Hi,

I am playing a multiplayer game as Ljosafar. I have researched construction, but the city menus don't offer me siege workshop as an option. The civopedia mentions no other prerequisites for the siege workshop. Am I doing something wrong, is this a bug, or is there some information missing from the 'pedia?

Elves cannot build siege equipment.

Oh... okay. Does it say so somewhere in the pedia?

Dont know, but if it does it problaby says in the Lsojalvar area in the Civilization tab.

Nope, nothing in there. Is there somewhere I should report this? Aesthetic issues?

Nope, nothing in there. Is there somewhere I should report this? Aesthetic issues?
Still nothing in the civilopedia on this. Being a new player, I'm wondering what to do without siege gear. Are elves just supposed to shatter waves of men upon the walls, and get comfortable with with a body count many times higher than the enemy? I know there must be a better way, it would be nice if it was mentioned in the pedia.

I've got a nice size army of mithril armed swordsmen ready to take on the dragon city next door, and though I hate to admit it, morale among the ranks is low.

This is something I wish would change. Ways around it are building the Pact of the Nillhorn and using the Hill Giants to batter down their walls. Or blast them with Fireballs.

The "the Age of Ice has Ended..." pop-up at the beginning of the game includes a short strategy guide (for most if not all civs that are playable, but not for those that require slight xml changes toy become playable yet, like the Svartalfar or Sidar, or for Infernal/Mercurian, since you would never see this screen anyway when you switch to their civ mid-game). Some of these may be a bit outdated (I don't think they have been updated since "Light," so they may not be the best Guide in "Fire" or "Shadow"), but the Elves strategy is alright.

This guide specifically tells at the start of the game that you can't build siege workshops or siege units, and suggests you invest in fire magic so that you can use your Mages' fireballs and your Archmages' meteors as siege equipment. If you intend to take a lot of cities, I suggest you take hat advice (actually, fire magic is a better choice than siege weapons for most civs, since it is cheaper and more mobile; I rarely build siege units in FfH anyway unless I'm playing as a Dwarven civ. The building isn't worth building very often; I think it should also allow assigning an engineer specialist to make it more useful)

Unless you want chariots, of course, which also require it :)

When you've got mages with fireballs and Flame Pillar :-)
And there are plenty of other mounted units to fill the gap chariots leave.
Work with what you've got, and learn to love it

thats why I said "very often." It is one of those buildings that it is good to have 1 of, but not worth it to have more than one.

Still, I'm not sure it is worth it for Chariots; sure it would be for War Chariots, but they don't require that building.

I've never built a siege weapon in ffh. When I play Khazak I'm so far ahead I just terrorize my enemies with HN shadows and assasins. Much more fun and no responsiblilty.

I sometimes like to build siegecraft just for flavor and roleplaying. Just using Mages is efficient and versatile, but I grew bored of being stuck with that strategy. In this latest game I wanted to play the Ljosalfar without building any Fire Nodes. I was playing on Nikis-Knights map and was going to wait for fire until after I took it from the Clan of Embers. But I ended up building a fire node eventually. I wish the Elves at least had a collateral damage archer which came as early as catapults do. But I also think they should have a wall sapping unit or spell. Perhaps the Priest of Leaves could have a spell which caused vines to weaken city defenses.

Why not Sappers! A weak (easily assassinated), early siege unit (crafting?) with low bombardment (1 or 2 %) useful to everyone early in the game, but if the elves want to play siege warfare later, they'll need an army of sappers to break through walls and heavy culture. Not to mention the mounted units they'll still probably need to soften the defenders.

Essentially, elves shouldn't have anything with wheels, but that shouldn't mean they don't know how to take out a wall.

Why not Sappers! A weak (easily assassinated), early siege unit (crafting?) with low bombardment (1 or 2 %) useful to everyone early in the game, but if the elves want to play siege warfare later, they'll need an army of sappers to break through walls and heavy culture. Not to mention the mounted units they'll still probably need to soften the defenders.

Essentially, elves shouldn't have anything with wheels, but that shouldn't mean they don't know how to take out a wall.

