

chino2468 · Post by **chino2468** » October 29th, 2007, 3:32 am

lol its sounds like good advice, but WCs cost 7 gold

Post by **Aethaeryn** » October 29th, 2007, 3:51 am

Yes, the advice does seem a bit outdated, though completely different than that of the How to Play series which recommends to almost never use Vampire Bats and provides a different tactic. The guy who wrote this guide seems a bit proud, I'd love to beat him with another faction just to humble him.

Cuyo Quiz · Post by **Cuyo Quiz** » October 29th, 2007, 4:38 am

I reckon this is old. Although i can't remember the Vampire Bat stats at the time...

Shiver · Post by **Shiver** » October 29th, 2007, 6:20 am

Wait, that isn't a fakepost?

Post by **thespaceinvader** » October 29th, 2007, 7:15 am

Seems a but suspect in today's climte to suggest attacking orcish archers with skeleton archers given their fire weakness and the orc's fire attack, rather than with skeleton warriors... In fact, a lot of that advice seems a little sus... Though WC flooding might work against poor players, i'm sure there are counters for it. Plus, the 7gp cost for them makes that strat somewhat less viable nowadays.

Caeb · Post by **Caeb** » October 29th, 2007, 8:12 am

seeing as how this was written by an Elvish Pillager over three years ago, I don't think we should read too deeply into it... well, other than for nostalgic purposes...

Post by **Jetrel** » October 29th, 2007, 4:51 pm

Caeb wrote:seeing as how this was written by an Elvish Pillager over three years ago, I don't think we should read too deeply into it... well, other than for nostalgic purposes...

Yes, this advice was quite sound at the time, but the balance has radically changed since then.

At the time, undead were somewhat overpowered; as he said, walking corpses could just overrun opposing armies, and vampire bats (now useless for everything but village-grabbing) were very good at killing enemy units.

Strangely, at the time, the ostensible "core units" of the faction, the skeleton and skeleton archer, were quite underpowered, and it was actually smart not to hire them, at the time. One thing I love about the current balance is that they're rightly back in the spotlight as MVPs of the faction.

On a related note, the same thing can be said about the Orcish Grunt - it used to be notably inferior to the Troll Whelp, but the Whelp has been modified to the point where it no longer (fully) overlaps the Grunt's domain of uses. Troll whelps also used to have a very low "experience to level." At the time, it was a good idea to never hire grunts, and to just use trolls in every situation where you'd want to use grunts. This of course sucked, becuase grunts as supposed to be _the_ quintessential orc.

Another atrocity was when the first saurian (the skirmisher) was added - ironically as a member of the northerners. It was so overpowered that you could win pretty much every game, except maybe a contest against undead, by just spamming saurians.

It's nice that these things have been fixed.