Hi guys, I would like to ask for help in OVE as its a very hard matchup for me

If ele goes charrog, I have a decent chance at winning if I sword archer mass. However, I can't deal with tree spam, its too difficult for me.

-I usually start with AS or AM to take tower and force them to castle air. When I see them spamming mana (3-4 on mana) and didn't build any fires/airs I go "oh shit" because they are going to spam trees. There are 2 types of tree spam, the first is by not so good ele players who just spam pure trees (4 and above), those I can just turtle and win.

-The second, is by competent players who will go 2-3 trees follwed by lots of support (cycloids, charrog, inferno). I find that almost impossible to deal with as order. The cycloids and inferno spells wreck my units and theres no way to counter them. Ninja cannot kill inferno before the spells are casted, and the mage can't do sh it to the cyloids because they have waters to heal and the shield spell. They have a superior economy and can keep spamming spells and stop me from reaching the giant mage meric ninja deathball.

-How do I deal with this strategy? I can't stop the trees from massing up, if i try sword archer spam with rage, they can just park their trees in their base and CA wrecks my swords. Also, they can keep making new trees to shield the weakened ones. Once my push dies down, they would just walk over my base. Archer spam also doesn't work, they can push me back to my base and use spells to wreck the archers. Personally I feel tree spam is a little op, order can be ahead with like a handful of sword archer, could have killed some ele miners, but all ele needs to do is tree spam and force order back :(

When you see someone tree spamming, just keep in mind that he got no skills. If you ask me and a bunch of others, Elemental Empire is pay2win. I've lost 10 matches or more because of tree spam which is why I got membership now to fuck up tree spammers (FACUFERI4 is a big example)

Now to beat tree spammers, you need to have access to Chaos Empire because beating tree spammers with Order is nearly impossible unless your opponent fucks up. And don't use Elemental Empire because it's so glitchy and most of the time your Cycloids don't do shit. Good luck.

Elemental Empire has two ranged units only: Fires are close range and the parabolic curve of the projectiles makes them only able to make the full use of their range when retreating - so Fires chasing units have to be very close to reach them. Airs are expensive, and extremely bad at kiting or following due to the very long attack duration. Elemental can have a powerful ranged force when massing both or either of these units, but they are not available in large numbers during the early game or mid game, hence a very common strategy is to just buy a castle air and eco up into trees very early into the game. Archers meanwhile can continually poke at Trees and Scorplings, as well as unprotected Fires and Airs (and protecting Airs requires Cycloids which are far too expensive for the early game). Elemental is unfortunately only good at diving and massing in large numbers. That said, if you survive to the late end game there is no good Elemental build that can cope with a strong Order army.

You basically need to choose at some point in the game if you are going to go for an offensive and continually attacking/poking strategy or try to stall at your castle with castle archers and walls. If you start losing control of the game, a very prolonged stall will eventually turn into a win, if you can keep Elemental out of your base.

Against tree spam you do not want to be losing your tanks to the free scorpions, if you are able to draw the fight out and kite a lot with all your army you can trade free scorpions for free archer arrows. With a few merics Infernoes should not be able to kill your archer army, because the spells are very slow and slight catches will get healed up. You obviously can't target Cycloids with ninjas, and if scorpions are on top of your archers you won't be able to reach them with your archers either, so try not to let the scorpions act as shields, again with kiting as much as possible.

I suspect if you are fighting Trees/Scorplings/Cycloids/Infernoes before you are able to get Giants/Mages/Merics for a deathball then you are falling behind before you start to get attacked with all those AoE spells designed to wipe out archers.

When there's a Charrog in your base, or even 3/6 scorplings in the really early game you really don't want to let it stop you from mining or be forced to spam swords on it - the Charrog AoE could hurt a lot if well timed. If you have 2 archers against one or two early trees, for example, obviously you don't want your archers to stand still and die to the scorplings, but if you can kite forward so that your archers are between the trees and the scorplings you can immediately start shooting at the trees when the scorplings are dead and maximise the time between scorpling spawns. The other option for minimising the benefits of scorplings is to not kill them at all, so the tree reaches the next charge when the previous scorplings are still around, but if you do this you want the scorplings to be wasted walking to your miners, not when they're being useful attacking your units.

