Battle mechanics for Silvan Elves

[ThorHa]

After having read (multiple times) how easy it is for just 500 Elven archers to beat 5000 Orcs/Goblins I decided to give the battle mechanics for Silvan Elves a closer look. And drew conclusions out of the appr. 100 battles I had against Mordor and the Orcs of ... in 3 Silvan campaigns.
Let me start with a clear statement - I do not beleive anyone telling me he can win against 5000 Orcs (20 full units, mostly skirmishers) with just 500 Elven archers (which would be 4 units) easily in the vanilla TATW, less that he can win with nigh 0 losses. The only exception would be a battle on extremely steep ground where the enemy has to come uphill channeled through narrow "passes" and you enjoy free space for shooting to the limit of the Elven archer range upped by the height advantage. Otherwise - no.

Boundary conditions:
- Early stages (until around turns 30 to 40). Light Elven archers/some spearmen/some Sentinels against mostly Snaga Archers/Snaga Skirmishers/some heavy Goblin infantry
- No submods, no canged unit stats
- No reckoning with Trolls. If you´re not able to field at least 2/3rd of stacks against full on the other side as soon as trolls in numbers come into play - well, you´re in for a hard time then ...
- Battles on hard difficulty

Troublesome enemies:
Most troublesome enemies of Silvan elves in the early campaign stages?
1., 2., 3. - Black Numenorean cavalry (Nazgul generals bodyguards). Reason is obvious - your Elves have to skirmish (move) to avoid losses, thus even stakes may be pretty useless. So you do NOT have an effective counter for heavy cavalry. Fortunately you will encounter just one at a predictable place - Dol Guldur.
4. Snaga skirmishers. Reason is likewise obvious - these guys do Javelin damage at a distance where the Elves will not automatically try to disengage until Javelin distance has passed. So their high number always ensures that despite the pathetic attack values they will hit some scores. Due to my experience they are the sole origin for the vast majority of Elven losses in early game stages.
5. Snaga archers. As soon as they come into range they WILL score kills as you are most likely forced to ignore them for quite some time in the battle

Battle mechanics:
Let´s assume a (bad) standard setup for Elves - flat land (be it covered with wood or not), 3 Elven light archers, one spearmen unit, one general´s unit against 5 Snaga skirmishers, 2 Snaga archers, 2 Goblin infantry, one Orc general. Sounds pretty familiar to Elven players?
Well, no matter how you position your units 3 things are going to happen:
- You will win
- You will take losses
- You will find the strongest enemy units to be the easiest to deal with
Let´s go through all 3 step by step:

Win?
Obviously you will set your archers in skirmish mode, fire arrows on (so they use up arrows in a less speedy way and cause moral damage). If "fire at will" is turned on (highly recommended for this Elven specific setup) your archers will always fire at the nearest target. Spearmen placed in the (far) back, you want them at good health chasing weakened enemy units where appropriate. They need micromanagemen, together with the generals unit. One note of warning - without support the generals archers can NOT even take out a single unit of Snaga skirmishers (tested in a 1:1 encounter in a campaign).
With an enormous amount of patience and having your units scattered all over the place you may at least rout one exhausted Orc unit after the next one, most likely extinguishing some in the course of events.

Losses?
Watch the way the archers retreat in skirmish mode. Let´s assume you positioned them 2 lines deep, max width initially for the highest amount of damage (straight lines of sight/fire to the enemies for most units possible). Let´s further assume the enemy approaches 3 units wide, with a more or less linear front but slightly slanted to your forces.
From north to south
Orcs: G
X X
X X X
X X X
X
Elves: ------- -------
------- GGGG

Then the archer line retreats starting with the elements nearest o the enemy, moving away from the enemy again not strictly backwards (so not |) but slanted (\). Basically they roll themselves up from the left to the right. And few of them will be caught in this process and forced into melee. This may or may not repeat several times. The first source of losses.

