This is an EvO strategy, it will not work well in EvC or EvE. This also works best in medium maps, desert is long enough. Note this is targeted at newer elemental players, around 1700 - 1800+. CHair abbreviation is originally from pumu. It stands for Charrog + air.
This strategy has also been posted at the stick empires wiki (it's at the bottom in the elemental section), I just added some more stuff here. http://stickempires-rts.wikia.com/wiki/Metagame_Strategies

This strategy can be morphed from the three earth start or an air start. With the air start you can pick off an archer or a miner, with the three earth start you will be more defensive but have more eco.

For earth tips, I highly recommend you to click here, as I don't feel the need to explain it : http://forums.stickpage.com/showthread.php?86495-Earth-tips Reading the replies will help as well.

Using the earth start, if the opponent goes with an archer start, attack the archer and keep getting earths. After your earth starts getting wounded use your other earth (which should be there by now) to tank for you wounded earth, which you should turn into a miner. Keep repeating this process until your opponent inevitably overwhelms you. With the technique shown above you should have a good economy, use this money to buy a castle air. With your earths as tank, this should keep archers away.

After he goes away, try to build around 2-3 airs. Keep scouting the middle, and build a Charrog ASAP. He will most likely be building a lot of archers and swords. Once you attack, make sure you have your airs target the archers and ignore all melee units. 3 bolts from an air will kill an archer. Keep buying airs for firepower and fires for Charrogs. Start getting waters and buy the healing upgrade.
Pursue his army and kill as many miners and archers as you can.

Pull your Charrog back once it gets too wounded, buy any upgrades you need for support units eg. tornado, meteors and more Charrogs. Keep repeating the process and don't let your opponent build walls. You can mix in any support units, you can macro more waters for Cycloids, or macro fires for infernos.

Very detailed guide actually, nice job. And thanks for the link to my post :P

What do you do if your single asap Charrog + a few airs face archers that just run and kite on the longer maps? You won't get any hits in and the archers will whittle down your Charrog if they do it at max range.

Airs are faster than archers I think--so you can get a few hits in. And if you keep your charrogs close to the airs, they'll have a hard time kiting at max range. Alternatively, you could use the burn ability to get in close and try to do some damage.

Quote from Skeletonxf

Very detailed guide actually, nice job. And thanks for the link to my post :P

What do you do if your single asap Charrog + a few airs face archers that just run and kite on the longer maps? You won't get any hits in and the archers will whittle down your Charrog if they do it at max range.

Thanks for the compliment, your thread was very detailed as well, which is the reason why I put the link to your thread.

Saint dane's reply was pretty accurate, that should answer your question. Besides people don't have instant reflexes so you should be able get a lock on before they have time to react, resulting in you getting one archer. People tend to underestimate airs and try to kite you as they would against fires.

Pretty neat guide you got there. I might try it out sometime. :P

Quote from nutsophast

Thanks for the compliment, your thread was very detailed as well, which is the reason why I put the link to your thread.

Saint dane's reply was pretty accurate, that should answer your question. Besides people don't have instant reflexes so you should be able get a lock on before they have time to react, resulting in you getting one archer. People tend to underestimate airs and try to kite you as they would against fires.

Yeah, there's also the fact that airs will hit once their attack starts even if the target proceeds to move out of range, making it really easy to lose an archer or two when kiting.

Yeah, the air uses a lock-on function. Once it starts the animation of the attack, that means its already locked on to whatever target you selected, this is one of the best perks of using airs.

@terry Yeah you should try it out, it's a pretty effective strategy. I get a lot of points with this strategy.

Quote from nutsophast

Yeah, the air uses a lock-on function. Once it starts the animation of the attack, that means its already locked on to whatever target you selected, this is one of the best perks of using airs.

@terry Yeah you should try it out, it's a pretty effective strategy. I get a lot of points with this strategy.

@both of you

The air can't lock on if the Archer leaves its range before the Air starts the lightning bolt. Charrogs struggle to actually catch up to Archers that are kiting from the beginning of the fight even with the speed buff of whatever their Q ability is called.

And relying on your opponent to not play at 100% skill (factoring in ping to kite at max range) is going to make you lose eventually when someone does.

