Dire Wolves vs Fell Bats

[Green]

Which one is better against their dedicated targets (light skirmishers, archers...)? I can read the stats so don't tell me that one has higher MD and the other higher MA and the bats seem to be more tanky (but have low leadership to offset that) and are able to surround faster (hence greater leadership penalty). Dire wolves seem to be more apt at actually killing stuff and they seem much better at chasing (because flyers are normally trash at chasing).

Thoughts?

edit: I should mention that I am thinking about single player strictly. In MP Wolves are the better choice 90% of the time

[THEDOSSBOSS]

Like MP like SP. Wolves are the better option. I was able to kill balthazar with exactly 1 unit of wolved by charging and making sure he diesn't get a hit in on them. Bats have less mass so a) won't knock him over and b) won't be able to pull out quick enough to avoid getting hit., unless you pull them out before they do the necessary damage

[𝒦.ℒ.ℬ.]

probably wolves.

[TVMAN]

Fell bats are fodder meant solely to buy time. They're useful for throwing them into a cavalry unit to break the charge or for tying up ranged units, but even with the upgrades they're still mostly flying zombies and should be treated accordingly. I usually end up replacing them with vargheists as soon as possible.

Wolves are a better anti-ranged flanking unit, and as you pointed out they're great at chasing routing units. Since the Vamps don't have any ranged to speak of, breaking and routing the enemy ranged is a pretty important goal to accomplish during a battle.

[Wyvern]

Wolves are certainly not the better choice in MP 90% of the time. Bats have cost, mobility and in many ways survivability on their side, which means the choice is very debatable(and tbh, most consider wolves grossly underpowered/inefficient).

But, you said you wanted info for SP, and were asking which is better vs their specific targets. As far as raw damage goes, direwolves. As far as actually catching up to targets and tying them down or pursuing them off the field, bats are superior because they have better speed+don't suffer terrain penalties+are harder to beat off in melee. That said, if you can afford it, hexwraiths are better than either in campaign.

Bats can support superior units well into late game by tying down enemy anti-large and have larger versatility. Direwolves struggle to position as well and get torn up by basically any vaguely decent melee unit. In early game, direwolves are competitive because they serve as a pseudo light cav. In mid-late game youre better off with bats due to their far superior flexibility. Finally, neither unit is really THAT good at killing things, youre usually better off relying on other units to do the killing. My vote goes to bats.

[Notoko]

Both are usefull, flying units are great for getting behind the enemy front line and taking out arty. Wolves are great at helping chasing down enemy routed units.

[shadain597]

I like the wolves. They're great at countering basic cavalry and flanking for psuedo-cav hammer and anvil tactics. Bats, well, I've never found them useful. In fact, I hate all low-tier flying units. They can't even beat artillery crews in melee on easy difficulty. In theory, keeping those crews busy would be useful, but every time I've tried to get the fliers to the arty early in the match there's archers covering them that shred the fliers. By the time the archers are distracted the general melee has started and the arty is low priority.

Then again, I'm not the greatest TW player, so my strategies might be missing something.

[StarofTanuki]

both you have 20 slot so no reason to have pure wolves or pure bats

[Sir uP]

Ya the wolves are "reusable" paper tigers, they can actually shred units.

For bats to be useful u need tech and talents and a couple chevron otherwise they can't kill the arty/archers fast enough and often get battered so badly in the process they can't do anything else.

So ya as others have more or less said:
Bats are a quick answer to oh ♥♥♥♥ stop shooting at me while I approach or oh ♥♥♥♥ I need to block and pin this cav charge.
Wolves are the answer to archers and arty.

[glythe]

Bats are hands down the better unit. Long term in the campaign bats are something you can keep well in to turn 50 while wolves are useless around then. Overall bats cost less than wolves and can fly. It is a no brainer which is cheaper to keep in an army to perform the same role. Also let's be honest.... the staring vampire army has a Vargulf (if not you're playing vampires wrong). It can win sieges almost by itself if it isn't surrounded.

Why? Bats give you something that your army needs..... an ability to reach out and touch a dangerous ranged unit. This works even more readily in sieges where wolves are just kind of sitting there soaking up arrows. Also wolves can't fly so they suck in a siege where the enemy almost always has pikemen sitting at the gate.

The thing to do with bats is use them in groups of 2 on a soft target like handgunners/archers/artillery. Either have 2 or 4 units of bats in an army. You can shred archers that are safe from everything else and then retreat. You can even lose 1 bat per fight and not care because they will come back most of the time from the undead ability where the dead respawn.

Once you get bats up to rank 4 they are quite good at killing ranged units and are perfectly fine vs higher tier units (or dwarf archers).

