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Strategy and Tactics series: The High Elf build

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Very different take on the capital city! I tend to use it to pump out Bows for the first few shards, and leave the bows there so I can get the training grounds built early. Will be interesting to see how it plays out.

Are you planning on demolishing the farm in the capital city as well? Could slot in a harbor or further magic building, once your food city gets going.
 
The farm is absolutely on the chopping block. Once I get myself a healthy food surplus I'll trash it and let my food city carry the weight. It's the other reason I haven't cast fertile grounds on my capital yet... not going to use it so why waste the mana?
 
I would have gone with researcher if those bonus 3 points were applied to your capital...IE your capital generated 8 points of research naturally rather than 5...but as such researcher is just a flat bonus added to your research output.
 
This video shows one of the reason I dislike the elves, especially their settler.

It's easy to think "well, the additional cost and build time are made up for in the movement speed." But it just isn't so. Your first settler, for example, would have built the city on the same spot, on the same turn, if it was one from another race. But you still paid 25 gold in addition.

Even more so, it isn't just a single turn build difference, it's a single turn PER settler.

So if you crank out 5 settlers, that 5th settler is done on turn 15. For each other race, that 5th settler is done on turn 10. Meaning that it gets a truly massive headstart in getting to its destination. And unless you are building somewhere truly distant, it's unlikely you'll recoup that. Even more so, in that same 15 turns, another race could probably have 2 other combat units out. And will have spent 125 less gold on settlers. Thats a free elven archer right there.
 
Pinstar said:
I would have gone with researcher if those bonus 3 points were applied to your capital...IE your capital generated 8 points of research naturally rather than 5...but as such researcher is just a flat bonus added to your research output.
Click to expand...
Well, sure ... IF you're turning your capital into a research city.
I suspect your economy would get way behind due to doing so. I'd be much more interested in seeing how well your build goes in a less ideal start.
Even a desert world that happens to have a bunch of scarabs ... yay for no gold from the lairs.

Tell you what, I'll make a video of human early game with researcher (ignoring research buildings), and you tell me if your spells come faster than mine.
I'll go impossible, on standard settings, and try to "end" the game as quickly as possible.
I.e. not actually win, but making winning a formality.
I think I can manage half an hour.
 
Didn't realise my transcoder was set to 16k bitrate ... stupid video took 3 hours to process.
Anyways, here it is
http://youtu.be/qKKWKb8rDeI

Crappy start location, and I played quite sloppy, but still ... at that point winning was a foregone conclusion.
Got 3 lords, which is silly overpowered - but hey, I'm human I'm so rich I just hire everybody without thinking about it.
Cut the video there, 'cos after that it's just massive unit spam and swarm a temple site ... meaning each turn took progressively longer to play.
 
Getting rid of that initial farm on cities that don't need one is something every player should be aware of - especially AI players.

I get the feeling the AI doesn't do the brutal laser-focused city building a good human player will do.
 
And this is another thing that hurts AI if paired with city limits.

With civty limit we have what is in Civ games called tall build.
Small numver of very well specialized cities. They need to be in order to support big army and higher tier units.

With limit you can not build mediocre all arund cities, as in W1 and be competetive.

This hurts both mediocre players and AI.

From positive side, AI does have x2 resoucre bonus on hard and x3 on impossible.
 
In a game as complex as this, it will take time for the AI to be tweaked to a more competitive level. Heck, even Civ 5 which has been out for a LONG time and has had some major expansions has an AI that can be a little quirky and can be beat even when given massive advantages by the difficulty level.

On a side note, episode 2 will be out on Tuesday. I'll post it as a reply to this thread to keep discussions focused and not clutter up the forum with extra threads. My plan is to do one every Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday. Keep that feedback coming.
 
Thank you for posting them, I found them really helpful.
 
Episode 4 is up.
One of my earlier commentors said this was a more exotic build with very few units. And here I thought this was normal for elves. I'm curious to hear others' opinions on my low-unit approach to the early game.
[video=youtube;LdaQFgCQMSs]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdaQFgCQMSs[/video]
 
Yep that's me.

On good side, you supplanted those few units with fireball spell, so issue was less noticeable. Plus that Imp spell.

But currently, you can not get some quick cheap units, since you have no building that can produce them. This is vulnerability that can make or break the game, if some unexpected strong random spawn appears.


In around 5 turns, you'll get dragons as enemies. Hope you are ready (I guess this was the reason why second hero was rushed). :D
 
Oh I'm well aware of the dragons. My rushing that 2nd hero was because I didn't want to lose the chance to grab that hero. The high healer hero type works VERY well with my longer term strategy, and I didn't want to risk losing her; that play was more about long term benefit than it was dealing with the dragons. You'll see in tomorrow's episode how I use a minimalist army to deal with those dragons.
 
Very nice videos, thanks a lot.
But I just wondering, why you dont use the whole speed of the scout unit of elves? He has 5 movement point and you let him stay some turns 3 fields away from elementals. Just move him 2 fields to the elemental or mob and then - 3 fields back.

Other thing, why you used the archer to clear the elemetal-spwan whle the scout is out of tasks? just move speedy scout to archer and let archer to countinue his original task!
Third thing I dont understand, why should you take a perk lesser heal at the beginng? It was competely wasted perk - as a research focued mage you have no usability for this. Just addistional 2 turns, and it is done! Even if your food gone for two turns down.
 
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