After the first retreat the battlefield might look like this, with adjacent units might experience fringe melee occurances:
Orcs: G
X X
X X X
X X X
Elves X -------
-------
------- GGGG

The second source of losses are the Snaga skirmishers. These buggers are extremely weak, but if they only aproach into Javelin distance they will not trigger the Elves retreat. And no matter how weak their attack, the high number ensures that still few Javelins will find and kill their targets. Yes, there might be people out there that are able (and have the patience) to micromanage all their archer units and avoid Javelin losses altogether - I can´t :-).
The third source are the Snaga archers. Even if you temporarily concentrate fire of all units upon them, there will be some left alive. And in the course of the battle until the final stages your retreating archers will have more important targets, thus even the diminished Snaga archers will score some (a few) kills.
Thus - if your 675 people come out of the battle victorious with about 80 lost lives it is a normal result, not a bad one.

Deal?
To make a long story short - the heavy infantry and the Orc generals unit are preferred Elven meat. They rarely ever spread (like the skirmishers), have no change to reach the archers ever and just run into one volley after the next. If the same 10 units as above would consist out of Goblin infantry only, you might win without losses (though the higher armour and shield rating might prevent their extinction before arachers are out of arrows).
As a summary conclusion - the Elves biggest advantage is speed combined with firepower. But that is made up by an extreme weakness - no cavalry until mid game. Which essentially means that the enemy might have survivors, you can´t enfore early routs and you can´t force break temporary melees where necessary. The fact that any reasonable enemy (except you are in for world conquest - a bad idea for a Tolkien Elven game) does likewise not have cavalry renders the stake ability pretty useless ...

For what its worth to you,

Thorsten

[axnsan]

Just a few comments - skirmis mode and fire arrows suck

One note of warning - without support the generals archers can NOT even take out a single unit of Snaga skirmishers

Wrong. This may only happen when you use fire arrows...
Also, if you turn skirimis mode off, you won't have problems with archers randomly running from snaga skirimishers or black numenoreans when behind stakes.

[ThorHa]

Just a few comments - skirmis mode and fire arrows suck .

Oh, really? If you say so ...

Wrong. This may only happen when you use fire arrows....

Wrong. This actually happened. I would not even know how to activate fire arrows on a general, as I did´nt bother to know the keyboard command and the UI button is replaced by the "horn".

I am not going to comment on your other statements - if you are able to micro 5 units separately, fine for you. I already said I can´t. Otherwise, and with the setup described, if your archers just stand ground you lose and have high losses.

Regards,

Thorsten

[axnsan]

Well I was talking about using fire arrows on the regular archers. General's can't use fire arrows.

And fire arrows really do suck

[Terafis]

Nice write up Thorsten

Couple of comments -

Vs the Black Numenorian Horse Unit in early game, your generals can deploy stakes, set them up off to one side and they run right into them. But to do this you have to bait them out of Dol Guldur - hang around close to the castle and he comes out, for a defensive open field battle where you can set the stakes up.

Vs any goblin army, first very important thing to do is concentrate all your fire on their general unit, kill him quickly, then play the skirmish game - no need to use fire arrows, the very slow shoot/reload on fire arrows doesn't work with skirmishing. This way you only need to kill half of each unit to cause a rout, as the gobbies have very low morale, and after losing their general they run away very easily. I always micromanage my units vs early orc armies, because like you said the range on the javelins is outside skirmish retreat range. Easiest way to micromanage is just to keep pausing the battle when you need to, after a while you don't even have to do that.

Best way for the eleven units to fight ranged orcs is to sprint a long distance to a hillside / hilltop / some kind of elevation, stop and kill from range for a couple of volleys, then sprint to the next position - use the timer multiplier between sprints, and it is super effective. If you keep your units together, and rush them from hilltop to hilltop, their concentrated volleys each time they get some range are devastating to the orcs.

Using this technique I killed a 1000 man orc army with one single unit of basic elven archers, had about 80 survivors and they were 2 silver bars and they spawned a general unit 'hero of the battlefield' unit afterwards, which was very satisfying.

The trick is to kill the general straight up, so you don't need to waste arrows shooting at half dead units - they rout instead, leaving you with plenty of arrows to concentrate on full units for max kills per volley.

