Yeah, just wanted that combo so I took it :)
What would be a reasonable warbuild for this guy? Afaik (note that I have no Rax because of the QF-spell this time):
20% TG
16% Hospitals
15% WT's / GS
15% Guilds
10% Towers
10% Banks
8% Farms
3% Dungeons
Leaves me with 3% and I also want/need Stables, or are they less awesome with 20% TG already built?
As a dwarf player last age playing A/m role, with QF, I still had to run some rax to keep armies together under 12 hours. You'll notice probably more so as elf that you'll get chained a lot. When chained you'll be making 4 hits each unique which is pretty heavy on mana usage if you're only relying on QF.
Your combination of TG/stables/dungeons is not near optimal. Given 26% for the three, I'd put 1.5% dungeons, 10% stables, 14.5% TGs. If you can keep army in/out, can raze or fade stables for GS or WT.
A Mage isn't a Mage without Mystic.
Econ, Offense, Learn attack. Live with having less-than-perfect wpa for your early wars... you'll only be on level with any other Elf until you get science, and only barely able to edge out other attackers. If you spend too much energy on wizard pumps, you screw yourself in the long term.
See what I mean when I say that Sage is pretty bad?
Well it might be a bit late to try and convince someone to change since the age started (1 day out of 90 isn't really but I wouldn't want to restart myself)
Without Mystic you won't be as good a mage due to less mana and more difficulty keeping the desired wpa up. Sage is kind of a atm personality since it improves all of the abilities.
That said an elf is clearly a Mage and cannot really be played in any other way.
20% TG (Stables give a higher increase but also increase NW, your choice)
16% Hospitals good
15% WT's / GS (you want 15% of both)
15% Guilds (10% should be enough in war, pump between wars)
10% Towers you won't have enough runes to cast all the FBs you want, 20% is better
10% Banks ok
8% Farms ok
3% Dungeons 2 is about the max you need
At this point in the game sage is sort of like having no personality, once the science kicks in you start to benefit from it but for the first half of the age its pretty weak. Sage compared to mystic right now is just you lacking meteor and double effective guilds/towers (which would save you 20% land)
Run 10% guilds after BE kicks in as mystic for full duration spells, at least before your land comes in.
Always run stables before TGs as an elf, even if it's just 5-10% for small hits. A mix is best, but you'll rarely have enough room for them.
Stables are TG go together very well... if you build heavy TG, you have more incentive to build stables, not less. Likewise if you just build stables, they are much weaker than they would be if the rest of your province was oriented towards offense.
If you have a lot of raw offense and expect to use all of it, then stables are comparatively less useful for your province. However, if you are only in the habit of sending a portion of your elites on attacks - which is usually the case outside of war for Elf - then this is less of a problem. You do not need to mount your entire offense, and if you are running 9+ epa doing so can be counterproductive. TG should always take precedence... stables are there to give you bonus offense, which is situationally useful for a lot of things since it's raw offense as opposed to mod.
As Elf/Sage, you're going to want to convert to a variant of heavy attacker around the middle of the age, around the time Learn attacks become profitable. The bad part of Elf/Sage in particular is that they have no econ bonus, an expensive elite that does not have good attack power, and no thievery bonus, so they're one of the hardest Sages to raise. QF improves the return on investment for Learn attacking if you keep armies in/armies out, but the other stuff more than offsets that.
Finding the time to wizzie pump and science pump in an effective manner is a lot more work than just picking Mystic, and the reward of Elf/Sage can be dubious. Even after a science pump, Elf/Sage lends itself to having more offense than Elf/Mystic, and building anti-chain buildings as you seem to be doing.
Before you have a lot of channeling science, rune supply is going to be problematic. You don't want to be caught without runes, and stealing them isn't always an option, so you will need to make some sacrifices to use your magic. It might be worth it to forget about gs and suffer the chain for your first war... as an Elf/Sage, it's usually better that enemies chain you than chain one of your Orcs or UD. If the enemies don't attack you, then the GS didn't matter. WT and hospitals are necessary though.
I stopped reading after the second paragraph, because nooblet is aptly named.
If your'e suiciding as an elf, you will have little difficulty mounting your entire army with 18% Stables. This'll give you a 20% offense boost, uncompounded by any TGs that you may have or honor bonuses.
18% TGs at 85% BE would only yield 18.77%, which does not multiply with honor effects (since OME is additive).
Stables win for the races with 4 or 5 max offense per unit-units... hands down.
Couple that with the fact that you don't have to rebuild your stables if you can maintain armies in-out.... es big wins all around.
