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Of course.
I would like to remind everyone DE is the bastard child of faery, which was a great T/M race. It just so happened that someone decided it would be funny to slap +1 off specs onto them, making DE into some sort of abomination which seems remotely possible to hybrid.
Yeah, I know that DE is Fairy. In fact one of the earlier DEs WAS Fairy with a differently priced elite (I think). IMO, DE should lose the +1 Off Spec and get either +100% honor bonus or +1 Stealth/Hr. We have attacker races, why not a T/M one?
hmm.. maybe i should vote for a restart then ? ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by Asakura
you are definitely making good points, will try to make my de look at little bit better by trying to negate some anyway.
- pitfalls: not sure if this beats nightmares.. we have elves in the kd anyway so they can cast those on the targets that need em.
- dark elves have the cheapest offense, 6 points for 300 gold and a soldier.. so at least they can rebuild it faster.
- against "weak" targets, like attackers, a/t, +spell strength should be MUCH better than +spell efficiency since most spells go through anyway. (?) +1 mana makes up for that over time but still.. superior short time damage.
so yeah, -losses and -wages probably makes elves tougher in long wars. quick feet is also a pretty nice bonus.
thanks for all replies.
Nightmared troops do not die. The trained ones at least. Unless you chain your target immediately he is all good again in a few hours.Quote:
- pitfalls: not sure if this beats nightmares.. we have elves in the kd anyway so they can cast those on the targets that need em.
Leets die slower than specs. Elf leets die even slower. When you get creds for an Elf, you train defense. When you get creds for a DE you have to split because leets are retardedly expensive.Quote:
- dark elves have the cheapest offense, 6 points for 300 gold and a soldier.. so at least they can rebuild it faster.
Spells largely cost 2% mana on the low end in war. +1 mana will always be more damage.Quote:
- against "weak" targets, like attackers, a/t, +spell strength should be MUCH better than +spell efficiency since most spells go through anyway. (?) +1 mana makes up for that over time but still.. superior short time damage.
Go dspecs with DE and attack with elites and dice with 130 mod dpa FTW.
If that was the case you might as well go all leets.
It's only for orc that non-warriors will be ambushed. Because orc elites have a 4/1 offense to defense ratio, you only need to send 1/4 of his offense to get half your land back. That's more than worth it. You see see that ambushes generally are not worth it for other races because it's only worth it to get half the land for half the power, and no other race has a greater than 2/1 offense to defense elite, except avians who can't get ambushed. The human has exactly 2/1 off to def, in which case an ambush should be equally effective to a traditional march if you were to get exactly half your land back and correct me if I'm wrong, but it's up to half and not exactly half.Quote:
Originally Posted by SomethingClever
btw, are you allowed to ambush each player who attacked you or just the last? If it's everyone then an orc non warrior chain in which each player attacks once can turn out to be a massive failure because the chained province can just ambush each one of them back. With warrior, orcs have +30% gains. Without warrior, orcs have -35% gains.
Of course DEs would go all elites and no def specs in that case. The option is really all elites or half elites and half off specs. If you're going any elites at all, there's no reason to get def specs. With half off specs you can't turtle, which limits your options severely. With all elites, the DE is the best race for turtling, during which you can use that +30% spell strength and invisibility to blast him with spells and ops. Once he's weak enough that's when you attack him. You're still sustaining heavy losses against elves since they have 50% losses, so it's best to hold off on attacks for awhile. As an elf A/M, you need 20-25% towers this age over the DE, which is quite significant.
I believe nightmares reduce specs and elites into soldiers, which die rather easily to night strike. Not sure about this one either.
All elite DEs should be stronger than elves. Elf is actually the weakest race, considering +15% population for gnomes, that's to be made up for by high sustainability and damage. Utopia used to be about massing as much initial offense and defense as you can, and hit as much as you can for a 48 hour war. Now, it's about staying strong for as long as you can and weakening your opponent...still not used to this. I played for awhile a couple years back, then quit and rejoined 2 ages ago.
Isn't it ridiculous that after so many ages, how Nightmares actually works is still a mystery?
"Elf is actually the weakest race" No one is going to take you seriously ever again after that.
