Orc vs elf unbalance

[Huttensohn]

I mostly play elf, and mostly encounter orcs on multiplayer games. Against a reasonable orc player with some upgrades , I believe, it is not really possible to win as an elf. I recently won one game because of superior speed and rushing town centers but I now played a skirmish against myself (orc vs elf) with the same strategy and got totally wiped out. I now think I only won the multiplayer because my opponent didn't play a good game and missed upgrades.

The problems -
Orc build explodingly fast, thanks to their orc peon. (And later, slaver) Ambidextrous is nice but in the beginning it is often a lose lose choice. Take it to early and you produce not enough units, take it to late and you fall back, also due to long building costs.
The orc peon though is a now brainer.

A thrower with lots of health, regeneration and three attacks (troll hunter) is just devastating for archer-heavy elf. The elf assaulter is only one turn cheaper, but is a lot weaker and not a real threat.

Wastly better shaman.
The orc shaman only costs 3 turns and is really exponentially growing orcs power. double strike and trample are devastating and can destroy your entire buildings/army in one turn (which you build an in ages).
Elf druid costs four, and has only minor buffs. It's just ridiculously weak against the orc shaman. Every single shaman power alone is stronger than the elf druid powers.

The strength buff is especially deadly on throwers and healing half health is also strong, although it doesn't heal poison and fire.
By the time you get wizard, it can often be already to late, and even the powerful ent spell fades against the raw power of the orc shaman.

Buildings - the orc stone pillar has more health, builds quicker, has an aoe debuff attack with damage , has better armor, even a counter attack and two spaces, the Elfen outposts takes forever to build, has less armor, only one space and adds only a minor buff. This is just a bad joke.
Stone shelter is like wall and parapet in one with more armor and hp than parapet.
the stone pillar is really quick to set up and can be really tough to take down. Fire archers cost 3 turns, have low range, and fire can be repaired in one turn.
Elf meele is a lot weaker. Ent thrower requires a tech but is still weaker than troll crusher. Orcs, however, have countless ways to take down buildings easily, from the very beginning. (Buffed axe thrower is a very strong and easy way)

Power creep. Orc is already strong in the beginning, but it also has a lot of potential with all its mega units and giants. The upgrades are also very straightforward and they really make the orcs significantly stronger. again, orcs grow exponentially, elves linearly. (+1 to this, +1 to that).

Armour. It is really hard for elves to take down the armoured warrior poison is quite slow. something like an armour piercing archer would maybe help.

All in all, its just very obvious in my opinion. I am afraid, with making buildings more powerful it will get even worse as elfs already struggle against buildings and have weak ones, while orcs are strong against buildings and have strong buildings.

So - I think they are just too many good things in orcs. Good things that should be much more evenly distributed between the race. You can't have it all. But orcs build quickly, have a lot of health, strong support, even strong range, good buildings, good against buildings, good in early game, strong potential for later game. They have also the full range of cheap spammable units and powerful expensive units. The only downside that I see is that they are quite slow.

[Savra]

Wait till the new update, supposedly it should solve some of those issues, also elves wood shaper can aid in building as it can mend buildings at a range.

As for assaulter compared to headhunter, assaulter I believe has higher dodge ranged and can heal itself as well, troll headhunter is strong yes, and has multiple actions and regen, but it is easily burnable, plus is still a thrower so it can be countered by units like cavalry. (which elves will be getting a lot of: 9 naval ones, 9 fast cheap ones, 9 flyers, and this isn't counting the subs.)

Elves I believe are more of an early game race, they aren't at their full strength yet like humans and orcs are so they are going to have it a little more difficult in fighting such enemies, however with the upscaling elves will end up with some pretty strong units that might tip the scales a little (I'm not saying a lot) in their favor, for example the ent warriors have higher health then a ettin, and with the up scaling that will still be higher, as well as possibly the armour as well.

Elves will also be the first race to have 2 turn cavalry it seems as the town watch deer rider would probably cost 2 turns to get, making it the cheapest scout cav. Elves also will have other advantages coming their way too however their on hold till after the upscaling. One of these is also the druids transformation abilities I hope.

Orc shamans may be strong, however their healing doesn't remove status effects like burning, also they can't disenchant with any units except their 5 turn cost warlocks and witch's. Elves spell casters have a wide variety of spells which is why they cost so much. You can also speed up your production at base with wisps fairly quickly as elves money couriers are can be obtained in a variety of ways at the home base, unlike orcs who have only 2 ways at the main base and usually have to risk the courier getting killed in the front line.

Orcs will eventually have most their upgrades put into a blacksmith like structure for them, removing them from their other structures. (like my biggest complaint being the tc)

But to sum it up, its just that they still have a lot of content waiting to get in like the others, as the orcs got a lot of theirs in fairly quickly being that theirs wasn't so complicated to get.

[Huttensohn]

Thanks for your elaborate answer. Yes, elf wizards and druid have a wide set of skills, but they are required to get into reach for most of their work, which makes them easy prey. And again, their powers are nice supplements but not a real force multiplier.