Quick tip when defending vs full orc stacks coming down from the misty mountains - let them lay siege to your city, then sally forth with your elven archers and slaughter them from range - they take a long time to react because of the range of the silvan archers - same tactic, kill the general unit first up (he generally hides at the back, so send a unit or two round the rear), then let the slaughter commence

Regarding the slow movement speed of the elven general unit - you have two choices really. Keep them in cities for sally forth where they wont need to skirmish much, or wait until you get a full stack army up, and just use straight archer units for your conquering battles - OR - adjust the movement speed of the general units in the .txt file, to make them the same speed as normal archer units and able to keep up with the skirmishing units.

Just a quick final comment - I use RC+RR Additional Units (and now patch 1.2 makes it standard) that the Orcs can recruit Worg units. This makes it all a lot trickier, and exceptionally more satisfying to win, as the orcs like to include at least 2 worg cavalry units in each attacking stack - fun times

[ThorHa]

Vs the Black Numenorian Horse Unit in early game, your generals can deploy stakes, set them up off to one side and they run right into them. But to do this you have to bait them out of Dol Guldur - hang around close to the castle and he comes out, for a defensive open field battle where you can set the stakes up.

Yep. Tried that two times and got (Partially) unlucky - the Black Numenorians always went against different units first. They eventually ran into stakes, but only after having done an obscene amount of damage (for an Elven player used to very low losses, that is).

Vs any goblin army, first very important thing to do is concentrate all your fire on their general unit,

Yep. Only obstacle is that this unit at the opening stage of the battle is in the backyard of the Orc army. Thus I was rarely able to kill the General before having to retreat the archers.

Best way for the eleven units to fight ranged orcs is to sprint a long distance to a hillside / hilltop / some kind of elevation, stop and kill from range for a couple of volleys, then sprint to the next position - use the timer multiplier between sprints, and it is super effective. If you keep your units together, and rush them from hilltop to hilltop, their concentrated volleys each time they get some range are devastating to the orcs.

I´ll give this one a try - if I can. As I am used to go offensive early (Dol Guldur turn 25, Moria turn 3x) I often have to fight uphill, which means the archers would really have to go a very long way to gain uphill position. Furthermore Goblin archers are my last concern when heavily outnumbered, normally the AI fields them in very low numbers.

But the method as such may prove to ease micromanagement and thus seems to make it possible to manually steer my forces - thanks.

Regarding cavalry on Orc side - this seems to be something for masochists :-))))). The Silvans are difficult enough (for me) in the first 40 turns due to poor economy and divided starting positions, thus I will NOT give it a try anytime soon.

Regards,

Thorsten

[jản]

Well I was talking about using fire arrows on the regular archers. General's can't use fire arrows.

And fire arrows really do suck

they really suck when used as distance weapon. i usually use
them on a wall during a siege abttle when the enemy is already on the walls. when the attacking units
fighting with some of my militia i put archers on the next corner wall segment and than use fire arrows.
that work really well.
oh and BTW - general archers can use fire arrows but only when the generals himself is KIA.

[axnsan]

Well they usually don't get to use them anymore then anyway.

[sami]

cant be doin with this running from hill top to hill top tactic. waste of time if you ask me...
keep shooting untill they are close, whichever units want to retreat, let them, turn the rest off skirmish mode and run them to the flanks. nine times out of ten the retreating units will be chased, the rest can then shoot from the back and sides from a safe distance...you can then turn skirmish mode back on and repeat the process if need be. the original retreating units could well be firing again by then, the orcs having given up the chase. works well, gets firing positions from all angles for greater effect and it is very satisfying when you manage to get whole army surrounded and your archers are killing at will...pick your targets tho, get rid of the biggest threats first- dont let them fire at will at stupid targets like a unit routing or a unit with a handfull of orcs left. takes a bit of managing but works for me.

[cmdrnarrain]

Thorsten - You are correct they are full of crap. Most of the people who bad mouth archery do so because they don't like fighting against archer heavy armies as they cause them more casaulties then they are used too. Thus archers are OP.

You are right Silvan rule at the start when armies are small, lightly armored, and consist of low quality troops. They run into a lot of problems when armies have trolls, troll catapults, heavy army, and are full stacks. Unfortunately Ents seem to cause a lot of CTD in battles so I have had to stop using them.

