Elfs need a buff. wait... BUFFF

[unmerged(527231)]

Ok, i have played enough 1x1 games and my friends too and i think no one would disclaim that Elfs are ridiculously sucks.
The whole concept of elf's unit is like 'low hp with high resistance'. Ok, but in the world of Warlock rules combat spells.
So that uber arethi-spearman getting down with simple lighting strike and finished with any crap like hunter, and 70 gold and what is more important, 4 (four!) turns of building time is GONE just for 28 mana and one shot. +20 elemental resistance is nothing, i just cant feel it, they are so low hp that it feels like they are more vulnerable to spells then other basic units.
What is the purpose of the arethi-spears then? Scout? It's worse scout in the game, because scouts are dying. If enemy's scout found you first, your scout is dead. And if your scout is arethi-spearman its a disaster (4 turns god damn), if your scout is rouge or hunter its,.. ah nvm.

The next uint is Warlocks of Angil... This uint is a joke. It is one of the usless unit in the game. Do you know any other unit that costs 300gp, and could be killed with single shadow bolt spell for 55mana? He is a ranged unit with 22hp, '0 melee resistance' for 300gp??? Are you kidding? Human mages has 22 hp too, higher damage, 3 ranged skill with frozen effect, and costs almost the half of Warlocks of Angil. Whats the hell??? Human mage is twice as effective.

Oh, the next unit, Sky Carveil - straight, this unit is trash. 250gp for 25hp, 10 elemental resistance, and, you wont beleave it, oh my god, 12 missile attack... Another candidat for best money wasing unit in the game. It dies in two or even on crit shot, forget it.

Next question - hall of commerce. +20% to all resources. Oh, a nice idea, it will raise the productivity in mixed economy city, but you need to build the hall of archery and the hall of spearman. Wait!!! Why the hell do you ever need the hall of archery and hall of spear in ECONOMY city? And by the way, most of cities focused on productivity of the certain type of resource. So what is the purpose of the hall of commerce? I cant see it, its usssssssles.

This race is pretty good in late game, when you use the proper units. Stunning bowmans are good. Lots of mana ect. But if you met your opponent in 10th turn - you are dead, and there is no way to turn it around.

I cant play this race any more, my friends banned this race and i ban it too.

 

[unmerged(170187)]

Yea I know what you mean. When Elves first came out people saw their increased price and train timed along with some of their various special powers and started saying "Elves are OP". But if you actually play them several times you see they have a lot of over priced and crappy units mixed in with a few gems. You'll notice there aren't really anyone crying overpowered anymore.

The 70 Gold 4 turn spearman scout is not worth it. The Elves don't have any cheap spamable units to act as throw away scouts like the other races to and it really hurts them early game. I don't bother building the spearman because they cost to much and take to long. As soon as I capture a neutral city I start using Rouges/Robbers/Bats as my scouts since their cheap and easy to make. I don't care if I loss a couple. Scouts are suppose to be disposable, they are in pretty much every game I've played regardless of genre.

The Warlock feels like an over priced Vampire without all the cool vampire effects because he does death magic, so if your facing undead your kinda screwed. And his do Elemental instead of Death once every few turns doesn't really make up for that. The unit is not 50% better than all other casters like his cost suggest. He's barely on par with them.

The Sky Carveil is like a copy of the Undead's flying ship, only once again more expensive. I will admit though that the Sky Galvin is pretty strong. They can actually take some damage, have elemental attack, and get teleport ability. Since they are siege units they are great for attacking cities and clearing out towers. Problem is getting to late game with them.

Yea the Hall of Commerce is worthless. I feel like it's a consolation prize at the end of the troop training tree. It's like "Congratz, you wasted all that build space to train better units so here is a tiny amount of extra income to offset your expenses." I mean you are pretty much never going to build it except in a city that is already setup to train units, and even then 25% is nothing. You are probably better off just building a farm or craftsman district at that point.

In order to get the same benefit you would need an income of 12 in that area. So you'd already need 12 gold income to get the same benefit of just building a craftsman guild. Sure you could argue it applies to all 3 areas so as long as the total income from all 3 is 12 then it works out. But you start with +2 in all areas from the Castle so that's only 6 income, then you have built the upkeep costing buildings to unlock it so your income is still 6. Thus you need at least 2 more Farms/Craftsman/Mana buildings to make it worth the benefit. Some may then try and argue the "Resource" building bonus. But again if your building a city to train units odds are you are going to build perk buildings and thus won't have any extra income from them. It is much better to just specialize the city in the area that resource gives you.