It would be less. Once you remove modifiers and factor the 80% efficiency of the returning troops. They could send some 100k MO and you only need 15k to ambush, kill 600 or so elites and as a result lose half their gains + 7k mo:s which hurts you.Quote:
It's only for orc that non-warriors will be ambushed. Because orc elites have a 4/1 offense to defense ratio, you only need to send 1/4 of his offense to get half your land back.
Ummm....they don't defend at 100% me, but at 80, so you are closer to 1/5 of their offense than 1/4.Quote:
It's only for orc that non-warriors will be ambushed. Because orc elites have a 4/1 offense to defense ratio, you only need to send 1/4 of his offense to get half your land back. That's more than worth it.
You can ambush all ambushable attacks on you, as long as you got generals to do it. If someone 4x you, you can ambush him 4x (last first, then second last...). You can ambush attacks from different attackers, but always start ambushing the last attack from the attacker you choose to ambush.Quote:
btw, are you allowed to ambush each player who attacked you or just the last?
DE should go all elites and no defspecs. It's more space efficient. But, it's a pain cause then they'd have to use offense to kill dragons, and their elites worse at attacking than their offense is (obviously).Quote:
Of course DEs would go all elites and no def specs in that case.
Spell strenght will not help you unless you got good enough wpa to break him. (A fail is a fail)Quote:
during which you can use that +30% spell strength and invisibility to blast him with ops.
for orcs: warrior>WH
DE with all elite defense makes losses too expensive. I've played it, and whatever you do with hospitals it's still a sluggish province that can't handle trading blows with a comparable province because of the losses (even with tree of gold).
But I don't like orcs all that much either.
It's not a mystery. It takes a random % of your military at home (specs in higher numbers than elites or thieves; caps out at like 1%) and puts them into retraining for 12 hours.Quote:
Originally Posted by Tight Panties
DE is ****, pure ****. Don't pick it. Don't even consider it.
a42 (this age is with changes of those age), my kd ran 25 DEs (whoring purposes). After we got jewed in awar, rest of age in mid t50 was pain in the ass. Our allies also pick DE and they had as ****ty age as we did.
Just don't pick it
Running 25 DEs is out of the question. They are easy to rape. You can run a handful if you have an active KD full of hybrids, to make use of nightmares and ToG, but that is about it.
I like the way you put that first part. However you go on to imply that an ambush is equal to or better than a TD when the gains are equal to or better then the effort. This not the case, half gains made at 1/3 effort dont match up to MAX gains. Land is king in war and taking any less then the max to save on casualities is simply weak. Of course if you made a couple of ambushes in place a TD then that would be fine. Ambx2 = TD (potentially)Quote:
It's only for orc that non-warriors will be ambushed. Because orc elites have a 4/1 offense to defense ratio, you only need to send 1/4 of his offense to get half your land back. That's more than worth it. You see see that ambushes generally are not worth it for other races because it's only worth it to get half the land for half the power, and no other race has a greater than 2/1 offense to defense elite, except avians who can't get ambushed. The human has exactly 2/1 off to def, in which case an ambush should be equally effective to a traditional march if you were to get exactly half your land back and correct me if I'm wrong, but it's up to half and not exactly half.
3Ambs or a TD+Amb would put ahead. But like I said one or two free ambushes wont make up for punishment of Orc WH. So I think its a valid choice if your not planning to do more then 2 attks/day
Countering a wave with armies in armies out style of amush retail would be very impressive but you cant expect to ambush them all you only have 4 generals. You can only ambush each one once. And you dont have infinite military.
Remember Im not trying to say WH is better then WAR I just didnt like the formulas that were being presented. I also dont like the absolutism floating around that say there are only three or four respectable race/pers choice in the game.
DE is horrible! Give them an offensive elite already! Overdefending or sending out defensive elites on attack sucks!
make their elite 3/7, rename them faeries and give them all spells imo.Quote:
Originally Posted by apollo
+1 :pQuote:
Originally Posted by bishop
I'm all for restoring DEs to faeries with defensive elite, too. They've never worked as DEs.
Even if they do not go all the way back to 7def leets, they could remove the +1 offspecs and give thems something more... T/M-ish. Now it is just a bloody abomination.
