Please Help! Undead Merchant or Cleric

[yogi_bear]

i can't decide which to take. i did fairly good on undead cleric last age and they have increased the bonus for cleric but looking at merchant, the spec credits and building credits are really good, aside form ToG. in a warring kingdom and for a UD province that attacks almost everyday. which one is better? thanks

[claritinclear]

Cleric. No matter how much money you make it's better to keep your assets than losing and retraining which takes both gc and time. If you're going to be attacking every day you don't want to waste time recovering from attacks when you could be building up

[Bukharistan]

Cleric is a huge waste on UDs. You already have -75% offensive losses, so the -50% will only save you 12.5% offensive losses --> from nearly nothing to absolutely nearly nothing. Your troops are cheap to retrain that's another reason to not take cleric. For UD I can recommend tactician --> allows you co cut rax and run lower WTs, OR it allows you to attack every 8-9 hours if you have activity :)

[Uhm hoi]

If I ever war an undead merchant this age, he gets fireballed first, put explosions on him and I'd just let him get fat. You dont get your soldiers to use the credits, you dont get any meaningful tog and near the end of the war, any land you took can be farmed back easily. Undead does not have access to kidnap to fix any of that. Imo, merchant and war hero are the worst persona's for an undead.

So if the choice is between ud merch and ud cleric, I'd go with the cleric.

EDIT: I agree with bukharistan, but the choice was cleric or merchant and cleric is the least useless of the 2.

[yogi_bear]

how bout the defensive loses for clerics, isn't that worth taking?

[madtyres]

I would just deep chain an undead cleric so his sustainability is useless. undead merchant is decent (but dont count on ToG in war cos you will get fb-ed by any decent kd and probably wont have credits to train anyway). I still would go for undead tact - tact is a really awesome pick for UD because they can only do intel ops anyway so there isn't much point in getting good tpa (and the CS helps to offset that). -20% attack time is ofc sick for an attacker as well

[madtyres]

how bout the defensive loses for clerics, isn't that worth taking?

if you want to pick cleric I think Orc will be awesome with it

[noobium]

None of the above.
If you have to pick one though, pick Cleric. Undead cannot Merchant. You're way, way better off picking Warrior or Tactician though, and arguably better picking Mystic in some kingdoms.

[yogi_bear]

noobium, any reason why should i not pick merchant?

[Uhm hoi]

Because anyone with a somewhat decent wpa can take away the entire persona bonus in the first tick of war without you getting any chance to recover from it.

[Milkman]

ToG outcome is decided by your income. You need to have lots of peasants aka lower draftrate to get meaningfull results. Additional spec credits would be nice if you can use them directly or could be stockpiled for next war wich is no longer an option.

Cleric only saves around 10% of your land that would have otherwise be spend in hospitals. Not really worth it if you see what you get for bonuses from Tact. No thieflosses, -20% attack times and -25% succesful thief ops is a lot better in my opinion.

[tiggis]

noobium, any reason why should i not pick merchant?

I can give you one.
It does not synergy with Undead as well as either Warrior, Tact or even Rogue.

Warrior adds to your already massive offense (+10ME, +1 Gen, +bloodlust)
Tact decreases attack times (which means more elites) + CS which is massive spell.
Rogue removes your worst penalty and allows you to kidnap which is huge for Undead.

Merchant gives you TOG (you should not have economy problems), Extra Land credits, and extra Specs credits - Once again you should not have money problems.

Undeads issues are not economy but sustainability of their peasants.

[Bishop]

Cleric. No matter how much money you make it's better to keep your assets than losing and retraining which takes both gc and time. If you're going to be attacking every day you don't want to waste time recovering from attacks when you could be building up

Completely correct

Cleric is a huge waste on UDs. You already have -75% offensive losses, so the -50% will only save you 12.5% offensive losses --> from nearly nothing to absolutely nearly nothing. Your troops are cheap to retrain that's another reason to not take cleric. For UD I can recommend tactician --> allows you co cut rax and run lower WTs, OR it allows you to attack every 8-9 hours if you have activity :)

Completely incorrect. Cleric significantly beats tactician.

[yogi_bear]

thanks, ill pick cleric again

[StratOcastle]

how bout the defensive loses for clerics, isn't that worth taking?

It is the way I play them.
They say you deep chain undead cleric but this comes at a price.
This type of recommendation is based in what these guys are use to seeing, not unique strats.
Besides, we know this is what they want to do right? So I strat for it.

There's always great misunderstanding here and I've even gotten called 'greedy', but this just shows the narrow vision some players have of the array of options. If you haven't seen it personally don't jump to negative conclusions my friends.

Generally speaking, in war my provinces are the most hit without dspecs release regardless of personality. To clarify, I almost exclusively cover heavy attacker to hybrid, from elf to undead. This doesn't mean I'm a superior player, but that I'm intimate about my approach to kingdom and responsibility. I strat for my activity and I don't turtle, I tank.

Playing cleric to full strength is to understand durability. Most guys, no offense, are warped by offensive prowess. - if you immediately think I'm turtling then refer to the previous paragraph^. if your building your cleric like you build your warrior you're probably going to have muted results. I'm a style guy at heart. I can tell you I had my best results with orc cleric, but I prefer undead for more than numerical reasons.

The proof of a strat in a challenging environment isn't just the hit to survival ratio I mention above; how many times the enemy wants to recruit you after war is the gold standard.