Beginner quiz on unit statistics

[stencil]

The other day I almost tried my first multiplayer game, but then I remembered, I’m not actually that good at this game. I like playing campaigns on easy, for goodness sakes. So then I wondered if there were some way I could objectively assess how ready I might be for multiplayer, like a quiz or something similar. In searching I only found one* small example, so I thought, perhaps I could study a bit and make my own. Below is a set of ten questions meant for beginners like me (all determined off of base values unless noted otherwise). (Also note that these are just based on statistics, not what might actually be best strategy.)

*June 2023 edit: Inky has a great add-on on the 1.16 server called "Tactics Puzzles" that I highly recommend for testing you knowledge in specific scenarios.*

I’d love if people had thoughts or wanted to provide their own example test questions! Without further ado:

1. Which of these has the highest base movement points?

Drake Glider
Gryphon Rider
Elvish Scout
Cavalryman
Wolf Rider
Bat

Answer:

Elvish Scout, with 9. The others all have 8 (although, as noted above, tactically I understand the bat has much higher effective mobility, as it can move easily over basically every terrain.

2. Rank these in order from smallest to largest base impact damage at night. (Bonus: would the order of 'most likely net enemy HP loss' change if attacking a Blood Bat?)

Dwarvish Fighter
Footpad
Wose
Heavy Infantry
Troll Whelp
Walking Corpse

Answer:

Footpad, Walking Corpse, Dwarvish Fighter/Heavy Infantry, Troll Whelp, Wose, with 6, 7, 8, 8, 9, and 10 single strike damage, respectively (or doubled for each if counting both strikes). Footpad could also do 5 melee damage (ha ha, 6 was for ranged), while HI could do 11 damage if fearless. If fighting Blood Bat, order could possibly change; drain would give the bat ~3 HP back per successful strike, so it would depend on what terrain they were on (whelp attacking from hills would probably result in more net HP lost for the Blood Bat than wose attacking from flat).

3. Which of these does not have at least one terrain type with 70% defense?

Saurian Skirmisher
Thief
Merman Hunter
Fencer
Merman Fighter
Naga Fighter

Answer:

Saurian Skirmisher, whose highest terrain defense value is 60%.

4. Which of these would have the largest maximum damage increase from the strong trait in a single round of combat?

Drake Clasher
Ulfserker
Horseman
Goblin Spearman (i.e. meaning not weak)
More than one of the above
All of the above

Answer:

Drake Clasher. Regardless of time of day, regular goblin spearman would be 3 more damage than weak one, strong ulfserker would be 4 more, and strong horseman would be 2 more on base so 4 total with charge. But strong clasher would go from 6 to 7 damage per spear strike, which would correspond to 7 or 9 damage/strike in the day, meaning it could increase 8 total damage by being strong. Of course, as pointed out in the comments, the strong Ulfserker would benefit the most overall due to the berserk attack.

5. Which of these has the lowest ratio of maximum base ranged damage relative to cost?

Drake Burner
Dwarvish Thunderer
Poacher
Elvish Archer
Bowman
Orcish Archer
Skeleton Archer

Answer:

Dwarvish Thunderer. Burner costs 21g and could do 24 max base ranged fire damage, so damage/cost = 24/21, or 1&1/7. Poacher is 16dmg/14g, or 1&1/7, E archer is 20/17 (1&3/17), Bowman is 18/14 (1&2/7), O archer is 18/14 (1&2/7), and S archer is 18/14 (1&2/7), but Thunderer is 18/17, or only 1&1/17. Again, caveat that there are many other factors that go into the worth of a unit.

6. Which of these does not add a unique damage type or weapon special to their faction?

Saurian Augur
Elvish Shaman
Mage
Orcish Assassin
Ghoul
Dark Adept

Answer:

Dark Adept. Augur adds cold, Shaman adds slow, Mage adds fire, Assassin adds poison, and Ghoul adds poison, but Adept's cold and arcane are also provided by Ghost. (I know, Ghost's attacks aren't magical and its arcane is melee rather than ranged; it's an imperfect question.)

7. Which of these has the largest increase in base maximum melee damage relative to their level 1 unit?

Drake Warrior
Dwarvish Steelclad
Elvish Hero
Swordsman
Orcish Warrior
Deathblade

Answer:

Deathblade. The others all have a base melee damage increase of 12 (well, swordsman only increases by 11), while deathblade increases by 19 (i.e. from 21 to 40).

8. Which of these requires the equivalent of more than four but fewer than six level one kills to advance a level (i.e. needs 33-40 experience)?