Yes DEs should get either "All Spells" or "+1 Stealth", and a more defensive elite. They should definitely lose the +1 Off Spec.
imo, all this will do is make 1/4 the ghetto players choose this as full t/m, hurting their kingdoms by taking away another attacker, and then those provs will sit there and dise all age with huge defenseQuote:
Originally Posted by Bishop
With all of the current races, attacking is something that is always an option. So all those T/M wannabes have a chance of being swayed to attacking by whatever kingdom they land in, but with faery back, that kingdom is stuck with a T/M.
edit: we all know those ghetto noobs love going full T/M even though it is extremely weak nowadays, maybe if full T/M'ing were stengthened somehow without strengthening hybrids much, this might be a better option
The ghettos will still pick DEs and turtle T/M anyway, just that they cannot do it as effectively now. Even if you give them better off specs all they will do is attack weaker ghettos.Quote:
Originally Posted by apollo
Or they might choose to attack and try to war equally sucky ghettos, or just slightly worse ghettos. Why would you want to deter action between kingdoms? And with the current system, attackers still can manage enough offense to hit these useless T/Ms and to take their useless land.Quote:
Originally Posted by Asakura
So maybe the current system should be reworked to allow T/M to be a more useful and viable style of play. Not everyone has a hardon for attacking.
The problem with T/Ms is that thieves and mages are meant to be support roles from the ancient ages of the game. This was mostly back in the ages where you had the war meter, and attacking meant everything to winning the war. Eventually even without the meter KDs have come to terms with using the amount of acres and NW exchanged as an indicator for war.
If you make them too strong you risk turning the artillery into an ICBM, and it would make it pointless to play attacker relatively. And unlike attackers that will still eventually exchange acres, T/Ms will have trouble breaking each another when everyone waves their 6rwpa 6rtpa around.
I'm actually going to have to change my answer from Orc/WH to Dwarf/Rogue, after rereading the question.
Because a kingdom of 25 Dwarf/Rogues would pretty much have their fate decided for them in war.
In the words of Admiral Ackbar: We can't repel failure of that magnitude!Quote:
Originally Posted by ninjin
Guess I should've worded the question more carefully :)Quote:
Originally Posted by UtopiaOfGreed
I was more curious if any of the 25 Human/Mystics or the 16 Dwarf/Rogues on the server would show up to vote for their ultimate power combos :)
Of course you're not a math major because you can't do any math. Take the numbers on an objective basis, inserting parameters for the subjective parts. For each race, total up your offensive unit power, then add some parameter A times its defense (however important you view elite defense to be) and then add some parameter B times your defensive unit power (again however important you consider practical defense to be), for A<B (because elite defense is worse than practical defense) and B<=1 (assuming you don't consider defense to be more important than offense; if you do then you're likely to be a tank who's not really looking for war).Quote:
Originally Posted by VT2
Humans: 6+3A+6B
Elves: 6+4A+5B
Dwarves: 7+4A+5B
Orcs: 8+2A+5B
Gnomes: 1.15(5+4A+5B) due to +15% population
DE: 5+6A+6B (all elites) or 6+6B (half off specs)
Avian: 7+3A+5B
For human vs elf, 6+3A+6B ? 6+4A+5B reduces to B ? A. Since B>A, Human > Elf.
7+4A+5B > 6+4A+5B reduces to 1 > 0, so Dwarf > Elf.
For orc vs elf, 8+2A+5B ? 6+4A+5B reduces to 2 ? 2A. Because B<1 and A<B, A<1 so 2>2A, and Orc > Elf.
For gnome vs elf, 5.75+4.6A+5.75B ? 6+4A+5B reduces to 0.6A+0.75B ? 0.25. If you set A and B low enough, you can possibly get 0.6A+0.75B < 0.25. However, it would be unreasonable to take B<0.5, because defense should be at least half as important as offense. So, for most practical purposes, 0.6A+0.75B > 0.25 and Gnome > Elf.
DE is a little more complicated because you have 2 builds. Let's compare them with each other first. 5+6A+6B ? 6+6B reduces to 6A ? 1. There might be some people who would put A<1/6, but considering how much talk on how not turtling sucks, I conclude that most would consider A to be of some significant value, >=1/6, and 5+6A+6B >= 6+6B.
Then DE vs elf is 5+6A+6B ? 6+4A+5B reduces to 2A+B ? 1. It is possible to take either side of this. It is generally reasonable to take 1/2<=B<=1 and 1/6<=A<=1/2. Take the bottom range and you get 5/6 < 1. Take the top range and you get 2 > 1. Comparing the range of A and B, 5/6 to 2, to 1, I'd conclude that for the majority of ways to evaluate it, DE > Elf. (If you actually use A=1/6 and B=1/2, then you're really neglecting defense for offense)
For Avian vs Elf, 7+3A+5B ? 6+4A+5B reduces to 1 ? A. We've already established that 1>A so Avian > Elf.