On short maps kiting is far less effective, but your castle archers are more useful as they can cover the mid field a lot better. This doesn't balance out, and Elemental will have a greater advantage anyway.

I think the key thing to remember is that you don't need to take out Elemental's statue. You don't need to spend money on all the speartons and swords you would for a normal game for pressing into the opponent's territory, and that money will help more as miners, archers, walls and merics. If you aim for holding them off by continual free kiting and avoiding as much melee combat as possible you can maximise your free ranged damage and minimise Elemental's free melee units. You can't do anything to their base once they have a castle air, so it's not worth wasting money on loads of speartons trying to tank their castle damage. Elemental on the other hand needs to be constantly as close to your statue as possible to stop you catching up in economy and prevent you from being able to stall, and while you can prevent that, you're on the track to a win at 20:00. even though you aren't achieving much and the game is really boring.

@gaismail that's so sad :( seems like I won't be able to win ele after all. But on a positive note, facuferi is the only active ele player I know who knows how to play ele to its full cancerous potential XD

@skeletonxf wow that's a long post! Appreciate the time you took to write it out :) Tho there are a few things I don't understand

-how does order go for an offensive strategy and continuously attack/poke ele? How does archers continuously poke at ele? When they start the first tree, you will have like 3-4 archers and some swords. There is a small window for you to damage the first tree, but afterwards, they will build another 2 trees in very quick succession, protecting the wounded tree and forcing you back with scorp spam. To be able to contest centre you are suggesting that you continue production of sword archer. But you cannot push ele off with sword archer as their mass is simply stronger than what order can make. Eventually you'll be forced back to base and because you invested so much in army, you won't have enough resources to go for mage ninja giant turtle, and thus lose the game.

-trading archer arrows with scorpling arrows sounds like a good idea, but from what I experienced, if you try to mass archers, you will be overwhelmed before you set it up. They have charrogs which tank tonnes of damage, so you have to turtle. Meric can't help the archers, because when you are forced to turtle, infernos can wreck your archers and miners at the first row of gold, forcing you to retreat everything which will eventually get you killed.

-I will definitely fight their scorp/inferno/charrogs army before I get my deathball up. This is impossible, I don't think even the best order player can accomplish this.

-how do you kite forward to get the archers between the trees and the scorps? It sounds like an insane move. They have other units like charrogs/tower spawn, scorps spawn continuously and its very hard to not get hit by the poison from scorps. They have tree root ability to kill archers, and can move health trees forward to tank.

I feel like we are talking about 2 different variations of the tree spam that ele uses. The situation that I'm facing now is,
-game starts, order goes archer start, ele goes earth start, order takes centre and ele Castle airs.
-order goes for miner archers with some swords to try to break ele economy, ele goes miner spam and hustle. Order is unable to do much damage to ele, because they can build miners much faster and can hustle much faster.
-ele stacks gold/mana, and goes for a tree, followed by 2 more in quick succession. At this point order has like around 4 archers, some swords and a healthy eco to spam out sword archers. If order tries to rush ele with tower spawn + rage swords or just a huge sword archer rmass, ele can hold with castle air or spawning healthy trees to protect their weakened ones. If order fails this attack, (which has a very small window to succeed), they are screwed and will not have enough resources to turtle.

-if order tries to mass archer Merics, ele, with the aid of 3 trees and charrog/Tower spawn, can force order off tower and force orser to turtle, where the spells can kill the archers/miners with no space to retreat. So going on offense is not a good option.

-if order turtles with spear meric into mage ninja and giant, they will most likely fail too. Because 3 trees + tower spawn + spells can put tonnes of pressure on order at the spear meric stage. When orser gets a mage, ele can use v to kill it, order won't have a ninja by then. Or ele can spam cycloids in such numbers that they can wreck miners, Merics, everything. Order's pop will go down until they have nothing left.

