Looking for help with the Wood Elves

[Chummy 8]

Just finished a very long and successful Nurgle campaign and looking to start something different. I picked up the Wood Elves pretty much the first time since their rework.

How exactly am I supposed to manage all these forests? The woodies play a weird defensive, non-expansive style that I can't get my head around. Occupying anything outside of the hearthlands seems pointless since the AI goes right for them and the garrisons are very weak. Are you supposed to occupy territory and eventually sell to allies?

How exactly do you handle sieges? In Wh2, you could cheese the AI by hanging outside the walls and raining arrows down on em. In 3, I get shot to ♥♥♥♥ by the towers. Their melee infantry isn't great and my usual strategy of bum rushing the gate and using magic to take out blobs doesn't work as well as I would like.

[Zeradus]

Shadow magic with pendulum is the best lords to recruit. as far as taking out towers get lots of archers when doing a siege that way you can take out their towers. Remember that an unmanned tower doesn't fire. ALWAYS build up the yellow garrison structure. I always amassed a lot of wealth by razing the enemies up and then after having a lot of money and armies tidal wave expand, after that initial crash of expansion holding all of those territories will suck but that is why you don't get attached to all of them and only keep stationary armies where you know there is going to a lot of attrition.

[SpeaksTooFast]

Originally posted by Chummy 8:

How exactly am I supposed to manage all these forests?

Unless you have spare armies, one at a time.

I normally love the wood elves but right now their garrisons outside of the major settlements are super weak making them good for little beyond feeding the invading army xp.

I do think Orion is still in a pretty good place as you can ignore the weak garrisons by simply going wide and having more armies everywhere.

If you don't think you can hold the heartlands just leave them in ruins.

Don't to be afraid to run in the red once you have a decent bank roll as you can make a lot of money from fighting/looting/razing.

[Halcyon]

I had good success by allying a local order power and then razing their enemies to let them backfill.

[Nylan]

Depends on the faction, some can get rather powerful boosts to specific lord types. Such as the Sisters of Twilight office for a life mage making Awaking of the Woods as cheap as 2 WOM. Low cooldown, cheap damage spell can help a half stack hold a tree.

Generally when playing Wood Elves i'd just take 1 outpost (short of any that offer landmarks, like the one by Durthu for Hawk Riders) to keep for myself and offer anything else i take up in diplomacy to make friendly with the neighbors. A settlement you will make no money off of anyway might be worth a trade agreement, NAP and military access. The following turn a second settlement might just be worth a defensive alliance (defensive allies owning hearthlands count for boosting forest growth). Plus of course they can build it up and manage it.

That one outpost i suggested taking is to use as a recruit center. Choose the building for -1 turn global recruit cost as well as -50% recruit cost. Any unit recruit globally is slightly less than recruiting locally at the tree, catch is you get many more global recruit slots than local. Can build an army in a lot less time than you could recruiting at the tree at 2 units per turn, or longer if they take multiple turns.

For sieges i did a lot of "bait and switch". The AI is slow to react to that, even on VH/VH. Check out the map, a lot of the sieges off somewhere that the attacker can deploy and move a short distance to attack in a different spot, but for the defender it's a much longer route to march over and defend. Maybe just slip a few waywatcher units over the walls and on to the capture point from the far side. Maybe deploy some fast units at the map edge on one side while your infantry hide in the trees on the other side of the map. Not going to be winning in melee by brute force until you get to treemen or the Bladesinger type units.

Look carefully over your faction specific offices, might be reduced upkeep for specific units (drychas faction for example) or really cheap spells for some like a Life mage for the Sisters.

[Hieronymus]

Just make arrer units and arrer everything down.

[DaBa]

Not sure what you mean by the non-expansive playstyle. You can expand just the same, although it is way harder to get a good economy by just owning a few regions. The main point of capturing settlements that aren't forests is to give you places where you can recover after battle and provide you with trade resources that will be a hefty part of your income early on.

As for the armies, since Wood Elves economy is pretty weak compared to basically all other races, you will HAVE TO earn a lot of money from raiding and sacking settlements. Basically, your passive income from regions is only enough to pay for the army upkeep alone, and if you want to have a good amount of armies you'll constantly have to operate on basically 0 passive income or even negative income, all your excess money for buildings and units will come from your war efforts, or things like sea treasure. Diplomacy is also extremely imporatnt, you can get paid thousands for trading a settlement that is barely bringing you any income, and get a trade agreement out if it at the same time for example.

