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    Your Elvenar Team

Tournament Advice

Giovannaa

New Member
Hello everyone,

I have searched for a bit and haven't found what I'd like to see, and that is some kind of recommended chart or guide that gives you a recommended point goal based on your current barracks/armory/troop level makeup. Does such a thing exist?
 

CrazyWizard

Oh Wise One
This is for every player different.

There are so many factors in play.

So make the answer simple as long as your stash of troops and goods are rising, you could / should do more,
As long as your troops and goods drop, you could / should do less.
 

CrazyWizard

Oh Wise One
Go here to learn the best strategies: https://elvengems.com/tournament/

I advise ignore elvengems, ask your fellows who perform wel and learn yourself. test and experiment.
Elvengems gives absolutly horrible poor advise and it should be taken with a huge grain of salt.
It's not designed by people who actually play the tournaments.

It is based on paper stats that I calculated here
http://crazywizard.info/en/bb_unit_elves.html
http://crazywizard.info/en/bb_unit_humans.html

It seems they took these numbers to heart without taking in account other factors, like special powers and strategic factors like range and special powers and just went with the naked numbers presented
I left those factorts out on my list on purpose since I thought people should try. with the naked numbers they should get a clue but not the answer.

As a result of this for the current tournament for elves they advise banshees, Anyone with any proper experience in the tournaments will tell you that thats the very last unit you should ever use.

  • Banshees are from the training grounds, untill very very very late game they are the slowest training units
  • Banshees only get 3* in chapter 12, this means that untill chapter 12 the sorceres has the special power advantage.
  • Banshees suffer from the same flaw as the sorceres, they can't stike there enemy untill they expose themselves to the enemy unlike priest / blossom. even if the paper stats are worse, there strategic value makes them far far far superior than the banshee/sorceres. and in most cases even in an inferior state (lower *)


This is why I tell everyone who thinks elvengems advise should be taken by heart, please ignore it, and experiement yourself. test, try and find out what does work and does not work. take notes of your results if needed so 9 weeks later you can apply your knowledge what you learned 9 weeks ago in the next tournament.
 
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Darielle

Chef, Scroll-Keeper, and Buddy Fan Club Member
  • Banshees are from the training grounds, untill very very very late game they are the slowest training units
  • Banshees only get 3* in chapter 12, this means that untill chapter 12 the sorceres has the special power advantage.
  • Banshees suffer from the same flaw as the sorceres, they can't stike there enemy untill they expose themselves to the enemy unlike priest / blossom. even if the paper stats are worse, there strategic value makes them far far far superior than the banshee/sorceres. and in most cases even in an inferior state (lower *)

Thank you for the new perspective on elvengems, Wizard. I'll start paying more attention and checking my own progress against their advice. One thing I will say is that I only autofight, never take the time to actually battle. I almost always use the recommendations elvengems makes for autofight, and I almost always win the battles I try (I only fight the first 3 or 4 levels in tourney, and only up to high halls in spire). Perhaps for me, an autofight wimp, elvengems works. Perhaps if you actually fight even higher levels, it wouldn't. I'll keep that in mind when I get to where you are.

One thing about blossoms, though ... they don't show up until Chapter 7 and you can't upgrade them until later than that. So where I'm at, the bud sorceress is tons better than blossom. I understand that I shouldn't compare a level three with a level one blossom, but since that's all I can get, that's all I have to compare with. So you have to be pretty high up if your blossom is "far far superior."
 

Henroo

Oh Wise One
Darielle: I think what Crazywizard is pointing out is that both the Priest and the Blossom Mage have longer ranges. Therefore, they can attack most light melee and all heavy melee troops from a point where the melee troops can't close to attack range the next round. Which essentially lets these Mage units get off 2 free attacks in these situations without ever taking damage. This is a HUGE advantage. A Sorceress or Banshee is shorter ranged, they have to get so close that the melee units can get to them next round.
 

