Crazed observation by WBC III wacko zulu

[Karol13]

Recent 100+ hours I spent on WBC 3 with latest official patch (so probably outdated for most of ya)

Yet, it is pretty stable on larger maps.

After certain hours of gameplay, I realized that the synergy of skills is super spread across various categories, that each has it's own value and finding the most effective combo's is the key to prevail.
It took quite some restarts, with different race/class combos. Most important thing I learned, that the manuals are not sufficient.

I used 3 manuals:
Hero Creation (stats + skills of each race and class)
Spells (not extremely but still suficienty detailed spells descriptions + costs)
Manual (building trees for each race)

What I had to figure out myself
- Taming (which creatures are considered MONSTERS)
- Spells: cool downs, to-hit ratio of DMG spells (Armageddon hits nearly with 100% accuracy, Wildfire with 90%, all other spells miss nearly each moving object :( )
- Summoning : Summon Fire Elemental is the most efficient summon spell IMO (only 40 mana, +50XP per level, Fire Elemental can hit both ground and airborn enemies and is quite resilient)
- Building tree: actual costs of the buildings, but most importantly skills & units - I had to map this myself, to plan economical approach (if it makes sense sacrifice spell-skills and getting economics skills, like wealth, gemcutting, merchant..)
- Summoning 2: getting an option to summon workers is neat (quasit, zombie..)

AI :
- Warlord actually gave me more trouble than Emperor
Emperror tries to build huge empire, loads of towers and keeps huge army at base, Warlord quickly assembles assault army and send to your base, sometimes in split assault or in waves, especially effective combining different types of units, to divert your defenses, perfectly utilizing tank/ranged/flier so even if my defenses are Maginot line like, Warlord usually can press through.
Emperor is harder to conquer, tho. So sometimes I play much longer, till all resources are depleted and then I have to find out a way to take down the zounds of his towers, to win.

- Time before first stronger wave assaults your base is extremely short when playing against stronger AI. While on Prince and below, I can rely on sly mine-grabbing + mediocre defenses, to assemble strong offense army (dragons), AI of Lord or higher would not give you enough time to get the Flyer dwelling up to tier 3, and if you would keep your defenses mediocre, they would breach through easily.

- as a followup on the point above, having any bonus on the tier1, tier2 units (XP, HP, speed) is essential. If your hero is not holding any such skills, you must either use the best your race offers:
- good view range (your towers are rendered useless, when they don't see enemy catapults)
- flyers (so you can keep you fire power, despite the ground is bombarded)
- versatility (your units should be able to hit both ground and air enemies)
- regeneration (especially evil races lack this, no healers, no heal spells, no regen boosting buildings)
- short term don't expect much help from your hero, in case you built a formidable spell caster. Even with ENERGY skill, only few higher level spells can be cast, before the enemy hits you hard. So having 2 mages or 2 Deamons won't save you.
- also don't expect much help from warriors, despite warriors can stand a chance against dozens of tier1 units and some extra tier2 units, stronger waves will encircle your hero, and without BLINK you are a goner, even if you still would have all 4 (or more ) health potions.
- land management, less land you own, less mines you have, but easier it is to build effective defenses. As I play against enemies who are in alliance, I am persistently attacked from all sides. Moving my units in between multiple fronts is not really working, even when I own fast units (Horse Archers or flyers)
- some units seems super effective, but are not: Barbarians for example: they shall penetrate multiple enemies up to the range 4 (or 6 later), but their hit ratio is miserable, not to mention they essentially cannot hit enemies who are engaged in melee with them. (And their AI won't push them to aim for further away enemy, so the barbarian would basically use his extra skill and hit 2 or more enemies, he keeps throwing at the nearby enemy till he dies). Or Dwarven units: despite they are resilient, they mostly cannot hit flyers, and are slow as the law allows it.
- some other units seem overexpensive and weak, like the Sun Priest (Ssrathi), but as soon their range jumps to 12 and they move in groups, they can take down even dragons, who are naturally resistant to fire (most of them). Or floaing eyes, who not only can hit both ground and air enemies, despite their low range (4) they move fast and can outmaneuver even more dangerous army.
- defenses : towers are fine, but fragile should you rely on one DMG type. Piercing is great against dragons, but many tier1 units are highly resistant against projectiles. Fire takes down catapults and rams fast, but not few enemies have fire resistance or elem. resistance. Lightning is very powerful, but unless you load some infantry it it, their hit-ratio is low. Stack few catapults near your towers to take care of swarms low-tier infantry. Don't rely on range only, towers aim for nearest enemies anyways, unless you are skilled and fast enough to manually assign targets. If your race does not have any view range boosts, have some flyers around your towers, I suggest ROAMING GUARDIAN.