Army composition wise, your funds are precious so you have to be very cost efficient. Melee infantry is the weakest part of wood elves roster,, you should avoid anything more expensive than Eternal Guard, which are pretty decent low tier infantry for line holding. Archers will always be your main damage dealers. Glade Guard are one of the best (if not the best) low tier missile units in the entire game, combining them with a few Eternal Guard units to create a front line will give you a very cheap, but very effective army. Glade Guard with Starfire Shafts remain very strong through the whole game and can decimate anything, armoured or unarmoured. Combine that with buffs from technologies, heroes, lords and veterancy, and glade guard can become disgustingly powerful, maybe even the most cost effective damage unit in the entire game. You take like 10 of them, shoot at something, and it is basically dead in one or two salvos.

You really should go for higher tier units only if you feel you can afford them. Tree Kin are disgustingly durable against basically anything physical that isn't a combination of AP and anti-large. If you unvest into tree-kin you should probably not use Starfire Shafts because of the fire damage, go with Hagbane Tips instead which will reduce friendly fire damage as well as help tree kin survive longer thanks to poison debuff on the enemy. Treeman are also decent, but I feel like Tree Kin just do a better job at what they are designed to do, and are cheaper so I prefer them.

Also, magic. You will a lot of times end up relying on magic to do a lot of work, due to not being able to afford many elite units. Magic is especially useful in sieges, you can peel enemy's garrison with magic and AI will usually just let you do it and stay within walls, you can damage their most dangerous units this way and then send in the rest to clean up.

Few other shout outs that I personally like using and saw great results:

- 1 or 2 Hawk Riders in your army can be pretty devastating, very easy to flank enemies and shoot into their back doing massive damage, but be careful because they are super squishy and die to basically any melee flying unit or archers. Alternatively can use Glade Riders for the same purpose, available for cheaper and earlier.

- Dryads can be a surprisingly good, especially when they get veterancy and you get some things to buff their stats. They cause fear, which for a melee infantry is pretty sick, do magic damage so effective against physical resistance, especially demons. Pretty fast and decent damage. Very cost effective for being so cheap.

- Zoats are very expensive, and for the price they aren't very cost effective fighters, but that's not their main point. You get 4 free spell casts when you bring them along, that you can use independently of your other spellcasters. Both Flesh to stone and Earth Blood are very useful spells and I really think that getting to use them for free, with addition to what you can cast normally with other spellcasters, makes them worth the cost. And between spellcasts they can still fight just as well. A single one in your army will more than pay for it.

[Abisha]

only capture points around the main tree, your main tree grow X points a turn.
the tree's also have a "portal system" connecting main hubs together.

[identity]

Wood Elves don't really have a reason to expand. Their mission is to activate all the different healing rituals for each magical forest. You get bonuses for having allies, so they will take most of your territory and defend the lands around your forests.

[hottnova75]

Your archers range is one of the best in game , with generals buffs and gear.

You can own the map , if you do it right.

Raze enemies everything. Building your outposts is cheap and fast. You are wasting gold if you don't raze most enemy settlements. There are a couple odd ones , but most just end up being simple outposts anyways. Put some points into post battle loot skill in tree and generals skills.

Double up cheap armies of glade guard and a few spears or dryad units for a wall like they said earlier. Two armies can take almost anything. In the fight , pay attention, because the units will need to be micro managed more than past versions of TW. Sometimes you will find idle units that have to be reordered right in the heat of battle. Use pause often.

Wood elves are defensive at the main tree hub settlements. I ignore most outposts getting smashed if I am busy with razing and conquering a few turns away. Defend the tree.

Focus on building the main Trees Hub settlements , and don't forget you can Worldroot travel.

Sometimes no diplomacy except with The other wood elves , and high elves is best.
That leaves alot of open razing to do. Don't tie yourself up with most diplomacy, Unless you have really high standing with them. Things go south fast when you kill their trade partners.

Once you get armies at two tree hubs , it grows from there.

Oh, and if you like Wood Elves, you should try The Sisters of Twilight expansion. They kick a s s.