It would make a lot more sense to simply have the Hall of Commerce unlock when you have a Farm, Market, and Mana Farm(or whatever it's called for Elves). But that of course this is trying to salvage a building which I think is unsalvageable to begin with. The reason is the game's mechanics are such that any attempt to deviate from specialization automatically leads to a sub-par building strategy.

The elves have more expensive units that are mostly not any better than their counterparts in other races. They also take a lot longer to build and have the weakest economy of all the races. Their focus on mixed specialties like with the Hall of Commerce and their lack of many of the higher end production bonus buildings make them extremely weak in this area. In a 1v1 fight some of the elves units would clearly win, but those are very few and this game rarely has 1v1 fights for units. The fact that their units take so long to build and cost so much means they are almost always going to be out numbered so they drastically lose that advantage. It's like with the Human Warrior which isn't really any better than the other races but takes longer to build so they are outnumbered.

The only main advantage I really see in the Elves economy is that they only have to pay the difference in unit cost to upgrade and not the full cost of a new unit like all the other races do. This however just leads more to the sense of simply playing another race and use the Elf units that are actually good to boost your army if you capture a neutral city. I also don't find their bonus to R&D to be that great because the cost are so high, that it is putting a major drain on their already weak gold economy. It has a huge up front cost that get's cheaper over time on a "per Gold to R&D ratio" given their repeatable R&D build is fairly low upkeep, but you need several very high upkeep buildings to get to that point. So in the end they have trouble just affording the few cool things they can do.

 

[harmonius]

Agree. Elves are a joke. They cost too much gold and production time. Elves can't loot as fast as other races, because you can't have many elf units in the beginning. Elves can't create economy as fast as other races, because elf settler cost 3 turns production time and 75 gold. So they are in lack of money. So elves can be rushed by any other race.

 

[korog]

I agree... elves could be a stronger on many points.

First... their settling is slower. Yes, their settler has whooping 3 moves nad can shoot a bit, but creating those with 3 turns, you will be falling behind with city count. Right now I do not have a solution for this..

100% I agree with Warlocks of Angil. These just suck. Sure they can run, but what else? I tried them couple of times, warlocks couldnt do too much, I kept tehm as safe as possible, sticking him inside cities and only defending with them. But the second warlocks stepped out of the city, they died to 1 shadow bolt. I was going like: what a waste of 300gp. My opponent happily agreed.

For 300gold price, I expect him either survive a lot better and/or summon imps or something other cool. Elves are really weak, because they can not mass units, so they better have quality summoners or something.


Also, their spearman (scout) is kind of is expensive and kind of same as archer is, but more expensive and takes even longer to produce. So, I never produce them and stick to archers.

As far as flying ship goes, it is not good unit to send to MP front. But that also goes for flying galleus. At least flying units can have other uses.

So why I do feel, that in multiplayer I am only playing with archers? Only unit I look for are archer's upgraded version with stun ability. And upgraded archers are only elven unit that will win you MP games.

 

[osserpete]

Yep. I have to agree with all the above posters. The longer build time, especially at the start of the game really handicaps the elves. Especially in that critical turns 1-20 stage. The settlers need to come with the perk to make them immune to all terrain penalties to make them anywhere near worth the extra turn and gold cost and that benefit depends on the location of your starting city........
The only unit i use from the elves are the archers. Once they're upgraded to tier 2, their special attack is great for monsters spawns as they can 'hold' a city for 2-3 turns until help arrives. I was initially excited about the temple units, until i built some and found out they suffer from the same problem as the other elven units......HP way too low!
I don't know how the Devs can fix the many problems. The whole race seems to be poorly thought out. A good start would be to double the HP of all the units. The warlocks should do spirit damage as their base attack with elemental as a special and death magic perhaps as a perk to make them worth their cost As for buildings, mostly what Sprye said above would be a good start, too.

 

[unmerged(170187)]

I don't know how the Devs can fix the many problems. The whole race seems to be poorly thought out.

Well most of their problems are balance related. Simply lower their cost, reduce build time, and they need to add a cheap disposable scout unit.

