Ultimate DE strat?

[prankster106]

After a little strat help, I am at a bit of an impasse with prov development ever since they scrapped undead and I have been forced to go for my old fallback the dark elf.

Here's what I'm looking at for a war build (1500 acre dark elf mystic)

Homes 25%
Farms 5%
Banks 10%
Training Grounds 15%
Military Barracks 7%
Forts 18%
Guilds 10%
Thieves Dens 10%

Running 12 elites pa (aprox 18000)
2 raw tpa (about 4.4 mod)
3 raw wpa (6.2 mod)
And the rest into off specs (aprox 5000)

The aim has always been to go A/M with population maxed for highest off/def points (yeah I know all elite gives more total but the 5k of off specs with +1 gives a higher mod off then otherwise possible and cuts down on costs during retraining)

Would appreciate any advice on this one, I am also hoping someone can answer for me: if I have 10% watchtowers it gives me around a 15% chance of catching thieves (run 2 raw tpa), am I better to leave the 10% in thieves dens to bring my mod tpa up to 4.4 or swap to watchtowers for thief def during war?

Thanks

[Avenger]

So many homes? No hospitals and you're attacking with a full leet def?

[VT2]

You have very low realistic offense, and your networth's going to be way too high for you to handle.

10% watchtowers is almost as bad as 0%. If you have actual TPA, which you do, invest those 10% into thieves' dens. This gives you both offensive thievery, as well as defensive.

You have no hospitals. I estimate you'll survive one day, then be rendered useless from attacking, and being attacked.
25% homes is useless.

[VT2]

Also, forts.
You play the weakest defensive race in the game, and you want to increase your pitiful defense. Why?

Get barracks, so you can out-attack people instead.

10% guilds guarantees that your duration-based spells will last a very short time.
In short, you're not A, you're not T, and you're not M.

Stop trying to cover every area, and accept the fact that dark elf has paper for defense.

[dark5863]

10% guilds guarantees that your duration-based spells will last a very short time.

Doesn't 10% guilds yield the max durations for a Mystic? Iirc, it was 20% for nomystics, and hence 10% for mystics.

Edit: 3 raw WPA is low ;o. Aim for at least 4 raw WPA. Lose the watchtowers, put a bit more TPA in and run dens instead. Lose the forts, get hospitals built, I'd say 15%. Don't bother with rax unless you need them to keep up with the rest of your KD. Attack times are better decided on a KD level than individual province level, imo. I wouldn't be able to give you more specific numbers for army/thieves without knowing more about your province, including your honor and the science you are running.

[ThZ]

Homes 15%
Banks 15%
Training Grounds 15%
Military Barracks 15%
15% GS
Farms 5%
Guilds 10%
hosps 10%

discuss. (im definatly no DE expert, imo they stink, but this makes more sense to me)

[prankster106]

@ Avenger

Yeah my thought was to compensate for high troop losses with tog and fast repop, also extra pop was aimed at gaining extra troops.

@ VT2

I have found the defense to be nearly uncrackable, currently 126k with wage at only 100% (science pump), +monarch bonus makes it at least 140 during war. I know exactly what you mean about practical offense tho, the strat I have been using (with a reasonable degree of success) is to pick off over exposed provinces with anonymity or use the off as an opener for the rest of the KD to bring down T/M's, unfortunately mine is still the highest mod off in the KD (even if I cant realistically use it)

Guilds are down from 20% during peace time, still maintaining over 6 mod tpa tho so effective mage. Appreciate the info on thieves dens tho, have never really done anything apart from defend with them prior to working our this build.

[prankster106]

I'm still learning the ropes with serious building planning but I have found guard stations to be pretty ineffective, particularly with dark elves, if you play them to be hit it quickly becomes too difficult to retrain the high cost elites (+30% wage doesn't help) and you wind up being unable to retal. Also the 15% only saves you around 20% of loses on even on a 300 acre attack (pushing it at my size) that's only 60 acres saved which take all of 6 paradise spells to regain, compared with fort that gives 17% def bonus (an extra 20K def points at current build).

Like the rest tho, I picked up somewhere that going big on homes was a clever way to play, from what you guys have posted guessing I was misinformed =P thanks to all for the advice tho.

[prankster106]

@ dark5863

Monarch for the KD
honor aprox 1100 (one heck of a bad war last round)

Sci

** Effects Summary (Known Science Only) **
14.3% Income (158,067 points)
7.7% Building Effectiveness (89,546 points)
5.6% Population Limits (111,566 points)
57.8% Food Production (79,738 points)
8.4% Gains in Combat (54,569 points)
44.7% Thievery Effectiveness (84,715 points)
66.3% Magic Effectiveness & Rune Production (186,175 points)

[dark5863]

We use large numbers of homes on our DE A/Ms. It works well. Some people will tell you it's stupid, some will praise it. Depends on what your goal as a province is, if you ask me. It definitely has it's downsides as well as upsides.