Saurian Augur
Dwarvish Guardsman
Bowman
Orcish Archer
Dark Adept
More than one of the above

Answer:

Bowman, at 39 XP. Augur and orcish archer need 28 and 30 XP, while guardsman and dark adept need 47 and 48 XP.

9. Which attack has the best likelihood of landing at least two total strikes (regardless of source)?

A Mage attacking a Skeleton on a fungus
An Orcish Assassin and a Troll Whelp attacking a Fencer on sand
A Skeleton Archer and a Ghoul attacking an Elvish Fighter in a forest
Two Drake Clashers attacking a Thief on a hill

Answer:

The assassin and whelp attacking the fencer. In that case, the fencer has 40% defense, the assassin has three ranged strikes and the whelp has two melee strikes, and the odds of getting at least two hits out of five vs 40% defense is 91% (the assassin's marksman is irrelevant). A mage getting at least two magical hits out of three with 70% chance-to-hit is 78%, the skeleton archer and ghoul getting at least two hits out of six against the elvish fighter's 60% defense is 77% likely, and the two clashers getting at least two hits out of their potential eight vs the thief's 70% defense is 74% likely.

10. How many recruitable unit types does Dunefolk have (i.e. level 1 units)?

6
7
8
9

Answer:

7. Poor Dunefolk; more than a decade old and still unliked by some (hearsay).

Bonus 1: Which pairing would have the largest potential difference in damage dealt vs received (i.e. assuming all strikes hit)?

Spearman attacking Drake Fighter at day
Dwarvish Guardsman attacking Grunt at night
Elvish Fighter attacking Skeleton at day
Skeleton attacking Dwarvish Guardsman at dusk
Drake Fighter attacking Elvish Fighter at dawn
Grunt attacking Spearman at dusk

Answer:

Skeleton attacking Guardsman at dusk. Long explanation: Spearman vs D Fighter would be 30 vs 27, unless Spearman attacked with ranged, which would then be 8 vs 12; max net difference of 4. Guardsman attacking Grunt would be 15 vs 18 melee, or 5 vs 0 ranged. E Fighter vs Skeleton would be 12 vs 15 melee, or 3 vs 0 ranged. D Fighter attacking E Fighter would be 21 vs 20 melee/9 vs 9 ranged, while Grunt vs Spearman would be 18 vs 21. Skeleton vs Guardsman would be the highest difference, at 12 vs 6 (6 net max difference).

And here’s a simple scoring guide (number correct):

0: Mal-Ravanal’s Walking Corpse
1: Tallin’s Peasant
2: Kapou'e's Goblin Spearman
3: Ardonna’s Bat
4: Asheviere’s Bowman
5: Arvith’s Horseman
6: Mal Keshar’s Dark Adept
7: Rugur’s Runesmith
8: Burin’s Steelclad
9: Baldras’ Senior Village Elder
10: Kaleh’s Sun Sylph!
11: Hugo's Freebooter (Altaz Mariner)
(I would probably have been a corpse if I took this quiz last week.)

Do let me know if you have other good sample test questions, perhaps some for more intermediate or even advanced players!

(Edited as explained in comments to improve questions.)

[Atreides]

I got 4. Feel free to crush me in MP anytime. :)

Oh actually I think you got one answer wrong. I'm sure that the Ulfserker does the most damage. You forgot berserk. That's 30 rounds!

[stencil]

Ah, you are completely correct! I apologize for the error, and use this as evidence that you'd probably beat me in multiplayer Thanks for pointing that out.

I was trying to come up with questions that involved every recruitable unit in multiplayer, and ulfserker got lumped in with those other specialty ones. I guess maybe I should have asked, Which of these has its own unique animation for attacking Dark Adepts

[For future forum searchers, since I couldn't find it on my own searching, I thought I'd just mention that the recruitable units are the ones with the small pawn icon in the top right corner of their squares in the Wesnoth Units Database, when looking at one of the eras including Default. The crowns in the same relative location, next to the level 2 identifier, represent units that can be faction leaders in multiplayer games, if I understand correctly.]

[Jarom]

Having finished the quiz with score of "Ardonna's bat" I'm oddly satisfied. Having finished the campaign, I'm now lvl 2 beating all other possible outcomes in mobility, and I don't get out much, only occasionally scouting the frontlines and grabbing unprotected villages.

That being said, I wanna question both the practicality of most of those questions for multiplayer as well as some answers to them.
Q1:
This question is good and makes sense, although effective mobility really depends on the map, because many are mostly flat, and what really matters for scouts is whether you can reach a village in a turn or not, so that one MP more or slightly better movement costs might or might not matter at all.

