How to play Northerners

Share and discuss strategies for playing the game, and get help and tips from other players.

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Yoyobuae
Posts: 408
Joined: July 24th, 2009, 8:38 pm

Re: How to play Northerners

Post by Yoyobuae »

I don't get it.

Using a poison/marksman attack against drakes which have natural high hp and low defense, plus it's almost positive that an augur will be nearby.

Maybe the augur is not right beside the target drake though, so you'll do 3~9 damage plus 8 poison damage, 11~17 damage total. From there one you can count on the drake player using augurs to continually deny poison damage. Is that worth a 17g sacrifice?

If one faction is suited to counter assasins, it is drakes (well undead too with their poison inmunity). Against your grunt+assasins+few goblins it would be easy to counter with clashers+fighters+augurs and maybe burners if day.

Poison won't be a serious problem with plenty of augurs around (even not a problem at all once one augur levels to soothsayer, which is rather easy).

The general tactic would be to first get rid of the grunts and take away nearly all your killing power. Attack grunts first with all ranged (burner/fighter/augurs) then form up a drake line in front of augurs to prepare for poison damage. If any part of the formations is quite exposed, use a fresh clasher to strengthen it up. Without archers killing a clasher on one turn would be very hard.
Coz
Posts: 10
Joined: April 17th, 2007, 8:50 am

Re: How to play Northerners

Post by Coz »

I made some calculations, to compare Grunts vs Trolls. I'm not a mathematician, so don't eat me if there's something wrong here :p

Also WARNING long post. Scroll down if you want a conclusion.

Against a Clasher, on flat Terrain, no matter the time of the day, a Troll and a Grunt are statistically supposed to get exactly the same amount of damage if you count the terrain defense. During the day, the Troll and the Grunts do exactly the same damage to a Clasher, since the Grunt has it's damage lowered by 2 points while a Troll's damage is only lowered by 1 point.

Trolls have a small advantage, due to having 4 hp more( regen doesn't matters if the Troll can't survive, so let's not count it ). On Hills and Mountains, the defense is the same as a Grunt. On the other hand, the Grunt is 1 gold cheaper.


But in reality, I don't think that what matters is the hp, but the number of hits that it takes to take down a unit:

A Troll has 42 hp and each hit to it does 6 damage => 42 / 6 = 7 hits.
A grunt has 38 hp, a hit does 7 damage => 5.42 that ends up being 6 hits.

A Clasher has 4 attacks; if we count defense on flat terrain, against a Troll they would be 4 x 0.7 on flat terrain, which means that statistically, each Clasher should land 2.8 hits on a Troll, so the opponent would need 3 Clashers unless the RNG hates you. 2 Clashers should land 5.6 hits, so the difference between required hits ( 7 ) and the probability is 1.4.

A Grunt would receive 4 x 0.6 = 2.4 hits, so again you need 3 Clashers , but since you need fewer hits, the RNG holds a higher power over you. 2 Clashers should land 4.8 hits, so the difference between required and probable hits is 1.2, smaller than with a Troll.

So in the end, a Grunt is more likely to die than a Troll, but the Troll is more expensive. The extra gold is worth if you will receive the damage from 2 Clashers, but with 3 Clashers both units are bound to die, so a Grunt would be a better idea because it's cheaper.


Now against burners, it should obviously be that on flat terrain Grunt is better to defend since the Trolls have no resistance against fire. Grunts do 2 more damage points during the day, but since Burners use ranged attacks that hardly matters. But let's check the number of hits, just to be sure( I'll use version 1.6.5, where Trolls are less vulnerable against fire ):

Required hits to Troll: 42 / 7 = 6
Required hits to Grunt: 38 / 7 = 5.42 rounded to 6.

Probable hits to Troll: 4 x 0.7 = 2.8
Probable hits to Grunt: 4 x 0.6 = 2.4

Probable needed burners to kill Troll: 3
Probable needed burners to kill Grunt: 3

Hits left from 2 Burners unless the RNG screws you with a Troll: 6 - 2.8 x 2 = 0.4
Hits left from 2 Burners unless the RNG screws you with a Grunt: 6 - 2.4 x 2 = 0.8

So at less than 1 hit away from dying with both Grunts and Trolls with 2 Burners, I would say it's better to use Grunts because on top of this they are cheaper.

