Ulfserkers

[ZuesAwoken_]

I've played this game for a long time now, but only recently got into online multiplayer, so I could be mistaken, but it seems like the Dwarven Ulfserkers are WAY too powerful. With correct distribution and some skirmishers, I've found that its difficult to lose, unless I play on the hardest difficulty or give my enemy a HUGE benefit. Is the AI in this game really bad or what? I know that the AI is really easy to lure into a feint, but I've stopped doing that because its easy enough anyway...

[DeCoolest_Cat]

They are VERY situational. If you are playing against a person (which I thought you meant when you said online multiplayer), and they have a unit with a higher melee damage (like a orcish grunt) than the ulfserker, it will probably die. However, if you fight a unit with low melee damage (like an elvish shaman) then you'll probably win. Even if the ulfserker wins a 1v1 battle, another unit will most likely finish it off next turn. They definitely are not bad units, but they aren't "WAY to powerful"

[ZuesAwoken_]

Maybe its just the AI, or the I play with them, or the fact the the way I play with them and the way the AI plays line up perfectly. Ill try them out in in an online game(Yes I did mean against actual people).

[Gyra_Solune]

The thing about ulfserkers: they're literally the single weakest melee unit in default and they have absolutely atrocious value for gold. The odds are stacked against them if they're attacked by almost any of the standard infantry in the game, and they cost way more than any of those guys, meaning that if you continually lose them to spearmen and grunts, you're literally throwing away money.

So this means they're most effective against ranged units, and that's mostly where they shine, putting pressure on the opponent to leave nobody exposed because they are likely to just completely lose that guy. Against the Undead they pose a very imposing problem, in that even though almost literally all of their other units can completely ruin an Ulfserker (Skeletons just utterly destroy them effortlessly), against an Adept they create the sole instance of a 100% chance of killing the enemy in the game (okay it's like a 99.999999999% chance but seriously) which means it's a lot harder for them to even use their primary unit. But against almost every other faction they don't do as well, because none of them depend on their ranged units nearly as much.

The AI is not the best because AI is hard to do for even the biggest-budget game developers around - for a free open project like Wesnoth the imperative is that they can actually even put up some semblance of a fight more than that they're that smart enough to know how to handle an Ulfserker.

[Dixie]

Pretty much any unit-balancing concerned tested out against the AI is pointless. The AI is stupidly aggressive and disregards many key concepts like time of day. But it's not really because it was botched or the devs didn't care or something, it's just that designing an AI is an insanely complicated thing to do. In fact it is quite decent for what it is, really. It does its best. It's just not up to human standard.