Meteor lake. Undead tactics.

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

Moderator: Forum Moderators

Post Reply
mtx
Posts: 23
Joined: August 21st, 2005, 5:11 pm

Meteor lake. Undead tactics.

Post by mtx »

I've just played two games on meteor lake one with knalgan vs undead and other with undead vs drakes. In both games undead lost due to their inability to properly scout the south part of the map (beeing outscouted by griffons or anihilated by drakes). Is there a good tactic to handle this or is just undead are hopeless in this map against these factions?
User avatar
Doc Paterson
Drake Cartographer
Posts: 1973
Joined: February 21st, 2005, 9:37 pm
Location: Kazakh
Contact:

Post by Doc Paterson »

If you're facing knalgans, you need to use more ghosts than you normally would- Knalgans have mostly blade attacks, (which the ghosts resist big-time) and will have a rough time clearing you off of any of the southern villages, particularly the water villages. Also, you've got to use your bats to steal those unprotected villages. It's a fairly big map, so the bats will really shine if used correctly. Gryphons can chase the bats, but if they do this they'll be wasting a lot of time and resources; they also can't kill a bat outright without getting lucky (a double hit). If they're using a lot of gryphons, push hard with skeletons and ghosts, maybe a few adepts. Either way, the ghosts will be really excellent, and you should be able to trap the gryphons and do them in.

Drakes, you obviously need to do a lot of adepts, bats to find the holes in their movement range, and possibly (if you can manage the somewhat difficult to understand adept-corpse-style) corpses. Adept/ corpse works on this map; it's just a little different in that you have to supplement with more bats than usual. If you're not familiar with adept/corpse tactics, look for Noy, Soliton or Allu....They're all very good with it and would be great trainers.

8)
I will not tell you my corner / where threads don't get locked because of mostly no reason /
because I don't want your hostile disease / to spread all over the world.
I prefer that corner to remain hidden /
without your noses.
-Nosebane, Sorcerer Supreme
mtx
Posts: 23
Joined: August 21st, 2005, 5:11 pm

Post by mtx »

Thanks for the advice Doc. I will try to implement those tactics but I still feel that bats are too weak and gosts are too expensive to mass them.

The game I played with knalgans, I just passed around the ghosts with my gryphons and got the vacant villages getting a good ecnomic advantage. They were also good hunting adepts in their way to the battle front.

Against Drakes I bought a lot of scouts (maybe too many) but the drakes controlled very well my bats and ghosts leaving no holes. With fire damage they cleaned them quite fast. Also due to the rough terrain is difficult to protect the southern part with non scouting undead units, Drakes have much more movement there and can choose where to fight and where not.

BTW the two matches were against Soliton, and he also agreed that the map was not very easy with undeads.
User avatar
Doc Paterson
Drake Cartographer
Posts: 1973
Joined: February 21st, 2005, 9:37 pm
Location: Kazakh
Contact:

Post by Doc Paterson »

mtx wrote:Thanks for the advice Doc. I will try to implement those tactics but I still feel that bats are too weak and gosts are too expensive to mass them.

The game I played with knalgans, I just passed around the ghosts with my gryphons and got the vacant villages getting a good ecnomic advantage. They were also good hunting adepts in their way to the battle front.

Against Drakes I bought a lot of scouts (maybe too many) but the drakes controlled very well my bats and ghosts leaving no holes. With fire damage they cleaned them quite fast.
You really don't want to use ghosts at all against Drakes, so I can see how that would have wasted and lost you a lot of resources. You need to push the Drakes hard in the northern areas of the map, and avoid serious battles in the south. It'll still be a little tough for undead, but you can definately make a match of it if you keep your cool.

I've found Undead to be very good on that map, but they really must walk the razor's edge- in other words, it's very easy to have your battle plan collapse with the slightest imprecision. If we meet on the server, I'll try to help with this further.

Another thing that may interest you-

The next version replaces 2 of the water villages (the ones near, but not on the lake) with swamp villages (easier to occupy with a cheap undead unit) and has a bit more terrain in the northern center (your adepts will have more cover when crossing the middle).