The elven sappers could be upgraded (with nature mana) to a more advanced sapper whose spells weather the rock and make it crumble.

At first i laughed when i saw them. Without siege weapons, how are they ever going to get through this pass? Had i known better i would still have my arms left.
But i suspected something. Their confidence aroused fear in us. That might be the only reason why we survived.
--
The sound of the mortar beginning to crumble was the first signal of what was coming
--
The rock had aged centuries in a few minutes, falling apart under our feet as if a tempest forced it to yield.

Problem is that the 'pedia and wiki both have many entries that are just pieces of lore. These are delightful to read but not particularly helpful to new players. There are too many things that you have to learn the hard way and that leave you confused.

The elven sappers could be upgraded (with nature mana) to a more advanced sapper whose spells weather the rock and make it crumble.

From design standpoint they don't get siege, to compensate better archers and building in the forests etc. Giving them sappers would just break that and make this change meaningless. I like it the way it is.

Problem is that the 'pedia and wiki both have many entries that are just pieces of lore. These are delightful to read but not particularly helpful to new players. There are too many things that you have to learn the hard way and that leave you confused.

It's not wiki nor 'pedia, it's my own work

From design standpoint they don't get siege, to compensate better archers and building in the forests etc. Giving them sappers would just break that and make this change meaningless. I like it the way it is

Did you read the sapper proposition? Is says 1-2% siege, that's not much, and as fireballs are dangerous in forest,i don't think it's overpowered if they get a national unit (limited to 3) 5% sieging sapper

From design standpoint they don't get siege, to compensate better archers and building in the forests etc. Giving them sappers would just break that and make this change meaningless. I like it the way it is.

I don't particularly like the idea of their sappers getting better, as the whole point is that if they intend to siege a city, it will require a lot of work, but the whole point of having sappers is to make siege at least possible (as an alternative to having mages with fire, which is somewhat contradictory to their nature). Saying that having sappers would break the character of the civ is a bit extreme. For one thing, they can have siege through the use of fire sphere mages or the 3 Nilhorns, this would just be a way for non-warmongers (who surely would want fire sphere) to be capable of taking the occasional city from a pesky neighbor without having to throw waves of mounted units and legions of melee units against a brick wall. It would just allow for more flexible play strategies.

i'd rather have their druids/conjurers summon treants with a small bombardment bonus (picking up boulders and throwing them). would seem more in line with their nature, compared to digging under a stronghold (more of a dwarven thing)

Tier 4 (units) looks like the cure for all the elven offensive ills. :blush: tier 3 divine spells are particularly nasty for sieging cities... like earthquake, for example.


Actually, I never use(d) chariot or Catapults to begin with. Siege stuff is WAY too slow for me, so I normally go with melee. I think people really under-estimate how general-purpose and versatile a melee unit is when it's raked in a lot of experience... melees that are on parity with the enemy's tech and weapon types can STEAMROLL a city with many fortifications (as if it weren't even there) with the both City Raiders promos, and at least one unit type specific promo. Enchanted blade (or poisoned blade for the assassin units), followed by bless, flaming arrows, (possibly) mutation, and shield of faith only add to that advantage.

Although, at higher difficulties, you may have specialize your rolls a bit as the AI civs will have better toys to use.

Giving Treants good siege abilities seems like a very good idea. I'm not a fan of the sappers concept.

Giving a unique elven nature 2 spell (equivalent to the dwarven enchantment spell) that would allow a small sapping of city defense would be fine with me.

I always build a body node for haste. Some level 1 spells are very useful. Adapts are useful without being upgraded to mages.

I don't like the Ljosalfar for the same reason, despite their ridiculous synergy with FoL. Flavour-wise, it just seems so awkward that FoL, wood elves and fire magic are like bread, peanut butter, jelly, although I really haven't had any success with them if I don't use fireballs to remove the enemy's cultural defenses.

Speaking of things you can't build, I'm Khazad, I've got the Runes holy city, mithril (metal casting AND mithril working), the Golem Mastery tech, and I can't build the Mithril Golem. Any idea why?

