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Dryads question

Almondum

Spellcaster
Hello folks,

I was looking at the military units the other day to assess if I should be training something more.
In the game world there is an awesome unit called Mistwalker, she looks like a Dryad and I thought when I will get access to Dryads and upgrade them, they would behave the same way.

I went to compare and the Dryad we get never moved 4 spaces. She always moves 3 spaces and attack 4, just like a normal crossbowman.

Why we don't have access to a 4 moving Dryad just like the AI does? Seems quite unfair.

Thanks and have fun!
Almond
 

SpaceCowboy

Soothsayer
The Ranger has 4 fields of movement and 4 attack range, it unlocks a bit later (I think Woodelves Chapter). However, there is no unit in the game that has initiative as high as the Mist Walker, which makes them a real pain!
 

Almondum

Spellcaster
The Ranger has 4 fields of movement and 4 attack range, it unlocks a bit later (I think Woodelves Chapter). However, there is no unit in the game that has initiative as high as the Mist Walker, which makes them a real pain!
Thank you Space. I am glad I will have access to a unit with 4mov and 4 attack range.
It's a real shame that we can't beat Mistwalker's initiative. Sometimes I want to scout a map and "pay" in archers for doing since the Mistwalkers kill them.
 

Laurelin

Sorcerer
Thank you Space. I am glad I will have access to a unit with 4mov and 4 attack range.
It's a real shame that we can't beat Mistwalker's initiative. Sometimes I want to scout a map and "pay" in archers for doing since the Mistwalkers kill them.
Rangers (the 4-move, 4-attack Unit) can be highly situationally useful at only 1* level, most notably to pick off those infuriating one/two Enemy Mage Units which often accompany other types of Enemy Units but are standing just out of Archer/Dryad reach on your first move, and Rangers' Initiative, at 20, is very good, too. However, Rangers, like many if not most of the non-Barracks Troop Units, are vulnerable to being one-shotted at the 1* level - firstly due to all Units' low HP at that stage, and also because Enemy Units will commonly target either/or the highest-Initiative and/or most mobile Player Units, which are often your own Light Ranged and/or Mage Units (there are exceptions, where certain Enemy Units will reliably always target a particular Player Unit - so you can kite them around if you like, amongst other tricks to even the Player-AI odds a bit!).

Another reason to conserve your Rangers is because Mercenary Camp Units take a lot longer to train than Barracks Units. I myself used my 1* Rangers very sparingly indeed, largely just stockpiling them until they acquired their 2* Promotion - which was only this week, as it happens (I'm at the end of the Halflings Chapter). Even at 2*, though, they are low in HP compared with Archers (Initiative 18) and Dryads (19), so where I can - i.e. where the terrain or the Enemy combination, or both, aren't healthy for Rangers - I still substitute Archers and/or Dryads. By the time you get your 2* Rangers, your Archers will be at 3* (in fact, I think they may already be - in Fairies, if you still are? - or near enough), and they're tough enough to withstand being one-shotted by anything other than e.g. Enemy Heavy Ranged Units (esp. Orc Deserters) at 2* or 3* level.

And yes, MistWalkers - don'tcha just hate 'em?! I know I do, and in fact many players, self included, consider them to be rather OP - not only the 8-total strike range, so they can hit most of your Units on their first turn, but ALSO high in HP, with a pretty good debuff at their 3* level, AND the Strikeback ability, too. All they're missing, really, to become the game's Combat Overlords Without Compare, is a tactical nuke or two... :D

Scouting most Provinces above the first few trivial-difficulty Tournament Provinces (those below 6th Tent/Round - Rounds 1-5 all have only 1* Enemy Units, 6-10 are 2*, and 11+ all-3* with debuffs) is pretty much necessary unless you're facing easy combinations such as all-Mage/Light Ranged or, even better, all-Heavy Melee/Heavy Ranged. I usually use a Golem Squad to scout Provinces where there are MistWalkers - yes, you'll lose a few, but they're very tank-y, so most survive. In the very high Provinces I'll use one Squad of Orc Strategists - if I have any to spare, which isn't often, since they cost Orcs, not Supplies, to build - because they have a better Defence against Light Ranged and they also have Strikeback, unlike the Golems... not that the O.Strat's 3-space strike range can even hit those dratted M.Walkers, but hey, it's nice to see them trying! Haha.

