Quote from Skeletonxf

And with their one ninja they invalidate your far more expensive caster and your water unit.

That will depend when it uses shinobi and where my units are.

Quote from _Ai_

No, I'm saying that they will shinobi at a distance that it's confirmed to be able to kill the casters. At least good players will.

Oh, so they will shinobi closer to the spellcaster?

Quote from IHATETHISNAME

If I can ask, what are you rated?


It's pretty damn hard to instantly techswitch into 450/150 units with 24 second queue. Even besides that you still need to wait about a full minute to queue up shinobi and shinobi II. It's hard to play around ele early on without going into the typical archer/sword ball and it's harder still to make a safe techswitch against them. By the point they can get out meteor infernos the order player may have not had time/money to get out ninjas.

My rating is 2196. I haven't played in about a week or so, maybe things have changed.

I'm sorry I think you are mistaken. Of course they would get the archers + swords, I'm not saying they should start with a shadow. Many order players neglect walls, which I think is the key to tech switching. Unless it's castle or any other short map, then it's hard to do anything OvE. But setting that aside, what I'm saying is that after the order player is put on the defensive, they keep getting archers and swords and repeatedly try and attack.

After ele takes the tower (which is when order will try and attack with swords + archers), they would probably have to wait to settle and recover. Order can use this time to create a mage, to buy even more time to tech switch to more advanced units. Maybe there is something more, I'm saying this based off of total300 managing to pull this off on desert, and doing it successfully on a medium map. Unfortunately I have no replays since this was in one of the last updates.

If you just turtle they lose not only the tower but any advantage they might have had economically. Waiting around doing nothing is just asking to be constantly bombarded with infernos hits while they just sit back and laugh as they out-eco you and get free charrogs from the tower.

Turtling is not a good way to techswitch man.

A ninja and Shinobi I and II costs 700/400. An infernos costs 850/100, plus the cost of meteor which I don't remember. But it seems to me like a ninja with Shinobi II costs approximately the same as an infernos with meteors. Admittedly it has a longer queue time, but mightn't it be possible to get one out in roughly the same time as an inferno?

Don't know what all this discussion is about, but seeing some posts on elemental/order I can take that there's discussion on whatever imbalance there is in the match up.

It's cost effectiveness. If you simply went down the line for all the elemental units saintdane you wouldn't find it any different. That's why treatures are so prominent: they're the lowest cost for a combination that spawns units.

Quote from IHATETHISNAME

If you just turtle they lose not only the tower but any advantage they might have had economically. Waiting around doing nothing is just asking to be constantly bombarded with infernos hits while they just sit back and laugh as they out-eco you and get free charrogs from the tower.

Turtling is not a good way to techswitch man.

Well, I don't see how turtling will hurt your economy, you're just getting a wall and castle archer, which is the same cost as two archers. I didn't mean turtle right away, I wasn't being very clear, use swords + archers to harass until mid-game. By that time you should have a lot of miners so cost shouldn't matter too much. Also, getting an infernos at mid-game isn't very good, besides they won't have many airs and fires to begin with.

If I'm missing something someone please explain why turtling would hurt your economy.

It doesn't necessarily directly hurt you, but it allows your opponent to not only do the same, but to hold the tower. They'll always be ahead no matter what.

Ninjas cost 450|150 and shinobi is 100|100 then 150|150. This Ninja being made prevents a spear or sword.
Infernoes cost 850|100 plus the 300|100 meteor show upgrade.
We're left with 700/400 and 1150|200 for the first of each.
Going for a V without even the clone upgrades is 1350|100.

In both cases, ignoring queue times and other units players want to bring out at the same time, Order can assassinate the opposing spell casters more easily than Ele can make them if both economies are equal. Taking the queue times and prevention of other units into account makes everything so much harder, but ele sacrifices damaging units alongside for the Infernoe and everything temporarily for the V. The order player sacrifices a potentially crucial Spear and has to bring out mana before the Ninja's gold cost can be paid for, so has to tech into mana quite heavily and have the gold before any gains.

It's certainly easier queue time, with the upgrade times for shinobi taking so long as well, for Ele to bring out an Infernoe or possibly a V before Order is able to bring out a Ninja, but not hugely.

Once the Infernoe is on the field all it takes is a Ninja to run at it and kill it. The Infernoe takes so long spell casting it will struggle to get away, and the ninja will be invulnurable to Ele's waters trying to prevent it reaching the Infernoes and any vs wanting to possess it. The Infernoe is basically going to die unless it never goes near the fighting or has a cycloid to protect it, adding in another chunk of gold for ele to need.