Conclusion

Against 2 Clashers on flat terrain, defend with a Troll.
Against 3 Clashers on flat terrain, defend with a Grunt.
Against any number of Clashers on Hill / Mountain, defend with a Troll.
Against burners defend with a Grunt.


Wouldn't it be nice if we could make tables with more of these kind of calculations, at least for the Northerners? I don't suggest doing it for every situation, but on known sensible situations, when defending from 2-3 units. It can be done easily as a group effort.
Yoyobuae
Posts: 408
Joined: July 24th, 2009, 8:38 pm

Re: How to play Northerners

Post by Yoyobuae »

I don't think it'll be as simple as that. You cannot decide to place trolls/grunts wherever and whenever you like.

You need to recruit them, move them around, attack with them, defend with them. Analyzing only a part of the overall strategy (defense) will only give you the best benefit on that particular situation, but it would probably fail for anything else.

After you recruit, you can only make the best of the hand you have dealt yourself. It might not be the best for the situation you face, but hopefully it should be good enough (assuming you recruited well).

EDIT: I mistake that I made early on was to over-analyze Wesnoth. What really happens in Wesnoth never fits nicely into any sort of analysis. There's to many unpredictable (RNG and, more importanly, human opponents on MP) and complex factors.

When I tried to fit in my analysis with what happens in game, I hit a brick wall. Nothing made sense. It seemed impossible to make head from tails among the chaotic nature of Wesnoth combat.

My conclusion is that it is better to first experiment with different tactics in game, and then analyze to see why some work and others don't.

In the end, all analysis can do for you is to help understand existing Wesnoth tactics. New tactics need to be discovered by play testing them.
Caphriel
Posts: 994
Joined: April 21st, 2008, 4:10 pm

Re: How to play Northerners

Post by Caphriel »

Coz wrote:During the day, the Troll and the Grunts do exactly the same damage to a Clasher, since the Grunt has it's damage lowered by 2 points while a Troll's damage is only lowered by 1 point.
This is wrong. (Tasty non-mathematician om nom nom nom :lol2: )
Troll damage = 7*.75*.7=3.675 rounds to 4.
Grunt damage = 9*.75*.8=5.4 rounds to 5.
Strong troll = 8*.75*.7=4.2 round to 4
Strong grunt = 10*.75*.8=6
Fearless trolls do equal damage to grunts.

But you're only considering defense. Grunts have higher move and deal more damage at night, making them much more useful overall. A 4-move troll is going to have a hard time catching drakes that are running away.

Even assuming your math is right (I'm not going to check it), Wesnoth isn't convenient enough that nice clean tables will tell you how to play. The enemy will be using a mix of units, and will presumably optimize their attack patterns to maximize their chance to efficiently kill your units. Furthermore, you can't magically place units where you want them to be. You have to recruit them in advance and maneuver them there.

In short, you ought to play more and analyze less. You're rarely going to be presented with perfect situations. Most likely, some units on both sides will be wounded, there is terrain to take into account, the positions of other units that aren't in the immediate vicinity.
Coz
Posts: 10
Joined: April 17th, 2007, 8:50 am

Re: How to play Northerners

Post by Coz »

Caphriel wrote:This is wrong. [...]
Troll damage = 7*.75*.7=3.675 rounds to 4.
Grunt damage = 9*.75*.8=5.4 rounds to 5.
I rechecked, and this is indeed wrong.


I have been told over and over that I'm only considering defense; it's because I think that the only feasible way of analizing wesnoth is by splitting it in parts, draw conclusions, and then integrate the knowledge, so that would be the final step.

Grunts have higher move, but move isn't as important once your units are in the front lines. Grunts also have a hard time catching drakes.

You can't tell what will happen during a battle, but you can certainly tell 'which move is the most likely to make you win', even if it doesn't happens in the end. I'm trying to keep things simple to move into more difficult issues, so that the conclusions make it easier to figure out the harder parts.
Eskon
Posts: 184
Joined: August 12th, 2008, 2:21 pm
Location: Esslingen, Germany

Re: How to play Northerners

Post by Eskon »

With the ability of grunts to move through hills, even flying drakes will not always be able to escape a grunt - though either way the unit that does the catching in the Northerner army is the wolf rider, be it through its own speed or its ability to ZoC.

