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Likewise Influence; absolutely, you're gonna have a constant source of influence expenditure, but they tend to be pretty manageable. The most important ones is paying for Asuryani Arrivals on cooldown to mitigate our abyssmal base city growth rate, and 40 influence per city every ten turns is not exactly asking for the moon on a plate, you know? After that comes city founding, webway travel, and hero recruitment.
Cities cost influence and ore, and are twice as expensive for us as other factions, so that's going to sting. Webway tickets can rack up surprisingly quickly, but it's an infrequent expenditure and, short of panicking and rushing a bunch of units back to defend a city, one you can save up for. Technically webway activation also costs influence, but making it free is a tier 1 tech and a pretty decent one, so in practice it's free. After that the big one is going to be hero recruitment; while you don't strictly speaking NEED any of them, the Autarch is worth considering for what that ultimate will do for your economy alone, and Spiritseer's are really hard to pass up on for the utility they offer as healers/morale manipulators.
In sum, influence matters, there will be things you want to spend it on and some big-ticket items you'll want, but it's all pretty manageable. I haven't found myself needing to really focus on influence production - we're not Tau, constantly playing the resource-trading market, or Orks paying our units in good vibes, or Tyranids needing to crank out heroes for that synapse control.
Fundamentally, you're going to want a lot of food early, but without neglecting ore production. Pretty much the entire Eldar early game is food based, and pretty much our entire late game is ore-based. All our early units, even from our vehicle factories, cost food and ore to produce, and food in upkeep. All our lategame units, even from our infantry barracks, cost ore to produce and as upkeep, with the exception of Warlocks, which cost energy.
Unit wise, it depends on whether you focus on infantry or vehicle production. In either case you probably want to research webway cartography, then if you're going infantry you pick up rangers, howling banshees, and aim for fire dragons at tier 4; your starting guardians have remarkable firepower, but are fragile and ranged 1, so they're a bit hard to work with. Rangers are remarkably resilient against shooting and have decent firepower, so they make clearing neutrals much more comfortable. Howling banshees are immune to overwatch, have a researchable free action morale nuke, and kick out lovely damage; they're when you can start going on the offensive.
Fire dragons are when you can start burning down cities efficiently. Not long after that you'll get warlocks, and a squad of 3-4 warlocks with the cleansing flames tech can raze an undefended city in pretty much one round of attacks, and they can teleport to anywhere you have vision to, so that's a gameplan right there. The absolute bane of this approach is running into Umbra early; until you get fire dragons you flatly do not have anything that can take them on comfortably except maybe massed guardians, and even fire dragons will pretty much almost die from the umbra's death shriek, so taking them on is always painful.
If, on the other hand, you're going vehicles then you research greater ingress first and start cranking out shining spears. Shining spears are kind of guardians+ - they have little HP and a low model count, mitigated somewhat-but-only-somewhat by decent armour, some ranged DR when they move, and the jink skill, but they do very tasty amounts of damage to almost all targets, they have the mobility to pick their fights, and they're a reasonable answer to umbra right from the get-go. They're worth spamming.
Afterwards you get the vaul's wrath batteries for some fire support and kinda-sorta sieging capabilities, and focus more on support techs until you can start building fire prism tanks, which are a general-purpose workhorse unit that'll carry you to whatever you want to transition into in order to close out the game. Probably war walkers, war walkers are absurdly deadly. It's a simpler strategy in that you have more generalist units backed by support techs, rather than balancing a ranger/banshee/fire dragon composition and when to transition into warlocks, but it's also more vulnerable in that early stage. Shining spears might let you knock out umbra if you really have to, but relying on squadrons of fragile jetbikers can feel like something of a knife-edge balance, and managing the economy is trickier because you're just as reliant on food for early unit production, but much more focused on developing ore production to transition into tanks.
the Snipers can help a little with there max range of 3 and infiltration, but need to stand before shoot, or suffer a big dmg loose, also they are useless vs all that isnt light armored.
some will tell you that jetbikes can help you in that matter with there oh so great dmg mitigration skills, but in the end they have very low max hp, so they die in the same time as lets say SM Bikers.
another approch are Banshees who also have infiltration, but again this dont helps when the enemy sees you first in his turn.
so aim for higher units fast (many will tell you to use fire dragons, but they are made of papmache too, denying the fact in TT they are as hard to kill as a SM, so you need transport for them in gladius)
to top it all of Eldar have THE WORST City mechanic, think of settlement with Necroons but 1000000 Times worse.
