Elementals have a hard time against Chaos. Hopefully this thread will help you, if anyone even plays Elementals.

I recommend earth start as against Chaos you need a very steady eco, in a shorter map fires can be viable however. Fight for early tower, or at least stall the opponent's possession of it, but don't stay when outnumbered. Make some miners, the Chaos player will most likely rush you once he gets bombs, or just rush you with crawlers. Against crawlers, use a combination of earths and have the miners in the area that is getting attacked fight. You should also have a Castle Air, since you should have at least five miners, getting a Castle Air won't be a problem, especially if you're going to pick off a crawler or two. If he rushes bombs with crawlers, which is what he'll probably do, you should split your miners just like you split swords, this might take a little bit of time off mining, but it's better than getting bombed. The opponent will either run or waste his bombs, if he waits for you to clump up again your Castle Air should clean things up.

Try to go for fires and take tower, and keep building miners. If you meet any resistance kite and do hit-and-run attacks. And you might be asking, why not airs? Well, airs can only attack when they are staying still, this will be bait for bombers. Also, its attack rate is too slow to stop bombs from going under it. Fires are better as they can kite and get rid of bombs and crawlers from a safe distance.

Also build lots of miners, 14 or more. Keep building fires and start Charrog production, the Chaos player should have wings by now. Don't be too aggressive, you just have to focus on getting tower, securing tower, and protecting your fires. If you block your fires with Charrogs the wings or juggs can't do much, as Chaos players in EvC usually go for a heavy wing and low jugg combo. Make sure you start getting waters and the water healing upgrade. Get tower spawn and start macroing airs with waters for Cycloids. After securing tower you have to start snatching away a few wings at a time. Use the Cycloid tornado to stun wings and kill them with fires.

That's it for my strategy, feel free to post any counter arguement, your opinions, or corrections below!

usually for me i go 2 earth 1 chompler.
first one chases away crawler other holds tower. leaves to possibility for a lock and not as cheesy on the eco.
charrogs yes but not the only thing if faced with wing retaliation.
keep a water handy for scorch if need be if wings or other units attempt to fly over head as ground range cannot shoot directly vertical still

Yeah, I found this to work more or less better than any other strategy until the Chaos player brings out Spell Casters or simply waits you out on your fire spam.

Wings being able to kite fires freely also kinda weakens this srat.

Sadly Cycloids can't catch up to wings no matter what they do, and diving Miner Towers with cycloids shreds them.

It's a good strat, but you'll still lose EvC against good chaos players no matter what.

once you get ts1 you shouldnt need that many charrogs.
leaving you the option of making cycloids more freely.
3 usually is max for me.
miner towers should be targeting your ghost unit first.

im pretty sure one can.
ive done it successfully plenty of times.
if you arent able to hold tower your army is most likely behind.
otherwise one can easily tank with a charrog and shred the incoming juggers that either attempt to rush past or charge to stun. using your water to punish fly overs

Quote from Skeletonxf

You can't hold tower against wing spam.

Look, I have some very good replays to show my point, even if they aren't demonstrating this specific start, once you hit mid game you're screwed as ele anyway.
www.stickempires.com/play?replay=replay7678300&version=2.22
www.stickempires.com/play?replay=replay7607113&version=2.22

These replays are invalid, air start is exactly what I said NOT to do in my thread. Also going pure Cycloid is exactly why he lost.

Quote from PUMU

once you get ts1 you shouldnt need that many charrogs.
leaving you the option of making cycloids more freely.
3 usually is max for me.
miner towers should be targeting your ghost unit first.

Quote from Skeletonxf

Yeah, I found this to work more or less better than any other strategy until the Chaos player brings out Spell Casters or simply waits you out on your fire spam.

Wings being able to kite fires freely also kinda weakens this srat.

Sadly Cycloids can't catch up to wings no matter what they do, and diving Miner Towers with cycloids shreds them.

It's a good strat, but you'll still lose EvC against good chaos players no matter what.

Like pumu said, after getting the ghost, you don't need too many charrogs, so it'll be very easy to get more Cycloids (you have a good eco remember?). Miner towers will have to deal with your ghost + 2-3 Charrogs, your Cycloids should be able to run in.

Getting spellcasters will reduce the number of wings, you might damage the Charrog or Cycloid but having less wings means my fires can run in and do serious damage.

As for holding tower, Charrogs can tank wings just fine, also you have a ghost. If the opponent uses his wings to try and fly over you have the blast option. Like I said in the thread, juggs won't be a problem since the opponent will be going for heavy wings, and your armour-piercing fires will have no problem dealing with them.

Okay, at mid game you have good eco, we'll assume Chaos hasn't cheesed you or ran bombs into your base for the sake of looking at what happens next.
So you have good eco, you definitely have enough gold income to produce 2 units simultaneously, but 3 you would not be able to keep up, especially as you want to buy some upgrades as you build up your tier 2 army which costs resources too.

