Eltharion's Mongolian Army is Utterly Broken Doomstack

[yuzhonglu]

16 ellyrion reavers.
1 fire mage on dragon mount
1 noble on eagle for replenishment
1 Dragon for siege attacker.
1 Eltharion for ammo replenishment.

[JODEGAFUN]

Fendelphi の投稿を引用：

yuzhonglu の投稿を引用：

Well when I made the post I was using Imrik and got Eltharion from defeated Legendary Lords so I had access to dragons early. But Tor Gvala and Elyrion on birdy is fine, too.

The thing with the AI is they suck at keeping their ranged units near their melee units. So what happens is the reavers draw the AI cav in first, and massacre them. Then all of the infantry units follow chasing after the reavers, which leaves the ranged units unprotected against your flyers.

Just keep your flyers flying back and forth in the middle of the battlefield to keep the ranged units from moving up, too. After about 30 seconds, they'll be sufficient separation that you can pounce on the AI ranged with your fliers. And once they're dead there's nothing that can catch the reavers.

Tiranoc chariots work fine, but the issue is the two turn recruitment requirement and the need for a tier 3 building. As Eltharion you may not have the time to get it. You'll be facing hordes of ork armies really really early.

Early orc hordes can be dealt with by a mix of his starting units(Arcane Phoenix is key here for destroying blobs that form on your frontline), Archers and Rangers(Rangers trade quite well with early Greenskin infantry and will be a great help when fighting sieges). Add a few Spearmen to help hold back Trolls and Chariots.
It is cheap, and can do the exact same strategy as you just mentioned.
Cavalry will move forward and get hammered by volleys from your archers and get caught on your few dedicated spearmen. Your few fliers(initially it is just the Phoenix, but you can get an eagle fairly early if you want) will then engage enemy archers, while your own archers will focus any infantry that moves up, taking down 1 unit down at a time. The decimated remnants will then be counter-attacked by your Rangers and then flanked by archers, which will shoot the enemy from the side or rear.
Rinse and repeat.

Because the endgoal is Mistwalker units, you can ignore the Red line and start with the blue, getting early access to Lightning Strike and upkeep reduction(as well as increased recruitment ranks).
After that, I usually go for his unique line to get cheaper and faster walls/garrisons. Shortly after, you can get Stormwing.

Ogre Mercenaries can be a great help early on, as they all have the Siege Attacker trait. So after the first couple of Sieges, you usually get the Ogre event. You only need 1 Ogre unit in an army to enable faster sieges.

Just capture the two greenskin lords you opose in the first round(three are possible if you not pursuit the army you defeat with Eltharion, and they use underway move and you intercept them), Use the point you get from them and you can build the archery from the Mistwalker giving you access to a few of them.

[yuzhonglu]

Fendelphi の投稿を引用：

yuzhonglu の投稿を引用：

Doesn't work if you get hit by Waugh/ 2 armies at once, or if you have to fight 3-4 battles on consecutive turns.

As Eltharion your replenishment sucks so if you take heavy spear losses in the first battle, you're going to lose the second battle.

It works fine, as this is the strategy I am using every time I play that faction.
You get Lightning Strike at level 7(so Waaagh/multiple armies are not an issue) and the army will rarely take more than 200 casualties spread over several units, which is enough for the post battle replenishment option and replenishment from sacking to keep up with.
If you do take heavy casualties, it is usually due to a difficult(but important) siege battle. In that case, you can simply take the settlement, recruit some more basic troops, then move on.

Once you transitions into a full Mistwalker stack, you can auto resolve almost every battle with less than 100 casualties. You will have no issue fighting several battles in a row.

yuzhonglu の投稿を引用：

It's actually fine in a siege if you have real life time. Reavers will kill Black Orks on walls if given enough time and infinite ammo.

And you can cheese waywatchers with your Lord. Once they're out of ammo, you win!

