Converting an elf/mystic to an attacker

[darknessborn]

Due to few big attackers in my prov, I am having to convert to an A/m and coming into war I was hoping to get your advice on this build strat. First Ill post my stats, then the planned changes.

Personality & Race: The Mystic, Elf
Land: 1,615 Acres
Money: 313,876gc (42,710gc daily income)
Food: 74,080 bushels
Runes: 62,086 runes
Population: 42,609 citizens (26.38 per Acre)
Peasants: 14,119 (80% Building Efficiency)
Trade Balance: -122,387gc (0% tax rate)

Military Eff. with Stance: 125.16% off. / 124.03% def.
Soldiers: 0 (59.4% estimated draft rate)
Rangers: 0
Archers: 8,082 (50,120 defense)
Elf Lords: 14,234 (89,079 offense / 52,963 defense)
War-Horses: 0
Prisoners: 0

Total Modified Offense: 89,079 (55.16 per Acre)
Practical (80% elites): 71,262 (44.13 per Acre)
Total Modified Defense: 103,083 (63.83 per Acre)
Practical (20% elites): 60,713 (37.59 per Acre)

Thieves: 3,003 (1.86 per Acre / 100% Stealth)
Wizards: 3,171 (1.96 per Acre / 100% Mana)

sciences

Alchemy 79,990 49.529 +9.9% Income
Tools 14,795 9.161 +3.0% Building Effectiveness
Housing 56,217 34.809 +3.8% Population Limits
Food 89,655 55.514 +59.6% Food Production
Military 42,024 26.021 +7.1% Gains in Combat
Crime 0 0 +0.0% Thievery Effectiveness
Channeling 43,801 27.121 +31.2% Magic Effectiveness & Rune Production


current

1. Homes: 61 (3.8%)
2. Farms: 93 (5.8%)
3. Banks: 329 (20.4%)
4. Training Grounds: 247 (15.3%)
5. Armouries: 283 (17.5%)
6. Forts: 264 (16.3%)
7. Guilds: 109 (6.7%)
8. Towers: 64 (4%)
9. Watch Towers: 160 (9.9%)


planned

7% farms
10% banks
15% TG
12% forts
10% GS
10% hosp
10% guilds
8% towers
10% WT
8% stables


This is the best I can think of, an amalgamation of strats I've seen. Do I want to go all in forts or GS, not mix? stables or dungeons? zero homes? should I have rax? Lower my towers? Really could use advice on this stuff. Not sure what to do for war-time.

[crease]

ur gonna want 13 guilds and 12-15 towers to be casting ms with ur mana. on the topic of gs and forts, it can be worthwhile having both at start of war if you are a big province in the kd and aim to be ub. build more forts in war to get the job done quicker.

you will need some barracks to get 2x on the first day of war if your schedule is tight, 5% is sufficient, no need to rebuild these.probably only worth running 10 tgs after that stables are more efficient, so dont use more than 10 forts aswell. that should provide the extra space for guilds/towers/rax.

[darknessborn]

What about being an attacker? Focusing on the big "A" less so they're little m

[crease]

theres no point in sacrificing a capital m on an elf mystic, its so well setup for the role that it requires almost no extra investment (3% more guilds and 5% more towers) theres not much you can do to make an elf a strong A this age and ur prov looks fine.

its worth noting that you should invest a little more into tools science, its best to keep the number just above housing imo, still requires less than half the books compared to housing

[TheNemesis]

crease is right as an ELF/MYSTIC u would want to take advantage of those M skills A/M can work but definately dont drop the M :)

[Zobo]

I'm an elf A/M myself and I love hybrids in general. You're making the right choice, since the only T/M race is Faery.

Here's something you need though:
13% guilds for max duration. 15% towers, or 10% towers and a small stockpile (build more towers if war progresses past mintime).
10-15% Barracks. You simply aren't an attacker without at least 2 uniques a day. Sorry.

Here's some things I'd recommend (TL;DR, run stables over TGs):
Drop the banks until you have the opportunity to be unbreakable (hybrids often are left alone early stages of war, and Elf has a great opportunity with cheap dspecs to quickly become an unbreakable target).

Run max stables (1:1 horsie:elite, or near to it). Running max stables will give you a 20% increase to elite offense and a 25% increase to ospec offense. This bonus is again capitalized with OME modifiers from wages/honor/TGs. Never run TGs unless you're at least 10% stables or max stables. For my Elite:Dspec rates, I typically favor 15% stables for 1:1. You simply can't get the offensive bonus from TGs using comparable land. And ignore those "but your networth goes up" or "but you gotta have all that land for stables" naysayers. High NW is good in war, and as long as you maintain army in/army out, you don't have to build anymore stables for the duration of the war (in fact you could raze them all and still keep your horses!). Plus as your army shrinks from NS-es and casualties, the amount of horses naturally declines as well (my last war I put on 750 acres, went UB and only needed 6% stables to maintain my offense; I was only training dspecs and thieves, and using a low draft rate to be able to aid out 100k+ per tick). If you feel you need more Offense during war, just build in TGs (you're not building Stables anyways during war), otherwise that 15% Stables can slowly transition to... anything!