I'd probably guess that the AC isn't high enough, assuming you have mithril, and a golem workshop in the RoK Holy City. The Mithril Golem Requires a minimum AC of 75.

checking at boosting elves siege craft I found amusing that vitalise was sorcery related while entangle was divine (in the wiki)... I would have thought the reverse.
If reverse, I would have proposed that 'entangle', casted on a city, can reduce city defense as well as immobilize units.
Thus I can really imagine elves sieging cities with the help of their druids and archmages, (or high priests of leaves...) using nature's wrath to entangle people and distroy walls and buildings. instead of having them cast meteors and fireballs..

the principle of not having siege units is that elves are considered non-mechanists and are suppose to compensate by better mobility in forest and focus on magic.

having tier IV nature units being able to reduce city defense in place of siege would play a nice role while not overwhelmingly change the penalty. tierIV units come way later than catapults, there are few of them available for a civ and it would provide another solution than having FoL going strait for fire nodes in order to conquer the world in late game.

And the nature sappers could require some nature to work, ie bad on desert, ice and hell, powerful in forest and jungle, mediocre in grass and plain.
So elves can effectively extend their domain only in it's natural environment.

Fire magic causes forest fires and no elf is suicidal enough to burn their sacred ancient forests, if they survive the flames and starvation, the fellowship will execute them:p

Pretty sure ancient forests are immune to fire, which is the point of sylvanllewelyn's comment about FoL synergy i believe. (You wouldnt use fire mages unless your forests were ancient).

It seems to me that the Elves don't have Catapults because of game flavor not game balance. Sure the Elven Archers get metal upgrades, but they don't have Melee and Gunpowder units. I don't see any Elven specialties that require a lack of siegecraft to balance. And using Fireballs to blast down walls just feels wrong. I think nature based siege warfare would fit them well and I don't see any balance reasons to deny them this. Of course I could be missing something...?

Ancient Forests couldn't burn down in .23 (or most the earlier versions), but from what I've heard they can burn in BtS.

(Either way, they are destroyed when their tiles enter hell. not even burnt forests remain then, so they aren't coming back without the use of both sanctify and bloom, plus plenty of time)

Pretty sure ancient forests are immune to fire, which is the point of sylvanllewelyn's comment about FoL synergy i believe. (You wouldnt use fire mages unless your forests were ancient).

And ain't that unrealistic. Blasting walls with balls of fire with trees everywhere, almost certain to catch fire. Besides in Amelanchier's 'pedia entry the forests do burn from unnatural fire. So the best weapon for forest folk is the bane of forests...
I definitely agree with sylvanllewelyn about ljosalfar fireballs.

The elves are supposed to use a war of attrition to win but if they can't take even forest cities...

Is it possible for them to ignore cultural bonuses? Kind of the opposite of gunpowder units. Might help with making walls and castles more worth while.

Giving Treants good siege abilities seems like a very good idea.

I like the idea of Treants having bombard like the hill giants do.:goodjob:

If they also had some extra nature affinity, -50% in hell, -25% in desert or something like that if would also balance their bombard and restrict elven sieges to forested areas

Adding bombardment to Treants definitely sounds like a good idea. Elves are plently powerful without siege weapons (They're amazing defensively), but it's SO fitting to see Treants throwing bolders and logs, and it's hard to see how it would be overpowering to add bombardment to such a late game unit.

I've always found it easier to use archmages with Earth III to take cities rather than whittling down the walls with meteors. Sure you have to wait longer, but with Extension II, a single archmage can pretty much bring an entire stack of defenders down to 10% before he even gets next to the city. I guess the same could be said of meteors, but I would argue bringing the target's base strength down to the point where defense modifiers hardly make a difference is better than lowering the defense modifiers themselves.

obviously, for large stacks crush is preferable to meteors because of the exp gain, but meteors are much more usefull when dealing with several small bands of foes.

back on-topic: i figured since hill-giants have bombardment, and treeants are generally larger than hill-giants, they should get at least the same bonus (more could be a bit unbalanced). Since it's the same mechanism (physically) as a catapult, the same bombard rules should apply, and i can't see what the difference between a rock in a forest and a rock in the desert would be bombard-wise. the additional nature-affinity could be possible, but that's kinda impleted with them being able to be summoned only in forests.

elves have no direct city bombardment unit for a reason- it's to balance their obscene defence abilities.

