Unencumbered by helm or heavy armor, Archers are keen of eye and fleet of foot. Descendants of the elder race of Lordaeron, these sylvan woodsmen are unmatched in their use of the bow. Out of the mysterious forests of Quel'thalas come the Elven Archers to aid the Alliance in its darkest hour.Downtrodden, the Orc Peons slave thanklessly to please their masters. Their labor is also required for the construction and maintenance of buildings necessary to support the vast undertakings of the Horde. Inferior in all skills of import, these dogs are relegated to menial tasks such as harvesting lumber and mining gold.
The Low and High attack values shown in a unit's infobox within the game are calculated using the above formula, with the Low value assuming a half damage attack against a target Armor of 15, and the High value a full damage attack against no Armor. The target's Armor is then subtracted from the (half or full) Basic value, with a minimum result of zero the (half or full) Piercing value is then added to the result to get the target's HP loss from the attack. When an attack is made, the game randomly decides whether it will deal half or full damage. These tables show the internal Basic and Piercing Damage values used in the Warcraft II map editor. The other non-cosmetic difference is that Elven Rangers can learn the Marksmanship ability (so that they deal more damage) whereas their counterparts, Troll Berserkers, can acquire Regeneration (which slowly heals their wounds). While Mages are better than Death Knights (the Polymorph spell is extremely effective if used correctly, which can destroy entire armies in an instant), though some disagree on one count or both.
It is often argued that the Ogre-Magi have better spells than Paladins (the Bloodlust spell used on a large number of Ogre-Magi is very devastating, and makes people easily favor orcs, especially if they favor rush tactics), though paladins are slightly faster and can heal each other or other units, which allows for an alliance army to be brought back to fighting condition in an instant (provided the paladins have magic and the controlling player has good micro), they also hard counter death knights. The units stats are virtually identical, the only real differences can be found in the spells used by Paladins / Ogre-Magi and Mages / Death Knights. They are all trained at different structures and are fairly similar on either the Human or Orc faction. Warcraft II Units are composed of three main types: land, naval and air units.