Towers, as well as magic and artillery, will kill so many of your Reaver Archers before you kill a single unit of walled Black Orcs. Fatigue will have a major impact on their performance as battles drag on. And if you do win the siege, how will you replenish those lost units? Wait until you have built up the settlement so that you can recruit more? Use Global Recruitment, with the economy you dont have, because you have used most of your early building slots(and gold) on unit recruitment buildings rather than economy?
You have already spent a lot of your early game sitting around in your starting province, waiting for growth and building slots to unlock your various components(Mage require tier 3, Noble tier 2, Reavers tier 2, all different building slots). And now you have to wait a long time for replenishment, due to how ineffective Reaver Archers are in siege battles.
Does "early game" mean the first 50 turns to you?


How do you intend to cheese a Waywatcher stack with your Lord? You cant see them, until they let loose their first volley. And if you are facing 6 or more such units("waywatcher stacks" are the key words), there is a high chance that they will instantly break your Lord.
And if the Wood Elves bring a Shadow, High or Beast caster, you might get slowed as well, making you easier to hit.


Also "Utterly Broken Doomstack" apparently now means a lot of micro and cheesing the AI.

Well I'm at 200k gold in the bank due to battle incom on turn 50 due to from the sheer amount of battles Eltharion won. The reason is because he's fighting a battle an average of 1 battle every turn. And a quarter of them were won in forced march, with no replenishment in between because, you know, the more battles he fights, the more money the faction gains.

Since his army barely takes any casualties, it doesn't matter where he fights, what he scouts, or whether he's in forced march.

So sure, stick to your archer spear army. In fact that's what I used in the beginning to get Eltharion the experience he needs to 13 (so no he hasn't been sitting in one province doing nothing). And I'm also confident that if you're careful and do scouting with heroes and do lightning strike you'll beat the greenskins.

But if you want to smash them, without ANY need for caution, the reaver army is just better. Like it doesn't matter what the Greenskin AI does. He just crushes them in battle because once the enemy cav is defeated, there's nothing that can hurt his units.

[yuzhonglu]

JODEGAFUN の投稿を引用：

Fendelphi の投稿を引用：

Early orc hordes can be dealt with by a mix of his starting units(Arcane Phoenix is key here for destroying blobs that form on your frontline), Archers and Rangers(Rangers trade quite well with early Greenskin infantry and will be a great help when fighting sieges). Add a few Spearmen to help hold back Trolls and Chariots.
It is cheap, and can do the exact same strategy as you just mentioned.
Cavalry will move forward and get hammered by volleys from your archers and get caught on your few dedicated spearmen. Your few fliers(initially it is just the Phoenix, but you can get an eagle fairly early if you want) will then engage enemy archers, while your own archers will focus any infantry that moves up, taking down 1 unit down at a time. The decimated remnants will then be counter-attacked by your Rangers and then flanked by archers, which will shoot the enemy from the side or rear.
Rinse and repeat.

Because the endgoal is Mistwalker units, you can ignore the Red line and start with the blue, getting early access to Lightning Strike and upkeep reduction(as well as increased recruitment ranks).
After that, I usually go for his unique line to get cheaper and faster walls/garrisons. Shortly after, you can get Stormwing.

Ogre Mercenaries can be a great help early on, as they all have the Siege Attacker trait. So after the first couple of Sieges, you usually get the Ogre event. You only need 1 Ogre unit in an army to enable faster sieges.

Just capture the two greenskin lords you opose in the first round(three are possible if you not pursuit the army you defeat with Eltharion, and they use underway move and you intercept them), Use the point you get from them and you can build the archery from the Mistwalker giving you access to a few of them.

Those mistwalkers cost massive amounts of upkeep.

[yuzhonglu]

Also, by the time you fight the Wood Elves as Eltharion, you should have access to Dragon doomstacks, which annihilates them. I mean, considering where Eltharion fights, why are you even bringing up the issue of Waystalkers? If you are fighting Wood Elves, you should have snowballed to the point where your income is in the millions.

And siege battles are easy. You park the reavers in positions where the towers can't hit them, but they can hit the troops on the walls, and go afk for 20 minutes.