Well I think the part of Elves that was poorly thought out was their economy. They wanted to add units that had interesting side abilities to make them unique so they figured it was worth jacking the unit cost up. Then since the other races all had specialized in various areas the only place left was R&D so they figured, "Hay let's make a race that specializes in R&D" The problem though is they then made the elves weaker in the other areas even though it also seem like they were trying to make the Elves a jack of all trades race with Hall of Commerce. Monsters and Undead are about on par in gold production, and gold is the most important resource in the game.

 

[unmerged(259452)]

Imho, the elves are one of the strongest factions if you intend to go for spellcasting and research. They have great mana and research bonuses in their cities. Because of that, it makes sense that their normal units are a lot weaker - because YOUR magic is a lot stronger. So you lose a unit a turn from a fireball - so what? You should be doing a firestorm every turn - what do you think the enemy is losing from that?

The problem, imho again, is that even normal elven units drain mana. So not only are they weaker, but they actually take away the bonus you get from playing elves in the first place (extra mana). This is why I recommend Koatl village trait for everyone playing elves - because it replaces the crap standard units with stuff that is actually usable and spammable. And yes, some people will say that you should build the normal elven units because they become extremely strong at level 5 from their special attack traits. I say bullshit to that. By the time you get them to level 5, any enemy unit can oneshot them anyway.

 

[UncleJJ]

I agree with the criticisms of the elf faction: a weak slow growing economy combined with expensive units that take too long to build and have too low HP.

Only one unit stands out and that is the basic archer and its upgrade, its cost and build time are balanced with other factions, the other elf units seem weak, with low HP and long build times.

The elf economy suffers from lack of gold income from its cities and also low food (to a lesser extent). The buildings giving extra mana and science are good but expensive, so for every city that is fully developed down the mana / science path you need 3 others to just provide food and gold to run everything. So in some senses the mana and science is the output of a total of (say) 4 cities.

JJ

 

[unmerged(495697)]

Elves are a bit split. Some of their units are pretty strong, and some pretty crummy, they have economic advantages and they have disadvantages.

First for economy, they obviously have weaker gold and food production than others, though with their units costing mostly mana and gold, they also need less food. I tested this in one single player, where I had one food city provide enough food to stay on positive for 14 non-food cities and I had a normal army cize. So their only real issue is with gold, which is kind of a big deal seeing as that's probably the most important resource. Mana and research they do well in. They need a lot of mana, but they have by far the easiest time making it too, even beating out undead due to the fact that UD also eat mana for population. And they really blow others out of the water with research. How useful that is, depends on individual play style, I suppose.

For units, they are a real hit and miss. The spearmen are the worst offenders. They're supposed to be your main melee unit and the scout unit, but they're too flimsy for melee and too expensive (both resource and build time) for scouting. They have really nice damage, and low hit points. That works for ranged units, because they don't have to take a retaliation and have the relative security of range. Not so for spearmen. Even if you manage to one-shot the enemy unit, the retaliation means that anything and everything will be able to kill the expensive spearman on the following turn. The warlocks I have very little experience with, simply because they look so bad on paper, so if they have awesome perk ups, I wouldn't know, but they have too many issues, which others have already mentioned. The flyboats aren't bad actually, but they suffer from the same lack of clear roles as the UD one, and like the UD one, have a real prohibitive upkeep cost. You can't afford to fork that kind of upkeep cost for a unit that is just ok, with no clear role aside from city conquest, which can be done by pretty much any unit.

For the ok units we have the Taishar and the settlers. The taishar are a good tanky unit. They won't win you wars, but they're pretty good at defending cities and other units that can win you wars. They only have the problem that they come out a bit late to help with the early game issues that the elves have. They do their job though, nothing more, nothing less. The settler thing is a bit weird. On the one hand it's pretty bad, that you can make less settlers than the other races, on the other hand the elven scouting being what it is, you can't really utilize them any faster anyway. If the elves had better scouting, then it'd be a problem, but as it is, you have a settler every time you have a city spot scouted, in which case the 3 moves is a benefit. The bigger issue with them is the cost though. The settler is not any better than the other ones when you consider the build time, but why does it cost 50% more? I mean gold can be pretty sparse at the start if you get unlucky, and scout like the elves, so an increase in the settler cost which you are constantly cranking out is a big deal.

As for the good stuff, I think no-one can argue with the archers. They're good. They're not overpoweringly good, but they're good. If they had the scout perk, then they'd be really good. There's a reason why everyone uses the archer as the mainstay elven unit. As for the other good units, I really enjoy their temple units. That should not be much of a surprise, seeing as all races have good temple units, but the elven spirits of light and life are probably my favourite. They look cool, and require more care in their use than other temple units, but reward good use to a great degree. The only issue with them is that you can't upgrade any units into them, but that's not just an elven problem so...

