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?