[Aleera]

yuzhonglu の投稿を引用：

Those mistwalkers cost massive amounts of upkeep.

What? Excuse me, but. What?
Reavers are 175 upkeep.
Sentinels and Spireguard are 213 upkeep
Skyhawks are 275

The first 2, which everyone just says are superior to Reavers (they are).
Reavers have 45 models at 175 upkeep, meaning each model has a upkeep of 3.89. You pay 3.89 gold per turn for a missile dps of 19.
Sentinels and spireguard are a upkeep of 3.53 per model. That's 3.53 gold per turn for a 20 missile dps and a 22 missile dps. Both which are higher on the AP side. Sentinels are rocking a 22 AP per shot AND break enemy shields.

So no, mistwalkers do not cost massive amounts of upkeep (skyhawks are the worst of the 3 archers). You actually pay MORE for reavers for their damage output. Mistwalkers are both more cost effective and way more battle efficient then reavers.
Heck, basic helf archers cost 118 per turn, 68 models so you're paying 1.7 gold per turn for 19 missile dps.
Reavers are not cost effective and if you took the blue line (which is a must) you can easily beat Orcs, know what's even better? Basic archers can be bought at any settlement, no building needing. Now THAT'S efficient in the early game.

Reavers are not cost effective, are not efficient, Require a seperate building which could be used for literally anything else and your gold is better spend.

Again, if you want to cheese the AI and take 30 minutes per battle. Enjoy. But to claim they're cost effective or efficient, no. Just. No.

yuzhonglu の投稿を引用：

Also, by the time you fight the Wood Elves as Eltharion, you should have access to Dragon doomstacks, which annihilates them. I mean, considering where Eltharion fights, why are you even bringing up the issue of Waystalkers? If you are fighting Wood Elves, you should have snowballed to the point where your income is in the millions.

And siege battles are easy. You park the reavers in positions where the towers can't hit them, but they can hit the troops on the walls, and go afk for 20 minutes.

Clearly you've never fought a siege battle then. Only a select few maps, mainly the skaven lairs, have a spot where towers don't reach. Orc/Dwarf maps will have a clear line of fire in all but 1 map.

Nor have you ever fought waywatchers, because a stack of waywatchers will absolutely decimate a stack of dragons.

[CrUsHeR]

Hex の投稿を引用：

You can recruit Necrofexes from your ship dude, and if you play noctilus they don't even cost much. If you focus on ship growth first, you can have them VERY early.

Well, you know what i mean.

Someone asks for advice, answer is some "doomstack" unit where you literally need 50-80 turns just to unlock the building tier.

Unless playing Skaven where you can get a T5 province capital around turn 10+ instantly.

[yuzhonglu]

A couple of posters are obviously not arguing in good faith and obviously run multiple accounts. As it is, they are blocked. There is little reason to argue with them. You know who you are.

To the ones who I am responding to, well obviously you're not blocked. I really wish Steam would do what twitter does, which makes blocked posters completely invisible in their replies.

[yuzhonglu]

CrUsHeR の投稿を引用：

Hex の投稿を引用：

You can recruit Necrofexes from your ship dude, and if you play noctilus they don't even cost much. If you focus on ship growth first, you can have them VERY early.

Well, you know what i mean.

Someone asks for advice, answer is some "doomstack" unit where you literally need 50-80 turns just to unlock the building tier.

Unless playing Skaven where you can get a T5 province capital around turn 10+ instantly.

You still need the money to build the buildings....

[Aleera]

yuzhonglu の投稿を引用：

A couple of posters are obviously not arguing in good faith and obviously run multiple accounts. As it is, they are blocked. There is little reason to argue with them. You know who you are.

To the ones who I am responding to, well obviously you're not blocked. I really wish Steam would do what twitter does, which makes blocked posters completely invisible in their replies.

Who runs multiple accounts then? Because it feels more like you don't want people disagreeing. It really comes over that you only want people to validate your opinion and agree with you.

[Fendelphi]

yuzhonglu の投稿を引用：

A couple of posters are obviously not arguing in good faith and obviously run multiple accounts. As it is, they are blocked. There is little reason to argue with them. You know who you are.