On the whole, I think the elves need some loving. They're not far behind, once they get over the early game slump, but they really need some love for the first 30 turns, and the gold production needs a look. It's not bad to have a weakness in resources, since they have strengths too, but gold is a little bit too important to have that big of a weakness.

 

[unmerged(529415)]

I think, Cities of Elves are designed not in order to specialazed them, but improve all 3 resources. Sure under commitment with momontally needs u have.

And units of eles are strong enough. Archers with stun and plenty of hp should bild the main part of the army. Besides of that all elves units have long movement range wich makes settlering and battles easy.

AMO u have to play elves not as other races they have own way.

 

[unmerged(81995)]

Not sure about multiplayer, never played. But in games against the computer I found the Elves as good if not better than all races except monsters. And a far moving scout who can actually fight (a huge difference to e.g. human hunters) is absolutely worth its price - if you avoid losing it, of course. The ability to clear portal worlds and holy sites with the Elven tier 2 bowman without any upgrades or perks is priceless and makes up for the weaker than average economy. The Elves are the first race besides Monsters where I do not automatically switch to the advanced and elite monster units for the heavy fights.
Regards,
Thorsten

 

[unmerged(170187)]

Imho, the elves are one of the strongest factions if you intend to go for spellcasting and research. They have great mana and research bonuses in their cities. Because of that, it makes sense that their normal units are a lot weaker - because YOUR magic is a lot stronger. So you lose a unit a turn from a fireball - so what? You should be doing a firestorm every turn - what do you think the enemy is losing from that?

Your magic is NOT stronger. You just unlock spells a few turns earlier than the other players, but because R&D is RANDOM there is a chance they will still get more powerful spells before you. In one game I was going for resurrection, which is OP, to get back my heroes. Yet even though I had nearly 100 R&D and was clearing through 1 spell per turn and about 20 turns went by in which I never saw the spell. I ended up losing the game because the other player had resurrection and kept reviving his level 9 hero units. After the match I asked him and he said he only had 48 R&D.

Plus there is also the issue you can find powerful spells in neutral’s nest so R&D is only marginally helpful. Another problem is R&D does not carry over into the next spell so having more than it takes to R&D something in 1 turn ends up wasting the extra.

The other limiting factor is casting time. You can only cast one of those Fire Storms per turn and given they only do 10 damage, it’s not likely to be killing a lot of units. Most AoE spells are meant to soften up the enemy, but you need an army of your own to move in for the kill.

All those bonuses to Mana & R&D they get are extremely expensive, which is the problem because you need multiple Gold cities to support all those Mana/R&D cities. The Undead have much better mana flow than the elves and R&D only takes you so far.

They need a lot of mana, but they have by far the easiest time making it too, even beating out undead due to the fact that UD also eat mana for population. And they really blow others out of the water with research.

Better than UD at mana production? These kinds of generalizations without actually looking at the numbers are one of the reasons discussing balance issues in threads like this is so difficult. But since a lot of people seem to just look at the buildings and go “Oh well they got a building that gives +% in that area so they must be good at it.” Without actually crunching the numbers we get people running off with assumptions as if they were fact.

It’s time to crunch some numbers and see how the Elves REALLY fair against other races. And first up is the Mana Production area. For the sake of these examples I will be using mostly Size 10 Cities.

Mana Production: Size 10 City
Elves: 17 Base, 200% Bonus, +51 Mana Income, -51 Gold Upkeep
Undead: 31 Base, 125% Bonus, +69 Mana Income, -12 Gold Upkeep

So they produce about 18 fewer mana, at over 4 times to gold cost. I fail to see how that is more efficient. And compared to the other races Size 6 gets the most Mana possible for Humans which is 20 Mana at -27 Gold Upkeep, while Monsters get their most at Size 6 also with 16 Mana and -24 Gold Upkeep & -3 Food Upkeep.

R&D Production: Elves
Size 5: 8 Base, 100% Bonus, +16 R&D, -19 Gold Upkeep
Size 10: 23 Base, 100%, +46 R&D, -29 Gold Upkeep

The reason for the two different sizes is to show the problem with Elves R&D tree. It is extremely front loaded in terms of cost. Late game it is very cost effective but early game the cost are just too high. A size 5 Gold city will earn you 24 Gold per turn so you effectively need a whole other city to offset it’s cost, which is huge early game. So you are sacrificing two cities worth of production in hopes of unlocking some key spell a bit sooner.