You see all possible settlement Points from start, hurray.
Problem One: AI Focus hard on killing them when they are neutral (they are a killable, none rebuildable building, see where that leads? )
Problem Two: As soon you make them you Outpost for Teleport needs the Neutrals bash them hard too (and hey the research so you can Teleport and Fire after that is only Research tier 10, so Teleport with great joy to your fresh outpost and see how you units get killed together with the outpost before they coud make a attacck.) also the outpost has NO weapon for self defense.
Anoyance One: when your picked place somehow survived until you coud upgrade to an City Core you look at one Defense Weapon with laughable bad dmg output (you know, highest weapon tech in the galaxy and made into an alpha strike race in gladius... ) and a total gimped Worker growth (around 60% of all other races, because at least for that they seem to have read the Fluff of the TT Books)
There best Workhorses are the War Walkers (dont ask me how a scout unit coud have made it to to the apex of the eldar army in the way of firepower, standing power and cost, oh yeah i know how, because they made them Tier 7 Research)
if they ever bring us the Khaindar we see maybe a good infantry for eldar with reasonable standingpower, range and firepower, but the forgot to take them in the rooster.
Stardustfire sucks, don't waste your time on reading him.
I will point out though that :
-Guardians are extremely deadly.
Neutrals have a relative tendency to focus Webway gates if they can.
Claim one, wait for Neutrals to use their action on it, send the Guardians to one-hit those pesky cultists, neophytes and other kroots.
Keep a guardian or two in OW position to make sure the counter-attack doesn't sting too much.
The plasma grenades are crazy good. With them, Guardians one-hit almost every starting unit (the only exception being Space Marines 5 models squad)
In addition, Rangers deal close to 0 damage to vehicles. if your enemy went hard on vehicles, your rangers will be useless. Having guardians mitigate that (they are very good on anything with 8 armor or less for their price).
-Banshees are expensive.
While they are very good, you usually lack food.
If you don't lack food, then it means you lack ore for your second city (which is a pretty bad idea).
A guardian-rangers mix is usually more efficient.
-Umbras are not dangerous.
Umbras are monstrous creatures. The Sniper trait of Rangers also works on Monstrous Creatures.
You'll wipe them with ease.
Set your rangers close to the Umbra. Wait next turn, hopefully shoot some OW on an umbra or two.
Next turn shoot them with all you have.
Umbras are dead.
More Umbras incoming? Set your guardians in front of your rangers to deal OW on any Umbra that would come.
Meanwhile using Shining Spears to deal with Umbra is almost certainly a bad idea. Unless you can kill all the Umbras of the pack in one turn, it's very likely you will lose units.
Losing units is bad.
If you went vehicles, Vaul's Battery are a good tool to kill Umbras due to their low movement and your high range. And Vaul's Battery not dying from the first Umbra hitting them.
-If you go for vehicles (a bad idea in 1v1. A maybe-idea in team games), you need research.
The thing is you want to spend ORE on vehicles. But you need food for shining spears and Vault's battery.
So, get a research building and woosh through the ranks to get the Wave Serpent and finally start spending ore.
Note one thing : Wave Serpent are transports (so yeah they're not the greatest damage dealer).
Allied units can go in a transport.
Wave Serpent can go through portals.
Abuse that in team games to bring your ally with you. Abuse that in solo games to bring your infantry to frontlines for a lesser cost.
Note another thing : Shining Spears and Vaul's batteries are not vehicles. They can go in a Wave Serpent.
Overall infantry is the path of "If I hit first, the enemy dies. If the enemy survives, I'm dead". Vehicles if the path of "I want to play like every other faction".
What about heroes. Are they a must have early? Which ones are worth it?
If I don't get vehicle early on, when is a good time to get the tech to make them? Right before getting wave serpents?
