Dark Elf Campaign vs High Elf Campaign

[[6-4] Kek~]

Dark Elves seem to be vastly stronger than high elves on the campaign. I did a lokhir campaign just recently on very hard/very hard and achieved long victory after around 90 turns and maintained strength rank of 1 for the majority of the session. I had pretty much 0 struggles the entire campaign. I believe I lost 2 battles for the entire campaign.

However, I am not even halfway through this Eltharion campaign and I am starting to struggle quite a bit. I gave up the badlands and focused on defeating Nkari and securing Ulthaun, and I have just recently returned to the badlands. Things are running smoothly in the badlands. Unfortunately, Malekith and Crone are coming down from the north and giving me a really hard time. I am barely winning fights and only with severe casualties.

My question is.. why are dark elves exponentially stronger than high elves? Are they not supposed to be mirror images of one another? More specifically, why are shades so much stronger than sisters of avelorn? Don't get me wrong, sisters of avelorn are REALLY good.. but I feel like shades are far far superior. Not to mention, shades come from a t2 and t3 building while SoA come from T4. DE single entities also seem stronger than HE single entities, too. Whether it's the monsters or the lords/heroes.

I dunno, just felt like ranting a little bit about the state of the campaign.

[CrUsHeR]

Postat inițial de Superbia:

You're clueless.

Well, the numbers above are correct. They speak for themselves.


It's not like Dark Elves are stronger in everything, but their actual weaknesses lie elsewhere. Like not having access to global recruitment, or not being able to avoid attrition outside of Raiding Stance.

Black Arks are cool, but you only can recruit one every 25 turns so you quantify how many of those you'll get during a campaign. And then you still need to spend dozens of turns with Horde Growth before they have an actual impact.

Names of Power being potentially great but having a lot of duds, too. Where the High Elves are very reliable with Lord traits if you have the influence.

And so on. The factions are completely different in just about everything. Only thing in common is that their mage heroes are the most generic variant in the game. Both factions needed an overhaul to bring them in line with the newer WH3 factions, but not as much as let's say Wood Elves (still using the outdated recruit system with extra "forge buildings" etc).

[Apollyon]

Postat inițial de CrUsHeR:

Postat inițial de Superbia:

You're clueless.

Well, the numbers above are correct. They speak for themselves.

Your numbers were off and those that weren't were cherry picked using sub-optimal strategies to reflect what would be true if a player focused exclusively on public order when playing Dark Elves (which is the wrong way to play Dark Elves lol).

You can keep coping, but ultimately, both races are set to receive reworks with the Slaanesh DLC, so it's a moot argument to begin with. High Elves are definitely stronger currently and I expect this will remain the case after their reworks, but we shall see.

[[6-4] Kek~]

Postat inițial de Superbia:

Postat inițial de CrUsHeR:

Seriously, what a facepalm. High Elves are notorious for their Control issues compared to many other factions in the game. In particular compared to Dark Elves. Here is why:


So the High Elves don't even have a Commandment to boost Control.
Their control building gives +12 at Tier 5, but that is all passive control you get.
Invocation of Asuryan gives +4 control over 5 turns, with a 20 turns cooldown this equals a flat +1 control assuming you can use it each time the cooldown expires.

So at most, High Elves can have +13 control not counting the usual Legendary Lord item sets giving around +1 or +2 global control.


Dark Elves get +8 control from their regular control building, but they also get another +5 from the T5 Aristocracy building which means they get a total of +13 passive control. The aristocracy building also gives +2 local recruit capacity and +1 global lord recruit level so this is the one building you'll want in each and every city anyways.

They have a commandment for +4 for when ever you need a quick local boost.
But of course they have the slave diktat for +10 which can run permanently until stabilizing at 100 (if so desired, but getting 1500 gold or 50 growth is better with stable control).

But wait, that isn't everything - Sacrifice to Atharti gives +8 for 5 turns, with a 20 turns cooldown this equals another flat +2 control, twice as good as the equivalent Elves ritual.

Which means Dark Elves get at least +15 control, or up to +29 whenever running the commandment / diktat combo. Again not counting LL item sets which i'm too lazy to check now.

And indeed, Morathi gets a free.. what was it, +5 from Slaanesh corruption.
So you got this idea about Control upside down. Literally.



And please don't get me started on the post-battle loot. As Dark Elves, this is clearly going to be your nr.1 source of income compared to the net money you can make per turn from cities.