CrazyWizard

Oh Wise One
Thank you for the new perspective on elvengems, Wizard. I'll start paying more attention and checking my own progress against their advice. One thing I will say is that I only autofight, never take the time to actually battle. I almost always use the recommendations elvengems makes for autofight, and I almost always win the battles I try (I only fight the first 3 or 4 levels in tourney, and only up to high halls in spire). Perhaps for me, an autofight wimp, elvengems works. Perhaps if you actually fight even higher levels, it wouldn't. I'll keep that in mind when I get to where you are.

One thing about blossoms, though ... they don't show up until Chapter 7 and you can't upgrade them until later than that. So where I'm at, the bud sorceress is tons better than blossom. I understand that I shouldn't compare a level three with a level one blossom, but since that's all I can get, that's all I have to compare with. So you have to be pretty high up if your blossom is "far far superior."

In some cases the blossom at level 1 is better than the bud sorceres at level 3.
This is also from a autocombat point of vieuw.

But in general once you unlocked blossom II, you'll never look back, I only still use bud sorceres since I get them for free from the flying academy but I never make them.

Units have 4 mayor components are key factors in it's strength
  • Raw power (its attack , HP and defensive stats)
  • Initiative
  • Movement and range
  • Special powers
The 2 bolded ones are the most important
blossom has indeed the range advantage, the 5 range means that (even on auto) the blossom mage (and priest) kan move into range of the enemy, shoot not kill the enemy but are still out of range of the enemy giving them a second round of attacks.
Even if there power is not at strong, this extra turn is a mayor strength.

Another great example are powers and another place where gems goes horribly wrong.
Gems often promotes druids but lets compare the druid vs the archer / hunter.

In the steel tournament the promote dryad II, at this stage you have unlocked archer III, and lets presume you also unlocked dryad III se we get an equal comparison.

Yes from a raw power point of vieuw the dryad seems better but now lets look at the powers.
Dryad lowers the enemies attack stats
Archer lowers the enemies defensive stats.

Lower defense is the most powerfull ability we have especially with elvenar counting, a unit with a 170% defence agains light melee, after a 30% reduction (170*0.7=119) actually gets 51% knocked of it's defence, this makes the second attack hit like hell.
This means that the second attack hammers so incredibly hard on the enemy that it overcomes the raw power disadvantage by a lot, since it hammers these units pretty hard they also cant hit back as hard (lowering the attack indirectly)

Lowering your opponents attack might seem to be cool but it also means that you allow your opponnent to come into you range, to hit you. the best enemy is a dead one, not a weak one. dead ones don't get lucky shots.
This is especially prevalent when opposing 1 or more anti-units in your opponents army need to be dealth with, this crazy counting makes the second shot often hit twice as hard as the first shot, it's like those cannonniers where the first one hits your treant and you laugh and the second one hurts like hell.

This makes druids really poor light ranged units (and crossbowmen) but archers and hunters great since they actually kille the enemy faster and quicker.

Gems does not take these kind of factors in it's advise, resulting in a lot of players believing gems to make and use the wrong units leading to poor and sub-par performance, and therefore limited motivation.

I also see mix and match advises (for autofight) mixing units of different types like treants and archers. this on auto will lead in 95% of the cases to worse results than using 5x the same unit.
Mix and matching accidentally does work in autofight but in general is reserved for manual combat.

For this reason elvengems is one of the worst places to learn about combat or tournaments since they give a totally wrong advise to the absolute wrong people. they are often the reason people quit playing tournaments because they can't seem to make it work.
 

CrazyWizard

Oh Wise One
Darielle: I think what Crazywizard is pointing out is that both the Priest and the Blossom Mage have longer ranges. Therefore, they can attack most light melee and all heavy melee troops from a point where the melee troops can't close to attack range the next round. Which essentially lets these Mage units get off 2 free attacks in these situations without ever taking damage. This is a HUGE advantage. A Sorceress or Banshee is shorter ranged, they have to get so close that the melee units can get to them next round.

If you are facing 1 giants unit of thieves (or a combination of 1-2 thieves x heavy melee) is the blossom mage.
I use a unit that is supposed to be weak agains light melee agains light melee for exacly this reason, especially when not playing auto.