Next up is gold production. The single biggest factor in the Elves having gold shortage issues is the lack of a bank. If they were to give this building to the elves it would bring them back up on par with the other races in terms of gold production and below I’ll show just how big of a gap it is, it’s probably bigger than most people think.

Gold Production: Elves Size 10 City
Without Bank: 27 Base, 100% Bonus, +54 Gold
With Bank: 24 Base, 200% Bonus, +72 Gold

That single building is a difference of 18 Gold per turn in a size 10 city. Now when you expand that across just 5 gold cities it comes out to 90 gold per turn less that Elves are making. This is a HUGE difference in the amount of resources you can use to create an army with. Also it doesn’t take into account all the +Gold resource buildings you don’t get to add +100% bonus to, which can really stack up over a large empire.

Now let’s look back on the Elves supposed “strengths”. Early on R&D City needs a dedicated gold city to fund it, so that’s 2 cities used up just for a little extra R&D focus. Late game it becomes a bit cheaper so 2 Gold cities could support 3 R&D cities, but size 10 cities take around 75 turns to reach.

Next is mana which again needs its own gold city to support it. UD can easily support 3-4 Mana cities off a single gold city. While the other 2 races cannot produce as much mana per city they reach their mana production cap at size 6. On a mana per Gold cost the other two races are also more expensive but they still have 4 slots open if we stick with the size 10 comparison. So you could easily build a Market and 3 Craftsman guild in those cities thus reducing their drain on your overall economy to the point that 1 gold city could support the extra cost of 4 mana cities.

So yea, R&D is clearly their strongest area and they do have a decent Mana setup, but Mana is only slightly better than Humans and Monsters while falling extremely short of Undead. Though UD have a lot of Mana upkeep units so they need the extra amount. But even with that Elves cannot compete against UD in terms of mana production, no one can.


PS: Just realized some may want to know the crossover of Mana/R&D in the cities above. In pure R&D size 10 Elf city it only produces +4 Mana. While the pure Mana size 10 elf city actually has reasonable +15 R&D production. So you are probably better off going for the Mana and getting the R&D as a bonus. Also once you get to size 11 you can grab the +100% R&D building at -10 Gold Upkeep and increase your production to +25 R&D. So size 11 city with +51 Mana, +25 R&D, -61 Gold Upkeep is decent. Problem is you need more than one equal size gold city to support it though.

 

[unmerged(170187)]

Not sure about multiplayer, never played. But in games against the computer I found the Elves as good if not better than all races except monsters. And a far moving scout who can actually fight (a huge difference to e.g. human hunters) is absolutely worth its price - if you avoid losing it, of course. The ability to clear portal worlds and holy sites with the Elven tier 2 bowman without any upgrades or perks is priceless and makes up for the weaker than average economy. The Elves are the first race besides Monsters where I do not automatically switch to the advanced and elite monster units for the heavy fights.
Regards,
Thorsten

What difficulty and map size do you play on? I ask because on Impossible the AI can easily overwhelm you with far greater number of units on a Normal sized maps. I've yet to ever actual loss to AI but facing down AI on multiple fronts was far more difficult as Elves than any other Race.

The Elves Bowman are a great unit, but one good unit does not redeem a whole race. The stun ability is great for clearing out neutrals and makes it so that I think the elves probably have the easiest time of any race clearing the main land and portal worlds. Two bowman can keep any neutral in permanent stun. So Fire Elementals, no problem, Red Dragons, no problem, Golden dragons, no problem, notice a pattern? The only problem is when you face off against 2-3 of them at the same time, which can often happen in portal worlds. That's what an army of bowman is for though.

Their problem is in fights against other players. Stun only takes you so far as you will likely be fighting whole armies. I've had a few MP games with friends, both as the Elves and facing them. Stun can be annoying as it locks down a unit or two but with the long cool down and the fact that they are just normal archer units it's easy to charge them and kill them with all the other units on the field. Mostly I see people using stun to lock down powerful units on the field so they can't run away from focus fire attack. Ever thrown all your attacks at a hero and come up a few HP short of killing it, then on the enemy turn it runs away to heal in safety? Well no more with Stun.

