Faery: elites overused?

So this age I have been assuming as a faery one would want their army to be almost entirely elites(with the exception of those specs necessary for dragon killing)

This assumption was based on the fact that as faeries have that -10% pop, having a smaller portion of your population directed towards your military, the better. The .71 extra units/acre necessary inorder to maintain the same dpa as an all elite army seemed pretty significant for one wanting to get a respectable wpa/tpa(lets say 5 each) and an economy that could actually be of use in war.

However, if we start looking at defense/nw, then this becomes a tad bit complicated. Faery's elite, while 7 def, is also 7 nw. Unlike the races with higher attribute elites (such as orc and undead at 9/6.75), or races with lower nw elites(halfling), faery is by far the lower use/nw. This is especially true since it is so rare for anyone to be using the offense of their elites except in rare occassions(such as end of chain, before wd, or if you are a *gasp* attacking faery).

This ratio of "use"/nw is the same as the dspec--both being 1:1

So, would it be better to just be a little bigger, and maintain the same defense/nw as you would with an all elite army? 2 probblems i can think of are that OOW, people will see your nwa/acre as lower and have a higher chance of SoT'ing you. More importantly, you would be using more soldiers/acre reducing from your ability to have higher economy, TPA, and WPA. Seeing as that -10% is still there, this might be a big enough reason to keep it high elites.

However, specs are pretty usefull for dragons, and(to put it lightly) 350 gc is a far small number than 900gc, allowing you to either have a build thats not as economy heavy OOW for things like wizard pumps, or to help pump the attackers.

Also, slightly unrelated, but does the .8nw for offensive specs make an attacking faery more appealing?

If, OOW, you can't ToG yourself to pure elite defense, something is very wrong, or I'm gonna be really impressed when I see your 10 wars in an age. It should seriously only take 2-3 days to ToG to pure elite unless something nasty happened to you in the previous war.

In war, of course you consider, and probably build, specs instead of elites. Though you may build neither if TPA was the weak point coming in and you start (and stay) unbreakable, or some such.


Re: .8 NW/OP vs. 1 NW/DP - this makes *every* race attractive for attacking. The bad space efficiency on offense makes faery unattractive, and the pop malus makes them very unattractive. Double wammy, and static defense to boot.

That said... if you've got Fog, why keep defense? Use fanat, use (a few) of those elites, go ahead and hit big. If they chain... they've chained into a Fog. If they don't... keep those elites home, and your a sucky, but bigger, attacker still. Or repeat big attack till you finally decide to "lock in" your gains by keeping as much def as you have home. If unbreakable, you've won. (As happened in my current war.)

Faery attacker requires being more aggressive, and more willing to take risks, than most races. But it often will almost *force* a counter, which lets you plan around the required counter. (Or the kingdom will miss it, and that's even worse cause you get the perfect unbreakable.) A good player can make it work at anything other than top levels. I believe any top kingdom with the guts to try it as their attacking core would also rip other kingdoms to bits with NM chains and the like... but that's a different analysis.

To be clear though - no matter what, the Faery is a weaker attacker than every other race. The question is whether the intangibles can be made to outweight the straight attacking power. For most players they can't, even if in theory they did. Aka, don't try it at home, kids.

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Originally Posted by Topsy

This assumption was based on the fact that as faeries have that -10% pop, having a smaller portion of your population directed towards your military, the better. The .71 extra units/acre necessary inorder to maintain the same dpa as an all elite army seemed pretty significant for one wanting to get a respectable wpa/tpa(lets say 5 each) and an economy that could actually be of use in war.

However, if we start looking at defense/nw, then this becomes a tad bit complicated. Faery's elite, while 7 def, is also 7 nw. Unlike the races with higher attribute elites (such as orc and undead at 9/6.75), or races with lower nw elites(halfling), faery is by far the lower use/nw. This is especially true since it is so rare for anyone to be using the offense of their elites except in rare occassions(such as end of chain, before wd, or if you are a *gasp* attacking faery).

