Playing as Last Defenders, Tor Elasor is a Clown Car

[Aluminum Elite Master]

On any difficulty above Normal (and especially on Very Hard and Legendary runs) I notice that Tor Elasor is an absolute monster once they get just their starting 3 settlements in order.

It goes to show how much the CPU bonuses help in a spot like this, because with just 3 reasonable settlements, Tor Elasor typically:

1) Can support 4 partial stacks at once despite the upkeep for multiple lords
2) Can have 2-3 of those stacks include Dragon Princes, a Star Dragon, and a hero
3) Can have the largest stack include 5-6 Swordmasters of Hoeth and two Dragons
4) Can almost instantly rebuild the above within 5 turns if those stacks get destroyed

Really, it's a clown-car of endless enemies pouring out until you raze those 3 measly islands.

Thankfully, as Last Defenders I can save up, get a good nest egg, then deploy the 12,000 dollar Dino-army via the ritual and eat negative income for 4-5 turns as I carefully navigate the seas to go wipe them all out.

But that last part: man is it annoying to have to auto-resolve at sea... especially when the stack would have easily survived if I had manual control. Because of this, I always wait until I wipe the big Tor Elasor stack before sending out my invasion forces, just to avoid the mandatory auto-resolve at sea that would happen if I didn't ensure their big stack was out.

All-in-all, Tor Elasor is my least favorite minor faction, because of everything above as well as the fact that they always seem to attack me when I play as Last Defenders, even if they end up at war with Clan Mors at the same time as me. No matter what, they always seem to DoW me every single time.



EDIT: Also, if I raze the islands, I'm good, but if I occupy them when I wipe them out, I often somehow manage to get a ritual site on them, forcing me to defend them or even leave a sizable army down there. Just the most annoying thing in the game to me, and all because I can't manually fight battles at sea, meaning I don't like to have to transport my best army across (and hence why I sometimes leave an army there if I occupy those islands). At least I know these days just to raze the islands, which makes sense since they are not maximum hospitability for building anyways.

[Stoinker666]

Hehe, you call the a clown car? Have you seen the Tomb King's endless Skelleton armies? They have no upkeep: One single settlement stacket up with 4 fullstacks of skelletons.
Not hard to beat since those skelletons are crap, but insanely annyoing. And even worse if you don't contain them early on and they actually start getting good units.

[AVGAMER]

the dread sea is stupidly rich as regions go 3 boosted docks, 3 trade resources and the easy to defend.

[Freemark]

Originally posted by Stinker666:

Hehe, you call the a clown car? Have you seen the Tomb King's endless Skelleton armies? They have no upkeep: One single settlement stacket up with 4 fullstacks of skelletons.
Not hard to beat since those skelletons are crap, but insanely annyoing. And even worse if you don't contain them early on and they actually start getting good units.

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ yes. I played yesterday my first ME Queek campaign. I thought I was gonna try to beeline my way north to Karak Eight Peaks fast, to avoid dwarfs or orcs to become too big. Nope. I spent 60 turns trying to eradicate the freaking Court of Lybaras and their obscene 4 stack spam. The only thing that made me win in the end was Queek ambushing every single encounter, that's an amazing skill when it procs, basically an intergrated lightning strike (but better because you keep your own allies if they are close enough). Otherwise I would never had had the economy to properly field troops to go 1 on 1 with Lybaras.

[Aluminum Elite Master]

Originally posted by Stinker666:

Hehe, you call the a clown car? Have you seen the Tomb King's endless Skelleton armies? They have no upkeep: One single settlement stacket up with 4 fullstacks of skelletons.
Not hard to beat since those skelletons are crap, but insanely annyoing. And even worse if you don't contain them early on and they actually start getting good units.

There's truth to this, but not typically when I play as Last Defenders at least. As the Last Defenders, I often end up friendly with the Tomb Kings due to us fighting mutual enemies... and even if I don't, I fight them late enough in the campaign that I already have a good amount of territory. But Tor Elasor is far worse (again, for Last Defenders at least) because they can sometimes end up coming over to attack you before you've gotten a good set-up going economically.

That all said, even on VH and Legendary the Tomb Kings armies are sort-of fragile... they tend to field too many infantry units, so a good Doomwheel, or Stegadons, or Swordmasters of Hoeth, or whatever you have in your roster for fighting infantry is often going to be super effective.

[Ser Pounce]

Btw, you shouldn't raze those islands. Like, EVER. Doesn't matter the climate, it just give way too much gold to not take it. Even with the -50% income, you can make out of 6-8k gold per turn just from there. The earlier you can take them on, the better tho.

[Zorlond]

This is why I play with AI cheats turned off. This kind of BS is not rewarding, whether I beat it or not. The more blatant the AI flaunts it's immunity to the gameplay rules, the more I know it's a complete moron that will utterly fail to use it's numerical advantages properly, falling for the exact same tricks and tactics that AIs fell for over twenty RL years ago. Stuff that even the worst human player would see right through.

Yeah, I'd rather fight a moron that doesn't have a cheating numerical advantage than one that does. The difference is I can experiment with army compositions and work on order timing and battlefield control, instead of just doing the exact same OP pattern over and over and over against an enemy that's too dumb to stop chasing the cheese. It's more fun to be flexible.

[Aluminum Elite Master]

Originally posted by Ser Pounce:

Btw, you shouldn't raze those islands. Like, EVER. Doesn't matter the climate, it just give way too much gold to not take it. Even with the -50% income, you can make out of 6-8k gold per turn just from there. The earlier you can take them on, the better tho.

I find this to be hit-or-miss, though.

For one, it depends how far along the campaign was before they DoW you... in some spots, they aren't quite as built up yet as you'd think despite their attacking you.

Also, it depends on how dire the situation on the mainland is for you along with if you have the cash to repair or upgrade right away... if Clan Mors is still a big enough threat, I do often raze in that case because I can't afford to garrison the islands with even a single partial stack, nor can I spare the cash yet. And I can always come back much later and re-settle the islands if I really want.

But yes, if it's possible to take those islands without having to take too big of a risk on the mainland, then I sometimes do keep them, and in the last campaign as Last Defenders I did in fact keep those islands without razing.

[Aenarion]

Is there any other non-LL faction with such a favourable starting province?

[zefyris]

I don't think so. It's a non LL faction that will easily reach rank 1-3 at some point in game, and if confederated (usually by teclis) provides a massive boost in income for whoever LL took that. The only other province that can get close to this late game for HE is a province on the east of ulthuan due to the landmark building there, I don't think I've ever seen anything beat those two provinces.

If you start around here (Queek/Kroq Gar) you want to get rid of them as soon as you've secured the southe/south east costline, even if you have to go temoorarily negative upkeep for it. If you leave them alone they'll keep threatening you from the rear, and they will enter at war with you sooner or later no matter what you try, since they'll confederate sooner or later anyway.

As Kroq Gar, that province alone can sustain a good army if you focus on economy for it, and this despite the orange status.

[Aluminum Elite Master]

Queek's even worse for having to deal with Tor Elasor... your early units are pretty fragile, you don't get that 12,000-gold ritual for instant high-level monsters like Kroq gets, and you tend to get mobbed even more so than Kroq by the factions you neighbor in the beginning since everybody pretty much hates Skaven, even other Skaven.

That said, when Skaven had even worse food problems and even worse starting unit stats (prior to one of the last patches), it was far more of a problem to have to deal with Tor Elasor.

[Mr. Wiggles]

Dino dollars?

[Iriath Zhul]

Originally posted by Mr.Wiggles:

Dino dollars?

Bitecoin