High Elves are Strong Because of Spearmen, Not Their Archers

[yuzhonglu]

If you look at the stats, Bretonnian and Dawi archers are just as cost effective as HE archers. And TK archers are pretty decent, too.

But what both the Dawi and Bretonnia lack is a shielded high morale anti cav tier 1 cheap-♥♥♥ unit. It's the spearmen that make high elves such a strong early game archer force, before Sisters.

And you can use spearmen effectively all the way into the late game, where they'll hold the line effectively against dreadshards, tier 4-5 chariots and cav and Black Guards of Naggarond.

[Guillérmidas]

OP is right. High Elves spearmen can be played in lategame in highest difficutly. But they lack Melee Attack, so dont expect them to do damage in combat, they need great support from either archers, monsters or chavalry doing hammer and anvil.

Dark Elves works the same, but their dreadspears do much higher damage while holding worse the line at the start of the fight.

You dont need a expensive fenix guard to hold the line. But two of them are definetely worth at your backline if a monster or whatever break your cheap spearmen line and reach your missiles.

Same applies to other factions. Elite infantry are not worth the price most of the time. They better work as support for your tier 1.

BTW, I do use these cheap armies without cheese tactics like LegendofTotalWar does, in Legendary or Very Hard. He makes the game look boring as ♥♥♥♥, and I see many people doing the same: recruiting 17 sisters of avelorn and 3 heroes as frontline, and not a single chavalry unit, flanking or any tactic at all. Just cheese the AI weakness.

[Kyso4ek]

Dwarves have charge defence on pretty much everything though.

[yuzhonglu]

Originally posted by Twitch Staff:

PepeLaugh nobody tell him about silverin guard

2x more upkeep and about the same melee defense. Only advantage is the extra armor, which is useless against the hordes of armor piercing monsters and infantry later.

[Prince Niccolo]

Never watched Legend of Total War's campaigns eh?

[Sn3z]

The missile department of HE was actually never their compositional strength(the tiering tricks newer players into thinking HE is a range faction(units like sisters and LSG shields are also keeping HE firmly in this mindset) but really HE are strong because of their air, not just because muh dragon but its how the area effects army compositions in general.

[lPaladinl]

Originally posted by Guillérmidas:

OP is right. High Elves spearmen can be played in lategame in highest difficutly. But they lack Melee Attack, so dont expect them to do damage in combat, they need great support from either archers, monsters or chavalry doing hammer and anvil.

Dark Elves works the same, but their dreadspears do much higher damage while holding worse the line at the start of the fight.

You dont need a expensive fenix guard to hold the line. But two of them are definetely worth at your backline if a monster or whatever break your cheap spearmen line and reach your missiles.

Same applies to other factions. Elite infantry are not worth the price most of the time. They better work as support for your tier 1.

BTW, I do use these cheap armies without cheese tactics like LegendofTotalWar does, in Legendary or Very Hard. He makes the game look boring as ♥♥♥♥, and I see many people doing the same: recruiting 17 sisters of avelorn and 3 heroes as frontline, and not a single chavalry unit, flanking or any tactic at all. Just cheese the AI weakness.

Legend of Total War also hates cavalry and doesn't use them often if he can avoid it in TW:W.

He prefers missile spam because missiles deal the most damage and scale the best even up to max difficult. Melee becomes senseless on Legendary by comparison.

What he also shows, is that it's better to own many armies full of cheap units than it is to own one army of elite units, no matter how great those units are. Because 40 units is almost always better than 20 units. Sisters of Avelorn are great but having twice as many standard archers tends to be better until late game when you can afford it without much thought and are already snowballing.