Need help playing as the dwarves and elves?

[Dragonchampion]

It seems that I have a very... "human" mindset. I never can seem to reduce my losses to below 3 kills per death. I know this isn't normal, as I can see people on the forums playing very hard with 50:1 and even 100:1 death ratios! If I am playing on Easy/Easy, I should be able to replicate that, right?

Anyways, I need help on how to figure out how to play as them. They have small amounts of high power units, but for me I always seem to end up killing half or more of each stack per battle.

[Garriath]

I can't advise how you work with the dwarves, but I can totally help you with the elves. Don't act like you're dwarves: avoid melee combat, preferably at all, unless you're sure to win.

Both elf factions are mostly just worried about fighting goblins for at least the early game, and they're fairly simple to fight. Just keep them at range. Your arrows are going to be utterly deadly to them. If their morale holds up for long enough to charge your lines, just split up your archers into a few groups (hold the orcs with infantry only if you must) and simply shoot at the orcs until they break. Use fire arrows to speed up the process. Especially if you're playing on easy, it should be too hard to break them at all.

If you're playing as high elves (which is an easier if somewhat slower game), also, your generals are essentially one-unit armies. A well-executed cavalry charge (if you don't know how to do these, search around the MTW2 forums) can be relied upon to reduce an enemy troop to at most 50% of their initial population. If that enemy is already disgruntled, or especially if that troop includes the enemy general, your cavalry charge can easily send your enemy into an all-out route. If you use them right, you can easily rely on three or four general units to utterly annihilate an enemy stack of 500 or 600 troops with no permanent casualties.

So yes, invest only sparingly in infantry (honestly, your archers function perfectly well as infantry on their own), and avoid melee fights. Your focus should be to break the enemy's morale (you can inflict as many casualties as you want once he's broken.) As high elves, use your general's cavalry to maximum effect, and as the silvans, just rely on your arrows to get the job done.

Hope this helps!

[DrDragun]

There are many ways to get high ratios like that. Most of them revolve around cheesing the siege AI if you're dwarves or massing archers if you're elves. The elves are pretty straight foward... get enough archer mass (6+ units) and you can saw down anything that comes at you besides mass cavalry or trolls. Infantry you can outrun and kite them. Catapults will be annoying, particularly if they are firing into your generals. Most enemies will not MASS cavalry. Rhun or Harad armies you will typically only fight 2-3 heavy cavalry packs max, plus a couple of light or ranged cavs. Multiple Olog-Hai you will have to engage with infantry... they can outrun kiting archers. But basically just kite (means hit and run) and you can grind down thousands of infantry.

For dwarves, defend a siege with 2 melee units and 1 catapult. Bottleneck them at the gate and drop 50 orcs per shot. Even without the catapult, heavy dwarves can grind orcs all day in confined spaces as long as they're not surrounded. With dwarves it pays to know which enemies are armor-piercing and kill them first.

Also remember that it's very efficient to rout the enemies rather than kill them all. If the enemy has some low morale troops (militia or light infantry), then charging them with 2 or 3 of your units will make them break and run, counting as losses without you having to fight all of them.

[LuckyPistol]

Dwarves against goblins are tough: they have more units than you, so its hard to flank them. I'm still getting used to dwarves myself, but I've found every unit can be used for melee (much like the elves) but their pikemen are essential later on. Miners to protect pike's flanks and try to flank the enemy if you have other units left. If you have an equal number of units (UNITS, not troops) try to separate the enemy army so that its unit vs unit, you'll win even better from my experience

Evles were already covered excellently.

[DrDragun]

Dwarves against goblins are tough: they have more units than you, so its hard to flank them. I'm still getting used to dwarves myself, but I've found every unit can be used for melee (much like the elves) but their pikemen are essential later on. Miners to protect pike's flanks and try to flank the enemy if you have other units left. If you have an equal number of units (UNITS, not troops) try to separate the enemy army so that its unit vs unit, you'll win even better from my experience

Evles were already covered excellently.

With dwarf vs goblin it pays to know which enemies are armor-piercing. Halberds wargs and fellers you have to kill quick because they actually deal damage despite high dwarf armor. Bring some basic disposable infantry (miners/axemen) to take the snaga javelins (they have low ammo) and don't let your elite axes and halberds get shot by them.

[lolIsuck]

Yup, playing as the Elves is easy, as long as you aren't fighting cav-heavy factions like Rhun even a few units of light archers should be able to win easily when outnumbered. The nice thing with Elves is that you barely need infantry, their archers' attack is higher than most human or orc units and they can hold up in melee against multiple enemy units if neccesary.

Dwarves shouldn't be a problem either, you might have some trouble against Rhun but with your superior infantry you can easily whipe the goblins off the map without many casualties.