Of course, arcane range and buildings help. Shamans however, only need to be in reach of their allies.

Wood shaper is of course good again, but, again, high cost.

I have to say, I am not convinced by the wisp thing, it takes time to research and the slots at the temple of nature are very precious.

Elves don't have disenchant, too.

Yes, the headhunter can be burned easily, but headhunter can also easily kill the low range, low health fire archers, if they are not garrisoned.

But okay, let's wait for the updates.

[makazuwr32]

Thanks for your elaborate answer. Yes, elf wizards and druid have a wide set of skills, but they are required to get into reach for most of their work, which makes them easy prey. And again, their powers are nice supplements but not a real force multiplier.

Of course, arcane range and buildings help. Shamans however, only need to be in reach of their allies.

Wood shaper is of course good again, but, again, high cost.

I have to say, I am not convinced by the wisp thing, it takes time to research and the slots at the temple of nature are very precious.

Elves don't have disenchant, too.

Yes, the headhunter can be burned easily, but headhunter can also easily kill the low range, low health fire archers, if they are not garrisoned.

But okay, let's wait for the updates.

Elves have disenchant on druid and wizard.
Ent warrior can be used as movable tower.
Also elves are only race which has warmage-like like unit — blade singer — trainable in tc. As for me this unit is second most powerful one among elven units thus i suggest for you to use them.

Woodshaper by the way in armored form should have better anti-building bonuses and also when he dies in his armored form he dropps normal himself.

I also recommend for you to build more wolf dens for elves as they provide free temporsry units to hold off enemies.

Elf wizard later will loose ent summon (this will become tiered (3 levels), permanent, researchable and will be moved to woodshaper, will require corpses to summon alas) and will get instead different spells - 4 levels of thunder (aoe 1, aoe 2, aoe 3, single target heavy hitting), slowing (druid will have entangle), disarmor, clear vision, disenchant (by the way this spell later will be divided into 2 - cleanese onto allies and actual disenchant onto enemies), magic missle and 2 additional abilities which are on hold right now.

Last thing to mention — elves have dodges. And first tier is really cheap.

About assaulter vs headhunter:
Assaulter indeed has maxed dodge higher (60% ranged) and no ranged unit has bonus to him thus in ranged fights he can survive for even better amount of time.
By the way he also supposed to get dodge melee but for now he doesn't, that's a bug.

About elves in general: if we will count ONLY base race (without subs) than both elves and orcs are almost at their full power. And actually elves can fight well against orcs on open field.
Only problem is to capture tcs.
Later it will become easier when magic missle will be able to target units inside tc.

[Anchar]

I also want to add that I already wrote a whole topic about the fact that a bounty hunter cannot be burned because he dodges the shots of an archer, and the flamethrower for elves and people is an archer

[Huttensohn]

A lot of the issues have been actually compensated by gained skill, more experience (use Wolf den) , but playing orc vs elf (and I'm better at elf and have more upgrades with them) shocked me.

Bladesinger is a glass-cannon that gets easily killed in meele(for being quite expensive) , but I guess, with arcane range it's a nice tower killer.

I think, with a weaker or more expensive tower or slower constructing than now, a lot of the issues would be gone.

[makazuwr32]

By the way.
About upscaling:
We decided to break it into 2 parts because we still have not consensus how buildings should work.
First part will be upscaling all units and buildings by same level while second part will be upscaling and updating buildings separately to level we actually will agree.

Also indeed elves in mid and late game are much harder race to play for when compared to humans/orcs but it is not impossible for 'em against opponent of same skill level.

About bladesinger - just do not use him in melee, only ranged (magic missle).

All towers will be separated into 2 types: cheap, weak, fast buildable tower and more costly, more tough, more powerful tower.
Orcs also will get cheap one.
All races also will get cheap+weak and tough+costly walls.

About headhunter: he is not completely dodging attacks of fire archer. Right now if unit has bonus against enemy with dodges than dodge is halved.
Thus against fire archers dodge of maxed headhunter is 25% as opposed to 50% for all other types of ranged attacks. This change to dodges was made so elves could dodge enemies with bonuses against them.

[Savra]

Btw, elves wisp might cost some to accuire and also take up some production, but so too does the goblin scavenger who requires research to get. Wisps also have 4 speed meaning they can get to factories faster then scavenger's who sacrifice speed for survivability. Also elves may get another wisp unit that can be accuired through corpses.

Also temples and great trees still can summon units at your base, and though it might cost some to get these abilities, in the end it proves worthwhile as your production gets sped up quite a bit faster then that of other races. Undead, when they get their money couriers might come in second to this as they could do it at their main base but with lich's, and necromancer's plus graveyard towers and grave diggers. So I'd say they have that going for them.

[makazuwr32]

Main effect of elven wisps is the fact that their summoning is free — after you reseached techs to unlock it they do not consume your production for speed up.
Humans need to consume their production for that.