None of their heroes are bad, but they require extremely costly investments that are not worth it at the beginning of a game. For a rough number, I'd say before turn 40 on standard speed, it's not worth it to make Eldar heroes. And even after that, the Autarch, the Avatar or even the Farseer are extremely costly, so you may push it back even further.
Yes.
Wave Serpents provide the toughness you desperately lack on your infantry as well as something that can absorb OW for your infantry. It also provides a sort of mobile hospital.
They definitely are worth it to get.
Archon can work as a tanker to eat the enemy OW Shots at the start, but like most Gladius Eldar Units his hp are flimsy, means he need to retreat and heal up fast as well.
The Avatar looks good on paper, but his lack of damage ignore skills, most other races hero units have, make him die fast in one turn of focus fire. a SM captain has much more standing power for example.
Eldar in my opinion, that i have said in the past on these forums, are badly designed from a units perspective. All their early units are worthless. Literally all of them. Every other faction has a better, more effective selection. On paper, things might not look wrong, but as soon as you play a few games with the Eldar you are going to notice a pattern, mainly that your units die easily and typically can't hold a line vs an organized opponent. The reason for that is that Eldar early units are BOTH squishy AND short ranged. Typically in strategy games, short ranged/melee units tend to be on the tougher side, unless they are high damage high risk/high reward units. With Eldar in Gladius, all infantry except Wraiths are so fragile they die by looking at them. To counterbalance this, Eldar units have higher attack strength, but this is only on paper. In real world practice, due to their fragility, short range, and low mobility, you barely get the chance to use that firepower.
Back when they launched though, the Eldar had great end game units, so at first i thought this was a balancing thing, they had poorer early units but stronger late game units. I still would have tipped the balance a little towards strengthening the early units, but i could find some sense. Then they began butchering the Eldar late game units, because classically players beelined to the late game units and spammed them to win. They didn't strengthen the early units to compensate, though. So we ended up with a faction that is simply not fun to play. In the early game you play a skirmishing game of hit and run, and largely based on luck/rng, and you just hope to manage to snatch enough cities and protect them until you can make Walkers, Wraiths, and air units.
My advice is for AI games, pvp is probably much different.
Early game you need food, a food poor start will be very difficult.
I go for the free gate activation and then Rangers at tier one. Activate the gates that are under attack to get line of site and discover where your enemies are.
Rangers in overwatch with Guardians in front are very effective.
Make use of fire then move, don't hang out in range for a counter attack. Move out of the way to allow another unit to get into firing range.
I prefer to use Shining Spears instead of Banshees to handle enemy overwatch. Banshees ignore but do nothing to mitigate it for any follow up units. Shining Spears with super jink are nigh invulnerable. Activate it and move into cover and suck up all the overwatch, then move in your Guardians and attack. Their grenades are especially lethal.
Fire Dragons are your answer to burning down cities and any tanks, but you need to keep them safe. This is where Wave Serpents come into play. Load them up and move into range, hop out and attack, and next turn if injured attack and then move back into the Wave Serpent to heal.
I also like to get the Avatar of Khaine and equip with armor boost, hit point boost, life leach, attack rate boost. It is spendy nut this will hit single target units and cities really hard. Combine with Doom from a Far Seer and watch the fireworks.
The infantry with the ghost blades are both durable and hard hitting.
Warlocks hit like a mule but are not very durable.
The late game units are all good. Their fighter jets are especially useful.
I find the early line of sight to be useful as you can see cities and claimed tiles throughout the game. I actually end up taking several tier one techs at the start - webway activation, rangers, grenades and shining spears. This gives me a foundation to build on. After this I tend to quickly shoot for Wave Serpents as they greatly enhance the use of relatively squishy Guardians and Fire Dragons.
I play huge maps with one of each race in a FFA with max wildlife and medium landmass, so different settings might change the relative value of the gateway activation.
Note also that, in addition to their transport utility, Wave Serpents don't deal great damage *over sustained combat.* For a quick alpha strike they can hit surprisingly hard, simply because of their Serpent Shield free attack.
Yes, basically.