Q2:
Question itself is interesting and I underestimated the wose (though it only has like 10 or 12 base dmg... weird), though due to low terrain defense, terrible resistances, high costs, and bad matchup against its common night foes against which impact is effective, I'd question the practicality of such attack. Setting that aside, an actual error in thinking/formulating would be that attacking a bat changes anything in base dmg. It only changes the possible outcomes of the fight, base damage remains the same.

Q3:
No complaints. Actually useful question. Especially if you know where exactly those units get that 70%, because reefs are rare in multiplayer.

Q4:
Setting aside the ulferkser mentioned, it makes sense. Though, ulferkser is unpredictable.

Q5:
This is mostly pointless calculations, except that I find thunderer truly useless. Also, in the results you forgot to factor in the dextrous trait, which is non-negligible and has IIRC 0.36 chance to make elvish archer the best.

Q6:
IMHO your wording is wrong. Attack type IIRC is used in Wesnoth lingo, meaning damage type or range+damage type. In that meaning, Shaman, Assassin and Ghoul also have damage types that are already there, though former two bring it to ranged. Be more specific what factors we should count in.

Q7:
This is completely impractical. I'd laugh if a Skeleton attacked my Dwarvish Guard at dusk for that little bit of extra damage difference - don't they have DAs or what? Not to mention chance to hit, strong trait and other factors. It all brings no added value to a beginner's game.

Q8:
The difference is negligible, so it doesn't really matter. Also in multiplayer you often play on 60% experience multiplier, effectively nullifying the differences. Ask about the mage.

Q9:
Again, there's virtually no difference. And Steelclad's increase in survivability is the best anyway due to resistances.

Q10:
This question is good for multiplayer beginners, even though it doesn't bring much in terms of quality, because it requires general understanding of the game and encompasses something that is not so well known from campaigns.

Oh, and treat my advices with a pinch of salt. I'm a multiplayer beginner.

[stencil]

Thanks for your comments, @Jarom! As I mentioned, my experience in multiplayer games is exactly 0, so I am very happy to hear from more knowledgeable players.

I agree with your basic idea, that many of the questions are not that helpful for actual multiplayer games. My goal was to come up with some questions about all the recruitable multiplayer units that had objective answers. So I tried not to ask questions that might be disputable, even if most experts would agree on the answers the majority of the time (e.g. if playing Knalgans, would you prefer having five Thunderers or six Poachers—I suspect it’s “it depends,” but even here I’m not sure about the generally “correct” answer!). Unfortunately, that meant I didn’t ask about practical situations more likely to come up.

I’ll definitely edit the questions to fix some of the issues you noted. Most of the questions were just meant to test knowledge of different factors defining each unit, like cost in Q5 or damage, TOD and resistances in G7. So yes, they’re impractical, but I believe might still help a beginner like me think about what makes some units better counters than others. That’s interesting about multiplayer often being played on 60% experience multiplier, thanks for the tip. And you’re spot on that dexterous Elvish Archer is the best of the ranged in Q5 (though to my defense, the question was asking about the worst).

May the wind be always at the back of Ardonna’s bat.

[Jarom]

I've reviewed the corrected questions. 1-6 and 10 are fine now.

Q7 although correct, needs a large amount of calculations, because the answer is not obvious and requires detailed knowledge about exact resistance values. It makes it worthless as quiz question (nobody will bother), as multiplayer question (those are not all possible in a single turn as alternative choices) and as beginner question (rarely anybody except experts know exact resistance values by heart, because they are easy to check). You could improve this question a lot by placing the same unit (eg. Dwarvish Guardsman) on one side, with different enemies and TODs, but you might also consider a completely different question instead.

Q8 and Q9 simply have too few of a difference to be significant. Pick units that actually have visibly different XP/HP values, or ask about increase in main attack's base damage on advancement because that's much easier to remember. For example, beginners should remember that advancing an orcish grunt is much easier than advancing a human mage - 12xp difference with 100% modifier (though harder than orcish archer - also 12xp difference), but they don't care about Augur's 28 vs Poacher's 29 exp for level up.

[stencil]

Thanks again for your suggestions, @Jarom. I agree with your opinions, so I adapted Q9 into Q7, changed Q8, came up with a new Q9, and made the old Q7 a bonus.

I'll be glad to hear if other people also have thoughts about additional good, objective questions for beginners to multiplayer. Thanks!