Races, Units, Buildings

[Seravy]

The economic difference between dwarves and dark elves is absolutely huge. Any suggestions on how to play dark elves when it takes me 10 times as long to get going? And I can't build a strong army until I have multiple cities generating gold?

Rely on magic until you can produce Nightblades, Warlocks or Nightmares. Prioritize population growth. Consider that you are playing a late game race, and also that dwarves are not just an early game race but also the one with the strongest economy. comparing them is a bad idea. In exchange for that they get close to nothing related to magic, no sage's guild, no amplifying tower, no wizard's guild. If you have access to the other plane, you can try to take advantage of the basic units all having magical ranged attacks to gain some early advantage. It might also work against beastmen and draconians if they do not have ranged units. Dwarves and Trolls are usually too durable for that to work. Also if you find Orihalcon take advantage of it. It boosts every unit you can build except Nightblades.

[Seravy]

Finished the first Dark Elf testing game.
It's 1414 and the first wizard I met is finally down to only three cities, but I lost a ton of important units and buildings to 3 nightblades which I had no way to fight, and one wizard on the other plane already has Evil Omens in play and the entire plane to herself as she eliminated the other wizard there. Also lost all my heroes in various stupid ways, mostly my own fault.

The population growth of Dark Elf wasn't all that horrible, it wasn't good, far from it but it wasn't the direct cause of losing.
Warlocks worked really well for some time...but in battles where they fail, they fail completely and I lose all of them. Ultimately they're like Magicians, just a lot more expensive yet having the same weak points, mana leak and/or invisible units. I don't see how this unit, on a race that already pays for the "good" units by having the slowest growth in the game, is worth 210. Yes, Doom Bolt is amazing, except you don't get Caster 20 which might not get you 10 direct damage but is often almost as good, confusion, earth to mud, petrify, mana leak, just to name a few spells they can cast that can be potentially equal to a doom bolt or better.

I also produced adamant nightblades and they sucked. 5 of them couldn't deal with 3 units of minotaurs. Even with invisibility they are a bit too fragile. Still they were the safer option compared to warlocks, except the fighter's guild+armorer's guild+alchemist guild is even more costly than the wizard's guild and produces nothing. For a top tier unit they were..barely ok, which is a problem considering they had adamant. Again, not something that can make up for having slow growth. Finally, Nightmares, I didn't produce any. They are harder to make than Warlocks and don't deal better damage, probably worse even. Flight is amazing but I had sprites for that. Maybe I should have went for them first and warlocks later.
One more thing I failed to use well was war trolls but that was entirely my fault. I expected a stack of 9 to be able to take an enemy city, but I lost half of them to black sleep so I couldn't win. I should have used resist magic.

Overall the race is not bad, but I feel it's at best medicore. I was playing on extreme btw.

[namad]

Nightblades have always been entirely useless imo. In MoM, in CoM. Would never bother making more than one or two as scouts, maybe. If you want to change that, feel free. If anything I think invisibility ruins them. There is no way an invisible unit can be a top tier armorer's guild melee powerhouse, it wouldn't be fair.

Perhaps reduce them to fighter's guild or even lower? Otherwise remove invisibility and just make them useful?
Warlocks are great, yeah, but being able to mix warlocks and magicians might be even better, but you can't give warlocks doom bolt AND 20 mp that'd be op. They can't lose doom bolt because it cannot be cast for 20mp if you add it to their spellbook.

You could remove nightblades and just give them both warlocks and magicians?
Alternatively make nightmare's cost 200?
Dark elves are a good supplemental race where you just pay gold for a wizard's tower and warlocks, when you already have another race going.
Alternatively if you were left alone forever on say normal, a dark elf that had like 30cities would have a ton of power generation from that.
Another idea. Give warlocks 41 mana, and no doom bolt ability, doom bolt automatically in their spellbook, make them cost 300 or 400. Either remove nightblades or turn them into weak low tier cheaper invis scouts?

[Seravy]

The greatest problem I see with Nightblades is they have identical stats to a halberdier but cost 66% more. Yes, Invisibility is nice, but once more we are at the point where we have an expensive unit that isn't durable. Which is why I had them with 3 hit points at first but people didn't like it and it was too powerful. (to be fair halberdiers have better stats : they have a ranged attack of 3 vs none on the nightblades.)
Unless we buff the units, I think the fair prices would be 120 for Nightblades and 150-160 for warlocks, considering the race has slow growth.