Remember, civs are balanced as a whole not in terms of individual units. If you want to play a strongly aggressive military game I suggest a different race, such as the bannor or clan.

The problem is that if they don't have any other bombardment nor penalty/risk from fireballs then they'll use fire to bombard, which is not very elven. Treants bombarding along with some fire penalty would force the player to choose different strategies instead of burn-it-all.

I'm not sure I follow why it's so "unelven" to use fire magic for war. Wood elves would certainly learn to appreciate and respect the distructive power of fire. Sure they wouldn't be pyros at home, but bombarding an enemy city with fireballs doesn't strike me as out of theme.

If an enemy city is in the middle of forest, then bombarding it with fireballs is quite unelven, because the explosion should ignite the forest by any common sense

The Ljosalfar are based more on the Scottish Seelie Court rather than the high fantasy/Tolkien/D&D tree-hugger elves. They are more fit to air or even earth magic, but there is nothing out of character for them to use fire.

Edit: Scottish? Wait, I could be wrong about that, maybe Irish or something...

Celtic.
FoL worships nature in its all ways, and hurting sacred trees is a crime punishable by death.
It just feels strange that they don't use the force of nature itself when sieging but risk forest fires.

but they have synergy with FoL.. making them more of a tree-hugger tolkien kind...

I have difficulties (but habits are coming) to think of alfars as tree hugggers... if they are, why are they alfars and not elves?

as I have read a book inspired on nordic alfars .., very different from tolkien/fantasy elves.

...ljosalfar and dokkalfar (svartalfars) ljos had power over inanimate/un-living matter. and svart over living matter (even dead corps that have still some living cells)...
in FfH lore that would make
svart would have power over : nature/mind/body/death (strength).
ljos would have power over : fire/earth/water/air/enchantment ..Etc.
most spiritual mana are not adressed but mind as you control the body of another..

wouldn't it be fun ??

sorry for the disgression...

They are not tree-huggers, they worship the nature in good and ill. The forces of nature are as much death as life but they don't want to tip the scales anyhow.

If an enemy city is in the middle of forest, then bombarding it with fireballs is quite unelven, because the explosion should ignite the forest by any common sense

a fireball is not a nuke, a fireball directed towards city walls have the same effected of ignited catapult projectiles and would hit city walls not any forest inside the city, assuming you can have a forest inside a (not elven) city.

If you are in a dense forest even hurling the fireball through it (either ground level between trees or high above going through the leaves) will have a risk of ignition
When it hits the walls to weaken them it must explode to have any effect and explosions have a notorious connnection of spreading fire to near flammable objects.

First off, in the traditional D&D fireballs don't hurl but simply explode where the mage wants. Second if you were inside a dense forest you wouldn't be able to target city walls at all. Third, city walls can be damaged by the sheer force of the impact of a projectile against the walls, no need of an explosion, but of course a fireball does explode. Ultimately though (fourth), no city wall of a non-elven city would be built at less than 50-100 meters from the forest, hence there couldn't be a significant amount of sparkling from the explosion of a mere fireball that would reach the forest and start a fire.

If they just explode somewhere how can they have a force of impact?
Second if you were inside a dense forest you wouldn't be able to target city walls at all. Third, city walls can be damaged by the sheer force of the impact of a projectile against the walls, no need of an explosion, but of course a fireball does explode. Ultimately though (fourth), no city wall of a non-elven city would be built at less than 50-100 meters from the forest, hence there couldn't be a significant amount of sparkling from the explosion of a mere fireball that would reach the forest and start a fire.
Now that's something I didn't take into account. But if a mage casts fireball in a forest, where does he go so he can aim? What about forest guardposts?