-this is the dilemma that order faces. I'm okay with 2k ele players who don't know how to pressure, but when the ele player knows how to pressure order, I won't stand a chance.

It is definitely a dilemma. Unlike Order versus Chaos which has a clear and skill based game from both players where you can punish mistakes, Order versus Elementals is very lop sided and I can't give you any magic bullet advice because there is none.

-game starts, order goes archer start, ele goes earth start, order takes centre and ele Castle airs.

Literally nothing else for you to do here because that castle air is so strong. You can at least keep your archer near Ele's base (but out of range of the Castle Air and not able to attack Ele's miners) so Ele is less likely to bring their first Tree to mid due to how many times you would get to shoot at it before I roots and starts with Scorplings. Once Ele has one tree rooted, Ele is going to want to put their next trees near it, so you can incentivise Ele to build Trees as far away from your statue as possible instead of closer

-order goes for miner archers with some swords to try to break ele economy, ele goes miner spam and hustle. Order is unable to do much damage to ele, because they can build miners much faster and can hustle much faster.

I don't see the point in even trying to buy swords to attack ele's economy here. You're very unlikely to kill much because the castle air chunks so badly and Ele can create a charrog very quickly when Ele sees it needs protection - and Earth spam works as protection often enough, and can then convert into eco anyway. You may want to try committing what would have been swords into miners and consider walls/castle archer if Ele becomes very aggressive quickly. Swords aren't going to press into Ele once Ele has a single tree out, and Trees are cheap.

-ele stacks gold/mana, and goes for a tree, followed by 2 more in quick succession. At this point order has like around 4 archers, some swords and a healthy eco to spam out sword archers.

If order tries to rush ele with tower spawn + rage swords or just a huge sword archer rmass, ele can hold with castle air or spawning healthy trees to protect their weakened ones. If order fails this attack, (which has a very small window to succeed), they are screwed and will not have enough resources to turtle.

Yep

if order tries to mass archer Merics, ele, with the aid of 3 trees and charrog/Tower spawn, can force order off tower and force orser to turtle, where the spells can kill the archers/miners with no space to retreat. So going on offense is not a good option.

I presume by spells you mean Inferno? Both of its spell casts are slow and predictable. If you mean Charrog then I presume you're getting attacked without having a wall up.

I think it's worth reiterating that Order is almost certainly in a weaker position here. Your economy will be weaker, and you will have to start praying to advance much further up the tech tree (and Ele doesn't have to) and Ele is bringing out trees and able to swarm at you with free Scorplings. Ele can probably hold tower easily on smaller maps and there won't be much you can do about it other than slight archer damage all the time.

The good news is that Charrogs have awful dps, and Scorplings die quickly to castle archer splash. You could try not having as many swords and instead having Castle Archer and walls, or if on a long map with Ele's trees close to their base, focusing on almost all archers instead and keep kiting to avoid taking any hits then running forward again after the scorplings are dead to avoid giving up too much ground, at least until you get forced into base defense. Buying swords to tank Scorpling damage is not as cost effective as walls, and I don't see you successfully killing a Tree even with rage once there's 3 of them.

-if order turtles with spear meric into mage ninja and giant, they will most likely fail too. Because 3 trees + tower spawn + spells can put tonnes of pressure on order at the spear meric stage. When orser gets a mage, ele can use v to kill it, order won't have a ninja by then. Or ele can spam cycloids in such numbers that they can wreck miners, Merics, everything. Order's pop will go down until they have nothing left.