You can avoid taking casaulties for the most part against Snaga's by placing a bait units far in front of your archers, but not so far as to be out of support range. The Snaga's target the bait allowing your archers to shoot unhindered. I use general's because I have ton of them and hate to see them become fat and lazy if I place them in cities. The also regen troops automatically. Downside, I lose alot of generals. Hehe, two were recently captured and executed to when I got jumped by three full stacks and had to run like a little girl but that fits the history as the elves were always getting capture.

[hahar]

with silvans all unit archers all unit skirmis-if u got sentinels deploy stakes if they got cavalry if they don't-no need for that
if u don't have sentinels and they got cavalry just turn of skirmis on unit that is charged by cavalry-that unit will sustand be raped but cavalry will also and then just keep on skirmis untill victory!

[Twist of Cain]

Obviously you will set your archers in skirmish mode, fire arrows on

Thorsten - You are correct they are full of crap

*snicker*

Let me start with a clear statement - I do not beleive anyone telling me he can win against 5000 Orcs (20 full units, mostly skirmishers) with just 500 Elven archers (which would be 4 units) easily in the vanilla TATW, less that he can win with nigh 0 losses.

Let me refute that with a clear screenshot.



Wait, wait, here's another. On a blank map, no hills to 'sploit, and just light elven archers.

[Bloodly]

That's not entirely effective as proof, though it's not any fault of yours; AI gets +1 EXP from the Barracks/Archery Range buildings(+2 total) and a direct Morale bonus from the walls(+2 to +4 based on size). So enemy troops in Campaign have +2 to +6 Morale, which lowers the odds of them breaking. Those skirmishers thus have morale on par with your own Elven Archers. For a proper check in Custom, you'd need to set enemy EXP to level 3 to 6, presuming each level of experience grants +1 to morale.

[Twist of Cain]

and a direct Morale bonus from the walls(+2 to +4 based on size)

How does this work? Are you assuming a siege?

[Bloodly]

No. Here's a piece of code from Export_desc_Buildings.

large_stone_wall city requires factions { gondor, northern_european, mesoamerican, middle_eastern, eastern_european, greek, southern_european, }
{
capability
{
wall_level 3
tower_level 1
gate_strength 2
gate_defences 2
free_upkeep bonus 4
recruitment_slots 3
recruits_morale_bonus bonus 3 requires event_counter is_the_ai 1
happiness_bonus bonus 4 requires event_counter is_the_ai 1
law_bonus bonus 5 requires event_counter is_the_ai 1
trade_base_income_bonus bonus 6 requires event_counter is_the_ai 1
retrain_cost_bonus bonus 1 requires event_counter is_the_ai 1
; population_growth_bonus bonus 1 requires event_counter is_the_ai 1

The thing I'm talking about is bolded. In this case, any unit trained(Retrained, too?) in a town with Large Stone Walls gets a morale boost of +3. All the walls, from Motte and Bailey to Huge Stone Walls have a similar line active.

Cities:
Wooden Palisade, Wooden Wall, Stone Wall: +2
Large Stone Wall: +3
Huge Stone Wall: +4

Castles:
Motte & Bailey, Wooden Castle, Castle: +2
Fortress: +3
Citadel: +4

[Twist of Cain]

Huh, neat. Experience provides benefits beyond morale, however.

[Bloodly]

Certainly, but it's the only way to simulate it via custom. The +Defence Skill from EXP means nothing as arrows ignore Defence. The +Melee Attack means little. The +Accuracy might change things a little.

...They balance the game around the straight stats, are willing to change those stats in the name of balance, then they throw it out the window in the campaign that's the majority of the game. Why? It's yet another piece of 'stuff the player has to chew through' along with the enhanced town growth, spawned armies, spy-immune(the walls and farms grant so much happiness and law)...ugh.

[LordBlades]

Certainly, but it's the only way to simulate it via custom. The +Defence Skill from EXP means nothing as arrows ignore Defence. The +Melee Attack means little. The +Accuracy might change things a little.

...They balance the game around the straight stats, are willing to change those stats in the name of balance, then they throw it out the window in the campaign that's the majority of the game. Why? It's yet another piece of 'stuff the player has to chew through' along with the enhanced town growth, spawned armies, spy-immune(the walls and farms grant so much happiness and law)...ugh.

