Top 5 Combos For Age 45

[Eigenvector]

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?

[Avenger]

They still suck at practical off/def. Only thing they have is turtling power. But nobody is unbreakable.

[Eigenvector]

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.

[VT2]

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.

[Eigenvector]

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.

[VT2]

If you run 5/12, which is really 10/12, because the elites have a combined offense of 10, you have no actual offense, and are in the same boat as the gnome.
Those who can't attack safely won't be attacking much at all, except when pressured, and then they're going down.

[Eigenvector]

That's mostly true. If you can remain unbreakable, except against provinces considerably larger than you, you can use the time to turtle and cast and to your opponent until you're able to break them safely. Do so similarly with gnome, which is slightly weaker on defense, so a little more easily breakable. This succeeds if opponent isn't also oping against you, otherwise it's a T/M contest; you should be running T or M with these two races, so if your opponent is running the other one, it's a battle between the ops. If your opponent is running the same one, then whoever's stronger in that particular field wins. This also assumes the entire kingdom is running the strategy. If not, the opposing kingdom can't break you, but will just break your allies and your strategy fails. So doesn't work in the general case.

I've heard plenty of people say that turtle/op doesn't work. Can you repeat the general argument?

[VT2]

This isn't something that veterans need to have explained to them, because the knowledge is innate.
You look at a any random gnome, you 'feel' that it has impractical offense and defense, and is just a fat blob.
All-elite dark elf? These make people tilt their head for largely the same reason.

The viewer may not necessarily know that the reason for this is the offensive power of 5, but he or she will feel that something's not right.
When you have 5 raw offense, and everyone's going to leave at least 6 raw defense at home, you have to send out two units to break them.
This leaves you with low defense at home, so they can break you easily.
Most can, and will, do heavy damage to your province.

6/6, with the 6 being practical in both fields, isn't 'the best,' but it's 'safe.' Even when all your practical offense is out, the gnomes still need to send two offensive units for each elite your dark elf has.
Think about this.

What hurts dark elf is the inability to turtle.
If you have a lot of elites, you'll be sending out your defense to hit, and this still won't be enough, because elites have strength 5. Not safe.
If you have a lot of offensive dudes, you'll be able to hit pretty much anyone, but you'll always be open to hits.

What hurts gnome is that it just sucks.
You can't hit, because then your defense drops to nothing, and you'll have a million units out, so your networth stays high even when people pick you apart, which lets you stay in range for longer during war.
You can't go all defensive, because you don't have dual bonuses to T and M, so you'll just be taking up space, and attacks are too valuable in war, plus, you'll be such a fat blob that most kingdoms would be able to squeeze in more firepower for your cost in networth, anyway.

[Eigenvector]

This part I know already and I stated it. However, how does a kingdomwide turtle/op strategy not work, if the kingdom can manage to remain nearly unbreakable during the turtle period and by the end of the op period the opponent should be weakened more heavily than you are, so that by the end you CAN attack safely?

[VT2]

Turtling doesn't work in war, because if you're unable and unwilling to hit them, you're usually unable to op them - ergo, T/M war, which is always ended by that one team of orcs and elves, that conquest your fat gnomes to pieces in a matter of painful days.

A full on uber-1337 gnome, with a billion thieves, all the elites in the world, goes up against an elf.
The elf wins, hands down.

It has clearsight. It can conquest you when you leave your army at home, and won't suffer as much from this as you, and there's no way for you to gain back the land.
If you get pressured enough, you send out. Now the elf hits you with a normal attack, and you bleed more.

You can't op the elf, because it has resistances to your thievery. You can't cast spells on it, because it has better magic than you, and defensive magic.
You can't hit it, because then you get picked apart.

All this, because your offense is naturally weak and inefficient.
If you had a stronger offense, you'd be able to break the elf's standing defense with one unit, rather than two.

[Ahab]

Silly. You're talking about straw men gnomes who don't even known the basics pitted against expert elves. Put players of equal capability on either side and it's a really tough fight. Gnomes make the best hybrids by far and very formidable attackers when managed by capable players.

So many of these debates are overgeneralizations. It all depends on what you bring to the game.

[VT2]

I'm talking about how gnomes need to send out two units to break my one.

[Eigenvector]

T/M wars never happened when I last played before rejoining because of the war meter. I'm unfamiliar with this one.

If it's conquest and op defense, it seems to be size and race specific. Some people and not others can use this counterstrategy.

[VT2]

A 'T/M war' is when both sides have a bunch of fat, overdefended gnomes or dark elves, that whore honor. This happens on all levels outside the 'top.'
Eventually, the other side will figure out that watchtowers stop the ops cold, and that elf is a natural destroyer of T/M's.

Essentially, the gnomes all get conquested if they camp hard enough, or they send out and get stomped, then they ragequit.

[Eigenvector]

Alright sure, it doesn't work against elves or anyone who can conquest you assuming you can't get the conquested land back.