For v vs ninja, all Order has to do is not reach the v's range for possess in a non shinobi state. The v can get away quite often, as will the ninja, but crucially the ninja prevents the v holding possess on anything for more than a few seconds, and the v only 'pressures' Order by forcing them to micro that ninja. If the Order player slips up and the v takes control of it before Order used shinobi, the v will be useful, but that's unlikely to happen. If the v gets the ninja as it retreats, perhaps using teleport to close the gap as it runs from a failed assassination, Ele has now used a 1350|100 unit to take control of an enemy unit that can do almost nothing for more than 10 seconds, and the v will be very close to the enemy front line.

But the ele player can just hold their spell casters back so ninjas can't reach them? Yes, and the order player can just hold back their shinobi so the ele spell casters can't approach. Once we go past the initial rush of early spell casters ele can do, all the gold efficiency of ninjas vs spell casters goes to Order.

Yes, ele has cycloids, but now you're using 2100|200 gold and that's only going to prevent a single ninja from killing your v, and you lost the benefit of rushing your units out before shinobi 2 comes around because your cycloid and v won't out queue the ninja by anything significant.

The moment Order brings out that second ninja, ele's only way to deal with the ninjas would be to have the raw units ready to combine and just fight with them and pull out the spell casters if the ninjas ever waste shinobi. Once ele does that for one fight, next fight ele has dead weight again.

Queue times and rushing initially favours ele against Ninajs, but never afterwards unless ele can surprise Order and make the Order player mess up.

Quote from IHATETHISNAME

It doesn't necessarily directly hurt you, but it allows your opponent to not only do the same, but to hold the tower. They'll always be ahead no matter what.

Hmmm, I don't totally agree but I'll just stop right here.

@skeleton This is why I think ninjas should not be able to shinobi out of their frozen state, it's stupid and unfair as shown in your useful post. You cleared up a lot of things we were talking about and I mostly agree with you.

Quote from nutsophast

@skeleton This is why I think ninjas should not be able to shinobi out of their frozen state, it's stupid and unfair as shown in your useful post. You cleared up a lot of things we were talking about and I mostly agree with you.

Thanks.

Yeah, ele's only reliable way to handle mages is to possess them, but ele has no way to handle ninjas with the shinobi making them impossible to stop.

Even if Waters could properly lock down Ninjas, it doesn't help hugely for when ele is trying to break an order turtle, because the ninjas will be in shinobi already once they cross that wall. :/

Actually ninjas aren't hard to deal with; just have a unit to constantly scout so you can know when shadowraths attack, and when they do, command your V (if you have one) to possess it before it gets the chance.

But agaisnt a mass, well I never fought against a ninja mass as ele, but I can imagine a variety of ways of dealing with it; just don't mass Vs in return. XDD

Quote from Skeletonxf

Thanks.

Yeah, ele's only reliable way to handle mages is to possess them, but ele has no way to handle ninjas with the shinobi making them impossible to stop.

Even if Waters could properly lock down Ninjas, it doesn't help hugely for when ele is trying to break an order turtle, because the ninjas will be in shinobi already once they cross that wall. :/

But wouldn't it be better than nothing? Because even if the opponent isn't turtling, he will mostly get you with his ninjas.

@terry Maybe, but getting a V just isn't worth it. Besides, the opponent can just run in spears or use magikills to kill your V while he can't move. Overall it's just very hard to control the V, other units, whoever you're possessing, buy stuff and keep an eye on your V all at the same time.

Quote from nutsophast

But wouldn't it be better than nothing? Because even if the opponent isn't turtling, he will mostly get you with his ninjas.

@terry Maybe, but getting a V just isn't worth it. Besides, the opponent can just run in spears or use magikills to kill your V while he can't move. Overall it's just very hard to control the V, other units, whoever you're possessing, buy stuff and keep an eye on your V all at the same time.

I guess it would be something, but I'd rather ele can totally deal with the issue instead of just some of the time. I've had too many matches where I can shred my opponent's army if they leave the walls + ca but they obviously refuse to, and often that's at times when I can't dare to dive their ca's because I can't tank 3 cas with anything*. Making ele somewhat competent more so outside the base but not address turtles would make it more frustrating for me. - I'm not saying don't implement it, I'm saying don't just implement it.

*other than that Giant of theirs I'd really like to possess but they have ninjas I'd really like to be able to assassinate with something I don't have or at least not need a cycloid per ninja to just keep my v able to stand still without dying.

I get your point, then what would you suggest we implement? This is a thread for suggestions after all.

Honestly I don't know how to fit those issues without very heavy handed redesign on ele.

I've been testing and thinking, I'm going to try to answer all the issues in this subject. Don't even let the opponent turtle, and furthermore, the opponent will most likely be aggressive with consistent archer pressure. Anyone 2k and above will be able to survive this pressure and push the archers back, they won't be able to turtle instantly as they were preparing for attack.

Keep attacking so he can't build a wall, use airs, fires, trees or whatever works for you. This eliminates the threat of walls, therefore with fixing ninjas escaping ice it will probably fix most problems. That's what I think.