Why? precicely this, I can hit the enemy at least 10 times before the enemy can hit me, since blossom mages / priests also destroy defence no unit survives 10 hits from a priest / blossom mage, even if its 3x as big as your won units. lately this is changed to frog princes but it still works.

This shows the clear advantage some units have using range to there advantage and how a unit thats a poor unit on paper can be great when used in reality.
 

Darielle

Chef, Scroll-Keeper, and Buddy Fan Club Member
If you are facing 1 giants unit of thieves (or a combination of 1-2 thieves x heavy melee) is the blossom mage.
I use a unit that is supposed to be weak agains light melee agains light melee for exacly this reason, especially when not playing auto.

Why? precicely this, I can hit the enemy at least 10 times before the enemy can hit me, since blossom mages / priests also destroy defence no unit survives 10 hits from a priest / blossom mage, even if its 3x as big as your won units. lately this is changed to frog princes but it still works.

This shows the clear advantage some units have using range to there advantage and how a unit thats a poor unit on paper can be great when used in reality.
Wow this is clear to understand and good advice. Thanks for the tips. I wonder why gems doesn't think of these things? They are awesome for their guest chapters. Anyway, great info!
 

Darielle

Chef, Scroll-Keeper, and Buddy Fan Club Member
Darielle: I think what Crazywizard is pointing out is that both the Priest and the Blossom Mage have longer ranges. Therefore, they can attack most light melee and all heavy melee troops from a point where the melee troops can't close to attack range the next round. Which essentially lets these Mage units get off 2 free attacks in these situations without ever taking damage. This is a HUGE advantage. A Sorceress or Banshee is shorter ranged, they have to get so close that the melee units can get to them next round.
Thanks Henroo; I can see how these things work now.
 

CrazyWizard

Oh Wise One
Wow this is clear to understand and good advice. Thanks for the tips. I wonder why gems doesn't think of these things? They are awesome for their guest chapters. Anyway, great info!

Because they are good at copying information and not good at creating information, as long as nobody tells them what to do they have no clue.
It's because of there (former) access to mod tools that they could make this site so successfull. but they don't seem to play themselves.
They could take pointers from others and use there months hard work and with a few clicks get the same information from the moderating tools and release it completed.

There is a reason I pointed out that list on my former webpage, it's the only explanation how they could come up with such poor advise and it totally fits there profile.

The reason I say (former) access is because lately there information seems to be slow and drying up, innogames finaly gave them and earfull or restricted access altogether.
In the past we on the forum made event quests lists, and there were people paying diamands to be able to reveal the next quest.

Elvengems grabbed that information and released shortly after an event started, we havent seen many lists again on any of the forums ina long while only recently it seems to slowly returning since gems is slow. embassy information is still crap or does it even exist? since elvenar is still crap
 

Mykan

Oh Wise One
I advise ignore elvengems, ask your fellows who perform well and learn yourself. test and experiment.
Elvengems gives absolutely horrible poor advise and it should be taken with a huge grain of salt.
It's not designed by people who actually play the tournaments.

This is why I tell everyone who thinks elvengems advise should be taken by heart, please ignore it, and experiment yourself. test, try and find out what does work and does not work. take notes of your results if needed so 9 weeks later you can apply your knowledge what you learned 9 weeks ago in the next tournament.

Just so you are aware, the recommendations do come from people who are top tournament players on their servers and have tracked their tournament results as you suggest above. I also believe they have done this at different stages/chapters of the game.

The reality is there are a lot of different ways to win fights, some are better than others. I could grab 4 or 5 top tournament players and get multiple different recommendations. Information in any guide is a starting point but sooner or later it is best for a player to own their strategy and style of play.

Its a reason I haven't added updates to my combat guide lately, the underlying basics still hold true but the application has to become part of your play. Using the above example of mages, I know a elf player who is consistently top ranked in tournaments who loves the bud sorceress and regularly takes them over blossoms as their tracking shows them to be better. I have not tried to find the specifics of when and why, the point is they have taken ownership of their choice even if it differs to a common recommendation.

