Dark Elves Strategy ME

[Archluden]

Hi,

What are your opening moves/strategies when playing as the Dark Elves in ME? I'm playing on very hard as Malekith, but struggling to push out.

Mung charges down with 3 doomstacks if I take out Clan Septik (reuniting Naggarond) and if I go for Har Garth straight away they outnumber me and out quality me.

It seems that DE have a really bad starting posistion, no real income buildings, no friends, lots of enemies, weak strength rank and dont bite my head off, but I think a lot of their units struggle to hold their own.

Harpies are a bit niche, bleakswords are a bit weak (weakswords lol), spearmen either lack shields (bad when fighting other DE factions) or have quite low MA and MD stats. Dark shields really are quite poor too especially when charging. However Darkshards are really good and bring a lot of DPS to a otherwise low DPS army.

So far I'm recruiting lots of Darkshards and cheap spears and utilising the starting fire mage, but struggling to have a maintain an income or formidable stack which is causing lots of trouble upgrading settlements or stopping the relentless rebellions/raids.

Anyone got any tips? Where do you head when starting off?

[Demon of Razgriz]

Your best move as DE is to immediately load all of your ships and go to Ulthuan and beg the High Elves for forgiveness or execution, whichever they prefer. :)

Seriously though, I really can't help, sorry. I never played DEs.

[Archluden]

Originally posted by -SG1-Shadowscall:

Your best move as DE is to immediately load all of your ships and go to Ulthuan and beg the High Elves for forgiveness or execution, whichever they prefer. :)

Seriously though, I really can't help, sorry. I never played DEs.

What if my Dark Elves get sea sick and I don't quite fancy the trek?

No problem, hopefully someone can!

[Harmania]

Disregard all T1 units that are not Darkshards.Just get enough Spears to stall enemy front-lines while your Darkshards and Malekith kill everything. Malekith is super, super strong, and the faster you level him up, the faster he'll carry your army for you.

[Shandor]

Low dps army? You talking about the Army with the best Infantry Unit and the best Ranged Unit.
Executeners defeat every other Infantry Unit in the Game and Shades are the best Ranged unit because they can also kill most things in melee.

Usualy i ignore the Skaven first, after i killed the first Unit of them. Let them recruit. You can beat them 1vs3 on Very Hard later. Go take Ghrond first for the Goldmine.
After 30 turns i dont recruit Darkshards, Bleackswords and mostly Spears anymore.

And i never use Harpies and Dark Riders without Ranged Weapons ever. They are not worth it.

[Gnaeus Poopicus Magnus]

I haven't played Malekith in ME yet, only in Vortex. What I can gather from the smooshed map is that Malekith will have an easier time guarding all the settlements around Naggarond, but you still face the same challenges as you did in the Vortex. Namely, Dark Elf factions are pretty hard to establish good relationships with, and your generals constantly need babying to perform basic tasks, or else they'll rebel.

What I did in my Vortex campaigns was establish NA pacts with my immediate neighbors, which allowed us to gang up on the Aghol / Vikings in the North. Once they were out of the way, I was friendly with the neighbors who still liked me, and killed the ones who disliked me. By this point, you should probably control the Western edge of the continent/at least most of the Eastern coast. It's also a good idea to make a pact with the Cult of Pleasure, though in every ME campaign I've played, CoP gets wiped out quick because of their even worse starting position.

In terms of early army composition, you're mostly going to be fighting Norsca or other, similarly weak DE factions. I like to go with ten dreadspears, four or five crossbow/darkshard units, and the rest can be a mix of cavalry, bolt throwers, and harpies (though I tend to ere towards bolt throwers because they're really only useful against early game units, and when I mean useful, I mean really useful.)

You're right that Malekith and Morathi have bad starting positions compared to leaders like Tyrion, who basically gets Ulthuan handed to him on a silver plate (lmao @ Teclis getting pwned by Skaven and Vampire Coast). BUT, the Dark Elves have the uber economy booster known as slavery, which really is sort of ridiculous once you have enough settlements / raid the HE factions.

All in all, just try to use common sense and team up with your bros against the Chaos vikings in the North, until you don't have to anymore and can enslave them as well. The DE are a very powerful mid-late game faction when they get Black Dragons and Shades, so as long as you can survive until then, a DE campaign should be fun.

[Shandor]

Originally posted by Swong:

I haven't played Malekith in ME yet, only in Vortex. What I can gather from the smooshed map is that Malekith will have an easier time guarding all the settlements around Naggarond, but you still face the same challenges as you did in the Vortex. Namely, Dark Elf factions are pretty hard to establish good relationships with, and your generals constantly need babying to perform basic tasks, or else they'll rebel.

What I did in my Vortex campaigns was establish NA pacts with my immediate neighbors, which allowed us to gang up on the Aghol / Vikings in the North. Once they were out of the way, I was friendly with the neighbors who still liked me, and killed the ones who disliked me. By this point, you should probably control the Western edge of the continent/at least most of the Eastern coast. It's also a good idea to make a pact with the Cult of Pleasure, though in every ME campaign I've played, CoP gets wiped out quick because of their even worse starting position.

In terms of early army composition, you're mostly going to be fighting Norsca or other, similarly weak DE factions. I like to go with ten dreadspears, four or five crossbow/darkshard units, and the rest can be a mix of cavalry, bolt throwers, and harpies (though I tend to ere towards bolt throwers because they're really only useful against early game units, and when I mean useful, I mean really useful.)

You're right that Malekith and Morathi have bad starting positions compared to leaders like Tyrion, who basically gets Ulthuan handed to him on a silver plate (lmao @ Teclis getting pwned by Skaven and Vampire Coast). BUT, the Dark Elves have the uber economy booster known as slavery, which really is sort of ridiculous once you have enough settlements / raid the HE factions.

All in all, just try to use common sense and team up with your bros against the Chaos vikings in the North, until you don't have to anymore and can enslave them as well. The DE are a very powerful mid-late game faction when they get Black Dragons and Shades, so as long as you can survive until then, a DE campaign should be fun.

I really like Malekiths Starting Position. You wipe out Ghrond, kill some Rats and deal with the Mung. Thats done kinda fast with 2 or 3 Armies.
If that is done you can look what Darkelves are against you or fight the Highelves coming over from Ulthuan.
Morathi is usualy on your Side and she wipes out most of the southern Darkelves. So you dont have to deal with them.
And once you research +Diplomancy with Darkelves they are really friendly to you mostly.

[Noun]

As melekith I normally go straight south, and take the province south of naggarond, as that happens i raise a second army and start filling out naggarond too, I build all the slave buildings in naggarond and all towns in that province and force all slaves to go to naggarond, I dont build slave infrastructure in any other provinces. Once I secure both provinces I send both armies north and kill Mung, I also amass a third army and use it to raid naggarond and farm rebels, then I slwoly work my way east and kill the Norscans over there before they become a problem. After that I normally horribly screw up and everything falls apart.

[Shandor]

Originally posted by Rawr XD:

As melekith I normally go straight south, and take the province south of naggarond, as that happens i raise a second army and start filling out naggarond too, I build all the slave buildings in naggarond and all towns in that province and force all slaves to go to naggarond, I dont build slave infrastructure in any other provinces. Once I secure both provinces I send both armies north and kill Mung, I also amass a third army and use it to raid naggarond and farm rebels, then I slwoly work my way east and kill the Norscans over there before they become a problem. After that I normally horribly screw up and everything falls apart.

I would not miss out the Goldmines of Ghrond. You need t take it at turn 3 or 4 before your "friend" in the east attacks it and conquers it.