Undead/Converted Unit Priority

[Krexxler]

Heyo~

My first real thread in this forum. And it's a question, woop woop.
So, I'm torn here. On maps with limited units (no portals) and somewhat limited units to make into my own. I'm in quite a pickle.

Is it worth focusing on Skeletons, Ghosts, Vampires or just converting enemy heroes?

When is one more worth over the other?

Which heroes are worth converting, and which are more worth just turning into Skeletons/Fodder for Graveyard?
Are ghosts really that useful outside of research?

And how many bodies does it usually take for a Vampire to spawn?


I do apologize if this has been asked already.

[YourMaster]

It always takes 10 bodies for a vampire. No matter if the body comes from an imp or an avatar.

Ghosts are really weak creatures, usually not worth having. Only flies are worth turning into ghosts, but only if you don't want to sacrifice them in the temple or add a body to the graveyard.

Skeletons are also quite weak creatures, dying quite quickly and only coming more into their own once they reach lvl10. Their biggest advantage is that they are a cheap and easy creature to have and train quickly. A lvl 10 Fairy is much, much more powerful than a lvl 10 Skeleton, but if you capture a lvl 2 fairy you would be able to turn it into a lvl 10 skeleton long before you could train the fairy to lvl 10. Skeletons also take little pay and eat no food, so on maps where you face lots and lots of heroes and you don't have the resources to convert and maintain a large army going for skeletons can be the way to go. If you look at pure potential - and realize you can train thieves into knights - only dwarves, trolls and archers are worth turning into skeletons. Of course always be sure to convert samurai, knights and giants to your cause.

Vampires are an interesting unit, they are really powerful, but also really expensive to keep and to train to a high level, and they don't do that much damage. When you have plenty of gold, the graveyard is basically a broken room as you can kill your own imps or units from the portal to get as many vampires as you want. Sacrifice imps to get the cost down and find an easy way to kill them and you can buy vampires for 1500 gold a piece, train them to lvl 5 or 6 quickly and easily beat any map.

What I generally do though is convert all heroes with the heal spell, plus knights, samurai and giants. The rest I turn into skeletons. Vampires are created from the creatures that I lose or accidentally die. This isn't the 'best', but convenient and most maps are easy enough that I don't need the rest of the heroes/more vampires.

[Krexxler]

Thank you for the reply.
I never really thought about killing my own imps for cheap Vampires. Although that feels too much like a cheat in my eyes. (Though I use the manufacturing exploit for infinite money, but that one at least requires you to train a bunch of minions to a reasonably high level first.)
Are skeletons considered to be on the cheaper end of payday amount? If so, that's really helpful to know.

And yeah, I figured with the Ghosts. I never really realized how bad they were until recently. I just never bothered with them to begin with. Seems like they are more than happy to flee from most fights, which is infuriating. And I mean, for something which is transparent, they are surprisingly easy to kill. I mean, shouldn't metal just "woosh" through them?

Is there something one could change in the Ghosts config file to make them more useful/viable? I mean, they seem like a nice substitute for Warlocks when no portal is availible.

[YourMaster]

You can easily see and sort all creature stats here: http://dungeonkeeper.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Creatures
Skeleton takes as little money as a demon spawn.

But you can modify all your creatures really easily by changing the config files in the creatures subfolder. Giving the ghosts more powerful spells, more health or better stats is sure to make them really powerful, but would you want to? If they are strong it is less rewarding converting creatures. Ghosts function nothing like warlocks now, and by the time you have your torture room most of the important research is already finished. There are many heroes worth converting that are better researchers than ghosts, and also most of the evil creatures can do some research at least, with the Dragon and Mistress being good choices.

If you're problem with them is just with fleeing, that's a design fault in KeeperFX that makes creatures flee when you have retreat enabled. You can modify the fear values in the config file to make this stop, or just download 0.4.6 unofficial.