Banshees are from the training grounds, untill very very very late game they are the slowest training units

Are you referring to when they get their upgrades? If you are referring to training speed than this is incorrect and varies based on individual player circumstances. With all things equal then training grounds is a slower building but rarely are all things equal. Wonders and the alternating tech tree influence the speed for each player.

@Giovannaa I have not seen such a tool but what I used to do was set a goal of how much tournament I wanted to do. If points is your goal you can run the maths or use the tournament calculator on gems (which also shows rewards). I would note my troops prior to each tournament starting and ending. I knew how many troops I would expect to finish a tournament with by doing this and it became obvious as my techs changed and wonders increased to see when I should increase my goal as my troops at the end of the tournament would be higher and higher then expected.

You then set a new goal and monitor again, like crazywizard said if the troops are going up then you can do more. You may also find this needs to vary by tournament, for example dust and scrolls are typically tougher and you may struggle to do the same amount.
 

CrazyWizard

Oh Wise One
Just so you are aware, the recommendations do come from people who are top tournament players on their servers and have tracked their tournament results as you suggest above. I also believe they have done this at different stages/chapters of the game.

The reality is there are a lot of different ways to win fights, some are better than others. I could grab 4 or 5 top tournament players and get multiple different recommendations. Information in any guide is a starting point but sooner or later it is best for a player to own their strategy and style of play.

Its a reason I haven't added updates to my combat guide lately, the underlying basics still hold true but the application has to become part of your play. Using the above example of mages, I know a elf player who is consistently top ranked in tournaments who loves the bud sorceress and regularly takes them over blossoms as their tracking shows them to be better. I have not tried to find the specifics of when and why, the point is they have taken ownership of their choice even if it differs to a common recommendation.



Are you referring to when they get their upgrades? If you are referring to training speed than this is incorrect and varies based on individual player circumstances. With all things equal then training grounds is a slower building but rarely are all things equal. Wonders and the alternating tech tree influence the speed for each player.

@Giovannaa I have not seen such a tool but what I used to do was set a goal of how much tournament I wanted to do. If points is your goal you can run the maths or use the tournament calculator on gems (which also shows rewards). I would note my troops prior to each tournament starting and ending. I knew how many troops I would expect to finish a tournament with by doing this and it became obvious as my techs changed and wonders increased to see when I should increase my goal as my troops at the end of the tournament would be higher and higher then expected.

You then set a new goal and monitor again, like crazywizard said if the troops are going up then you can do more. You may also find this needs to vary by tournament, for example dust and scrolls are typically tougher and you may struggle to do the same amount.

I am not buying this at all.
Banshees suck in all ways just like sorceres do,

Dryads are in no circumstance te best unit.
Lets take this advise as an example
1591085892391.png


Now lets compare this to my unit breakdown I made some years ago on my website
1591086123365.png

See the link?
The raw power agains heavy melee the dryad is the best. and heavy units are the main enemy in this tournament.

Now comes the kicker, Elite archer has the power -20% defence, and both heavy melee units (orc warrior/general and swamp monsters have 2 move and no range attack. this means even when (any) archer (or blossom mage) attacks they are still out of attack range of these units. 5% defence vs heavy melee or 80% defence vs heavy melee doesnt matter as long as that unit can't attack you.

Anyone who played manual in the steel tournaments knows that the most fearful unit is the thornrose mage as it's hits both hard and from a long range. both the elite archer and the (pro) ranger hit this unit much harder than any dryad can ever do.
It also helps that both 3* variants have as a special power a defence breaker making it easier(not easy) to get rid of thieves, heavy melee units and those pesky thronrose mages

As for the ranger, 4 move and 90% defence agains mages help a lot in getting rid of that pesky enemy on turn one, and if it's impossible it can absorb the first hit. (especially usefull in manual combat)

(Poison) Dryad has an expremely poor damage range vs the thornrose mage 19.8 per weight vs 30/32 and therefore can't even be considered competion to both the other units. even at the strongest version of the dryad can't even compare to a 1* unit from the other 2.
It also doenst help that the poison dryads special power reduces the enemies attack. as that won't help them kill the enemy any quicker.