This ratio of "use"/nw is the same as the dspec--both being 1:1

So, would it be better to just be a little bigger, and maintain the same defense/nw as you would with an all elite army? 2 probblems i can think of are that OOW, people will see your nwa/acre as lower and have a higher chance of SoT'ing you. More importantly, you would be using more soldiers/acre reducing from your ability to have higher economy, TPA, and WPA. Seeing as that -10% is still there, this might be a big enough reason to keep it high elites.

However, specs are pretty usefull for dragons, and(to put it lightly) 350 gc is a far small number than 900gc, allowing you to either have a build thats not as economy heavy OOW for things like wizard pumps, or to help pump the attackers.

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Your analysis of elite defense vs. spec defense omits a very large factor: opportunity costs. Elites are 40% more effective than specs for Faery. To get the same DPA, you're having to sacrifice 40% more troops than you would have with the elites. Where are you cutting from? Thieves? Wizards? Peasants? Those are all key parts of a T/M province (which would be what the majority of Faeries run, exceptions are the few special people like Ethan ;) (No offense meant))

Your "use"/NW does not factor in that, and is in fact very flawed. For example, for 70 raw DPA, you need 10 EPA but 14 DS/A. That 4 extra troops/acre would cost an additional 4NW/A if taken solely from TPA and/or WPA or 16NW/A more if taken solely from peasantry to attain. Thus your range for additional NW/A for the DS defense is 4-16NW/A.

So, while the Faery elite and defense specialist are the same defense/NW when only considering the NW of the defensive units, the elite is actually more NW efficient when trying to get the same DPA because you don't have to sacrifice the lower NW units (peasants = 1NW, and Thieves/Wizards = 4NW) for the higher NW specs(DS = 5NW.)

P.S. I hope that that is at least mildly coherent... I'm about to fall asleep on my laptop, so I would not be very surprised that when i read this in the morning that it makes little to no sense even to me.
P.P.S. Roll Tide

hmm, yeah ive been lookin back at what I was originally thinking...might have been overthinking it--7>5.

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Originally Posted by Ordray

Your analysis of elite defense vs. spec defense omits a very large factor: opportunity costs. Elites are 40% more effective than specs for Faery. To get the same DPA, you're having to sacrifice 40% more troops than you would have with the elites. Where are you cutting from? Thieves? Wizards? Peasants? Those are all key parts of a T/M province (which would be what the majority of Faeries run, exceptions are the few special people like Ethan ;) (No offense meant))

Your "use"/NW does not factor in that, and is in fact very flawed. For example, for 70 raw DPA, you need 10 EPA but 14 DS/A. That 4 extra troops/acre would cost an additional 4NW/A if taken solely from TPA and/or WPA or 16NW/A more if taken solely from peasantry to attain. Thus your range for additional NW/A for the DS defense is 4-16NW/A.

So, while the Faery elite and defense specialist are the same defense/NW when only considering the NW of the defensive units, the elite is actually more NW efficient when trying to get the same DPA because you don't have to sacrifice the lower NW units (peasants = 1NW, and Thieves/Wizards = 4NW) for the higher NW specs(DS = 5NW.)

P.S. I hope that that is at least mildly coherent... I'm about to fall asleep on my laptop, so I would not be very surprised that when i read this in the morning that it makes little to no sense even to me.
P.P.S. Roll Tide

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BIG win for the crimson tide this weekend!

"Also, slightly unrelated, but does the .8nw for offensive specs make an attacking faery more appealing?"

no. I attacked with my elites when I attacked in war. was just fine.

on the other hand, you said that 20 mod wpa was hard as faery. :)

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Originally Posted by DDodge

BIG win for the crimson tide this weekend!

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Indeed :D Hate that Florida's QB got hurt; hope that it's not serious, but I think that as long as Bama can best LSU in November, then we'll be looking at another National Championship game (and hopefully title :) )

faery is overpowered.

Im the best faery in Utopia, PM for advice.