To the ones who I am responding to, well obviously you're not blocked. I really wish Steam would do what twitter does, which makes blocked posters completely invisible in their replies.

When someone posts "utterly broken doomstack" and it turns out to be a very poor army composition that is most likely only a theory craft with some serious holes in them(have bad pacing on the campaign map, requires a lot of micro, time consuming, poor performance in sieges) as well as some inconsistencies in the arguments that follow("early game army", in spite of requiring tier 3 and 4 units. "Cheap and easy to field", in spite of being more expensive than most early game armies and require a lot of different building slots to complete), I will call it out, because it wont help anyone and will only misinform new players(of which we have gotten a lot of recently).
What exactly was your intention of this thread, if not to discuss the pros and cons of your army composition?

And if you cant find the arguments to show "your point of view", then post screenshots or video clips that shows the process and the results.

Claiming others are "arguing in bad faith"(about what exactly? How is arguing about an army composition being bad or inefficient "bad faith" when the topic is "utterly broken Doomstack"?) and claiming that others are using Alt-accounts to "win"(win what exactly?) is just a sign of resignation.

Most of the people who are making arguments in this thread have fully visible accounts. That should make it pretty obvious if it is an alternative account or not.

[Hex]

yuzhonglu の投稿を引用：

CrUsHeR の投稿を引用：

Well, you know what i mean.

Someone asks for advice, answer is some "doomstack" unit where you literally need 50-80 turns just to unlock the building tier.

Unless playing Skaven where you can get a T5 province capital around turn 10+ instantly.

You still need the money to build the buildings....

Getting money is easy with Skaven, and you don't need to spend any on anything until you get that high tier settlement because there's nothing worth building if you're gonna get top tier stuff soon anyways, you also need to sack and fight anyways to get the food needed for the instant high tier city.

For Vampire Coast, you can go sack ports anywhere and install those coves and not actually conquer anything until you can buy Necrofexes from your ship and just crush anyone. Norsca is especially easy for this as it's full of ports with no defenses. The ports will provide enough incomes per turn to easily afford a Necrofex stack, especially if you play with Noctilus.

[Fendelphi]

yuzhonglu の投稿を引用：

Well I'm at 200k gold in the bank due to battle incom on turn 50 due to from the sheer amount of battles Eltharion won. The reason is because he's fighting a battle an average of 1 battle every turn. And a quarter of them were won in forced march, with no replenishment in between because, you know, the more battles he fights, the more money the faction gains.

Since his army barely takes any casualties, it doesn't matter where he fights, what he scouts, or whether he's in forced march.

So sure, stick to your archer spear army. In fact that's what I used in the beginning to get Eltharion the experience he needs to 13 (so no he hasn't been sitting in one province doing nothing). And I'm also confident that if you're careful and do scouting with heroes and do lightning strike you'll beat the greenskins.

But if you want to smash them, without ANY need for caution, the reaver army is just better. Like it doesn't matter what the Greenskin AI does. He just crushes them in battle because once the enemy cav is defeated, there's nothing that can hurt his units.

So if you rush, you can get this "doomstack" up at around turn 15(according to you).
That means that you have 35 turns to make 200k gold with Eltharion alone(if we are to assume other armies and income revenues are spent to build and upgrade buildings and paying for army upkeep).
If Eltharion, from turn 16 and onwards, have 1 battle per turn(35 battles, which is a lot for 1 army over 35 turns), that means he has to personally earn nearly 6k per turn. If your "doomstack" was first available from turn 20(and not 15), it is nearly 7k per turn. If you want both noble and a mage in the army before we call it a "doomstack", it is around turn 30, and so now you need to make 10k per turn from his battles alone.
The usual amount for decent sized battles is 2-3k.
If you sack a settlement, you can get a decent amount extra, but that wont expand your territory, and if you settle it afterwards, you have to pay a lot of it back for repairs(plus you end your movement).
If you sack and move on, you are leaving your enemies in control of the area, with options to build up armies behind your back.
Can you see why that seems a bit odd?

