Ghosts unstoppable vs. Dwarves?

[Lozo]

I must say, after an experience of my opponent spamming non-stop ghosts and parking them on villages, I dont see what I could have done differently. I saw a few other mentions of the ghost dwarf line-up on here and they basically said "sometimes an Ulf during the day can do it" or "have a ton of thunderers gang up on one". Neither of these seem like a viable, realistic strategy.

Can anyone offer any insight? Are there other units in the game that completely dominate an entire army?

[Yoyobuae]

Ghost take half damage from all of knalgan faction's attacks, but they have about half the HP of other normal level 1 units. From these two facts follows:

• Each HP of the ghost is efectively twice as valuable
• A ghost healing on a village, effectively receive twice the benefit
• The healing effect from drain is effectively doubled
• Whenever damage is rounded up/down, the effect is doubled

The second point will make evicting a ghost out of a village exceedingly hard. The best solution is probably not letting them reach your villages in the first place.

But in case that can't be avoided and you need to kill it, the third point becomes helpful. Rounding on Wesnoth is always done towards the original damage value. Ghost resistances will always lower your damage, thus rounding can only be up.

Why is this important? When each extra point of damage that you can do to ghosts is effectively double as valuable, the effect of rouding becomes important.

For example: Poachers with +25% night time bonus do 5-4 damage. With ghost's 50% pierce resistance that is 2.5-4 dmg which gets rounded up to 3-4 damage. So you gain 2 points of damage (10 total vs 12 total) and those extra 2 dmg are actually twice as hurtful to ghosts.

Another way to see it is that rounding effectively reduced pierce resistance to 40% instead (5 dmg minus 40% is 3 dmg). Might not seem like much, but this extra 10% damage is twice as effective against ghost, I think of it as effectively -20% weakness (assuming 50% is normal).

Anyway, all this means is that ghosts are weak against units with attacks that do 3, 5, 7, 9, etc damage. This means Poachers/Thiefs(day/night), Footpads(dawn,dusk), Dwarf fighters, Guardmen, strong Ulfs, strong Gryphons, etc.

The more attacks the better, for example: Poachers (at night) and strong Ulfs (at daytime preferably, see below)

The fourth point makes it very important to cut back ghost's drain. That 10%~20% defence that your units have becomes very useful during daytime, ghost's drain is cut back only 1 HP. Your free to melee them to smithereens at that point.

[Caphriel]

I prefer using outlaws at night to kill ghosts, but the only unit-efficient way to do it is an ulf (preferably a strong ulf) during the day. It'll take an average of four thunderers to do one in. Several backstabbing thieves and plinking poachers can also do the job. Strong thieves need 3 hits at night to kill one assuming they don't get hit in return, and they have pretty good dodge, so they're not likely to get hit a lot. Two-three thieves and another outlaw at night is usually enough to finish one off, and they're much easier to deploy than four thunderers

[Mystery]

Footpads are the best at dealing with Ghosts for various reasons:

[*] Like the Thief, their "elusive" dodge rate and standard human Arcane resistance (20%) are ideal for mitigating an enemy Ghost's drain.
[*] With a dual-ranged attack, they can attack an enemy Ghost at range to avoid the drain and then counter on the melee side when a Ghost tries to hit them back.
[*] With the best mobility of any Knalgan unit, sans Gryphons, Footpads are ideal at surrounding a Ghost and either whittling them down or trapping them for something else. Though they lack the movetype, they do have equal MP to Ghosts.

Plus, you should have a ton of Footpads against Undead anyway. Aside being the de facto scout unit for Knalgan (Gryphons are too expensive to employ extensively), their Impact damage and dual range makes them great against Undead in general. Pierce damage makes Poachers and Thunderers into specialized units for this racial match-up.

But yeah, the previous posters have the right idea. Use Outlaws. Keep in mind they're about 2/3 the price of Ghosts! All of them are good against Ghosts in their own right and they're strong at the same time of day, ensuring they are always advantaged against a Ghost. Keep Ghosts off your own villages. If your enemy is holding one of their own Villages with a Ghost, go around them and make them chase or, if you have a decisive numbers advantage, you can just overpower/swarm it.

[Velensk]

At day griffons can work quit well especially if strong.

[Tonepoet]

While other counters have been mentioned I'm surprised nobody mentioned Dwarvish Thunderers They deal 18 damage a pop. A ghost's HP measures in at exactly 18, although it's good to note their resistances effectively double this number. However, it's also good to note that while their defense is universally good, it never rises above 50%, which isn't quite stellar. So with two Thunderers, you stand exactly a 25% chance of killing the ghost outright, regardless of terrain. Needing at least two units to kill the factional tank is pretty standard I believe and this is a role that against Knalgans, only the ghost can fill, because the Dwarvish Fighters come with impact as standard and Ulfserkers make mincemeat out of both the Adepts and Ghouls.

You can also use footpads to scout for ghosts as a preemptive measure, to prevent ghosts from ever reaching your villages. They don't handle terrain quite as well mind you but they also undercut the ghost's cost by 6g, so you can usually outrecruit 'em. Combatively speaking, I also believe the footpads have the upper hand in prolonged combat, just so long as the ghost isn't on actually on a village to instantly negate the damage done. Also, if handling the rough becomes important for whatever reason, theoretically you can recruit three Footpads and a Gryphon Rider to every four Ghosts.