[Wolfeson]

Basicly what people above have said. For the elves, your archers are your main killing tools, so keep the enemy at range as much as possible. For dwarves, you're all about quality over quantity, so fight in confined spaces. Also, for all of these factions (really this applies to everybody) make sure you have at least a couple cav units in every army. Aside from charges, the way you can really boost your kill count and reduce your casualties over the long term is to be sure you can chase down and destroy all the routing units. Having to fight the same troops more than once is never a good thing, and heavy infantry are never going to catch up to routing units.

[Dragonchampion]

So I tried doing what you guys said, and I used elrond + 2 groups bow qunyas (or whatever) and 1 group of the Noretino warriors to try to take down a single village. But, for some reason, they PEASANT ARCHERS outshot the elven archers, and almost completely obliterated them. What gives?

[Bowmaster]

You must have done something seriously wrong. Did you shoot the peasant archers or the infantry, or both? You could have sended Elrond to take down infantry, allow the archers some peace to kill the enemy archers. And did you use loose or tight formation? Archers should always, always use loose formation, it can dramatically reduce the number of casualties. And the settlement you assaulted? Was it exactly a village, a town, a large town, or what?

[Garriath]

Also, were you trying to fire through buildings, or over a wall? Both can be a serious issue. Also, bear in mind that if you select all your units and issue a single attack command, they'll usually branch out and attack multiple units, so it could be that your archers were aiming for a different enemy.

As Bowmaster said, that really shouldn't have happened.

[Dragonchampion]

It was a village, they sallied forth, and I used Elrond to fight the infantry while the archers took down the hunters and such, but the infantry were axemen and cut down my general like butter. I had my archers on loose formation, too.

I have a feeling axemen bandits are just OP. :|

[kraxmause]

It was a village, they sallied forth, and I used Elrond to fight the infantry while the archers took down the hunters and such, but the infantry were axemen and cut down my general like butter. I had my archers on loose formation, too.

I have a feeling axemen bandits are just OP. :|

Normal or heavy axemen? Either way, they aren't overpowered, you just did something completely wrong. Nothing is easier to win than a battle against sallying rebels! Just line up your archers in a distance where they can shoot the enemies coming out of the gate (forget about loose formation, you won't need it). When sallying, the enemies all rush out of the gate together and such a tightly packed mass is a paradise for your archers. Aim at the infantry.
Line up your infantry a bit before your archers, once the enemy reaches them they should have lost ~30% of their troops to your archers already. Once they reach your infantry, make your archers attack their archers. While engaging with your infantry, move your cavalry around your right flank, find the enemy general and charge him from the side/back. When doing so, you might have to stop your archers from attacking due to potential friendly fire.
Once the general is dead, the infantry will rout instantly. This is were you order your cavalry to attack the remaining archers who are bound to rout quickly if attacked by cavalry.

If you're expecting a sally, never forget to bring cavalry! Actually, never even use an army if it's missing cavalry! One general unit is enough, more is better!

[Mhaedros]

Take another general unit that Elrond, as he uses spearmen. While they can be good, the elven cavalry is so much better when on offence. Don't leave them in melee though

[Dragonchampion]

Well, that might be my problem. I diud attack rather quickly (on the 2nd turn) and had only a few squadrons of elves, so perhaps I should wait? What is everyone else's early strategy in this game for Dwarves and Elves? (Turns 1-20)

[Haldir of the Galadhrim]

My strategy for Silvan Elves is to sit and wait, take a few bandit settlements to increase your gold pile and only attack with either the Mirkwood half or the Lorien half, use the other to generate and upgrade your military buildings, so eventually you can be throwing out those high quality Elves that wreck most Evil forces.

[Coldfire88]

Try Isenguard, youl barely be able to keep 1:1 kills, deaths ratio... those horse charges can be devastating.

[Garriath]

Also, if you're playing the Elves and attacking a village, it's almost always a better strategy to assault the village than starve them out. Not only do you finish faster, but you're able to simply rain arrows down on your enemies. If they charge out, just retreat, and they'll either back off, or be very, very easy to pick off one-by-one. If you wait for them to sally, they're all going to charge at once, and unless you can break them before they reach your line, you'll be forced into melee, which is going to make some casualties for you, even if you win.

[Wolfeson]

Ya, particularly against villages or "orc encampment"-style settlements (those wide open ones with low walls and no towers), just attacking the towns is the way to go with elves. They will just sit there and take it 90% of the time, so you can just massacre them until you run out of arrows. Just make sure you're shooting at an angle that lets your archers fire at a relatively low trajectory; that makes them much more deadly.

Against towns and larger, and particularly against anything with stone walls, however, it's often better to starve them out and force them to sally through the bottleneck of their own gate. Your archers practically can't miss when they're clumped up like that, and you get free shots at them until they've reorganized into a battle line (that can take up to a full minute).

[Dragonchampion]

But what about villag=villages with NO walls? most towns begin like that. What do I do?

[Wolfeson]

But what about villag=villages with NO walls? most towns begin like that. What do I do?

For villages, you can attack immediately and just shoot everything in there. The enemy will virtually never move, and if theydo try to ome out, it's invariably only 1-2 units at a time, packed into a narow street, so just focus fire on them and boom.