Faction Observations: Who's the strongest? Who's the best?

[player]

they are invincible against drakes,

I have found that Drakes are quite powerful when properly used.

i agree with you about that, since they became lawful and chaotic with the saurians, they are good, if used well.
but they still have weakness on cold which makes them not "perfect" for all use.
and all factions are all strong, depending on how you used them.

[martenzo]

You know, the main reason for underpowerment is that the units the were underpowered are made stronger and become overpowered. And so, the former well balanced units become underpowered. Orcs were the faction with relatively slow speed, but strongest attacks. Now they're one of the weakest.

IMO This is how it's supposed to be:
Northerners: slow, but high hp and highest base dmg
Knalgans: slow (slow down the dam gryphons), but high terrain bonus and high resistances
Elves: low hp, but fast and above average dmg
Humans: versatile, everything average
Undead: low resistances, but cheap units and above average speed
Drakes: low hp, but fast and high base dmg

But, as always, the final decision is up to the developers.

[player]

You know, the main reason for underpowerment is that the units the were underpowered are made stronger and become overpowered. And so, the former well balanced units become underpowered. Orcs were the faction with relatively slow speed, but strongest attacks. Now they're one of the weakest.

IMO This is how it's supposed to be:
Northerners: slow, but high hp and highest base dmg
Knalgans: slow (slow down the dam gryphons), but high terrain bonus and high resistances
Elves: low hp, but fast and above average dmg
Humans: versatile, everything average
Undead: low resistances, but cheap units and above average speed
Drakes: low hp, but fast and high base dmg

But, as always, the final decision is up to the developers.

drakes are one of the high HP units, right?
cause most of them have more than 40 hp(without suarians). im juz not sure about the glider. wink

Knalgans(only dwarves) are one of the factions that has low terrain defence(higher than drakes though). Knalgans (criminals without bandits) have low resistance(of course, they have high terrain bonus)
undeads have high resistance on all except impact, fire and holy.

orcs are not actually slow, only average(5 above).They dont actually have high attack on twilight,(they only have high attack during night), i guess, orcs are juz average.

[Tux2B]

Drakes are weak (very weak) against two type of attacks : cold and thunderstick. And another weak point is that they are very expensive.

Knalgans are strong, have quite high damage, high terrain bonus, and one quick unit (and they have both neutral and chaotic units).

Personnaly, I most of all play with drakes, dwarves (knalgans) and elves.

Orcs are a little boring (IMHO)

[Steelclad Brian]

IMO This is how it's supposed to be:
Northerners: slow, but high hp and highest base dmg
Knalgans: slow (slow down the dam gryphons), but high terrain bonus and high resistances
Elves: low hp, but fast and above average dmg
Humans: versatile, everything average
Undead: low resistances, but cheap units and above average speed
Drakes: low hp, but fast and high base dmg

But, as always, the final decision is up to the developers.

Well, one of my favorite things about the factions in Wesnoth is that they tend to incorporate a variety of units in them. No faction is completely monochromatic, and this makes the game a lot more dynamic then it would be if your examples were followed more rigidly.

Every faction should be able to do everything to some degree; what differs is how they do things, not what they are capable of doing.

EDIT - If I can give an example of bad faction balance: when I was kid I played a game called Warhammer 40k briefly. Some are probably familiar with it - it's a tabletop miniature wargame with a sci-fantasy spin. In that game there is a faction called the Tyranids. They're all big bugs, and the only ability they really have is to do tremendous damage in close combat. Because of the way they're designed, they're an exceptionally unique and well-defined faction, so much so that Blizzard took a great deal of inspiration from them when they created the Zerg.

The problem was, although they were really colorful and interesting on paper, they were boring and robotic to play. Because they were only good at one thing - close combat - every single game against them played out the same way. The Tyranid player would rush his troops into close combat, the other player would hang back and try and shoot as much as possible, and then the game would be decided by how successful the Tyranids were at getting into close combat.

On paper, it looks cool. The race is well-defined, exotic, and interesting. But because it was so specialized and unique, because all the units were designed so well to do one thing, the Tyranid player had no tactical options except to exploit his race's greatest strength.

That, to my mind, is the danger of designing too far towards specialization and exotic factions. Ultimately, highly specialized factions make for interesting game theory, but a boring game.

[Danielg42]

Skeleton Archers should be your bread, and DAs your butter. Zombies are near useless against drakes.

Just use the zombies as shields.

[martenzo]

The good side of a monochromatic faction is, that such a faction doesn't start getting too similiar to other factions. The factions have siply become too alike and thus comes factional overpowerment.

[Nicolas]

I think:
1 Loyalists
2 Drakes
3 Dwarves
4 Elves
5 Orcs
6 Undead
7 Mermans and Nagas

Loyalists: have all type of atks and special atks
Drakes: great damage in fire
Dwarves: great hp,defence,armor.
Elves: good defence and bows
Orcs: Strenght
Undead: armor
Mermans and Nagas: Nothing so good,maybe defence.

[Tux2B]

Mermans and Nagas: Nothing so good,maybe defence.

Only in water.
And... where did you see they are official factions?

[Baufo]

1. Dwarves
2. Orcs
3-4. Loyalists/Elves
5. Drakes
6. Undead

I think dwarves are the strongest faction because of the damn gryphons and their great resitance. In my opinion gryphons are still owerpowered even if they have become more expansive from release to release. 12-2 is the second best level 1 attack while having got scout movement and even can fly.
Orcs are the cheapest faction and tough fighters, a very strong faction too, I think.
But I still prefer playing elves. In a my fun rating they would be top.

[Doc Paterson]

I think dwarves are the strongest faction because of the damn gryphons and their great resitance.

Their great resistance to what? :/

[Tmoiy]

Their great resistance to what? :/

Uh, everything? Dwarves don't have a weakness resistance-wise.

[Soliton]

Their great resistance to what? :/

Uh, everything? Dwarves don't have a weakness resistance-wise.

Then again the Gryphon is weak to impact and doesn't have any other special resistances.

[Sapient]

The greatest resistance is having no weaknesses that your opponent can exploit. Iron Maulers and Woses may be great at killing gryphons in theory, but it's hard to pull off in practice.

[JW]

Their great resistance to what? :/

Is that a Rysorian Badger?

I don't remember the exact name...from Alliances? I'm almost gonna pull out the dusty old cards...

[on-topic]Gryphons have poor resistancies. Gryphons have a good melee, awesome movetype, and a lot of moves.[/on-topic]