How do elves kill stacks without catapults?

[ringwraith18]

Mages are expensive and fireball is pretty inneffective, especially against stacks in cities. How do the elves and other races that can't build catapults cope?

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

they cope because guardians of nature is seriously OP

 

[BobCW]

Maelstrom, Air II Mage spell. That's why they start with Air mana.

 

[BvBPL]

Yeah, elves really need mages. Esp. the lsof. as the Svart and run in with killer recon.

 

[BobCW]

Slightly longer answer:



Maelstrom will zap all enemy (and allied) units within 2 tiles of the caster (except of course on the caster's tile). It has a damage cap of 30%; four Air II Mages should be enough. Since most AI stacks will consist of units wielding metal weapons, bring along some Entropy I adepts too for Rust- rusting an enemy Champion unit who has Iron weapons will give them -2 strength from having lost their weapons, and an additional -10% to their base strength. If those two spells aren't enough, bring along a Shadow I Adept and Shadow II Mage; Shadow I gives all your units immunity to enemy first strikes, and Shadow II allows you to ignore city defenses from buildings. Add on buffs like Enchanted Blade (Enchantment I, melee units only) and Dance of Blades (Chaos I) to your own units as you see fit.

 

[BvBPL]

Or just use specters.

 

[ringwraith18]

Those are good answers, cheers guys.

 

[UnforcedError]

In fact I tend to use magic for collateral even with civs that are allowed to build siege. Catapults are just deadly slow and cannot be hasted. Also: adepts may be expensive but you don't need kamikaze units for collateral.

 

[Hightower]

As said above, the Elves really need Mages. Which is a serious problem for Arendel and Amelanchier, who aren't Arcane.

 

[BobCW]

Arendel is probably best off giving up Guardian of Nature for a dozen turns and abusing Spiritual to make a temporary shift to the Veil for Ritualists, whose Ring of Fire actually has a better damage cap than Maelstrom Mages.

 

[UnforcedError]

^^Or if you don't want to switch into AW with Arendel you should still have the religion in your Altar city to crank out high xp savants which can be directly upgraded into mages. They will also keep their potency promos. But building a bunch of ritualists works too, definitely.

 

[Azhral]

Thessa has good mages, Arendel has good priests, but what about Amelanchier (is that right)?

Cavalry is the best for him, thanks to his Homeland trait he can take advantage of the upgrade trick. Lvl4 Horsemen (10xp) with Flanking 3 and Homeland (or Horselord) have a withdrawal rate of 85%. Upgrading them to Fyrdwell (Horse Archers) or Knights gives them a 95% withdrawal rate, making them perfect for hit and runs and doing damage to enemy stacks without losing too many troops.

 

[Calavente]

well I'll add that the main issue with lack of catapults is not stack attack but mainly city defense destruction.
however, contrarily to the opening post, fireballs are really useful for that aspect.
(less city defense destruction than catapults, but it works nonetheless).

I think I never ever attacked stacks with catapults for mass effects... I only do it when I can't have mages.. such as with Khazad.

then, don't forget to cast rust AFTER maelstrom (maelstrom does +5% or +10% damage to units wielding metal weapons...and rust removes thoses. you then need only 2, max 3 mages to reduce the melee units to 70%HP).

 

[BvBPL]

One option is to crank out promoted disciples of leaves from your altar city give them city raider and then upgrade them to rangers. The city raider promotion removes the city attack penalty of the ranger and leaves them with a +10% to attack cities. Of course that isn't a lot, but rangers that can effectively attack cities are pretty great.

This works better with the Svart than the Lfos, of course, but it is should work with any civ.

 

[UnforcedError]

^^That's a good idea, especially with the Swarts

 

[BvBPL]

Yeah. An additional advantage is that you can promote a disciple unit to march at level 2 right away, so if you can squeeze out level 3 disciples, which is pretty easy even if you don't have an altar, you can get rangers with march and city raider.

Of course, if you leader is spiritual then they also come with mobility, and you don't need to follow the FoL to crank these dudes out.

 

[UnforcedError]

Yeah. An additional advantage is that you can promote a disciple unit to march at level 2 right away, so if you can squeeze out level 3 disciples, which is pretty easy even if you don't have an altar, you can get rangers with march and city raider.

Of course, if you leader is spiritual then they also come with mobility, and you don't need to follow the FoL to crank these dudes out.

That's even better. I tend to upgrade savants to mages with Arendel but I never thought about getting recon units via disciples of leaves. Thanks for the tip

 

[kekekeke]

Forget the old ways, convert to Ashen Veil and use the ritualists. It may be a gamble, but you just might be able to destroy infernals before AC gets too high

 

[UnforcedError]

Forget the old ways, convert to Ashen Veil and use the ritualists. It may be a gamble, but you just might be able to destroy infernals before AC gets too high

I tend to convert for a short period of time, build 3-4 ritualists and use them with priests of leaves as the heavy hitters. Works like a charm. And you only need AW in 1-2 cities, that won't raise the slider too much. In fact, getting Slavery for that time period to whip them out works best.

 

[akatosh]

Adding to the religion-hopping with Arendel, another thing you can do is convert to Empyrean after your stint in AV for the ritualists. Going Empyrean will get you back to neutral, protecting your forests from hell terrain. Also you get a chance to build some Sun II casters and Vicars. After you have 3-4 Vicars out, switch back to FoL. When you get to Feral bond you can upgrade your Vicars to Druids and have access to Crown of Brilliance, which gives you another good source of collateral damage. It doesn't stack with Maelstrom or Ring of Fire but it's more powerful than either.