Ranged units should avoid to be attacked at all and since there are no knights they won't be hit at all
Not getting hit or weaken the enemy massivly before it can hit is the whole point of ranged attacks. so such a power is in general a poor one.
The best defence agains an enemy is getting it killed ASAP because a dead enemy can't hit back, therefore a power that kills more enemy units is also a way to get hit less hard in return because again a dead enemy unit can't hit back.

This useless power is also the reason why the mortar sucks beyond reason, and the frog prince got nerfed a while back.

This kind of advise I just grabbed from that page the entire gems page is littered with it.
So the claim that these advises are made by very experienced combateers / tournament players can't be true.
It's impossible, no sane experienced tournament player would make this advise, unless they are trying to harm "the competition" on purpose.

I think I know what I am talking about, as for tournament results, I think I have build a pretty decent track record over the past several years.
1591085174608.png

I am eager to learn and just in case we would be wrong in our analysis we actually tried agains better knowing those units (banshees and dryads) and confirmed our findings

When we give "general" advise, we should take into consideration how the general public plays.
You can easily make the case that the far mayority will use autocombat, and this is where the general advise should be targetted at.
Edge cases should be ignored and can't be the basics for combat.
 

Deleted User - 4646370

Guest
What's even worse than Elvengems is in-game advice, swords. A case in point is Bud Sorceress, which is shown with 4 swords as better against heavy melee than Blossom Mage I. I really doubt this being true. And the app even hides the truth.

I wanted also to speak abut a fight I made in my second city in Feb 22, 2020 and whose result was really weird.
It was in crystal tournament, 5th province, 4* round. I was in chapter 6.
Ennemies were 2 Enchantresses II and 4 Faineant frogs II.
5 Soreresses II lost the fight, but 5 Treants II won with 2 squads left.
How such a result is possible ?
 

Darielle

Chef, Scroll-Keeper, and Buddy Fan Club Member
I am not buying this at all.
Banshees suck in all ways just like sorceres do,

I tried both blossom and bud sorceress on the tourney today, just to see if the advice on here would help, and I have to say I love my bud sorceresses, mainly because my level one blossom doesn't seem to have the power to fight all of the tough guys ... heavy range and heavy melee, that the bud sorceress gets on the first try. As Mykan said, there are different ways of doing things. Maybe you haven't owned a level one blossom in so long you don't remember their limitations? I'm not saying that's true ... I'm just suggesting a possibility for why you think they are always better than bud sorceresses. Today in the tourney, the bud sorceresses won hands down over the blossom level one. That probably wouldn't be true for an upgraded one, but it sure is now.
 

Enevhar Aldarion

Oh Wise One
Yes, the elf barracks mage is the worst of the three mages an elf player can have. The human barracks mage is also way better. But then, the human light melee is the worst light melee in the game, so it sort of balances out between human and elf.

Also, don't judge the quality of your troops until you have them at three stars. Unlocking their top stats and skills makes a huge difference in winning fights. Except maybe for the two I mentioned above. Even at three stars, those two are often outdone by two-star troops from the other two buildings.
 

CrazyWizard

Oh Wise One
I tried both blossom and bud sorceress on the tourney today, just to see if the advice on here would help, and I have to say I love my bud sorceresses, mainly because my level one blossom doesn't seem to have the power to fight all of the tough guys ... heavy range and heavy melee, that the bud sorceress gets on the first try. As Mykan said, there are different ways of doing things. Maybe you haven't owned a level one blossom in so long you don't remember their limitations? I'm not saying that's true ... I'm just suggesting a possibility for why you think they are always better than bud sorceresses. Today in the tourney, the bud sorceresses won hands down over the blossom level one. That probably wouldn't be true for an upgraded one, but it sure is now.

yup 3* vs 1* it's a pretty even matchup, depending on the enemies the one or the other is better.
The main issue of the blossom mage is it's poor health espceally at 1*,
In the days long long long ago (we did not have fire phoenix and boosters) I used bud sorceres with a bit of blossom 1*, but once I reached blossom 2* I never looked back.