Slow units will have lower capability to ZoC or flank its foes once embroiled in a battle. Trolls also seriously suck on villages. Both grunts and trolls have their merits and strengths. I usually have some of both, though usually more grunts, being better at combat and faster to reinforce with. The job of my trolls is to be placed in such a manner that they are attacked first.
Yogibear
Retired Developer
Posts: 1086
Joined: September 16th, 2005, 5:44 am
Location: Hamburg, Germany

Re: How to play Northerners

Post by Yogibear »

I found that it is seldom possible to catch retreating units. The main bulk of your army is normally 5-6 movepoint units and you can run away from those almost always (most of the time they won't be all standing in the frontline but instead 3-4 hexes behind). And if your opponent knows what he is doing, he will also protect his flanks from incoming scouts.

However, you have like 3 turns to advance: Two of those are normally taken to cross from your front to that of your opponent, one is for fighting (two if you want to be more risky or see solid chances to cause so much damage that your opponent won't be able to seriously counter).

That third turn is the one that forces your opponent to choose: Do i retreat further (and give up my villages for a turn) or do i stand my ground and defend? That turn is where your heavy hitters come into play (there are of course exceptions but this is what you see most of the time).

A five movepoint unit is pretty safe to retreat. The heavy hitters will be building the frontline, protecting mages, archers, ulfs and other valuable specialists. A 4 movepoint unit might suffer pretty badly, though. Heavy infantery, woses and trolls all have the same problem: To get back fast enough without being caught. You might be able to keep them from dying, but your whole line might have to pay the price for that. A difficult problem and very dependant on the map and its terrain as well as your opponents faction and his mix of units.
Smart persons learn out of their mistakes, wise persons learn out of others mistakes!
Yoyobuae
Posts: 408
Joined: July 24th, 2009, 8:38 pm

Re: How to play Northerners

Post by Yoyobuae »

Coz wrote:You can't tell what will happen during a battle, but you can certainly tell 'which move is the most likely to make you win', even if it doesn't happens in the end. I'm trying to keep things simple to move into more difficult issues, so that the conclusions make it easier to figure out the harder parts.
Actually, my experience is that it's not possible to tell 'which move is most likely to make you win'.

One can tell which move will give a unit the higher chance to survive, which moves will yield the highest chance to kill and so on. I guess it's possible to create a strategy just from picking the moves that seems like the best at each point in time, but all it will be good for is to achieving short term goals that may or may not help to achieve victory. That's how the Wesnoth AI works, more or less.

This is why I said that learning the 'harder parts' will almost always clash directly with previous analysis. For me the transition from analyzing each individual unit/move/attack to a more long term strategy planning was/is quite troublesome.

I think any kind of analysis of Wesnoth is simply too shortsighted. Your analysis may tell you that a troll is the most likely to survive when placed in that mountain hex, but then you may have failed to take into account that doing so would allow the enemy to ZoC trap said troll with a disadvantageous ToD coming next turn.

If anything helped me learn the finer aspects of Wesnoth was to let go of all the "analysis" and just play a bit more by instinct. Directly experiencing the good or bad results of the choices made is a better learning tool than any analysis will ever be.
Elvish Scientist
Posts: 62
Joined: February 18th, 2005, 11:06 am

Re: How to play Northerners

Post by Elvish Scientist »

Yoyobuae wrote:I don't get it.

Using a poison/marksman attack against drakes which have natural high hp and low defense, plus it's almost positive that an augur will be nearby.

Maybe the augur is not right beside the target drake though, so you'll do 3~9 damage plus 8 poison damage, 11~17 damage total. From there one you can count on the drake player using augurs to continually deny poison damage. Is that worth a 17g sacrifice?

If one faction is suited to counter assasins, it is drakes (well undead too with their poison inmunity). Against your grunt+assasins+few goblins it would be easy to counter with clashers+fighters+augurs and maybe burners if day.

Poison won't be a serious problem with plenty of augurs around (even not a problem at all once one augur levels to soothsayer, which is rather easy).

