Elf Mystic A/M Build?

[jobi912]

Hey guys,

Was wondering what a good strategy for an Elf Mystic A/M would be and some follow up questions.

Whats a good OOW and War building structure look like?
What are some key things to keep in mind when running an Elf Mystic A/M?
What DPA and OPA should I aim for?
Is it possible to run an effective a/t/m?

Thanks in advance for any input!

[Andurilas]

Even more than usual, this one depends on context. Elf mystics are vulnerable to thievery, which can take out your defense and wizards quite easily. Depending on your kingdom setup, you may need to run high tpa or keep elites home for defense in order to avoid being nucked. On the flip side, you'll likely be a lesser threat than the heavies and the enemy may not pay you much mind. But then: it's easy to be less useful and get left alone, but what's the point?

[Andurilas]

In most war settings I'd run like 25% WTs on an elf mystic, whether hybrid or tm.

[noobium]

it's important for elf/mystic to have good science, and to do that they need to work at it oow.

i'd probably look at something like the following once pumped:

30% homes
5% farms
10% guilds
15% towers
15% forts
25% watchtowers

outside of war, swap most towers, all watchtowers, and some forts for econ buildings. You should have about 40% land to work with. If you're in normal stance, that will likely be banks+schools.

while you need good wpa, you should probably get decent science before going hog-wild with guilds, otherwise the wpa makes it harder to sci-pump.

optional - swap some homes or wt for 5-10% stables. that way, it's easier to attain the raw offense to break targets in war.

forts can be variable, sometimes you'd want 25% for the DME, but you could just as well build none and risk getting hit. good kingdoms will make hitting elf a priority though.

you would want around 8 elites/acre, good for 40-48 raw opa. that gives your prov an offense that can theoretically send out against attackers.

once you get incoming acres, you'd likely want to build some banks. you can build banks from the outset but prob no more than 10%, and early war you will probably need the defensive and military builds.

in war, you can flip out the homes for other stuff in a pinch, or flip out homes for anything you need pre-war. the 30% homes is useful for economic purposes, and for keeping adequate defense. it also means populating your new acres faster.

if you have sufficient rune stockpiles to last 24-48 hours and know you can get incoming acres, consider dropping towers, and build them on your incoming.

sometimes you can and should expose yourself to hits in order to win a war.

you'd probably want to have more than a few mystics, that way you can take more risks when the elves and not be totally killed. if you only have 2-3 mystics and no backup, you have to be really cautious about not getting broken, which limits your options.

there is little difference between "a/m" and "t/m", except that a t/m would probably have less epa and wouldn't bother with stables.

you can play elf/mystic with higher epa and an offensive focus, but it's a lot riskier, and it's hard to be a convincing core attacker. you can, however, do a good job of scooping up acres in war, and if you are ignored by attackers you're in pretty good shape. doing something like this is helpful early age, as if it succeeds you'll score tons of honor. i like doing this with something like elf/sage or elf/warhero, but it works for any elf. you do have to be one of the smaller provs in the kingdom though, and there is the risk of being flattened by massacre if you're not careful; so you would need to have bigger provs in your kingdom that would be higher attack priorities, and usually have to fight kingdoms that don't allocate hits efficiently.

[asdfghy]

I would recommend Elf/WH for A/M.

Science is the key --a/t/m would probably require SAGE to run it well.
For war build, I would go way less homes and WTs & add in TG/Stables.

[Persain]

i liked my Elf Mystic A/M 2 ages ago. I basically did the EXACT OPPOSITE of what noobium suggests and managed to whore some nice honor/kill some dragons/bank the **** outa my kd as a mid tier attacker lol.

So back then they had a similar -defensive losses so i took that as a que to overbuild offense and usually ran 10-15 EPA with ZERO hospitals.