I actually haven't touched TGs, because I lack the room at the moment (my KD runs a Sage hybrid core).

Lose the forts. Your offense should be larger than your defense, and thus, offensive modifiers are more important. You can consider putting them in if you're going for UB, but only if the opportunity presents itself.


Here's my recommended build for our Elf/Mystics (what I was going to run as well, before we swapped to mostly Sages):
8% Farms
12% Rax
12% Hosps
12% GS
13% Guilds
15% Towers
10% WTs
15% Stables
3% Dungeons

[nooblet]

Only mix forts+gs if you know for certain you'll be a chain target, and most of your kingdom also uses guardstations.

There are a few general variants...

v1: Higher defense than most heavy attackers, with about as much mod offense at start of war as mod defense with all armies out. Errs slightly on the side of training more raw offense if you have both good forts and training grounds. Make sure you have good guilds and towers, and preferably good watchtowers.

v2: A lot of elites per acre. As they train troops in war, train up defense as fast as possible. This is more like a heavy attacker, but can use some defensive, economic, and magic-enhancing buildings while keeping a portion of elites home during war. The result is that your Elf will hopefully not be chained, and as they gain acres and defense they will have enough offense to keep hitting in a long war. It might also be useful to use barracks to get faster attack times instead of using defensive buildings, but you still should have magic-enhancing buildings.

v3: Run a heavy attacker setup with no forts, lots of buildings to mod offense, and only standard levels of guilds+towers at start of war. Elf isn't Orc or Undead, but their armies are strong enough to function as decent attackers. As the war drags on the elf will build what they need to transition to whatever role is most useful. This is good if you already have decent wpa and can obtain runes to spam spells through theft+aid, until you gain acres and build a large chunk of towers.

v4: Forget about offensive mods and stables, and use essentially a t/m build with enough elites per acre to hit heavy attackers. Much less offensive potential, but this variant lets you train up good thieves and use them both for defense and offense.

Mystics generally go for v1 or v4, while v2 and v3 are more useful for non-Mystics or kingdoms that run a lot of elves.

Since I haven't played Elf I can stfu, but I did note Elves last age and some of the pratfalls they experience.

[AceOfFrag]

As a a/M in the same situation I went during our last war from 900 to 1400 acres (not a real threat so letting me take and keep acres ruined my wpa/tpa- AW later in war was horrible) I feel your pain, and went from 10.5 mwpa to 3.5 mwpa w/ MF. I had to decide whether or not after war to convert to A/m- if I was going to do that I think I would have gone dwarf mystic. As it is with people sometimes draggin out hostiles and not wanting to give the button- I do so much damage (3 of us are able to 24hr coverage on MS as soon as unfriendly hits). It doesn't seem worth it to the kingdom, to lose the M in a 12 hour hostile- I turtle during hostile 16-20 MS and for example last war I added about 650K runes lost on thier part to LS- I hit thier big faes(2) and 1 of thier elves.

during war start:
homes 10-0 sliding down as i grow/acres taken back
farms 7
tg 15
banks 10- elf economy sucks
hospitals 10
guilds 8
towers 20-10, sliding down as i grow
WT-9
dungeon-1= chances are you will be following chains 1.5 dungeons are about teh most i consistently fill.
stables 10 sliding to 0 as I grow=if you have the gc, the best plan is to send them out, raze to GS or armouries, we are usually on our second -dragon by that time, 1 funded in hostile, second starts funding after war declaration. So usually no extra gc.(actually same goes for homes- again a gc issue, keeping to much makes you a plunder target for the really large kingdoms.)

As homes, stables, towers are lost to attacks I am building back to the other numbers and adding armouries (if the other kingdom is chaining and it looks like i will end up + acres, if they are max gaining, i will go for GS/hospitals).

i keep it simple with build to's you may have 10-20% land unbuilt at any time.
Post war I am running 45% guilds 25% banks 15% armouries 7% farms, 8% towers in EOW/CF, in 4 days there is more than enough gc to rebuild, if you lose your war, you just go fortified until people are ready. then convert back war start mode so you are always ready for he next hostile (stay static/turtle- the only acres i have explored were my 100 in protection, no LL either, growing is bad)