Elf Tactician

[Turbotron]

Hello,
I am an Elf Tactician, and am also new to the game.
I am wondering what I should be focusing on. I assume I should specialize in M/a or A/m?

What strategy should I set up? So far I am building lots of towers and guilds, and training a lot of soldiers to specialize.

Thanks for hte help

[Bananamancer2000]

With only 1 week left in the age, I would recommend solely focusing on building your millitary and do what hitting you can now. What situation is your kd in? If you have a fight coming up for end of age, just build up for that, otherwise have fun making random hits and stuff :P

[Persain]

Bananamancer is right the age ends in <1 week so your main goal should be focusing on growing land/military and learning how/who to attack. If your new enough to not know "enough" you can also try to learn what each spell does and playing around with the buildings (really need to understand these things to function in most kds).

Its a team game so i'd also post in your kds forum/chat saying "hello" so they know your not there to just mess up whatever they have going on.

As far as elf tact in general. The "best" M/a would have a personality of Mystic or Heretic since they both give bonus's to your wpa and special spells for you to cast. Otherwise your the "mage" part of your prov is a bit limited...i'd focus on A/m it if where me.

As far as builds...lots of homes/guilds/arms/banks untill you get trained up and your wpa pumped to where you want it (specs as def leets as offense, there isnt much reason to run offspecs on elfs). When training up i'd aim to have enough def that most attackers cant double you if you are full army in. You should be able to start most fights w/out geting hit down to hard, and then you get your pick of easy hits to grow off of and stay safe-ish while casting.

Your "war" build will likely have a decent number of watchtowers, hosptials, training grounds, with a standard mix of forts, farms, guilds/towers. Anything more specfic u'd have to ask more like how much of xyz should i run/why?

[StratOcastle]

I've played elf tac and the most important factor in choosing this combination is a kingdom that cooperates with what you do. Sounds odd? I'll explain.

Most everything you can do is enable other players, particularly your attacker core.

- Grabbing intel. You're familiar with the abilities of the tac, but many new players are unaware that you only need 1 thief to grab 100% accurate intel. This preserves your thieves from unnecessary losses.

- Attacking to offer better range for your other attackers - this means hitting an enemy to move him into better net worth range for your kingdom mates. The elf itself doesn't have enough offense to be a mainline attacker, but you have enough to set up follow up attacks.

- Because you have good spell resistance and can cast Clear Sight for better theft defense, plus a good functional defense, you're likely to retain a reasonable economy. This allows you to aid attackers and relieve your kingdoms dedicated mystics/heretics/sages/rogues from using their precious resources.

- You have enough magical strength to help your kingdom with the spell blanket. If you're new and don't know, a spell blanket is a group of debilitating spells your kingdom casts on enemies. Often including Meteor Swarms, Chastity, Blizzard, Gluttony, Greed and sabotage Riots. You should also be capable of casting Fireball, Lightning Strikes.

Generally you want to play from a defensive standpoint by not oversending elites to hit your enemies. Your speed, intel capability and defenses may allow you to play Camper. Camping is the concept of attacking at opportunity if say a hard to break enemy sends troops out and you have the ability to break their defense after they send out. The tactic in your case is for your army to get home before the enemy army gets home.

Good luck and feel free to ask anything that might come to mind.

[Bananamancer2000]

I've played elf tac and the most important factor in choosing this combination is a kingdom that cooperates with what you do. Sounds odd? I'll explain.

Most everything you can do is enable other players, particularly your attacker core.

- Grabbing intel. You're familiar with the abilities of the tac, but many new players are unaware that you only need 1 thief to grab 100% accurate intel. This preserves your thieves from unnecessary losses.

- Attacking to offer better range for your other attackers - this means hitting an enemy to move him into better net worth range for your kingdom mates. The elf itself doesn't have enough offense to be a mainline attacker, but you have enough to set up follow up attacks.