I tending to start wars with HIGH banks/homes in addition to some initial stables. I usualy entered war on no towers nor WT but a nice rune stock/gold stock and then razed my stables for towers. I positioned myself just below mid size in a kd so as war progressed i could use my first incoming wave to build 15% WT then my next wave of incoming land i'd finish my WT to 25% and add in arms. Next waves incoming land would be forts. If i manged to get that built without being hit (remember zero hosptials) i'd of lost a good portion of my offense but be setup to spam dspecs and make "crapy" hits to keep some incoming land but more than likely be close to unbrekable. If nearly or basically unbreakable my job was NM wave down the fat attackers we still needed to chain and MS any targets who could RM on real t/ms (note since i grew so much i had lowered my wpa such that our feary mystics could MV any MS i got from casting)

If i didnt manage to get ub i was probubly hit down and had sent a large portion of my specs at the dragon going pure leet. I could then multitap zero/near zero def targets to regain land while i turtuled the rest of my leets. I also had epic wpa and tened to overbuild towers an MS/fireball out of range targets that had the highest wpa people in the enemy kd.

Worked really well

[noobium]

if you fight bad kingdoms then you really don't need much thief defense. i'm assuming you're fighting kingdoms that are competent enough to target elf, and want to have the best chance of being able to attack, mage, and not get violated every which way. against bad kingdoms you can easily scoop acres and honor, laugh because ghettos don't counter an attacking t/m effectively.

i'm assuming you're fighting kingdoms with the sense not to let that happen, usually later in the age. early age elf can easily a/t/m noobs, but i'm assuming someone faces a vaguely competent kingdom that will notice the long-term threat of letting that elf lock down their acres, and seek to nip that in the bud. i'm basing it on the presumption that i'm a big elf with lots of honor, and want to keep said honor.

[Persain]

if you fight bad kingdoms then you really don't need much thief defense. i'm assuming you're fighting kingdoms that are competent enough to target elf, and want to have the best chance of being able to attack, mage, and not get violated every which way. against bad kingdoms you can easily scoop acres and honor, laugh because ghettos don't counter an attacking t/m effectively.

i'm assuming you're fighting kingdoms with the sense not to let that happen, usually later in the age. early age elf can easily a/t/m noobs, but i'm assuming someone faces a vaguely competent kingdom that will notice the long-term threat of letting that elf lock down their acres, and seek to nip that in the bud. i'm basing it on the presumption that i'm a big elf with lots of honor, and want to keep said honor.

That age we beat LCN out of protection then beat Serendipity directly after leaving eowcf. using the banned target finder i also see The old guard and misfits then some gheto.

With that said you may argue that misfits and the old guard are "bad" but LCN put up a few pretty good ages and we had to fight significantly down against Serendipity which was being lead by Kygal and proteous who are hardly "bad" no matter how much people want to troll them.

Key is to size your prov correctly and force others to apear more of a threat. No one is going to target the elf if you have a bunch of other targets that need to be dealt with such as other bigger elfs or an attacker core that can easily be chained.

edit...and key point in the win against Serendity everyone thought we'd get crushed i was an elf that aided some 3 million gc in a short-ish war (only like a week i wanna say?) to our fearies AND slayed half a dragon. They didnt catch me early because i wasnt training and just sat there with ****ty numbers aiding out and waiting for a dragon. Then again my goal was to win, and you know win. Typically more imporant thatn just trying to whore away some land/honor.

[noobium]

didn't know the particulars... but if you're fighting early age, playing a/m and scooping acres+honor is a common elf strategy for honorwhoring. some growth kingdoms used elf for scooping acres too, like ama. it's a hell of a lot better than playing pure t/m with elf.

i probably should have mentioned it but i already textwall enough.
usually by time i want to play more defensively, my elves would be Count rank or so, or they're one of the biggest provs in kingdom... therefore, easy land and honor scooping is out of the question, and rogues can seriously screw up the elf. while it would be fine if the rest of my kingdom inflated to the elf's size or i landdropped the elf, by mid-age kingdoms are pumped better, both attackers and the rogues that would prop farm an expanding elf. it is thus more likely that an overly exposed elf will be nipped in the bud, or allowed to bloat just enough that they can be ns/propped. it's still a viable way to play elf even later on, but the defensive and big elf is more suitable for a warring kingdom most of the time.