How to play - Undeads vs Loyalist - Huumy

[Huumy]

Undead vs Loyalist

Loyalist are lawful faction. You will be retreating at day and attacking at night. Units to look out for are mages, horsemen and cavalrymen. Heavy infantry is very slow, just don't be near them during day.

Units you are using:
---> Skeletons: You should have couple of these in your bigger army. They are mainly to kill mages and spearman, adepts kill them better but his guy is good at it too. They can also used to take some punches from cavalry.
---> Dark Adepts: In this matchup you can use few less adepts and more skeleton archers, but you still need few of these to really bring down units from high defense. At night you should use these to kill mages too. Recruit extra adepts if your opponent goes heavy on heavy infantry. Protect these as always.
---> Bats: Cheap scout and finisher. Only one is needed to move with bigger army. Horsemen kill these in one hit.
---> Walking corpses: Not good vs any unit, but good unit to have around. The bigger your upkeep gets the more you want to recruit these.
---> Skeleton archer: In this matchup skeleton archers are a must. Basicly you will have hard time killing cavalry without archers and loyalist will have hard time killing archers anyway. They are meat of your army. Other units are there just to give the right amount of extra damage.
---> Ghoul: Good to have one around. Even with these you can't really take many hits from mages or horsemen. I'm mostly using these to poison opponent units when attacking.
---> Ghost: Not really useful. Mages and horsemen can kill these in single attack round and all loyalist units have 20% arcane resistance. Use only to protect other units and free shotting HI.

Basic flow of the game:
Attack at night retreat during day. At night loyalist can't really harm you so. But once dawn hits the screen you will have cavalrymen hitting your frontline. They don't do massive amounts of damage to your skeletons but they don't take much back either. You can't avoid the cavalrymen catching on you, but make sure they can only hit your frontline without trapping any units and more importantly make sure the mages that follow can't catch you during day.

When attacking:
---> You really don't need good terrain at start of the night so advance fast. As long as you keep skeletons at front, nothing can really harm you.
---> Make sure you kill units or steal villages during night. Basicly you need to make your opponent lose more money during night than you lost during day.
----> Don't be too greedy, it's common reason to lose. If you really want to learn play, don't be afraid playing longer games and remember you can always save the game and continue later.
----> Scout so you know where your opponent cavalry and horsemen are. This helps you to decide where to attack.
----> Dead cavalry is ten times better than injured, their mobility makes it easy to retreat, heal and get back into fight fast.
----> Heavy infantry can still do good damage during night, but don't be too afraid to lose a unit to kill more opponent units.
----> During night when getting attacked skeleton/ghoul are good vs melee and archer are good vs mages. So give a thought what unit in the frontline is the best to make your opponent attacks simply impossible.

When retreating:
----> Keep your skeletons and skeleton archers at front, make sure your units are nontrappable.
----> At the start of your retreat there can be few cavalrymen giving high fives to your skeletons, don't be too worried but make sure your frontline have enough HP. Punish any cavalry that wanders too far. Keep retreating if you aren't sure there is chance to safely kill opponent unit(s).
----> Never let heavy infantry hit your anything during day.

Leveling units:
1.Skeleton archer: Now your army have more HP and more dmg (and you get cool looking dagger).
2.Dark adepts: More magical damage is always good. Still very fragile units during day.
3.Rest of your units.
What units you don't want your opponent to level.
1.Mage, white mage negates your poison and do massive magical damage vs undead units.
2.Spearman, level up makes this unit more than just meatshield/dark adept killer. Swordsmen can actually hurt your skeletons.
3.Horseman, gets a non charge blade attack. Making this unit more versatile.
4.Cavalryman, now it has crazy amount of HP.
5.Other units.


Any comments (that are not insulting in nature) are welcome.

[Dunno]

I have some questions. Have you ever tried to spam opponent with lots of WCs? And, what should I do if my opponent recruits mostly mages, what's the best unit against them? My dad likes to play against me with loyalists and it's really annoying when he wins. Maybe there is a better faction against loyalists? Thanks in advance

edit: forgot to say that your how to is very nicely written!

[Caphriel]

My dad likes to play against me with loyalists and it's really annoying when he wins.

You've already got some epic win going on right there

If your opponent uses a lot of mages, but nothing to protect them, a variety of things will work. Dark adepts are cost-efficient to use on mages at most times of day, because they are a lot cheaper and have more HP. Skeletons do good damage to them, but also get murdered by them. Ghouls can take a few hits, and poison the mages. Bats are good for finishing off wounded mages.

My personal preference would be to use more dark adepts, and a few walking corpses and bats.

[Huumy]

Have you ever tried to spam opponent with lots of WCs?

I think 1-2 skeletons can be replaced with WCs, they have their benefit of having no upkeep and doing good damage during day. But in this matchup the slow WCs in mass would be easily killed by fast cavalry with 30% impact resistance. I think lots of WCs are more viable vs knalgans or rebels. Tho I have never been good at using WCs, they are more defensive unit than skeletons.

what should I do if my opponent recruits mostly mages, what's the best unit against them?

I'm assuming your opponent still has some meat front of his mages.
As undead all of your units are good and bad vs mages. At day mages are dangerous, at night they are easy xp. Problem here is ofcourse that mages are atleast as fast as your skeletons, so the best thing I think of is getting few more dark adepts and try to catch him during night when he retreats. Basicly what you should do is attacking your opponent just the right time and place, where he is forced to retreat and still lose some units BUT if he keeps on attacking he will get few kills and still lose his whole army during the night. So basicly get your timing right.
If that doesn't work. You could try getting 1-3 more ghouls into your army mix and start your afternoon/dusk attack with them in frontline, try getting as many units poisoned as you can and have 2 bats ready to snipe some retreating 1HP units.

Maybe there is a better faction against loyalists?

I would just say that every matchup has it's small differences. I think no player is equally good at every matchup. And I would say no matchup is unbalanced atm.

[Huumy]

Bumping and adding more useful stuff to this thread --->
This is from high level player "neki's" youtube channel. A game where he plays as the undead vs loyalist.

I think the commentary is great for all the new players, neki explains lot of the way he thinks as he plays the game which is almost impossible do in a simple forum thread. There is lot to learn about the game in general not only the matchup.

Here's part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWFWXJW0mqw
and part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyJEIKVN3fM

[Fenmoor]

Thought the video was nice enough, but the background music was so loud that I could not hear the commentary. Will have to try some other ones to get some good ideas.

Fenmoor