swarm & ambush

[kenc80]

So I'm starting to really fall in love with swarm & ambush units nowadays. Scorps & demons I think are being underappreciated, especially the new beta5 demon. In late game situations or games against really elite players & stacks these can be gamechanging units. Since I'm an old W2 player, these abilities are new to me but I find them very helpful against DLR players who understand the negate & bonus rules better than I do.

Look I can barely do the math to figure out what negates what and what bonus is applied where its applied. It can be complicated. So when you see these super elite stacks of devils & pegasi, medusa and heroes, nothing works better or is easier to understand than throwing an 8 stack of scorpions at these super stacks. The swarm can't be negated and I guarantee you those stacks will run from scorpions. Same with Demons. Especially Demons. Four demons now swarm to +40 and if you put them behind some scorpions or tack a medusa on this can be a real devastating surprise for these pumped up hero stacks you see late in game.

Just wanted to throw that out there so people realize that swarm is a really easy to understand counter to late game heroes with the grandfather sword (+8) or that -5 cloak item i've seen with devils and archons. This same strategy works with ambush for Ghosts and WolfRiders. They can both be used to the same effect.

So dont be scared of the super stacks!

Ken

[Jeremy]

Thanks - useful insight.

I'm still not good at creating the superstacks -- or I get my Hero killed off, and they still have a stack.

My approach to dealing with them is to avoid the superstack and hit the player elsewhere -- ideally behind their front lines. If I can make them suffer behind their enemy lines enough, they'll either take my damaging attacks, or they'll turn their superstack around to deal with my raiding.

Because creating a stack of Demons takes quite a few turns -- often you don't have that time when you're facing down a stack you can't deal with.

[LPhillips]

Also a big fan of Scorps. I find it's generally enough to pump them from two adjacent castles. Of course the now-traditional wolfriders+ghosts still nukes stacks pretty damn well.

Demons are expensive. You been buying production and building stacks that way? It seems like the economics there are open to debate, but it's certainly much simpler to manage and employ than trying to construct "super-stacks". Ideally I guess you'd bring along a demon stack or two with your super stack, then just maintain 4 demons in front of your stack. Best of both worlds!

[ezras]

I find the ambush very unimpressive. My opponent just had an 7 stack of ghosts for +52 ambush and they lost like 4 or 5 gaints a pretty mediocre stack in a castle. anyone I have not found them very useful. Especially late game against super stacks, the ambush just never seems to be able to defeat those stacks.

[LPhillips]

Ezras, I think maybe you miss the point of the ambush stacks? They're for eliminating enemies who are too powerful to otherwise be eliminated. I think we all know the kind: +30 morale, -12 fear/chaos, with high-powered units to boot. You're not going to beat them with combat dice rolls. But a couple of ambush stacks can wipe them out, given the opportunity. Ambush stacks are not meant to survive. They're just assassins, not superstacks themselves.

I think there's a cap on Ambush bonus, and 7 ghosts is a wasteful stack. It's far more effective and cost-efficient to use 4 wolfriders and 4 ghosts. But even with 52% Ambush, those 7 ghosts would only Ambush 2-5 units. The rest will be determined by dice rolls, so they'll often lose against 5 or more superior combat units (ghosts aren't really good fighters). The strength of Ambush is that it will kill 2-5 units in that situation no matter how strong the units are. It can be a level 18 Dread Knight and level 18 Paladin with a Red Dragon, Grand Archon, and 4 Demons, and you can knock it out with a couple of ambush stacks without risking any really valuable units or heroes. Even if they have combat values of 80 each and reduce your units' combat values to 5. Get it?

[kenc80]

yeah ezras, as LP said, they are really for denting super stacks, they are definitely wasted against normal units. Sometimes even putting two ghosts with 6 orcs can do some damage even though orcs assassin doesnt stack. Nice thing about it is even if the ghosts die early in the fight, the assassin bonus continues on throughout the rest of the battle.

[strach]

LPhillips
there's no cap on ambush. Recently I attacked 6 demons + paladin + DK with 8 ghosts. my ghosts had 89% chance of an instant kill and they took down all demons and a paladin.

btw that shows how powerful ghost are right now, becasue only chance to win that battle would be to have a -18 DK, combined with medusa, Archon, Dragon and 4 strong units. with bet 5 "everything" changed. suddenly gohsts and demons became very powerful.

[magian]

No ambush cap?! That makes ghosts a bit ridiculous (considering they also have the best UL).

[LPhillips]

Having no ambush cap is actually really, really bad for game balance. Though it does take some effort to get that many ghosts together, consider them in a city. 11 of them means 100% ambush. You could fill the rest of the city with crows; it wouldn't matter. Shouldn't there be a +Ambush cap like 50%?

[KGB]

Remember ambush is only a 1 shot deal. So those crows would kill 1 unit then be killed themselves in regular combat by the next unit. You'd also need 12 Ghosts to reach 96% (roughly a guaranteed kill) so it's not exactly easy to do it and thus that player must have other cities that would be much easier to conquer.

If there is going to be a cap, it should be set quite high (75% or so). But personally I don't think any cap is needed because the case that Strach used the Ghosts for, is exactly what they were meant to do, kill super hero stacks you otherwise can't kill. With a low cap like 50% the Ghosts would only be able to kill on average 4 of the 8 units since they have no real combat ability of their own (15 strength).

KGB