Best of luck-
I will not tell you my corner / where threads don't get locked because of mostly no reason /
because I don't want your hostile disease / to spread all over the world.
I prefer that corner to remain hidden /
without your noses.
-Nosebane, Sorcerer Supreme
telly
Posts: 260
Joined: January 12th, 2004, 5:07 am

Post by telly »

Knalgans are ok though I wouldn't use many ghosts, mostly corpses should do on the southern villages as gryphons are weak to impact. But Undead vs drakes on there is really annoying. Especially going second I'm not sure theres much you can do, the guy can get the villages on your side before you can unless you recruit lots of bats and ghosts which they can kill kind of easily. Plus if you do recruit lots of bats and ghosts you won't have enough units to push the fight in the north. I haven't played the map much though, so maybe I need to do that.
User avatar
Doc Paterson
Drake Cartographer
Posts: 1973
Joined: February 21st, 2005, 9:37 pm
Location: Kazakh
Contact:

Post by Doc Paterson »

telly wrote:Knalgans are ok though I wouldn't use many ghosts, mostly corpses should do on the southern villages as gryphons are weak to impact. But Undead vs drakes on there is really annoying. Especially going second I'm not sure theres much you can do, the guy can get the villages on your side before you can unless you recruit lots of bats and ghosts which they can kill kind of easily. Plus if you do recruit lots of bats and ghosts you won't have enough units to push the fight in the north. I haven't played the map much though, so maybe I need to do that.
Funny, I saw that game versus that Cape guy, and thought "I'll bet Telly is going to post in the Meteor Lake thread in a few minutes." :D

You must realise that you got severely outscouted because you recruited all corpses and one adept on turn one....on a semi-large map like Meteor Lake, that's a severe disadvantage. The corpses took villages at a snail's pace (while the gliders took them rapidly) and your adepts, (when you did recruit more) were a full turn of movement behind. And so you ended up with a village spread of like 16 to 6. :? Things would have been a lot different if you'd started with multiple adepts, don't you agree?

I don't refute the fact that Undead vs. Drake can be one of the tougher matches on that map, but really- it wouldn't be much different on most other larger maps. Can you think of a larger map where Undead would have an advantage over Drakes? They do well against them on maps like Charge, where they can box them in, where the limited movement of the adept is less of an issue.

I've been beginning to think that the bat has been weakened too much, but I'm not sure at this point.
I will not tell you my corner / where threads don't get locked because of mostly no reason /
because I don't want your hostile disease / to spread all over the world.
I prefer that corner to remain hidden /
without your noses.
-Nosebane, Sorcerer Supreme
telly
Posts: 260
Joined: January 12th, 2004, 5:07 am

Post by telly »

Oh pff yeah of course I lost that game because I played badly, was like mashing about in a random way as I watched tv. Know I could of done a whole lot of things better. I just saw this thread and played that game as a result (rather than other way round) to just get a feeling as to how drakes vs undead works out in 0.9.5 (or whatever we're up to) on that kind of map.

Anyway yeah any map, undead need big numerical superiority plus corpses on top of that to win vs drakes is my feeling or some sort of choke point. On more open maps now that corpses don't have zoc its really difficult to keep the adepts alive. Against other factions you can go with skeletons or ghouls but they aren't much use against drakes either.
User avatar
Doc Paterson
Drake Cartographer
Posts: 1973
Joined: February 21st, 2005, 9:37 pm
Location: Kazakh
Contact:

Post by Doc Paterson »

telly wrote:Oh pff yeah of course I lost that game because I played badly, was like mashing about in a random way as I watched tv.
Hehe. Awesome. :wink:
I will not tell you my corner / where threads don't get locked because of mostly no reason /
because I don't want your hostile disease / to spread all over the world.
I prefer that corner to remain hidden /
without your noses.
-Nosebane, Sorcerer Supreme
Post Reply