Once you have both 2* Rangers and 2* Blossom Mages (the Elf Player's only way to catch up with the Barracks Priests which Humans start out with...), with their 2-move and 5-strike range, you really are laughing, and can finally put the Combat-related woes of the Orcs and Goblins Chapter behind you (in fact, all Combat pre-2* Blossoms, especially, can be tricky for Elf Players)... and if you're not there yet, here's something to be aware of: when you open the Advanced Scouts Tech of O&G, the Enemy Units in the Spire will ALL become 3* level, meaning they ALL have debuffs (but no more HP - that's how the 1-3* system works on both sides). That was a horrible shock to me, for sure, when I got that far...!

Good luck in devising strategies to outwit the Enemy Units - it's actually a lot of fun, once you get used to their AI patterns, and especially once you're armed with some actually dangerous - and especially long-move/long-strike range Mage and Light Ranged - Units of your own, too!

PS : If I may say so, your City build is excellent. If you're Tourney/Spire-focused at all, or even think you may become so in future, my only bit of advice would be to keep the Expansions down, if you can - whether Premium or Standard Expansions. You can just store them in Inventory if you do need them, but you can't un-place them, and they DO very strongly affect the dreaded Spire/Tourney Formula. It's too late to regret mid-game decisions once the truly enormous Squad Sizes start appearing... as in 10K Enemy Squads vs your 5K Squads (training size varying according to AW level), which I now see in mid-Tourney! While I have few AWs, most are high-Levelled, so I now have 12 Expansions in Inventory.

The Tourney/Spire Formula never causes a 'difficulty spike', as such, so you'll barely notice your Squad Size creeping up and up... it's incrementally very effective, though, since it comprises four factors which all multiply each other, as I'm sure you will see if I just provide it, here:

Max. Relic Boost % × Expansions Placed × No. of Mandatory Researches Completed × Total Ancient Wonder Levels

NB : Premium Expansions are 'worth' 60% of Standard Expansions; unplaced Expansions and Optional Research Techs are both ignored.

This Formula has never been officially released by Inno, but was reverse-engineered from crowd-sourced Player data by an excellent maths and stats expert called MinMax Gamer (now sadly no longer on the Forums), and his very detailed maths, as well as his Spire and Tournament Squad Size Calculator (incredibly useful if you want to see how future changes in the Formula's variables will affect YOUR particular City - it varies, often dramatically, from City to City) - can both be found on his own personal website (NOT AFFILIATED TO INNOGAMES), here:


... I hope some, any, or all of this post will be of some use to you! :)
 
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Almondum

Spellcaster
Thank you so much Laurelin!

So many wonderful tips and observations. May I ask when do you use your dryads?
I mostly use my elven Archers to counter Mages and H.Melee. My dryads are 1 star for now.

I need to learn more about the Elvenar AI, I only noticed the chase after the high initiative units.

I will follow your advice regarding the expansions. Thank you very much for the formula, I will keep it close!!
I felt the "epxansion" difference before and will be even more careful now.

Have fun :)
Almond
 

schadenfreude

Enchanter
Haha, don't judge a unit by their looks! It's important to remember the distinctions of their specialties even if the enemies look like your units. For example, the Orc Strategist is an excellent unit to deploy against Light Range. However, its doppelganger the Orc Deserter is actually a Light Melee specialist instead. Also, the Orc Strategist has a defense bonus against Light Range but the Orc Deserter has a defense bonus against Light Melee. Therefore, if you treat the Orc Deserter like an Orc Strategist, you might end up avoiding sending your Light Range at it when your Light Range will do a better job than Light Melee in this case! But I would TOTALLY LOVE IT if they'd give Dryads a strikeback!