There you have it. Elf is the weakest race in terms of usable offense and defense per acre. There are some ways you can force elf to be better than gnome and DE because elf elite offense is 6 and their offense is 5; to do that however, would totally undermine that fact that they have much better defense, so it's impractical.
Now of course, these are just optimal values, to be edited in war by spells, ops, attacks, dragons and other stuff. Elf is militarily and economically more sustainable than other races. Elf has magic. Therefore, elf is very good in attrition wars and any wars with a prolonged pre-war period. However, you can't deny that, all else equal, elf builds come up with lower total of {opa, practical dpa and total dpa}, weighted however u want each of those to be, than any other race.
That's such a waste of text, because the raw numbers of your army are less important than actual bonuses.
Elf is one of the three kings because it has the best bonuses.
Orc has a better army, but the elf, dwarf, and human still owns it.
However, VT2, my point was that the elf's raw numbers were the lowest, which isn't invalid. It was a mere misunderstanding. Perhaps I shouldn't have used the word weakest; what I meant by weakest is lowest base power without other race advantages. If you take everything else into consideration, elf becomes quite formidable. Of course, you need to take everything else into account to determine the effectiveness of a race, but I wouldn't entirely neglect the basic power calculation either if I were you; so I wouldn't say it's a waste of text.
True, but per acre means little when you need to do the calcs per nw if they were to give a real indication of the strenght/weakness. :pQuote:
Now of course, these are just optimal values, to be edited in war by spells, ops, attacks, dragons and other stuff. Elf is militarily and economically more sustainable than other races. Elf has magic. Therefore, elf is very good in attrition wars and any wars with a prolonged pre-war period. However, you can't deny that, all else equal, elf builds come up with lower total opa, practical dpa and total dpa, weighted however u want each of those to be, than any other race.
But the raw numbers don't matter, and the lowest raw is gnome.
It has 5/5. When it sends out, it gets lower defense than the others, regardless of the pop-bonus.
This is a proven fact, and makes elf not the weakest for raw numbers.
If you take out +15% population, then gnomes are the weakest.
If you include +15% population, if you take armies out both elves and gnomes have 5 defense. If gnomes use any of the +15% population on defense, gnomes should have higher defense than elves.
Raw numbers begin to matter less and less, but I still consider them in my analyses. If they really didn't matter at all, would you still say elves can beat a race that has a 20/20 elite at 10 nw/elite?
They still suck at practical off/def. Only thing they have is turtling power. But nobody is unbreakable.
Frankly, I'm not so fond of gnome attackers either.Quote:
Originally Posted by Avenger
One offensive unit of choice, one defensive unit of choice, fully turtled.
Gnome: 5/9.
Orc: 8/7.
Elf: 6/9.
Human: 6/9.
Dark elf: 6/6.
Dwarf: 7/9.
Avian: 7/8.
Dark elf has the weakest defense at all times, except when the gnome and the orc sends out.
The rest will not send out enough units to bring them below an effective 6.
Gnome also has a serious problem. Your offense is quite weak, and you actually need to send out one offensive dude or elite for every defensive dude - or defensive elite - the target has at home. If you're battling humans or dark elves, you need to send out two - raw, of course.
It doesn't matter that gnome will have 568178671717515915915198988 units and 716657515½ ponies - your raw numbers still make it so you need to send out more than all the other races if you want to break anyone. When you do, your 'massive' defense is getting cut at least in half, so the orc is going to double you if he has any mods, and there's a chance the avian and the dwarf will, too.
The two latter outspeed your army. Orc tends to run warrior, so he's likely to outspeed you, too.
6/4 on an elite is really powerful. Not because either of the raw numbers is parcticularly high, but because they're both very nice and balanced.
That extra point of defense makes it difficult for people to reach out and touch you at will.
Edit to Dark Elf: 6/6 or 5/12. If you take 5/12, it has the strongest defense when turtled. Defense goes down a little further when attacking.
This calculation is fine, but partial. It's better to have separate ones for elites at home and elites away. I already did that.