The calculus shakes out like this; for one, tier 1 techs are pretty cheap, and one tech either way makes a negligible difference, so if you find yourself really needing another of those techs, going back for it isn't too painful - but, will you?
If you're going infantry, then obviously you don't care about Greater Ingress, at least for a while. You might pick up plasma grenades if you see yourself building a lot of Guardians, but if you intend to lean primarily on rangers/howling banshees, then you're not going to get much use out of a ten-turn cooldown ability on a unit you only have a couple of. If you want to pick up heroes then obviously you want the Shrine of Khaine, but as valuable as they are heroes are a rough prospect to invest in, and the greater reliance on influence as a resource means cutting out that trickle of spends becomes relatively more valuable. That leaves Asuryani Summons, which adds +1 production to every barracks, and you've got to think of that in terms of breakpoints.
Not accounting for loyalty/special feature bonuses or penalties, without Asuryani Summons it takes 2 barracks to build Guardians/Rangers/Howling Banshees in 3 turns, and Fire Dragons/Warlocks in 4 turns. 3 barracks will build Guardians/Rangers/Howling Banshees in 2 turns, and Fire Dragons/Warlocks in 3.
With Asuryani Summons it takes 2 barracks to build Guardians/Rangers/Howling Banshees/Fire Dragons/Warlocks in 3, and 2 barracks to build them all in 2 turns. If the devs ever made excess production carry over, there might be some marginal gains to early units as a couple of points of excess production compound on each other to chop a turn of production time off every now and then, but, yeah, 'marginal' is the word. So, the bonus does make a difference, but it's kind of long term to pick it up at the start.
So if you're going infantry then the T1 techs you actually benefit from are: Rangers, Webway Cartography, *maybe* Shrine of Khaine, *maybe* plasma grenades, and Asuryani Summons *later on.* So if you're getting early heroes, grab Shrine of Khaine instead, and probably Cartography sometime after that to ease your influence budgeting. Otherwise, Webway Cartography is your best bet to unlock T2 techs.
If you're going vehicles, the calculus is even easier; you don't give a fig about Rangers, Asuryani Summons, or plasma grenades, only Greater Ingress, Webway Cartography, and maybe Shrine of Khaine.
You only lose excess production if you have an empty production line for one turn (including if you sleep the building).
You're not wrong.
You can technically come with the Wave Serpent, hit hard, then run away the next turn.
I get it.
However the Wave Serpent selling point is his 10 armor at T5. This low in tier, there is nothing that can efficiently kill it (except Necrons, but Necrons cheat hard).
If you use the Serpent Shield, then you're back to 8 armor.
You now have the defensive stats of a Predator for a 33% higher price. Except you're a bit worse because you're a skimmer and some units have a bonus against you.
If you want ONE MORE unit that hits hard then run away the next turn, may I suggest more infantry instead? :B.
Like I said, they don't hit hard over sustained combat :P
More seriously, if you're using them to transport bunches of infantry, you're probably leaning on quick alpha strike fights anyway, so that one more (pretty decent) hit might well be valuable. But it's a tradeoff, yeah.
Without Asuryani Summons, 2 barracks goes 12 24 36 48 60 72 84 96 108 120. Guardian production at 3, 5, 8 and 10 turns, rangers/banshees at 3, 6, 9 turns.
With Asuryani Summons, 2 barracks goes 14 28 42 56 70 84 98 112 126 140. Guardian production at 3, 5, 7, 9 turns, rangers/banshees at 3, 6, 8 turns.
Three barracks, no bonus, 18 36 54 72 90 108 126 144 162 180. Guardians at 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 10 turns. Rangers/banshees at 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 turns.
Three barracks, with bonus, 21, 42, 63, 84, 105, 126, 147, 168, 189, 210. Guardians at 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 10 turns. Rangers/banshees at 2, 4, 6, 7, 9 turns.
So, yeah, Asuryani Summons would accelerate production of early game units, but the gains are pretty marginal, we're talking like, "over the course of ten turns you'd get one or two units out a turn faster." The main advantage is still bringing fire dragon/warlock production in line with early game units. Loyalty/special feature bonuses might change that, but I'm not going that deep lol.