Missile resistance is too easy to get and so eventually your Bowman won't be cutting it in terms of damage. Sure they can still have a good support role with stun but you need some other units to punch through, and a strong economy to afford those units.

 

[unmerged(81995)]

What difficulty and map size do you play on?

Large to huge maps (habit taken over from Civ series) and challenging difficulty.
As I said, all against the computer. Yes, I already lost a unit here and there if the AI focusses on one isolated or one in scattered frontline. But rarely. One reason is as simple as can be - the fifth building in a city is going to be a fort or a tower, period. In frontline cities the 6th and 7th are likely to follow suit. The result is I need few moving units at the borders and focus these clearing the important stuff.
That said I still found Monsters much easier to play, everything comes more natural with them. For multiplayer (if I ever get to play those) I would never use Elves - waste of time, if the reports on these type of game are true.
And btw - as I have built banks with Elves, they have them. Still city specialization is easier with other races, that´s definitely true. My biggest problem with the Elves always is food.
Regards,
Thorsten

 

[unmerged(495697)]

Size 10 Cities.

Mana Production: Size 10 City
Elves: 17 Base, 200% Bonus, +51 Mana Income, -51 Gold Upkeep
Undead: 31 Base, 125% Bonus, +69 Mana Income, -12 Gold Upkeep

You did forget to take off 10 mana for the populaton for the UD so that's 59 mana for a 10 pop city.

Elves get 27 base 200% bonus, 81 mana, 30 upkeep. Also any extra population will increase it much faster than UD city. Yes it costs more in gold, but it does give significantly more mana, and even more at higher pop. (Trap, Storage, HoA, CoF, Bazaar, HoK and continue with wells untill you run out of growth.)

Just you know, FYI.

 

[unmerged(170187)]

You did forget to take off 10 mana for the populaton for the UD so that's 59 mana for a 10 pop city.

Elves get 27 base 200% bonus, 81 mana, 30 upkeep. Also any extra population will increase it much faster than UD city. Yes it costs more in gold, but it does give significantly more mana, and even more at higher pop. (Trap, Storage, HoA, CoF, Bazaar, HoK and continue with wells untill you run out of growth.)

Just you know, FYI.

I'll give you the fact that I left off the 10 UD pop upkeep since it slipped my mind. And since I'm not at home and don't have access to the game so I was using the wiki, which doesn't even have the well listed, along with building tech tree guide in the forums which does not list the well as a repeatable building. So I simply took the other 2 buildings which lead up the path to more mana. I'll need to check that when I get home.

Even if those figures hold true it's still only about 1/3 more mana for 150% more cost. Sure on a PER city bases it beats out the UD but the higher cost combined with the fact that the Elves have a weaker economy it ends up hurting them a lot more. Also you want to start throwing in pop cost then fine you also will need a food city to support the 20 pop from that Gold & Mana city. The UD however already have their pop cost covered in the Mana city itself. An elf food city produces 54 food so for easy math we'll use 5 size 10 cities.

Elves Mana: 27 Base, 200% Bonus, +81 Mana Income, -30 Gold Upkeep
Elves Gold: 27 Base, 100% Bonus, +54 Gold
Elves Food: 24 Base, 125% Bonus, 54 Food, -4 Gold Upkeep

So if we take 1 Food, 3 Mana, and 1 Gold city the total income is +243 Mana, -36 Gold, +4 Food.

Undead Mana: 31 Base, 125% Bonus, +59 Mana Income, -12 Gold Upkeep
Undead Gold: 22 Base, 200% Bonus, +66 Gold

The UD can take 4 Mana and 1 Gold city with a total income of +226 Mana, +18 Gold, -1 Food.


Even though the Elves come slightly ahead on Mana they have a large gold deficit still to make up. Gold is far more useful than mana, which is only useful up to a limited point. The UD still have a much easier time producing mana than the Elves do because of the lower cost involved. The current difference in the two setups is 54 gold for 17 more mana. I don't consider that a good deal.

Even if you trade out one of the mana cities in favor of a gold city to offset the Elves cash flow problem they then fall far short of UD in term of Mana production which defeats the whole point your trying to make, that they have an easier time producing mana. An Elf setup of 1 Food, 2 Mana, and 2 Gold cities would get you a total income of 162 Mana, +48 Gold, +4 Food. So now elves are ahead by 30 gold but behind 64 Mana. And of course the Undead could trade out one mana city for a gold city be back with a major lead in gold and be on par in Mana. The elves are clearly far ahead of Humans and Monsters on Mana production but they just don't compare against the cheap mana production of UD.