So to survive first wave, things to consider:
- economy (income boost, or lower prices via merchant), some economy bonuses can be gained by spells, but I learned this is quite ineffective way, Some races have buildings that boost our income, Barbarians, Empire, Fey... but the trick is, you must first spend some resources to slowly get them back.
- army : versatile and formidable even on tier 1/ tier levels. Don't be afraid to train ground-only units, they still can do great assault stopping job as tanks or meat shields, but have firepower spread for both : ground & air.
Unless you are immune to poison / disease (Undead) find a way to heal / cure your army (and no, don't rely on your hero only, don't expect your hero to have enough mana to heal whole regiments)
Aim for tier 3 units that either have splash damage or high defense. And definitely must be able to hit air & ground units, later in the game this will be critical. Let it be Pegasi, Griffons or Wyverns, or some good ground units, this might be the backbone of your army for a while.
tier 4 is usually a trap, they are slow and expensive to produce and the reason is, these generals might replace your hero in ways of command and conversion. But they rarely perform well in actual battle.

Later stage, is when enemies will get their Titans. This is hell tricky. Just numbers won't do much help, because not only Titans cause different mental defects (chaos, fear..) they are usually accompanied with dragons, who are also good at disabling Tier 1, 2, 3 units en mass. There is a spell that can heal these status effects, but that implies having your hero around, which can be a fatal error in both cases : you kill the Titan or the Titan will survive :D Here is when the towers get their prim to play, as they are unaffected by mental statuses, and continue to shoot on their usual pace. Despite it is handy to take down titans away from your base, it is not always possible, so keep your towers strong and ready.

Last stage: economical warfare. Enemy might have gotten hold of most of the map / mines, while keeping you under siege, now is your time to create assault squads, take down towers guarding the mines and either quick convert (one would quickly start loving Acquire spell of Alchemy magic) or simply destroy them for quick income + 3XP as bonus :D
Benefit it, you don't really need all the mines, you just need to stop the flow to your enemy treasury.
At this point, all enemy heroes shall be dead, if you did your job well. Very rarely I encounter enemy keeping heir hero inside their base. This is extremely nasty, as it continually boosts their units, morale and sometimes summons some extra units. AI heroes know the various spells and cast them mostly in a wise order (Charm, or similar boon spells, followed by heal or summon) and don't try challenge high level enemies, as it won't be uncommon to face level 150 pyromancer, who storms your base in first 1-2 minutes and armageddons you do coal.
But back to to the economy tactics: without heroes and titans, the remaining problems are dragons, which will stop being a problem, as soon all mines are depleted. Instead groups of 4-8 dragons, you will encounter 1-2, which should not be a problem for your veterans :D
Problem is, as mentioned before, Emperor AI keeps stacks of units inside their base, full of towers. Catapults only won't do, as in a blink of time tier 1, 2 units swarm your catapults.
Dragons only won't also not do, enemy towers would be extremely more effective on the costs/loses ratio, as dragons are super expensive, and despite one dragon can take down 1-2 towers, this won't be the case when only 6-10 dragons storm Emperor base with 50+ towers stacked near to each other. Remember, most probably your mines would be depleted as well. So getting the 1000 gold and crystal would be a long shot, especially would you need to multiply it by 5, 6 or more.

Now you just have to use the same tricks, you've seen before: combo of low cost creepers, who would attract as the tower arrows, so the stationed enemy soldiers, followed by good ranged units and catapults, dragons should enter last, so put some simple units, even bats in the sky front lines.

here for example turned Deamons extremely weak. Despite they have great synergy on XP bonuses and mana regen and wide army spectrum, nearly all their units have trouble storming trenches of shooters / towers. Even demons die quite fast, despite being tier4 units. And having summoners, who can summon deamons is also not extremely helpful, as you'll hit the army limit and won't be able to get enough deamons to overcome the formidable defenses of dozens of towers. Dark Dwarves with their long range siege weapons are cool, you have just to figure out how to maneuver the extremely slow units through the whole map and keep them save from quick counter-assaults. Not to mention that the stronger siege weapons are useless against flyers, and the enemy still might keep few dragons around.