So you say that you had an army of a typical early-game HE composition, as he was leveling. What happened to it? Did you just disband it, or did you hire a new lord to take the army, with Eltharion recruiting the "doomstack" afterwards? Where were you fighting for those first 15-20 turns(I am assuming, because as shown above, if it becomes much later, you can simply not earn enough gold per turn from Eltharion's battles)?
By turn 15-20, I was fighting around Karak Azgal and Karak Eight Peaks, and I had no option for turning back to his start province to start recruiting an upgraded army.
Another discrepancy is recruitment time. Even if it only takes 1 turn to recruit Reaver Archers, and with the Draftmaster skill, it will still take 4 turns to recruit 16 Reaver Archers. So even if Eltharion is able to start recruiting his new army at turn 15, he wont be able to move out until turn 19. And then you have to spend 2-3 turns to get to an enemy(if not longer). Which again leads to the issue of reaching that 200k in the bank by turn 50.

And if you have that kind of money, why not simply hire better units? Why concern yourself with the "but Tiranoc Chariots are more expensive"-argument, when you clearly are making more gold than you can spend per turn?

All of these things simply makes it sound like you had a funny idea and theory-crafted an army, without considering the issues of actually creating and fielding such an army.
And if I am wrong about that, sorry, but until you post actually evidence that this composition works in an actual, standard campaign, it simply has too many issues(that you have not refuted, mind you) to be a viable strategy in terms of efficient gameplay.

Again, players can always make themed armies and have fun. But there is a difference between that, and claiming something to be a "broken doomstack".

[yuzhonglu]

Fendelphi の投稿を引用：

yuzhonglu の投稿を引用：

A couple of posters are obviously not arguing in good faith and obviously run multiple accounts. As it is, they are blocked. There is little reason to argue with them. You know who you are.

To the ones who I am responding to, well obviously you're not blocked. I really wish Steam would do what twitter does, which makes blocked posters completely invisible in their replies.

When someone posts "utterly broken doomstack" and it turns out to be a very poor army composition that is most likely only a theory craft with some serious holes in them(have bad pacing on the campaign map, requires a lot of micro, time consuming, poor performance in sieges) as well as some inconsistencies in the arguments that follow("early game army", in spite of requiring tier 3 and 4 units. "Cheap and easy to field", in spite of being more expensive than most early game armies and require a lot of different building slots to complete), I will call it out, because it wont help anyone and will only misinform new players(of which we have gotten a lot of recently).
What exactly was your intention of this thread, if not to discuss the pros and cons of your army composition?

And if you cant find the arguments to show "your point of view", then post screenshots or video clips that shows the process and the results.

Claiming others are "arguing in bad faith"(about what exactly? How is arguing about an army composition being bad or inefficient "bad faith" when the topic is "utterly broken Doomstack"?) and claiming that others are using Alt-accounts to "win"(win what exactly?) is just a sign of resignation.

Most of the people who are making arguments in this thread have fully visible accounts. That should make it pretty obvious if it is an alternative account or not.

Most, yes. But some are not.

Also, reavers only require a single tier 2 building. So it doesn't seem like you have your facts right.

[yuzhonglu]

Fendelphi の投稿を引用：

yuzhonglu の投稿を引用：

Well I'm at 200k gold in the bank due to battle incom on turn 50 due to from the sheer amount of battles Eltharion won. The reason is because he's fighting a battle an average of 1 battle every turn. And a quarter of them were won in forced march, with no replenishment in between because, you know, the more battles he fights, the more money the faction gains.

Since his army barely takes any casualties, it doesn't matter where he fights, what he scouts, or whether he's in forced march.

So sure, stick to your archer spear army. In fact that's what I used in the beginning to get Eltharion the experience he needs to 13 (so no he hasn't been sitting in one province doing nothing). And I'm also confident that if you're careful and do scouting with heroes and do lightning strike you'll beat the greenskins.