Yes, the elf barracks mage is the worst of the three mages an elf player can have. The human barracks mage is also way better. But then, the human light melee is the worst light melee in the game, so it sort of balances out between human and elf.

Also, don't judge the quality of your troops until you have them at three stars. Unlocking their top stats and skills makes a huge difference in winning fights. Except maybe for the two I mentioned above. Even at three stars, those two are often outdone by two-star troops from the other two buildings.
I assume you ment heavy ranged.

The blossom mage is a slightly weaker version of the priest. human priests are amazing mages.

What's even worse than Elvengems is in-game advice, swords. A case in point is Bud Sorceress, which is shown with 4 swords as better against heavy melee than Blossom Mage I. I really doubt this being true. And the app even hides the truth.

I wanted also to speak abut a fight I made in my second city in Feb 22, 2020 and whose result was really weird.
It was in crystal tournament, 5th province, 4* round. I was in chapter 6.
Ennemies were 2 Enchantresses II and 4 Faineant frogs II.
5 Soreresses II lost the fight, but 5 Treants II won with 2 squads left.
How such a result is possible ?
The ingame advise is also very "paper wise" it gives a value at the unit bonus agains other units,

As for your why?
a treant is able to absorb a decent amount of damage, this is especially in the beginning of the game very powerfull.
but if the map is a bit troublesome those enemy enchantress can really destroy your treants.
Also the map was agains you those mages / AI could and would not attack the enemy frogs fast enough, and then it's bye bye enchantress.

Personally when you get access to Valorian guard II / veteran guard I prefer to use those above treants, those pesky enchantess create random total losses you cannot predict, the valorian guard with it's 1 range can always "hit" the attacking enchantress back creating a more stable result.

As an elf, except for drone rider I love the other 4 units from the mercenary camp once you have them unlocked and maxed. they have became my main units. off course there are a lot of other considerations which decide what unit to use, but if I had to pick and use only 1 of each type from then onwards it would be Cerberus, Ranger, blossom, valorian and frog.
 

Darielle

Chef, Scroll-Keeper, and Buddy Fan Club Member
Here's a result from this morning that I was pretty happy with:
bud sorceress.jpg
 

CrazyWizard

Oh Wise One
Here's a result from this morning that I was pretty happy with: View attachment 7787

You will always find results like this and there is nothing wrong with this result.
But you should look to the average results from a large set of results, a single result doesn't tell the story,

For example you can have an excellent result with a mix and match of different types of units, but using 5x the same units type in autocombat will on average create better results. some fights you can't wil with 5x the same units are sometimes succesfull with a mixed set.

But you can't always predict the result based on, so you should look at what works when I do this 100 times and in what scenario's works which units the best with the least casualties, this is your "best" unit

Then there are several other factors to consider which unit you should train / use
  • No unit is better than a free unit, from for example from a wonder, even if it's bad, when it had a use you should use it,
Then which should you train?
  • What are the average losses for each unit?
  • How fast can I train a unit?
  • Which fights can only be won with a specific unit?.
You should train units based on these questions above.

Which units you should train is depending on where you are in game, how your production setup is and which fight can't be won with you unit based on the first 2 questions.

Blossom 1 is flimsy, it has a hard time dealing with mistwalkers, much more than the sorceres, in the above example blossom 1* should in general have lead to a similar to better result.
Only from 2* does it become less flimsy and the clear winner between the 2, but a flying academy gives you free sorceress units and nothing is better then a free unit, unless your sorceress production is x fold faster then the blossom, then a mix of units should be trained.

This for example is the reason I rarily used cerberus untill the release of the elementals chapter(victory springs wonder), while cerberus was the clear better unit, it's production rate was so slow compared to sworddancer than I used those as main units, cerberus was only used where the sworddancers where unable to pull it off.

because of this our scores in scrolls tournament where much extremely more limited then today.

In the old, old, old days you could win a tournaments 1st place with only 14 provinces, in today's world, with today's production, units expansion en boosters and tournament rules that sounds like a bad joke.
 
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