In general, my philosophy towards GS is that its useful only if used as a KDwide tactic. Having 20% GS on 1/2 your provinces just means theres more incentive to hit the other 1/2. There are KD strats that use that sort of thing to force hits toward certain provinces or types of provinces, but in general I don't think they're worth it. As for forts, our KD only builds them on either elves or gnomes, and then too only when it allows us to move from a breakable state to an unbreakable state and when it fits in with the overall KD strategy.

I don't know how organized your KD is, but if possible you should really think of build strats for ALL the provinces, not just your own, and how they fit together. Then force the rest to follow the plan, albeit with their own variations on certain buildings.

[prankster106]

So whats the definitive unbreakable level? I have always used 100dpa as a very basic rule of thumb, 140 mod def for 1.5k acres brings me pretty close to that, but I guess the problem is I wind up being a pure mage unless an opening comes up or it is part of a chain.

[dark5863]

We don't run DE as unbreakables. Like I said, just gnomes or elves.

In my opinion, if you're trying to run DE as unbreakable attackers AS WELL as try to be a mage AS WELL as try to be a thief or defended against thieves, you're going to have a very hard time.

If your primary goal is to not be broken, you may as well run as T/M, only if you have a lot of other provinces in the KD to act as attackers, though. Otherwise, lose the defensive mentality, run less elites and more off specs, run hospitals and contribute to your KD as a strong attacker.

[VT2]

No one is ever unbreakable - especially not this age, with so many avians and orcs running all over the place, and this becomes even harder when you run a silly dark elf, with horrible networth-heavy elites for defense, and try to use them for attack.

Homes are a necessary evil, and only those with fat bonuses to population can use them as direct substitutes for other buildings.
Vines doesn't count, because vines is an idiot. He's also the one who tells people to go '30% or bust.'

You currently don't have the A, the T, or the M to be properly effective in any of them.
Drop one.

[prankster106]

Yeah but where? The T side of things has always just been def, actually using them on weak T provs using thieves dens instead of towers like you said would be an awesome bonus, what about:

Homes 20%
Farms 5%
Banks 10%
Training Grounds 20%
Military Barracks 15%
Forts 10%
Guilds 10%
Thieves Dens 10%

Drop elites to 10pa, should give an extra 3K off specs (8k total)

Stronger offensive focus, still enough def that anyone near my size who cracks me will be virtually suicideing while still maintaining effective mage (maybe boost tpa to 4 raw during pump) and a semi-decent thief defence.

edit* still using quick repop and highish def/income (with tog) to compensate for hospitals, but if that wont work what should I drop for hospitals and at what level?

[VT2]

Let's examine your choices.
You're playing a natural A/M, that comes with absolutely no turtlepower, and has the weakest defense of all the races.
It also has the cheapest offense, and recovers very quickly once war ends.

Now, taking that and attemtping to give it a badass defense is counter-productive.
Trying to go defensive with a dark elf is comparable to trying to go A/T with a dwarf, or A/M with a human. True, all of them can be done, but even then, you'll still get trumphed by the races that were built for those roles, and you'll have to give up your strengths to be passable in an area that's normally a weakness.

Defense works like this.
If people can't double you, you have enough. If they can double you, you need to get more.
Defense doesn't scare people away. When they see your juicy dark elf, they attack you, and it doesn't matter whether they leave 'suicide' defense at home or not, because you can't realistically attack them back, due to lack of barracks, elites used for offense, and all that other stuff.
Now, if you had enough offense to double prospective people right back, and the barracks to outrun them home, they wouldn't ever attack you, except in war, but there you'd still have the advantage.

Forts on dark elf is a waste of space, and loads of home give little actual benefit during wars.
Your defense is going to be paperthin anyway - might as well deal with it, and focus on what you're good at; cheap, effective offense, and magic.

You want training grounds, guilds, and barracks. Everything else is secondary to those three, and fully optional.

When I run A/M, I go for 2 raw TPA, no watchtowers, and no thieves' dens, because even though my weakness will be T, I can still get rid of A/T's stealth with expose thieves, or just butcher them with massacres - or cast clearsight, since I love elf for A/M.
If something comes up, and we need to run more T as a whole, I'll probably throw in some 15% thieves' dens in the middle of a war, but it's not a priority.

You can't run A/T/M now. That died with the old sage.