Don't try the Ulfserker at day thing unless you have a mountain to stand on while doing so. Regardless of what the statistical output may say, I rarely do see the ghost lose under any other circumstance. It happens but it's rare but it happens but it's rare. You'll never see mountains next to villages to begin with mind you, so it's not really a tactic that comes into play during this particular scenario.

[Greep]

well poachers are better I think. Someone did a test and found that poachers at night deal 3-4 damage agaionst ghosts due to rounding.

Edit: bah, being a moron. That test was in this thread lol.

[Tonepoet]

It really depends on the situation: A pair of poachers can have the same odds for 5g cheaper at that damage rate, but they only deal that much damage during the night. Otherwise they'll only deal 2-4, which isn't even enough to kill a ghost if all strikes get in, which means you'd need a third to finish it off at 42g, although considering that you'd only need the third poacher about two thirds of the time, for comparative purposes I'll give it a 33% reduction in price for the remainder of the time it's unneeded for this purpose, which rounds up to five gold.

So 42-5 = 37g spent on on average to kill ghosts with just poachers at a 25% kill rate on average. With just Dwarvish Thunderers you're spending 34 flat for the same kill rate. That's not even factoring in the extra .66 upkeep you're spending per turn on poachers either. Granted, you'll never have just poachers or just thunderers, so you could probably take a chance with a gryphon or something if it comes down to it. However your opponent will almost never have just ghosts either, so to do so would be stealing resources away from another department. Additionally you'll preferentially be attacking during the day, as to avoid damage bonuses from the entirely chaotic undead faction, so take it as you will.

On the other hand, 3 Poachers can kill a ghost at night on EV, (6/12 strikes hit totaling in at 18 damage) where as it always takes 4 Dwarvish Thunderers (2/4 strikes hit totaling in at 18 damage). That can make for a 26 gold difference and 1 less upkeep per turn! If you have enough foresight and do enough planning to begin with that is. This combined with the above data, means that three poachers might even possibly be an optimal number of units to combat ghosts with possibly. Do factor in that often times you'll only have 2 hexes to attack with however, in which case at least two Thunderers don't ever technically perform any worse than two poachers. As a final note, the Poacher's additional strikes will allow it to do projected damage more often, allowing you to more accurately assess the outcome of battles.

So either can be a good choice and they're more or less even. Factors to consider when picking between the two can include how many attacking faces you'll generally have, ToD on your ETA, the map's key pieces of terrain, the weighing of long term benefits vs. short term goals, Resistances vs. Combined HP totals, Consistency of Strikes vs. Consistency of Neutrality, head count, relative experience gain ratios and of course last but not least whether or not you're dedicating the match to the glory of HODOR.

[Eskon]

Ulfserkers face the same equation as poachers: Strong ulfs deal 3-4 damage, non-strong 2-4. That difference is huge. Since a recruited ulf has a rather low chance to be strong (20%?) ulfs are not exactly recommended. Especially considering ghosts can run from them at day, but catch them at night. In fact I consider ghosts an anti-ulfserker recruit while playing undead, because you won't ever catch an ulfserker with a skeleton, try as you might.

Recruiting too many poachers makes you vulnerable to increased skeleton recruit. I think a combination of footpads and poachers is the way to go.

Could you describe the trouble the mass ghost recruit brought with it more closely? If the trouble was that they took your villages, you might need a more effective village grab. Regardless the map, try to make it so that each unit you recruit initially can take one village on turn two.

The thing is, while it is a painful task to get a ghost off a village, I cannot fathom how a mass ghost recruit would manage to get your units off their villages. Ghosts aren't damage dealers.

[Velensk]

It's 40%

You get two traits per ulf and there are 5 traits available.

[Eskon]

Good thing Wesnoth does my math for me.

At least you didn't find anything wrong with the rest of my post, which I'll interpret as approval

[Caphriel]

Lots of poachers/thunderers for ghost killing will work against ghosts and ghouls, to an extent, but fails as soon as the undead starts recruiting skeletons and skeleton archers Thus my thief and footpad preference; those units are good against the rest of the undead units, too.

[Eskon]

Thieves are weak against skeletons too - unless you were referring to thieves versus skeleton archer backstabs? 8-3 versus 40% blade resistance goes back to 5-3, 10-3 goes to 6-3. Footpads, on average, can do at least that - alone - and they are nowhere near as fragile. I wouldn't consider thieves good recruits against undead by any stretch. Well, adept killing, possibly. I'd get dwarves for that, considering adepts can kill thieves rather easily on their own.

[Caphriel]

Thieves are great againt the Undead Backstab is fine against everything but skeletons and skeleton archers. I wouldn't recruit a lot of them, but a couple of them are certainly fine. Thieves are more useful than poachers, in my opinion, because they can attack dark adepts and skeleton archers, have a much higher damage output, and a higher move. Thieves and dark adepts maim each other pretty badly, but thieves are cheaper and speedier. I'll happily trade a thief for a dark adept.

[Eskon]

You're working under the assumption that you'll get backstab going in the first place. That's the part that usually causes problems for me.