You're clueless. High Elves get global public order bonuses from Nobles and Handmaidens, which you will always field max capacity of at all times. They also have a Legendary Lord in Alarielle that quite literally provides a +5 public order bonus just by standing in a province, making rebellions practically impossible.

Dark Elves have terrible public order, mostly because they really don't prioritize public order buildings over money and military infrastructure and they are heavily incentivized to either sack or loot and occupy settlements they capture in order to get slaves, meaning they start off with massive public order penalties. You mention diktats but Dark Elves really don't want to use their diktats for public order, because the other options are infinitely more profitable to them. They can get money or growth instead, which are always more useful than public order. Same goes for commandments, they get commandments that give them income or growth, why in the world would they waste that to get public order?

Post battle loot is a joke. If you're really relying on battles to get income, you're not playing the game correctly. This ain't Khorne, Dark Elves still need infrastructure, they can't function on battles alone.

All in all, you make very disingenuous arguments.

Wait you ACTUALLY think post battle loot isn't enough for dark elves? I typically field a negative economy and rely entirely on post battle loot for my dark elf campaigns. You can easily get 40k gold from post battle loot if you actually put skill points into the blue line. YOU are the clueless one.

[Ire]

While I hate how they replaced the dark elf slave mechanic instead of adjusting it, just to give it to chorfs, the diktat system *is* fairly powerful. If I could have my wish a DE slave rework to bring it more in line with the chorf system would be what I want, but obviously CA hates DE's and thats not gonna happen. So, heres my thoughts on the system we do have:

The advantages are obvious - the growth button is strong, the public order button lets them get away with a lot, and the third button is just free money that adds up to quite a lot over time.

The problem is that the economy is so heavily reliant on ports that access to ports makes or breaks a campaign. I actually find malekiths campaign to be one of the more annoying ones because early on you're dealing with all your backfield problems and only have one port.

Lokhir on the other hand has early access to quite a few ports (and corsairs are a great early game unit to have buffs for), and can spam out blarks at a much faster rate.

Try the old world campaign mod, and play rakarth, who starts south of brettonia (west of ikit). Even though most of the territory is unsuitable, his slave economy is bonkers because of all the ports. Its that big of a diffrence.

Naggarond needs a rework to have more ports. The dark elves are supposed to be big on naval everything, why does the continent have so few ports?

I also think a rework of the slave pens building is needed. I look at it and wonder why I would ever build it (except one to unlock the blark rite then immediately demolish it).

If the slave pens building acted like a port equivalent, a building that gained you slaves/turn, then it would be worth building.

[CrUsHeR]

Postat inițial de Superbia:

Postat inițial de CrUsHeR:

Well, the numbers above are correct. They speak for themselves.

Your numbers were off and those that weren't were cherry picked using sub-optimal strategies to reflect what would be true if a player focused exclusively on public order when playing Dark Elves (which is the wrong way to play Dark Elves lol).

You can keep coping, but ultimately, both races are set to receive reworks with the Slaanesh DLC, so it's a moot argument to begin with. High Elves are definitely stronger currently and I expect this will remain the case after their reworks, but we shall see.

Still calling it "public order" though it was renamed "control" with WH3 release.
Three years ago.


Did you even play the game in the past years? Or just clown award farming?

[CrUsHeR]

BTW one "little detail"

High Elf mage heroes are limited to Horse and Chariot, while Dark Elf mages all get Pegasi as flying mount. Just like almost every "modern" faction. Even the Empire having so much better caster heroes than Elves is a shame, really.

Sure you could stick to mages with your Lord choices, but heroes not being able to e.g. fly over castle walls to wreck the garrison from the inside is a HUGE disadvantage.

Especially for a faction which has nothing akin to actual artillery in order to level city walls, and next to no "wallbreaker" units (a disadvantage which is even worse for Dark Elves per se as they don't even have Invocation of Vaul for the occasional Shatterstone access)

[[6-4] Kek~]

Postat inițial de CrUsHeR:

BTW one "little detail"

High Elf mage heroes are limited to Horse and Chariot, while Dark Elf mages all get Pegasi as flying mount. Just like almost every "modern" faction. Even the Empire having so much better caster heroes than Elves is a shame, really.

Sure you could stick to mages with your Lord choices, but heroes not being able to e.g. fly over castle walls to wreck the garrison from the inside is a HUGE disadvantage.

Especially for a faction which has nothing akin to actual artillery in order to level city walls, and next to no "wallbreaker" units (a disadvantage which is even worse for Dark Elves per se as they don't even have Invocation of Vaul for the occasional Shatterstone access)

HE mages heroes can get sun dragons and mage lords can get, I think, moon dragons or star dragons.