What won't work for you - human player, might work for rabid enough AI. For example huge wave of tier 1 units, like the barbarian dogs, or meek goblins, unless you also keep a dragon or two at your base, catapults won't be enough to stop them nor the towers. Remember how I called out splash damage? Luckily it is not exclusive to dragons :D

WBC 3 is great at balance and power calibration. High DMG units might be fragile, resilient high defense units might be slow, flyers might have low HP or low defenses. Remember even bone dragon does not have missile resistance (in my version they don't). So you must consider a long list details and find a way through the list that best suits you. Like Knights have the strongest army for reasonable costs, but it won't be able to fight flyers. A detail that can cost you a victory, if not properly considered. Still it might well work, that you send your Paladins in frontal attack, making all enemies attack them, then you send much weaker flyers or shooters to take on the enemy flyers and towers.

Or Fey have cheap quickly trained flying units or shooters, but engaging a high tier enemy these units gets quickly cut down to few from 50+.

- can you stack your tier 1 units into towers?
- can your tier 1 units fight flyers?
- do you possess any economy boost? If not, do you have a good way to acquire more mines faster? (and keep them)
- Health regen or units with heal/cure/cauterize...
- mana regen (even if your hero might not be a spell caster, basically every race has one or two spell casting units)
- how to protect your towers (cheap meat shields or a way to repair them?)
- view range (best is "reveals whole map")
- what materials need your best units? How to provide these materials to your kingdom in enough volumes?
- disease / poison -> how to cure them or how to render immune to them.
- your army should consist of various types of units, but each shall require different materials to avoid quick material exhaustion. And possibly to use TRADE, unless all four materials are being used up in similar amount.
- way to capture and kill enemy hero (luckily even some tier1 units can sometimes do that, unless enemy has a formidable warrior, then try better :D )
- way to stop dragons
- way to stop titans, possibly away from your base
- is your army hit-n-run compatible? If yes, can you heal them?
- take down myriad of enemy towers to finally win.
- not getting crazy.

[Sid]

Nice post, what race do you prefer to play as for hero & faction?

[Karol13]

Originally posted by Sid:

Nice post, what race do you prefer to play as for hero & faction?

As for race, I am looking at following criteria:
speed + sight + early accessible units, that can hit flyers (or even better, are flyers)

speed -> if I cannot build a fast army, how can I perform any strategic maneuvers that can surprise my enemy?

sight -> I might have good economy and build 20 towers, but if these towers don't see siege weapons, bombarding them from beyond their sight radius, I would suffer much higher loses and probably even defeat, despite I had the firepower to destroy those siege weapons with ease.
Fey, Wood Elves, Ssrathi have extra sight bonus "reveal whole map"

early units -> AI (especially higher difficulty AI) loves to perpetually send waves of attackers, and as early as possible. Would I put my strategy into dragons, I would probably never live long enough to see even one dragon produced. So I like formidable archers (who can hit both flyers and infantry, while hiding behind walls + be stacked into a tower to increase DMG & range!
Yet even better are phoenixes who have great sight, cannot be harmed by most of cavalry and siege weapons, so float above your towers and decimate enemies from the safety of air. And most add-on value, is they can float above waves of enemies and attack their generals/heroes/catapults.
With these you can live long enough to get to mid units, like Pegasi / Griffin and later dragons.

I also like races that can build extra defense buildings apart towers, to battle dragons and titans (who cause chaos, fear and your low-mid tier units will run away from battle, and again, archers get extra value as you can put them in towers, so screw any mental effects)

Here come in play also fitting classes.
Would I want to support my phoenixes + pegasi/griffins, get a hero who can give them XP or other bonuses. In most version it would be Ranger.

Or another good synergy is Empire + Diviner (XP bonus to mages, whom you can summon as well produce) -> and also you get a spell that increases sight range! (just the economy part lacks :D )

Generally, your her can die easily later on, so best strategy is to have a hero that can be effective from your base, hidden in tower or behind walls (to avoid assassins and such)
That includes supporters (Merchant, Tinker...) or summoners (Nature magic, fire magic, Summoning ...)