What I've done before, in situations where I know I can't afford to research and then buy a ninja but really need the mage is to buy the mage, keep it in front of my archers and buy the poison spell only. When I have 3 or more Merics, the poison spell isn't going to hurt me too badly if Ele brings out a V and steals my Mage, and I will have enough notice and Merics before the Mage can cast the explosion spell that I should be able to avoid losing too many archers to it. With the deliberately handicapped Mage I then keep poisoning Ele every chance I get, because Ele has no cost effective way to cure poison, and Ele has so many low hp units that the poison ticks hurt a lot more than they would on Order or Chaos. The other great benefit to making Ele have to sacrifice waters on healing is that it stops Ele from using them to make Trees, Cycloids and Vs. Casting the poison spell as Ele approaches also ensures it is on cooldown before Ele can use a V on your Mage, and if timed well can poison the entire front line.

I think after you lose, consider what units you bought that never achieved anything. And see if you remembered to buy Hustle yourself, while you were dealing with Ele. I find personally it is easy to get caught up in slowly losing the game of offense and map control that I forget about economy.

@skeletonxf

I can't quote on my phone so I'll just reply in bullet points

-the first few points you made are sound

-by spells I mean inferno and tornado. While they are slow and predictable, when launched, they force you to retreat your miners/archers at the first row of gold to avoid damage. Eventually your pop will go down. Carrog have awful dps, but they have insane hp for their cost. By going all archers, you will eventually get forced back to base, where the spells can't wreck archers with no space to retreat. It is not possible to build up a mass of archers because you'll lose through attrition. A mage can hold out against scorp and charrog spam, but it cannot do anything against mass cycloids with protection spell, or suicidal infernos. And if your mage is taken, it's most likely gg because you don't have the dps to defend. What I do is to hide it at the back, but I'll get wrecked by the spells anyway. The op part about tree spam is that it forces you to turtle, where the spells can wreck you. I feel that there is no way around that. Top players like gaismail cannot deal with it too

Quote from Josephong

@skeletonxf

I can't quote on my phone so I'll just reply in bullet points

-the first few points you made are sound

-by spells I mean inferno and tornado. While they are slow and predictable, when launched, they force you to retreat your miners/archers at the first row of gold to avoid damage. Eventually your pop will go down. Carrog have awful dps, but they have insane hp for their cost. By going all archers, you will eventually get forced back to base, where the spells can't wreck archers with no space to retreat. It is not possible to build up a mass of archers because you'll lose through attrition. A mage can hold out against scorp and charrog spam, but it cannot do anything against mass cycloids with protection spell, or suicidal infernos. And if your mage is taken, it's most likely gg because you don't have the dps to defend. What I do is to hide it at the back, but I'll get wrecked by the spells anyway. The op part about tree spam is that it forces you to turtle, where the spells can wreck you. I feel that there is no way around that. Top players like gaismail cannot deal with it too

I beat Ele sometimes with Order, so I'll just show you how lest you get lucky.

-I usually go for archerminer start in both small maps, and long maps. Most Ele players try to take control of tower at the start by getting an Earth, so if you go for a sword start, then your opponent would most likely get more Earths to back it up. So like I said, archer start would be more preferable. And remember, don't just send your archer forward to attack the Earths without microing it. Forward G kite.

-Now you control tower and your opponent is working on his eco. Once you have a good number of miners (atleast 4) start making swordwraths and more miners at the same time and try to get rage as soon as possible. Try to keep your swords out of your opponent's sight so he doesn't keep his trees in his base. So basically, you want him to bring his tree forth and root it beside the middle. Now is your chance to attack and kill his tree.

-So you killed his first tree, now start researching Shinobi, miner upgrades, mage spells, and start making SHITLOADS of archers. Get walls and merics. More miners. Ninjas. All of these are important because your opponent is most likely to go for Inferno(s) to back off your archers. Remember fire arrows.

-Now the rest is pretty easy, pressure the fuck out of him. Get tower spawn and castle archers to back you up. So here's what you should already have: shitloads of archers, ninjas, merics, atleast a mage.

Good game. You win. Maybe.

Quote from Josephong

@gaismail
Thanks for your help! :) Seems like the only way to do this is to hide swords and hope they don't stack trees in their base, which a good ele player will always do :(

Glad to help you.