WHEN TO COMMIT OR SWITCH BUILDS IN DOTA UNDERLORDS

When playing a game of Underlords, you have a lot of decisions to make. You get five different units every turn, you're building Alliances, choosing items... You may know that certain units are strong in the meta, or you see all your opponents going for the same units, or you may just have a favorite strategy that you prefer. How do you make sense of all of these options and information in order to decide on a strategy, and how do you know when it is time to ditch a certain plan?

There are four main categories of considerations when making this decision.:

1) Quantity and quality of your units/items

2) The current meta

3) Your opponent’s strategies

4) Timing

Before we get into those, lets first discuss how each unit or item that you pick pulls you towards different compositions, and push you away from others.

Every unit in the game has a set of strategies or builds that it goes into, or is a good fit while building that strategy, even if it eventually gets replaced. When you buy a unit you are naturally drawn toward those strategies that it fits into, and away from the ones that it does not work well with.

Take Tiny for example, Tiny fits into a variety of compositions:

- Warriors obviously can use Tiny to great effect in the early and mid game, although he is sometimes replaced in the late game in 3 or 6 Warrior builds.

- He also goes well into various 4 Primoridal builds based around Arc Warden, since he is a great frontliner in those situations.

- And he even can fit into some Mage compositions in the early and mid game, since Primordial pairs well with Razor or Morphling in Mages, and is once again a frontliner in a build that needs it.

On the other hand, he pulls you away from certain builds:

- Knights, who already have strong frontliners like Abaddon and Omniknight. They generally do not run other Primordials and pairing Knights and Warriors is not very good, since then you would lack damage output.

- He similarly does not fit well into Elusive builds, who have plenty of defensive capabilities already, and do not need the extra frontliner.

All other units also have some builds that they work well into, and some that they do not work well with. It is key to identify what direction you are being pulled towards by each unit that you buy.

Each of these pulls add up, and when you assemble a large quantity of units pulling you in the same direction, the decision becomes very easy. But more often than not, you will have some units pulling you one way, and another set of units pulling you in the opposite direction.

Take this example, where we have 7 Warriors to only 5 Knights.

- 7 Warriors = 2x Axe, 2x Tusk, 1x Juggernaut, 1x Pudge, 1x Tiny

- 5 Knights = 3x Batrider, 1x Chaos Knight, 1x Luna

In this example, we have slightly more Warriors than we have Knights. So if we go just by quantity, it looks like we should be tending towards playing more Warriors, and looking to drop the Knights soon. These two strategies do not really pair well together, as discussed above.

But there is a key difference: We have a 2* Batrider, but no 2* warrior. This makes just a pure quantity calculation difficult!

How highly do you value a 2* unit compared to a bunch of pairs of units? Is it worth 4 units, or 5, or more? It is hard to say, and there is no hard and fast rule for this. In cases like this, we look at the quality of units.

Consider these points:

- Not every unit pulls equally as strong.

- Often times, the more expensive a unit is, the stronger it pulls you in its direction. That is because you have more gold invested in it, but also because it typically a stronger unit.

- In most cases, a 3-cost unit is stronger than a 2-cost unit, which is stronger than a 1-cost unit.

Upgrading a unit to 2* has a similar effect, and should be treated as more than just the sum of its parts.

That makes the above example actually very close, despite the higher quantity of Warriors, Knights have higher quality.

Some units are very high quality, most often the 3 and 4-cost units, which are rarer than the 1 and 2 cost in the early game. These are often called “key units” in their respective compositions. They are the highest quality units which are very strong on their own, and which are a huge draw towards particular strategies, especially if you get them to 2-star. These key units are always changing, based on balance patches, or meta shifts, so a definitive list of them is hard to pin down.

What is strong in the meta is also a consideration, but secondary to the actual units you are offered. Tierlists, like the ones here on QIHL, help you to determine the relative quality of various units. Units high on the tierlist should not just be picked more often than ones lower on the list, but they should have a stronger pull towards strategies that use them the best, compared to lower tier units.

Other meta information, like our Guides to the Top 5 Builds, should be used to bias you towards specific builds. They essentially lower the bar for what it takes to commit to that strategy.

Hypothetically, let’s say Assassins are very strong in the meta, and Hunters are very weak.

- We have only 5 Assassins, but 7 Hunters, assuming equal quality.

- Without meta considerations, we may be tempted to go Hunters, but the difference in quantity and quality is fairly low, so maybe we possibly more inclined to go Assassins instead, despite having slightly less at the moment.

That is not to say we could not ever go Hunters. Perhaps the next round we find 3 more Hunters. Then the quantity, and possibly quality, goes dramatically in favor of Hunters, which can outweigh their weaker position in the meta. Even the weakest strategy is playable. If you get enough of them, they just have a higher bar to clear if you really want to commit to them over stronger strategies.

This is an area in which I think many players overreact. They start out with a strong Knights start, then they see 2 or 3 other players also starting with Knights, and they get scared off because they do not want to compete. It is true that there is a shared unit pool in Dota Underlords, and the more opponents buy units that you want, the less likely you are to find them.

But it is also true that the effect is relatively small, because at least for the early game pieces, the unit pool is very large. In fact, the difference in odds between only you searching for a unit and three more players also buying it, isn't so huge that it suddenly becomes impossible to find the unit. Where it starts to really matter is in the late game, where 4 and 5 cost units have lower chances to drop to begin with.

Instead, you should use what your opponents are building as more of a tie-breaker when you are debating between two relatively equal strategies. If you have similar quantity and quality, and they are in a similar meta position, then going for the less contested strategy will often yield better results.

The final consideration is timing, when to make the decision to commit to a strategy. Every game is different, and when you get enough of a signal can vary wildly, from the opening few rounds, to as late as round 20. In some cases, it may be you bench space that determines when you need to make a decision. If you want to buy so many units for two competing strategies, but you do not have bench space for both, that is when you need to decide.

Here's a rough guideline of how you should generally time your decisions:

-

Rounds 1-10:

Gather a variety of units and see what directions emerge. The round 10 item may pull you in a certain direction (Summoning Stone pulling to Primordials or Savages)

-

Rounds 11-15:

Narrow it down to a few options, or even fully commit if you have a strong pull in a certain direction

-

Rounds 16-20:

You REALLY need to make a decision if you haven't already. The game is getting late and many players will have fully-functional 8-unit builds. You don't want to be left behind.

As the rounds get later and later, making a fully committed decision to a composition becomes more important. You waste potential gold in the form of interest by holding onto excess units, and you also clog up your bench, possibly limiting your options of what to buy. The bar lowers in these later rounds, as you need to make a choice and stick with it. It is often better to fully commit to anything, even a possibly weaker strategy, rather than be indecisive and fail to get anything together.

When and how to make a decision about a certain strategy or composition is very difficult, and depends on a lot of factors. There aren't any definitive rules on how to balance your quantity of units vs. their quality, or how strongly you should factor in meta considerations. This comes with experience, and improving as a player will include a better understanding of how to weigh these factors against one another. This guide is a framework to help you navigate these tough decisions, but actually making them, is up to you!

Let me know your thoughts on this guide.

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