But if you want to smash them, without ANY need for caution, the reaver army is just better. Like it doesn't matter what the Greenskin AI does. He just crushes them in battle because once the enemy cav is defeated, there's nothing that can hurt his units.

So if you rush, you can get this "doomstack" up at around turn 15(according to you).
That means that you have 35 turns to make 200k gold with Eltharion alone(if we are to assume other armies and income revenues are spent to build and upgrade buildings and paying for army upkeep).
If Eltharion, from turn 16 and onwards, have 1 battle per turn(35 battles, which is a lot for 1 army over 35 turns), that means he has to personally earn nearly 6k per turn. If your "doomstack" was first available from turn 20(and not 15), it is nearly 7k per turn. If you want both noble and a mage in the army before we call it a "doomstack", it is around turn 30, and so now you need to make 10k per turn from his battles alone.
The usual amount for decent sized battles is 2-3k.
If you sack a settlement, you can get a decent amount extra, but that wont expand your territory, and if you settle it afterwards, you have to pay a lot of it back for repairs(plus you end your movement).
If you sack and move on, you are leaving your enemies in control of the area, with options to build up armies behind your back.
Can you see why that seems a bit odd?

So you say that you had an army of a typical early-game HE composition, as he was leveling. What happened to it? Did you just disband it, or did you hire a new lord to take the army, with Eltharion recruiting the "doomstack" afterwards? Where were you fighting for those first 15-20 turns(I am assuming, because as shown above, if it becomes much later, you can simply not earn enough gold per turn from Eltharion's battles)?
By turn 15-20, I was fighting around Karak Azgal and Karak Eight Peaks, and I had no option for turning back to his start province to start recruiting an upgraded army.
Another discrepancy is recruitment time. Even if it only takes 1 turn to recruit Reaver Archers, and with the Draftmaster skill, it will still take 4 turns to recruit 16 Reaver Archers. So even if Eltharion is able to start recruiting his new army at turn 15, he wont be able to move out until turn 19. And then you have to spend 2-3 turns to get to an enemy(if not longer). Which again leads to the issue of reaching that 200k in the bank by turn 50.

And if you have that kind of money, why not simply hire better units? Why concern yourself with the "but Tiranoc Chariots are more expensive"-argument, when you clearly are making more gold than you can spend per turn?

All of these things simply makes it sound like you had a funny idea and theory-crafted an army, without considering the issues of actually creating and fielding such an army.
And if I am wrong about that, sorry, but until you post actually evidence that this composition works in an actual, standard campaign, it simply has too many issues(that you have not refuted, mind you) to be a viable strategy in terms of efficient gameplay.

Again, players can always make themed armies and have fun. But there is a difference between that, and claiming something to be a "broken doomstack".

Ring of Hukon. There's also a second army in Ulthuan that's been fighting and getting sea treasure, so I should have mentioned that. And yes, that army is a spear/archer army since reavers kinda suck outside Eltharion's army. The issue with Elharion's campaign is that early on you're fighting in two completely different places so upkeep becomes a big deal. Even a 50 gold difference in upkeep for a single unit is a huge deal.

And you want evidence? Try it yourself. Get Eltharion to level 13 ASAP, replace the archers and spears with reavers, and march around the Badlands fighting every ork in existence and see for yourself. This is not hard to test. So instead of spending three hours online arguing with me about it, spend those three hours on the actual damn game.

I mostly stuck around the starting area since there was more than enough enemies for him to fight as Grimgor DOWed on turn 14 or something and the Teef faction was about to DOW around turn 10 (so I hit them first).

Also, most of it was done without a noble.

[yuzhonglu]

So again, to clarify, I'm not arguing that reavers are a particularly great unit. My argument is that full reavers in Eltharion's level 13 army is a doomstack. You can use tiranoc chariots or any other fast moving missile unit and it'll still work but I prefer reavers. The OPness of the stack isn't so much because of the unit (any fast moving missile unit will work) but the missile replenishment ability that is maximized when its combined with a fast moving missile unit that can kite forever.

People who misrepresent my argument are not arguing in good faith and I want nothing to do with them.