Unlike wolves bats can just take to the air and escape. Because of this bats don't "go bad" until about 50 turns after wolves have long been completely useless. Try using wolves against an army that has cavalry. GG was not close. Meanwhile ranged cav takes forever to research, tech and field (one of the hard counters to bats). The other hard counter to bats takes about 100 turns becase we're talking about enemy flying units which sometimes you don't see in an entire campaign.

The other thing you can do with bats but not wolves is waste a ton of ammo from artillery for the lone cost of making one of your bats be tired (and maybe have some casualties depending on how many arties it is dodging). Look at the price cost on a bat and consider that it can easily waste half of a catapult's ammo (or kill it if it is left alone).

Originally posted by Sir ♥♥♥♥♥foot:

Wolves are the answer to archers and arty.

You have that backwards. Bats are much better at flying around a ranged unit's cone of fire in a way that wolves will never be able to match.

Bats can land on a ranged unit and take them to half health before they get messed up. Two groups of two bats each can also be aoe healed easily by your lord.

The one thing that can be problematic for bats is that all cav units lost a lot of their pullthrough ability. So in order to get bats to escape sometimes you have to spam click where you want them to go for about 20 seconds. Otherwise they fly back into the melee because 1-5 bats got stuck. But once you learn to circumvent that behavior they are quite good if you use them correctly.

[Sir uP]

Where i think you're wrong:
1) your comment about vargulf or doing it wrong is dumb and that invalidates much of what you say after.

2) much of what you say about bats dodging arty and circling around sounds incredibly microintensive for a throw away unit. You are describing vargeists or other valuable mobile units.

3) Wolves have no trouble flanking ranged units even around their "cone."

4) Bats never go bad. Especially issy flying circus bats but also see combined arms in 5)

5) I'm not a fan of wolves and don't use them myself. They dont fit my playstyle since I usually play with vlad and vanguard blood knights are the end game unit that fills the role of killing archers and arty. They also appreciate bat support to help them with ranged while they crush cav.

Where i think you are right:
1) Move your bats in groups of 2 (double the cost whereas wolves can shred archers 1v1)
2) Flyers are better for sieges.
3) wolves are outclassed quickly once you get high tier cav

Fact is wolves are the dps and the bats are better mobile meatshields. But they are both not meant to last.

[glythe]

Originally posted by Sir ♥♥♥♥♥foot:

Where i think you're wrong:
1) your comment about vargulf or doing it wrong is dumb and that invalidates much of what you say after.

2) much of what you say about bats dodging arty and circling around sounds incredibly microintensive for a throw away unit. You are describing vargeists or other valuable mobile units.

All things being equal it is impossible to accomplish with Vlad in 20 turns what you can get with Manfred in 20 turns. Manfred has the better start position and better end tier unit. Manfred is better at the end of the game with his zombie dragon than Vlad. You can kill off Templehoff in about 5 turns and Vlad in another 1-2 depending on how he has expanded.

Undead armies are mostly a joke to manage. Draw a line and attack with main infantry. Maybe flank around with damage dealing units like ghouls. Thats about it for early game. Maybe you don't number your units but I do because I have a lot of hours playing RTS games. Maybe you dont micro as much as I do and that could be due to fewer actions per minute.

Overall I don't like the idea of throw away units. I often give my old army to a new commander to babysit terrain while the first army runs back to base to recruit. The first fight with Manfred vs Templehof is one of the few battles where I get throw away units (including zombies which I never use).

Bats are one of thos units that do a lot better if you are wiling to micromanage them. Essentially they are one of the lightest cavalry units in the game (as fliers) but can have massively devastating charges on archers. If you use superior numbers and pull them out early they wreck the enemy unit and take minimal damage. If you attack 2v1 you will lose very few bats and can actually take out 3-4 archer groups before they need to be pulled to reserve forces (or healed). Use them to take out isolated archers or attack the back of a melee and they will not only survive but rank up very quickly. Even zombies can win vs better units if you have bats dive from behind as the morale penalty is completely insane.

As far as dodging arty goes sometimes the AI is willing to sit there and use up its artillery on junk units. It doesn't always happen but when it does bats are the perfect solution. Flying units are harder to hit than ground units. Some people are not patient enough to try it and other people consider it cheese. I personally have zero problem with it when the computer gets so many cheats (especially if I am playing a vanilla legendary game).

Originally posted by Wyvern:

bats are superior because they have better speed+don't suffer terrain penalties+are harder to beat off in melee.

Direwolves struggle to position as well and get torn up by basically any vaguely decent melee unit. In early game, direwolves are competitive because they serve as a pseudo light cav. In mid-late game youre better off with bats due to their far superior flexibility. Finally, neither unit is really THAT good at killing things

Back to the issue of which is better I want to suggest to the OP that I have to agree 100% with Wyvern. All things considered bats can just hover over enemy cavalry and wolves can't.