Well, the AI is getting all those bonuses, and still isn't extremely hard to beat. I expect that without them, the campaigns would be a complete walk in the park. And that's not what many people would like.

I personally prefer an AI that breaks the rules to stay challenging to one that does not but rolls over and die whenever I look at it the wrong way.

The ideal solution would be a vastly improved campaign AI, but sadly I doubt that's modable.

[Bloodly]

I have my doubts. There's as many people saying 'it's hard' as 'it's easy' regardless of experience. But whenever someone says 'it's hard' they're shouted/talked down(Even your own response), whenever someone says 'it's easy', people agree. And it seems the only ones listened to are those that say 'it's easy'.

I don't agree with what they have in place, because not only is it taking away possibilities in terms of player strategy(If you can't cause rebellion and your foes are too strong to fight in the field, what can you do but vegetate?), half the problem of the AI economy(Which require the money cheats) are caused by the spawned troops which it can't pay for. Better to cut both out and actually see how it does when it isn't stuck with forces it can't pay for and won't/can't disband(Starting setups mean you can just pay for your start forces).

The extra EXP and Morale just make a bad situation worse. It's one thing for the orcish sides; the stats for Orcs are very poor by default and this brings them up to your level. AS them, it makes fighting even more frustrating: a fight to simply survive rather than conquest or back-and-forth.

In general, because of all of it, there is no sense of accomplishment and no sense of 'getting anywhere'. My foe is not the Orcs or Gondor or whoever, but the mind that decided this set of buffs as the default and then decides to mock you: "If it's not feeling excessively hard, you're the one at fault!", when these boosts are regardless of difficulty level.

I do not understand the reasoning for the number and variety of AI boosts in place. I'm not even angry-just depressed. The setups can already be challenging enough in many cases. It's doesn't NEED the help.

[LordBlades]

I have my doubts. There's as many people saying 'it's hard' as 'it's easy' regardless of experience. But whenever someone says 'it's hard' they're shouted/talked down(Even your own response), whenever someone says 'it's easy', people agree. And it seems the only ones listened to are those that say 'it's easy'.

I don't agree with what they have in place, because not only is it taking away possibilities in terms of player strategy(If you can't cause rebellion and your foes are too strong to fight in the field, what can you do but vegetate?), half the problem of the AI economy(Which require the money cheats) are caused by the spawned troops which it can't pay for. Better to cut both out and actually see how it does when it isn't stuck with forces it can't pay for and won't/can't disband(Starting setups mean you can just pay for your start forces).

The extra EXP and Morale just make a bad situation worse. It's one thing for the orcish sides; the stats for Orcs are very poor by default and this brings them up to your level. AS them, it makes fighting even more frustrating: a fight to simply survive rather than conquest or back-and-forth.

In general, because of all of it, there is no sense of accomplishment and no sense of 'getting anywhere'. My foe is not the Orcs or Gondor or whoever, but the mind that decided this set of buffs as the default and then decides to mock you: "If it's not feeling excessively hard, you're the one at fault!", when these boosts are regardless of difficulty level.

I do not understand the reasoning for the number and variety of AI boosts in place. I'm not even angry-just depressed. The setups can already be challenging enough in many cases. It's doesn't NEED the help.

I understand where you're coming from. Just giving the AI flat money/stat bonuses instead of making a better AI is a lousy solution, but it's the solution CA chose of the games, and there's little (if anything) a mod team can do about it.

While certain situations are challenging enough already (like OoMM from what I understand), I believe most people would have no problem in steamrolling an AI from an equal position (roughly equally rich territory, factions with roughly equal powerful rosters). My experience with MTW2 AI is pretty limited, but from what I've read there are no radical differences between it and the RTW one. Having played RTW (and especially EB) to quite a large extent, at some point I got bored of some strategies (economic warfare) not working so I played around with the money bonuses AI was receiving. This is what I got:

AI at peace: not doing anything past the starting 3-4 turns because the starting army (and the additional units it would recruit during that time) push it's economy deep in the red.
AI at war: build a large stack of low-level troops that pushes his economy to the red, attack, lose it, do noting for a few turns until the economy recovers, rinse and repeat.

The AI sadly has no concept of 'sustainable economy', and that's not something anyone but CA can change AFAIK.