- Because you have good spell resistance and can cast Clear Sight for better theft defense, plus a good functional defense, you're likely to retain a reasonable economy. This allows you to aid attackers and relieve your kingdoms dedicated mystics/heretics/sages/rogues from using their precious resources.

- You have enough magical strength to help your kingdom with the spell blanket. If you're new and don't know, a spell blanket is a group of debilitating spells your kingdom casts on enemies. Often including Meteor Swarms, Chastity, Blizzard, Gluttony, Greed and sabotage Riots. You should also be capable of casting Fireball, Lightning Strikes.

Generally you want to play from a defensive standpoint by not oversending elites to hit your enemies. Your speed, intel capability and defenses may allow you to play Camper. Camping is the concept of attacking at opportunity if say a hard to break enemy sends troops out and you have the ability to break their defense after they send out. The tactic in your case is for your army to get home before the enemy army gets home.

Good luck and feel free to ask anything that might come to mind.

Granted I've only played in 4 ages, the upcoming patch notes seem the best for a Elf/Tact that I have seen. How do you feel about it for next age?

[StratOcastle]

I think it's comparable to the time I played it.

One of the differences is the spells available. I do see a tactic I would use and that'd be to cast Fools Gold and Explosions on enemy chained. Sometimes I'll look for attackers with poor Trade Balance and smoke them with spells that hurt income. The one thing to remember is once you reveal a tactic to your enemy they might use it agsinst your kingdom.

So from a strategic frame of mind you save a few goodies till you can affect a turning point in war.

On a side note, I did not try to rid myself of plague if I contracted it fighting undead. My philosophy is to keep my runes and mana mainly for offense. I'd still cast Clear Sight. The reason is not just for your defense, but because enemies may end up burning thieves and stealth attempting to take your intel.

I'm not known for being specifically a logistics guy, but I understand the general concept of being a wet blanket vs enemy efforts.

- I'm contemplating running an elf cleric myself because I'm particularly fond of damage resistance. -

[s0830887]

Hey man. There's a ton of good advice in here, but I worry that it's not necessarily legible to the new player.

In this game, pretty much everything is calculated 'by the acre'. For example, wpa = wizards per acre. You have 2000 wizards and 1000 acres, then you have 2wpa. Epa = elites per acre, dspa = defensive specialists per acre, tpa =thieves per acre, etc. Some of those you will have to work out.

As an elf, you are looking to play an attacker/mage role as you mentioned. In this example, you want to go A/m. Why more attacking than magic? Because you chose an offensive personality, rather than a thief/mage personality. To be more t/m than attacker, you need to chose one of the three t/m personalities - heretic (has a spell called nightmare NM, very powerful when organised), mystic (has meteor showers MS, arguably the most poweful spell in the game), or rogue (1 v 1 the most powerful of the three, but that is situational. Has propaganda and assasinate wizards, both devastating ops when organised).

You have high def value, and lower off value. You want to play a 'hard to break down' role, instead of a 'huge offense, heavy attacking' role. The speed on tactician works very well for this. I assume you play in a pretty low-level kingdom that doesnt have tight waves in war - aka, all enemy provinces hitting within a few ticks of one another. If you ARE playing in a KD where everyone attacks together at the same time, then you just need to wait for the enemy to send out, then when they are all out send YOUR armies out, and your armies should be fast enough to return home before the enemy does. In this way, you can ensure you always have super high defense when your armies are home (elf elite and dpsec combine their high def values nicely), and the enemy is liekly to either ignore you completely, or find it really difficult to chain you and hurt you deeply.

With your mana, you probably want to spend most of it on ET (expose thieves vs enemy rogues) and FB (fireball vs high peasant enemies). I would also encourage you to run higher than normal tpa (thieves per acre) so you can slightly support thieves with some light NS (nightstrike).

Assuming very basic level play, I would encourage you to aim for something like this: 4wpa, 4tpa, 8dspa, 8epa. Run high, high homes before war (maybe 40% for your level; the absolute top runs way higher though) and that will swell your population enough to run those numbers.