Help Forming a Dark Elf Strategy

[Azvael]

I'm trying to form a functional dark elf strategy.  As I'm a noob player, I need all the help I can get.    

What build would you suggest for dark elves?  I've seen Seravy's suggestion of 5Nature / 5Chaos.  This sounds like an excellent idea.  What other magic combos might work well?  Would DE's be served well by a heavy nature or heavy life build?  The former relying on heavy summoning to fill out DE lines, and the latter used to to enhance DE units and try to compensate for some of their shortcomings.

I'm at a bit of a loss on how to best utilize some DE units.  I'm fond of halberdiers and cavalry, and nightmares seem straightforward, but I'm not sure how to best apply warlocks and nightblades.  Any suggestions?

From what I can tell, the DE's greatest weakness (and they seem to have more than a few) is speed.  They're slow*.  Slow to grow, slow to produce, and slow to reach their elite units.  I have no problem with this, as their power output, good economy, and ranged attacks make up for this.  I'm trying to figure out how to best compensate for this.  Fast expansion on Myrror and rush-building all the population enhancing buildings is a no-brainer.  What else can I do here?

That's it.  Thanks for reading, and thanks in advance for any replies.  



* Not as slow as the original mod.  I considered them nearly unplayable in MOM due to their low pop growth and highly expensive units.  Seravy's mod has reduce this to what I think is a reasonable level.  They're slow and expensive, but not to the point of crippling.

[Seravy]

Nature - I can see that working. Improving terrain and population growth works well for DE, and summons can help getting past the early game where they have problems. Omniscient might be a good pick for them to get extra growth if you do all Nature, or you can rely on Change Terrain. Probably best on medium or lower land sizes where you can't afford ignoring medicore terrain areas.

Life - Dark Elf units don't benefit much from most Life buffs (Life buffs usually do nothing useful for magical ranged units) but Stream of Life is great for double growth rates. If you lucky enough to get Supreme Light, that is also great.

To speed up growth, the best bet is having either Stream of Life, or a realm with strong early summons (Chaos, Death, Nature) so you can expand without getting punished for it. Sorcery with Focus Magic also contributes nicely, and Floating Island is amazing for an all-ranged race. If it works, it pays off amazingly well though as Sorcery is unstoppable in late game if you have lots of power. So all 5 realms have something to offer.

[asche]

Life - Dark Elf units don't benefit much from most Life buffs

I would say that, especially in the beginning, they benefit very well from Warlord / Heroism, as this boosts their ranged damage output as well as survivability ...?

[Seravy]

Warlord is not a Life buff. I guess heroism is useful until you build a barracks and war college. The extra health for the elite level has limited value for ranged combat. Holy Weapon and Lionheart doesn't increase magic attack power and defense from Holy Armor or Invulnerability is not very useful on ranged units either.
Endurance can be nice if the unit needs the extra move to stay out of reach, but you can produce Cavalry if you need more movement so it's not that special either.

Warlord is something I would never play in a magic based strategy, as it takes away 2 picks from books without making my spells more powerful or cost effective. And those 2 picks are on top of Myrran.

Military dark elves...idk, I would play other races if I wanted to go the military route.

[Azvael]

Seravy, asche, thank you for replying to this thread.

I'm rather proud of myself for coming to the same conclusion as Seravy regarding white.  It seemed like a no brainer, but then I went back and read through the spells.  While there's a lot there that would be helpful, I think white would be somewhat wasted on DE's.  As Servay points out, it really doesn't do anything for the DE's biggest military asset: their magical ranged attacks.

And I'm not sure going early military is the best options for DE's either.  Militarys need to rush in the earlygame, and DE's rush like a tired, one-leg turtle.  Their military might comes in mid to late game, and by then it's nightmares and warlocks against everybody else's elite units.

For me, the appeal of DE's is the power generation and the ranged attacks.  I'm thinking I need to capitalize on these rather than focusing on how to lessen their shortcomings.

I'm thinking nature, chaos, sorcery (maybe especially sorcery) or some combination thereof.

I'm starting a new nature/conjurer game (on normal, lol; I 'll test it on higher levels when I figure out what I'm doing).  We'll see how that goes..  I'm looking hard at sorcery, though.

Seravy, in your DE build (5C5N) why did you pick five books each rather than 4 each + extra retorts?  I know you had a good reason for that.  I'm curious to know what it is, as I don't grasp the book mechanics very well.

[Seravy]

If you want to build the strategy on late game and powerful spells/ high power base, you have to make sure you have powerful spells.
4+4 books don't have enough high rarity spells for that to be reliable. It's the strongest if you're willing to take the risk (you have to be lucky with your default spells and need to find extra books/trade for/loot rares and very rares), but if you fail to find extra spells and roll, let's say, Clairvoyance, Earth Gate, Chaos Surge, Warp Reality, Earthquake, Blizzard, Petrify, Doom Bolt, Warp Lightning, Chaos Rift as your rare and very rare spells, you're probably going to lose. (Not that these are bad spells on their own, but in this combination you'll have far too many spells that do the same thing and nothing in other categories - and there are many ways for this to happen, for example you might get all summons and no combat spells instead)

It doesn't matter if you take 4+6 or 5+5 books though, depends on which realm you like want to rely on more. More nature gives you more creatures and combat tricks to support the dark elf units, more chaos is more destructive power, both in and outside combat. Both work.

6 Nature means you can pick Gaia's Blessing as guaranteed, but 6 Chaos gives you Flame Strike. 5 of each means you can pick both Fire Storm and Change Terrain, etc.
From Sorcery I'd want Aura of Majesty or AEther Binding as uncommons, and probably wouldn't care about the rare as much (they are all very good but nothing stands out as must have for Dark Elves - very rares are the big deal in Sorcery, like Sky Drake or Time Stop or Spell Ward)

[Azvael]

If you want to build the strategy on late game and powerful spells/ high power base, you have to make sure you have powerful spells.

...snip...

Ah, this makes sense.  Thank you very much, Seravy.  You've been extremely helpful.