[MjauMix]

Postat inițial de 6-4 Kek~:

Postat inițial de Superbia:

You're off base with this. You start off comparing one of the easiest campaigns in the game and the easiest Dark Elf campaign by far (Lokhir Fellheart) with the second hardest High Elf campaign (Eltharion) and pretending that it's indicative of the power comparison for the two races. It's not.

As someone who mains both races, I can tell you that High Elves are the more powerful of the two, primarily because Ulthuan is an excellent power base and the only challenging parts of a campaign are the first 20-30 turns. Therefore, once High Elves deal with their initial enemies, they're basically set to win their campaigns. The only outlier to this is Imrik, who admittedly has a hard time being so isolated from Ulthuan, but even he can potentially (and with some luck) manage to confederate Caledor before they get wiped by Noctilus.

At any rate, both races will be getting a rework in the next DLC and I look forward to seeing how their new mechanics will elevate them in power.

Postat inițial de 6-4 Kek~:

Agreed. It was just a bit of a culture shock going from a brainless campaign with 0 effort to this high elf campaign. Especially since High Elves are one of my least played factions, where -as dark elves I know quite well.

Evidently you can't read. I already stated HElves are one of my least played factions. You would think that, oh I dunno, maybe I'm looking for tips or suggestions? I have since received said tips and suggestions. I would also hard disagree that after 20 turns the HElves automatically win their campaign because Malekith, Crone, and Morathi become major threats. It really depends on the AI high elves on Ulthuan. Luckily for me, Tyrion sent 5 full stacks to deal with Morathi and never separated his armies so he was pretty much unstoppable.

Calm down Napoleon.

[[6-4] Kek~]

Postat inițial de MjauMix:

Postat inițial de 6-4 Kek~:

Evidently you can't read. I already stated HElves are one of my least played factions. You would think that, oh I dunno, maybe I'm looking for tips or suggestions? I have since received said tips and suggestions. I would also hard disagree that after 20 turns the HElves automatically win their campaign because Malekith, Crone, and Morathi become major threats. It really depends on the AI high elves on Ulthuan. Luckily for me, Tyrion sent 5 full stacks to deal with Morathi and never separated his armies so he was pretty much unstoppable.

Calm down Napoleon.

[CrUsHeR]

Postat inițial de 6-4 Kek~:

HE mages heroes can get sun dragons and mage lords can get, I think, moon dragons or star dragons.

Only the Fire Mage Hero gets the dragon mount, for whatever reason. Literally every other lore mage is locked to Horse & Chariot.

https://totalwarwarhammer.fandom.com/wiki/High_Elves_unit_roster#Heroes

[[6-4] Kek~]

Postat inițial de CrUsHeR:

Postat inițial de 6-4 Kek~:

HE mages heroes can get sun dragons and mage lords can get, I think, moon dragons or star dragons.

Only the Fire Mage Hero gets the dragon mount, for whatever reason. Literally every other lore mage is locked to Horse & Chariot.

https://totalwarwarhammer.fandom.com/wiki/High_Elves_unit_roster#Heroes

That is so strange. Good to know though, makes fire mages FAR superior to the other mage types.

[StrangestEcho]

Postat inițial de 6-4 Kek~:

Postat inițial de CrUsHeR:

Only the Fire Mage Hero gets the dragon mount, for whatever reason. Literally every other lore mage is locked to Horse & Chariot.

https://totalwarwarhammer.fandom.com/wiki/High_Elves_unit_roster#Heroes

That is so strange. Good to know though, makes fire mages FAR superior to the other mage types.

Life is the second best lore of magic in the game, only losing out to Vampires. Being able to win battles without taking any damage is amazingly powerful. A strong single entity stack with life magic support can lighting strike their way through a dozen stacks in one turn and come out with full HP.

[hulahoopah]

Postat inițial de Who trains thy hands for war?:

only dabbled in the dragon helf but they have a balanced traditional army with dragons and magic at high tiers in place of gunpowder and rockets

i did a somewhat gimmicky bolt thrower / sea guard / shock cavalry army and it was pretty easy with decent pew pew, and it would be not far off from a more tryhard optimized army

helves also have decent horse archers, such as they are in this game, and they can send the enemy in circles while you shoot at them

Helves are real shooty. More so than delves who shoot and melee, which is why i like delves more

note that lokhir can easily support multiple high tech armies while running in the score towards victory if leaning into his campaign mechanic

I like imriks dragon princes, stack up pretty well

[Smex]

Darkshards.