As for the comparisons I like to use Size 10 cities as a baseline because anything larger becomes less reliable as actually obtainable given how slow cities grow after that point. Also everything unlocks at Size 10, such as merc advance buildings even though they are not relevant to the topic at hand. I know it's possible to have larger cities but most of my games few if any cities reach size 12 or larger, while several do hit size 10.

 

[unmerged(495697)]

The point about 10+ cities is only that every pop over 10 will benefit the elven city more than the UD one. Much more. But that doesn't occur untill later in the game, hence why I only mentioned it in passing.

The thing with mana cities though is that the elves only need so many of them. I'm usually rationing them at something like 1Food/2Mana/7Gold. Depending on my unit composition of course. Now the elves really have to pay more in gold, but that's only an issue because of the crummy gold production that they have. If they had the normal gold production, then the cost of a mana city would be negligible. It still isn't too expensive, considering how few dedicated mana cities you actually need. My whole point was though that one elven city produces more mana than any one city of other races, even more so with things like mana pump. That has to be counted as a benefit for them, which no one even bothered to mention. No they're not absolutely trouncing the UD, but they are absolutely destroying humans and monsters.

 

[unmerged(170187)]

No they're not absolutely trouncing the UD, but they are absolutely destroying humans and monsters.

Yes they do crush Humans and Monsters in terms of mana production but your original post made is sound like you were saying they did trounce UD. Though if the Humans and Monsters had a repeatable mana build then they would likely be able to hold their own as well.

They need a lot of mana, but they have by far the easiest time making it too

They are a lot closer than you made it sound. And we also seem to disagree on what "easier" means in terms of empire building. The fact that Elves need fewer mana cities seems easier in your mind, despite the fact that you need to ensure a strong economic base to support them. While easier in my mind means having to worry less about economic short comings to get the production out the door. UD already need to build mana cities to support pop and units so you will already be on your way to having a large mana income.

Thus with undead you can just start building a mana city without worry it is gong to kill your early income. A size 5 Elf Mana city is +17 Mana and -14 Gold while the UD is +19 Mana and -12 Gold. This sounds like a close race but it's not really that close as the UD are now finished with upkeep buildings at this point since all of their Mana Farms are free. The Elves next building in the mana chain has 10 gold upkeep and thus brings their city to Size 6 with +21 Mana and -24 Gold. The UD also appear slightly underwhelming because I remembered to include pop cost this time. But the Elves need another city it offset that with food so it is misleading. The UD can also choose to take less Mana production and skip the Mill of Souls to go right into Mana Farm production. Thus they can have size 5 city with +17 Mana and -4 Gold. This is a LOT better in terms of economic impact since your gold production barely takes a hit.

The UD have an early lead and much cheaper cost, while Elves can overtake them on a PER city basis their cost are much higher and thus need to be offset by other cities in the empire. Where as undead require very little outside support to offset the expense of running a mana city.

 

[unmerged(489718)]

I believe the original poster is setting up a strawman and then knocking it down. I believe the elves were designed to be a late game faction. They remind me a lot of the high elves in MOM. If they could survive until the endgame and got the elven paladins, they were unstoppable. Certainly, I would not choose elves in an MP game where they would come under immediate stress. In single play, however, they are very playable. They require careful play for the first half of the game and their warlocks are too weak, but just like the elven paladins in MOM, once the elves get to the point where they can create phoenix, they are a real powerhouse. The phoenix, once it gets the meteor perk is far and away the most powerful unit in the game. Also, their bowmasters with the heavy arrow perk can easily take out fire and earth elementals guarding holy grounds.

 

[Gnomi]

^ While I agree that Elven economy is tad weak and warlock line is pointless, I don't think elven units are that bad overall (at least for SP). Their siege units aren't good, but that also applies for human and undead. Their archers are great, and I actually like spearmen. Sure, they are fragile, but their speed make it much easier to reposition them for better bonuses, pull back damaged units, or sending them to another front. In addition, they packs a punch especially with their flame spell (which, with their mobility, is relatively easy to take advantage of). Plus, you can build an elite Taishar unit without building the "special" advanced training building -- meaning that you can build it before other races start building their own elites (unless they rush for elites).