[Seravy]

Kept playing that game and I still haven't lost yet. (1418 Jan.)
It's now a stalemate, the first wizard is down to the capital and we are at peace, but I fight against two others. Every once in a while I manage to take a city, but I also fail to defend my own about just as often which I have to then retake. The loss of buildings and population from the constant defensive battles ruin the economy.
The race does not have any decent melee units, and that makes it unplayable. Yes warlocks are amazing but they run out of ammo and then the leftover enemy troops rampage in the city until turn 25. Not good. Nightblades can't hope to fight evenly with most melee units coming my way. And I still don't have nighmares because I was busy rebuilding the damage and replacing my lost units.

The problem I see is, the units are expensive but have no durability, so the losses are always high in battles.

Let's see what other races have.
Dwarven halberdiers have 3 hit points, and higher resistance, making them superior to nightblades despite being lower tier. Sure they aren't invisible but ranged units aren't what causing my problems...well actually they do too. Warlocks can't attack cities defended by ranged units and nightblades are too weak to deal with a city that has 5 magicians and 4 minotaurs. Even with adamant they barely win with 1-2 units surviving.
Hammerhands are obviously way better. Dwarves even have extra production and gold so these units are not even more expensive.
Beastmen halberdiers again are superior with their extra hit points. Which is quite bad considering they are the "generic" race and even their lower tier unit is superior. Minotaurs slaughter Nightblades easily with their +2 To Hit bonus.
Trolls clearly have an advantage as their halberdiers are literally 2 times more durable. Not even warlocks can deal with them because they have too much health to kill without running out of ammo. War Trolls which would be in theory the equal tier unit, have almost 3 times as much health and higher damage output.
Draconian halberdiers are the only thing on Myrror that is equal in health and utility to a nightblade : they are not invisible but fly, and have fire breath not poision. But they are an entire tier lower. At armoer's guild tier they have Doom Drakes which are again way superior. Although not invisible, with 5 movement they can easily assassinate ranged units anyway, which is the only advantage of nightblades, and the drakes are far superior against melee units as well thanks to their fire breath, flight and fear.

I believe Nightblades should get their 3rd hit point back and keep the current cost. Warlocks should be cheaper. And I need to start producing some Nightmares to see if they work or not. I expect them to have the same problem of high cost+low durability, but at least they fly and aren't weak to nukes.

[Nelphine]

I'm OK with the third hp and cheaper warlocks. But I'm not sure it will help that much.

As an aside, warlocks are very good for defending towers to prevent arcanus from getting to Myrror

[namad]

I'm worried if you make warlocks too cheap though non-dark elf starts will buy able to buy even more of them with gold after conquering one dark elf city and possibly settling more and just outright buying wizard's tower/warlock.

[Nelphine]

People can already do that with high men magicians (which are flat out better than warlocks).

[Nelphine]

And right now, I'm not sure how you can ever justify not playing dwarves if you choose Myrran. The economic advantage is way too strong and you can usually count on at least two other races to exist on the plane. (Although arguably hammerhands are better than almost everything on the plane anyway so it only matters for very particular strategies that require some other unit. Which is usually warlocks, or MAYBE doom drakes.)

And dwarves can buy whatever they want. I've had cities where I had amplifying towers on population 2 because I was dwarf and just bought every single power production building.

[Seravy]

Dwarves are amazing but they do come with three flaws :
-Slow in combat and the overland map. They can find themselves unable to win against weaker enemies because they just walk away. Cannons can help but only until the fast units take them out.
-They depend on minerals and don't have a purify unit.
-Dwarf cities don't have amplifying towers and produce low power, if you want magic, look elsewhere (or conquer cities from other races. That always works, if successful.)

They are the best choice for military based strategic, but bad for magic based ones.
Oh and their growth is almost as bad as Dark Elves, so spreading them around takes a lot of time.

...at this point I'm tempted to swap the growth values of Dwarves and Dark Elves though. That would also make Dark Elves equal to High Elves.