Well, most players don't have instant reflexes so their archers would move right when the air starts the animation for the lightning. No matter how far the archers are, the lightning will hit once the attack animation has been started. The charrog's Q ability is actually burn, it doesn't give a speed boost of any kind, it just burns anyone in it's radius.

Quote from nutsophast

Well, most players don't have instant reflexes so their archers would move right when the air starts the animation for the lightning. No matter how far the archers are, the lightning will hit once the attack animation has been started. The charrog's Q ability is actually burn, it doesn't give a speed boost of any kind, it just burns anyone in it's radius.

I'm quite sure it does actually speed boost. I guess I'll do a test.

A few patches ago I tried ChAir and I ran into players that did manage to poke down my airs with minimal losses. Also, you need 3 Airs per Archer to kill it outright. Getting that many is challenging against archer spam harass.

I don't care that most players don't play optimally, when you're designing a strategy you want something that works decently on very good players, not something with a gaping weakness that better players can exploit to beat you every time.

I'll try testing it as well, it just says burn so I thought it doesn't give a speed boost. If you read my thread carefully you can see that I explain how to keep away archer pressure (with help from your guide). Again, I said this works best on medium maps, maps like swamp and halloween will allow archer pressure which is why explained that this strategy won't work well on those maps.

The fact that most players don't play optimally is quite important, if everyone played perfectly maybe this strategy won't work well, but they don't.

If you allowed archers to poke down your airs, maybe you didn't tank properly. Nowadays people have gotten much more aggressive with archers, therefore sometimes the arrows are shot at an angle, sometimes unintentionally, which the tank doesn't cover. Maybe you should improve placement on your units, I don't know.

Quote from nutsophast

I'll try testing it as well, it just says burn so I thought it doesn't give a speed boost. If you read my thread carefully you can see that I explain how to keep away archer pressure (with help from your guide). Again, I said this works best on medium maps, maps like swamp and halloween will allow archer pressure which is why explained that this strategy won't work well on those maps.

The fact that most players don't play optimally is quite important, if everyone played perfectly maybe this strategy won't work well, but they don't.

If you allowed archers to poke down your airs, maybe you didn't tank properly. Nowadays people have gotten much more aggressive with archers, therefore sometimes the arrows are shot at an angle, sometimes unintentionally, which the tank doesn't cover. Maybe you should improve placement on your units, I don't know.

I know the Castle Air and early stall with Earths works very well for handling archers, I do it almost every EvO match I play on the longer maps. My point is, after that phase when you want to push out again, Charrogs indeed can't prevent sniping of airs at the right angle, and Airs can't 'tag' archers at max archer range.

My main point is, a strategy which relies on the opponent not doing something they should is a bad strategy, just like buying Mages and expecting to be able to spell cast freely with them, or building up a spear mass because 'most opponents' don't pressure you for it.

Hence I do a very similar start to what you described, but I rotate into Fires and trees instead of Charrogs and airs.

Quote from nutsophast

The thing is, everyone does archers, that is the standard strategy and this CHair strategy is meant to counter that. According to your logic, every strategy is a " bad strategy," as there is no strategy that can counter everything. What I think is this, instead of having one super strategy, you need to adapt to whatever your opponent is doing with many different strategies. A strategy is good when it counters what most people do, a strategy to counter every possible thing just doesn't exist.

Indeed. Perhaps I should have clarified I meant good strategies are good at what they are meant to deal with. A strategy for handling Mages (buying Ninjas) is a situational strategy, but a good one when used appropriately (against or in anticipation of Mages). A strategy for handling archers such as effective crawler and bomber micro is another situational strategy, but a good one in early game, because it does actually handle archers due to their low hp pool making them cost effective to assassinate. A strategy meant for handling archers that in fact can't is a bad strategy - such as the same crawler and bomber micro in the mid game when there won't be fast enough queue times to handle the sword masses as well as the archers with just crawlers and bombs.

I'm saying this doesn't handle archers, hence it is a bad anti-archer strategy. Yes, it handles newbs using archers, but most strategies can handle newbs using most units, that doesn't make them good the moment we take a baseline as handling a competent opponent - which I am doing.

I don't think archers outrange airs by *that* much. Do they? I also know that Airs are faster than archers. That means that even if the archers get that initial kite out of range, the airs will catch up eventually and snipe an archer or two.