The general tactic would be to first get rid of the grunts and take away nearly all your killing power. Attack grunts first with all ranged (burner/fighter/augurs) then form up a drake line in front of augurs to prepare for poison damage. If any part of the formations is quite exposed, use a fresh clasher to strengthen it up. Without archers killing a clasher on one turn would be very hard.
I hardly ever play drakes, but as Drake player I would not use Augurs. They die so easily, especially at night when they are more useful. When I am playing Northerners, and see an Augur approaching, I think: "Hey, 8XP bonus is coming". Protecting Augurs is difficult as you do not have many units.
Killing Grunts is cheap with Burners as they do not retaliate. But even during day it will take 3 Burners to do so, which means that you certainly not take away the killing power of the northeners.
The nice thing about poison is that you can force your enemy to skip its favourable ToD to have his units healed, which is a big advantage in a chaotic against loyal battle.
What worries me as Northener is a combination of Burners / Fighter to kill my grunts / goblins and a number of skirmishers to kill my assassins.
I have to admit that I play mostly against AI, as playing online does not really fit in my schedule. But I am free these days, so I am willing to try a match against you. I live in the Netherlands: UTC+1.
Caphriel
Posts: 994
Joined: April 21st, 2008, 4:10 pm

Re: How to play Northerners

Post by Caphriel »

Elvish Scientist wrote:The nice thing about poison is that you can force your enemy to skip its favourable ToD to have his units healed, which is a big advantage in a chaotic against loyal battle.
This is why a Drake player will use some augurs in this matchup, depending on the number of assassins deployed.
Elvish Scientist
Posts: 62
Joined: February 18th, 2005, 11:06 am

Re: How to play Northerners

Post by Elvish Scientist »

Caphriel wrote:This is why a Drake player will use some augurs in this matchup, depending on the number of assassins deployed.
The healing capacity of dead Augurs is not so impressive.
Eskon
Posts: 184
Joined: August 12th, 2008, 2:21 pm
Location: Esslingen, Germany

Re: How to play Northerners

Post by Eskon »

Keep in mind that the AI is notoriously bad at keeping its augurs alive. In the hands of a human with half a clue you're looking at some more trouble.

(To be honest, when I see assassins with drakes I think "Sweet, free 8 XP for my fighters")
silent
Posts: 244
Joined: February 20th, 2009, 5:53 am

Re: How to play Northerners

Post by silent »

The important thing to remember with the northerner vs drake matchup is both sides have advantages and disadvantages when it comes to using assassins and augurs.

Augurs, while useful for stopping poisoning from lowering hp, do not initially remove it. This can partially disrupt how the drake player attacks depending on how much they care about the loss of hp, and the poison still needs to be removed at a village, until one levels into a soothsayer. Their fragility can be a pain to protect as well, though good dodge rate makes them annoying for the 2-strike northerners to remove.

Assassins will not get free damage while augurs are around, but short of bad RNG, are still somewhat of a pain to remove due to their high dodge rate, and force the drake player to buy a healer, rather than another fighter/burner/clasher, since most players do not want poison to take effect on their forces. Less fighters and clasher are almost always a good thing here, since it means more easy to kill targets for your grunts (in terms of inflicting damage), and less retaliation damage when attacking.
Caphriel
Posts: 994
Joined: April 21st, 2008, 4:10 pm

Re: How to play Northerners

Post by Caphriel »

As Eskon said, if the drake player is using augurs to prevent poison damage, they're not going to be exposing them to a lot of attacks. If you play mostly against the AI, which prioritizes killing your units and doesn't really understand how to use healing, you're not going to get a good feel for how a drake player should use them. A (good) human player playing drakes is (generally) not going to stick around at night to keep fighting against a northerner, so you won't have a lot of easy shots at augurs during the night.
Insinuator
Posts: 706
Joined: January 6th, 2004, 10:42 pm
Location: Portland, OR

Re: How to play Northerners

Post by Insinuator »

I was reading the Northerners vs Loyalists post and I have to say that it is quite outdated. JW mentions fighting HI and Bowmen, two units that are almost never used by the good Loyalist player versus Orcs. Instead, I see a plethora of Spearmen and Cavalry. Especially the Spearmen. Anyone know of a good way of defending against a Spearmen/Cavalry onslaught? Especially considering both those units outpace over half your units.
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