And the above numbers are only if you're suiciding. More aptly, you can fully mount your appreciable offense between 5 and 15%, depending on how conservatively you want to play.
And don't fall into the "high NW is bad" trap. People looking for randoms look for low nw/acre provinces, either for plunder or fatter gains. In war, the NW differences are mostly negligible.
TGs come second, unless there's some reason you don't have time to grow horsies.
Here's a rough guide to idealize TG-Stables mix:
If 15% stables mounts your entire army, then every 1% stables increases your raw O by 1.333%.
At 85% BE, 1% TGs increases your mod O by 1.32%
So 1% initial TGs will increase both your MO and the offense relieved by 1% stables, which'll effectively net an amount greater than 1.33% (effect of 1% stables). Factor in honor and you can approximate how many TGs you should be running to match to your stables, but you should by treating stables with greater priority than TGs (it's possible to idealize them at about the same %, though). And in the relative value of TGs rapidly drops as % of stables to mount your entire army drops (at 5% stables you shouldn't be running TGs at all, as each % stables increases your offense by 4%).
In sake of space containment on an Elf/Sage, though, I'd rather run pure stables and let them die/raze them during war and run more GS, banks, WTs....
(Sorry this got a little away from me. :P)
You picked the silliest and most minor point, and still got it wrong by positing the same flawed "TG vs. Stable" argument that turned people away from ponies in the first place. I wasn't even commenting on what building you should run, only commenting on the OP's thought that he didn't need stables because his TG are good. (BTW he really doesn't.)Originally Posted by Zobo
Now I know ghetto warlords' "epic" strats...
nooblet do you mean sage is bad for elves or in general?
You should start a thread that presents all your thoughts on sagery - it's spread over too many threads and should be consolidated.
Sage seems suited to dwarf and human, not at all for elf.
75 Orcs are giving it a go as well, will be interesting to see if they make it work.
Elf is made for casting spells, mystic gives meteor and more importantly +1 mana. Since spells are your primary function that extra mana is a big plus. Sage might give you higher wpa later in the age but since you can break most people anyway, that extra mana per tick is much nicer.
Even if sage is better late game, mystic will be better the first 2/3 of the age.
Last edited by Blindman; 18-11-2012 at 15:24.
Sage is bad in general, and for Elf in particular.
What's the point? Too many selfish people think "oooh I'm going to have better science than everyone else!" and don't present a convincing plan to get there.
I just wanted a radical change from being heavy attacker or heavy T/M, and not your typical hybrid either, so there was the naughty Elf Sage winking at me and I gave in to lust *blush*
Meh... you can make a playable province with anything except the obviously bad personalities. I do believe Sage is pretty bad without the kingdom support necessary to scipump at a large size, but it's hard to say that Sage is entirely useless either.
Anyway your goal as Sage should be to get yourself some science as soon as possible, and find a way to balance your need for science pump with your kingdom's needs during war. You'd have to ask your kingdom whether they can do without extensive magic support early, or do a wizzie pump for early war. What you do during rebuilding as Sage, or any magic-user, is vitally important... moreso than tweaking your build to be just right.
By the age's midpoint you might be able to build a province which is good at both magic and attack/defense, and such a province could be a valuable asset it played right. Sage is likely better than the heavy attacker personalities on Elf, but not by a lot without a good science pump. If you are aiming for lots of wars, Sage won't get the science levels they would want. In the long term, total books matter more than books per acre, especially for Sages that usually won't get Learn attacked. A good point for Elf/Sage is that they're unlikely to be Amnesia targets, at least...
Oh, I forgot to say we're a ghetto, currently with no less than 10 inactives. Heh.
I see the figures I gave went over your head. I pointed out that even if you're suiciding as an Elf, running pure stables is better than running pure TGs. Of course a mix is best for suiciders, but more stables are better than more TGs. On more conservative builds, running Stables and no TGs is usually the best way.
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Elf Sage is okay. We had a bulk of them last age. They were all solid provinces that could grow quickly into UB, and if chained, could slug it out really well (inflated gains science is hilarious). However, you really need to focus on being a heavier attacker or/and a mage cracker though with high Channeling Science. If you have someone to cover duration ops and MS, then Elf/Sage is fine. You just better be fireballing high WPA targets. :D (wizzy pumping without mystic and as an elf is difficult though, as AW, prop, and masses are common against a non T/M, non UB).
You'll constantly be playing catch up, too, on rWPA if you war a lot and have a lot of destructive wars.
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