That being said, Dryads are Heavy Melee specialists so they will kill Heavy Melee faster than Rangers or Archers (I don't have a human city). They are also Mist Walker bait on opening round. Since no units act before Mist Walkers, you always have to take their pot shots. I deploy Dryads when I see Mist Walkers to protect my mages so she will go after the Dryad instead of my mages.

Another time I will use them is in high Heavy Melee/Light Range enemy combos. Light Range pair better against Heavy Melee than Heavy Range and can stay out of their range (except against Knight). With Needles+Fed Fire Phoenix+ELR, my Light Range will also have an advantage versus enemy Light Range, even though they are the same class. However, Dryads are the last Light Range to act in the Light Range class. Therefore, you don't want to line the Dryad up opposite the Wild Archers and Bandits because then the Wild Archers/Bandits get a free pot shot (line up Archers/Rangers across Wild Archers/Bandits so your team gets the free shot instead). Slot the Dryads opposite the Heavy Melee. Dryads have more pop than Archers/Rangers so they can help clean up the Light Range faster while also staying out of Heavy Melee's way when all the enemy Light Range are done.
 

Silly Bubbles

Necromancer
The exact formula is:

Tournament/Spire Squad Size = 3.574 * 1.0042^M * (0.003A+1) * (V+0.75P-4)

M = unlocked mandatory researches
A = # of AW levels
V = placed non premium expansions
P = placed premium expansions

There's more info in this thread: https://en.forum.elvenar.com/index....ing-difficulty-change-through-chapters.16321/

Personally, I wouldn’t worry much about placing expansions. I’d rather watch the amount of Ancient Wonders upgrades. Level 30 AW is as bad as 10 premium expansions or 6 standard expansions. Also expansions are very hard to get so you can’t really overdo it and can always use them to improve your fighting. When you get stuck on research tree, it’s very easy to upgrade a lot of AWs and forget the impact on fighting/catering.

Also, have a look at what players that achieved what you want to achieve do and that will make things easier too. Elvenstats.com is very good for that.
 

Almondum

Spellcaster
Thank you Bubbles!
What about the % of the boosted goods. Does it affect the difficulty? If yes, does the Mountain Halls % boost affect the difficulty as well?

Thank you!
Almond
 

schadenfreude

Enchanter
Thank you Bubbles!
What about the % of the boosted goods. Does it affect the difficulty? If yes, does the Mountain Halls % boost affect the difficulty as well?

Thank you!
Almond
It does, but for most players, their boost is maxed at 700 already so it’s often considered a constant.

The way @Silly Bubbles wrote the formula, he insinuated it’s maxed out with the “3.574” number, which is really 0.4391*min(Boost%,700% + 0.5)
ModelV5.0Formula1.png

Tournament/Spire Squad Size = 3.574 * 1.0042^M * (0.003A+1) * (V+0.75P-4)
I have 2 players in my fellowship with intentionally stunted Chapter 3 cities for Spire diamond farming. One person does not care about the relic % and has it maxed, but another player intentionally spends his relics and avoids doing too much tourney as to not acquire too many relics. These are very tiny cities. We were studying their setups using the minMax spreadsheet and punching in different numbers. It was interesting because in their case, relics do make a difference. The other interesting factor in their case study was the use of premium versus regular plots. The person who avoided relics only used regular plots. The person who didn’t care about relics bought premium plots and left regular plots unused. Even though there are more total plots, because she only used premium plots, her plots have less of an effect to the overall numbers. So I would say if you are still a very small city (under 10 plots in early chapter), it has a more significant impact with relic boost, but for most people, it can be ignored because we’ve maxed out boost long ago.
 

Silly Bubbles

Necromancer
Just to make it a bit easier to analyse, these are the effects on fighting/catering difficulty of the formula based on the latest version of MinMax spreadsheet (using preset values):

1% production boost: 0.13% increase
One mandatory research: 0.45% increase
One AW level: 0.18% increase
One non-premium expansion: 0.88% increase
One premium expansion: 0.58% increase

Just a note, all of these increases can be offset by the benefits that they offer.
 

Almondum

Spellcaster
Thank you very much for very thorough explanations! I will bookmark this post to consult anytime I have questions :D

Have fun!
Almond
 
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