I always wanted to play dwarves, but those lack everything: are slow, weak against flyers, expensive and one must quickly build array of mortars and towers and get enough eagles into the skies, to defend against first waves... so no matter what hero class you choose, you would have tough times.

Offensive races are good, but all struggle in air combat, so choose wisely.

[Karol13]

As for practical examples:
Ssrathi: who not only can deflect early and mid-game assaults, their towers poison attackers, priests can heal and then change towers into fire-dealing instruments of death (especially handy against catapults), which will never perform surprise attack due "whole map revealed" from scry pool, BUT later on can produce dragons with EXTRA XP, giving a clear advantage. Also their slashing dealing infantry units are great to pursue and kill enemy heroes.
Downside = Pterodactyl cannot hit grounded units :(, so the tier1 flyers cannot too. So before dragons, you have to use flyers only as recon units and anti-air defense (which is not so much needed early on)
on TOP of that all, you can get Meditation level 3 (+300% mana regen), so if you have a spell caster hero -> there you go!
Their general is not best compared to other generals, but can cross water and deals magic damage, which very few units / buildings have resistance towards, and despite is weak against physical, can also cast SHIELD spell.

Said that, the real challenge is economy, because most of Ssrathi benefits require loads of resources. And their early & mid tier units tend to die easily (not really high HP also no extra resistances)
Only on lower difficulties I was able to gather my tier1, 2 units and successfully raid enemy base.

otherwise it took tremendous micromanagement, to keep my base safe, have enough mines, and get my first dragons dispatched, who also could not attack right away, but could put enemy from offense into defense, so I could control wider area + farm for XP, just to build even more dragons, hoping the enemy won't get a titan before I bulk up enough.

Wood Elves: despite having good flyers, their horsearchers are extremely useful in all tactical endeavours, I just had to heed for catapults, which with longer range could decimate my cavalry would I forget to move them quickly out of their range. (hit'n'run). Being mid-game (Tier 2) unit, but extremely formidable, this makes Wood Elves deadly and dangerous. (low HP is not such a problem, unless you meet with enemy pyromancer or druid, who can deal 150+ dmg per one spell). But all other dangers for numerous armies of low HP units : splash damage or mental effects: ranged attack allows them to take down even dragons and mental statuses have also their active range, not to mention that this tier2 units have higher resistance also towards mental ailments. And combine em with Griffons, and you have all you need to battle even dragons and well protected bases (despite Pegasi with bludgeoning damage would be better, but griffons with slashing DMG hunt down heroes and most of natural enemies of horsearchers), so screw bludgeoning damage, that's why you can have fire arrows and then take down enemy buildings in few seconds.

According my own rules, best race would be FEY, extremely fast, cheap units with farsight bonuses up to reveal whole map. But their towers are a joke and their buildings can be crashed even by mid sized army of goblins :(
And it is impossible to keep enemies pushed into defensive all the time, so playing FEY requires a hero that would fill this gap, and that narrows the selection to very few.


In contrary to possibly good races, I was quite disappointed with some other races:
Dark Dwarves: golems + siege weapons + Alchemyst (or similar hero boosting constructs, buildings, like Runemaster...who is more for Dwarves, tho) was something I anticipated a lot. As it were resilient golems and long-range siege weapons that often brought havoc over my defenses in short time.
But lack of vision, low travel speed, bigger size and high costs... all together make d.dwarves a purely defensive race, with little ways to boost so desired income. And having hero as Sage or Archmage, removes possibly synergy between class and race (Alchemy magic summon golem + golem master XP boost)

similar disappoint from Barbarians: as I kept high hopes due the spear throwing early infantry + mid-game strong and fast cavalry...
barbarians spearthrowers cannot hit attached targets, so they are literally slaughtered one by one
and mid-game having strong army that cannot harm flyers... useless!
Although, with Ranger (Taming) , lighting hawk + pegasus can become your ultimate army, and as Barbs have income boost, they can get to dragons faster, and then upgrade your already formidable army with swamp dragons (who do fire damage & reduce defense) and later even with one of the best titans in the game.

If you want try different races, that lack sight bonuses, either brace yourself for extra micromanagement of hawks or other small flyers as sight range boosters or change map settings to "start with revealed map" + "fog of war off", otherwise stronger AI will abuse your sight limit greatly :)