So, you need fires to actually deal your damage, seeing as you're not going cycloid spam, or stacking airs, which means to deal any decent damage you HAVE to get into Chaos's face. You can deal loads of damage with scorch if wings fly over you but otherwise you need Chaos to stand still so your fire projectiles hit it. (A running wing army can dodge fire projectiles all day long provided map space, dealing free damage)

Given that you will be taking arrows to the face whenever Chaos can send them at you, you need Charrogs to protect your fires from hits. I'm going to assume you never actually have a Charrog die, and that you just heal them up with waters (way cheaper than buying a new charrog).

So, to hold a tower, you need Charrogs to use as tanks for your fires, which will need healing every now and then to keep them on decent hp. When you have your tower ghost spawn you have a charrog to approach under for free hit points, so ele's ability to approach is not an issue. You also have normal charrogs.

The problem is that ele cannot hit any of its major damage on chaos reliably. Fires cannot singlehandedly hit wings, cycloids are needed to catch up to them, and charrogs can tank for fires but they can't do anything other than take hits if chaos doesn't bother buying ground units (they have nothing to attack).

This leaves us with damage trades happening like this away from Chaos's base
Charrog damaged by Wings
Cycloids damaged by Wings (I guess you could hold them further back than your charrogs so they don't take hits)

So ele obviously doesn't want to fight there.
Ele will obviously want to engage under Chaos's base.

Now we get loads more damage trading happening


The problem here, I think I can illustrate with a diagram better than words


Cycloids are going to get melee attacks off on Wings, or force wings into the base. Considering this start stops at just a few cycloids, yet Chaos has lots of wings, I think we can assume that cycloids alone won't force Wings into the base here.
Yet, the cycloids will have already taken some harass for engaging, or at the least be forced to use up their protect spell to block the hits.

Fires are really going to struggle to hit wings continually, because the fires have something of a blind spot around the tower that wings can abuse, and of course as said before, if wings simply run away from fire projectiles the wings can avoid getting hit.
Fires will probably hit the wings a little, but you will struggle to keep up a volley unless the wings stop moving.

Charrogs and I guess Fires will force miners to leave the base or get killed, so Marrowkai and Medusas will both be left undefended. Seeing as they can hide behind tower, I think we can assume they get to cast one spell freely before ele has managed to fully approach, and their other spell before ele has fires on the inner side of tower to prevent them hiding away.
That means fires would all get poisoned if they hold the inner side of the tower, or the outerside depending on the order Medusa casts in. Two medusas and you'll have to get poisoned wherever you stand. Keep in mind this poison will also poison all 3 of your cycloid units (which are already taking arrows to the face already).

Marrokwai can singlehandedly make 1 cycloid unable to tornado Chaos's wings with their reap spell, and can chunk a lot of close together units (hello fires) with hell fists. All of chaos's spell casters would probably die before they get to recast anything, but ele is going to take very heavy damage on its front line when it approaches Chaos's base.

Assuming for a moment no water healing, Given a mass of wings with spell caster support and two miner towers, those cycloids aren't going to do much before they all die off, those fires will take minor damage but won't get focused on by arrows so will live, and all chaos spellcasters are probably going to die and wings will be able to avoid most fire damage unless cc'd

That means ele is going to have to stun chain the wings and use waters to keep the cycloids alive.
Wings can outrun tornadoes as long as they have somewhere to run to (this is clearly seen in the replays above)
Also, the Marrowkai are going to trade 1 for 1 with cycloids, with the reap invalidating the cycloid at the cost of the marrokai dying straight after to fires.
Between arrows from wings and medusa stone faces, the cycloids are going to take so much damage for diving ele.

I'll therefore assume that chaos garrisons its miners and takes a few pickoffs but otherwise gets them safe, and that all the cycloids soon die afterwards with some wings also dying but not many at all. Now ele has charrogs tanking for fires, and chaos can just continue to use its statue and the blind spot it makes to poke at the fires. Chaos could even bring out its miners and use them to tank the charrogs. Ele will take heavy losses with so many waters and cycloids needed to hold up the dive, but chaos will just lose spell casters and miner towers. The blast option will soon cease to be when the waters get used up.

Chaos also won't "will reduce the number of wings" by "Getting spellcasters", because this is mid game. Chaos can afford to buy two units at the same time just like ele can.

Everything chaos can do in this situation has some sort of theoretical counter by ele:
Wings running away? Mass cycloids / tornado spam
Need damage to rival those arrows? Fires
Wings running over you? Scorch
Need tanks for that dps? Charrogs
Need to disable spell casters? Waters
Spellcasters? Burn them


But in turn those get countered as well or open up other counter measures

Mass cycloids /tornado spam ? Run into base, after all ele is massing a 750|100 unit, it won't have much room for fires as well
Fires? Laugh behind the tower
Scorch? Run the other way
Charrogs? What ground fight?
Waters? Didn't need a recast on spells anyway
Fire dps? Only hitting on ground units
Scorch?

Ele is upfront damage only, fires are almost like melee units for all their range against wings because of the angle, and cycloids just get shredded by dps. Ele can only win an EvC against a bad chaos player, cycloid mass doesn't work and fires don't work that well either, cycloids + fires + waters + charrogs would work, but look at what you're buying.
4 freaking units just to engage solidly against Chaos and hold tower.

You can't afford that much.

Chaos need only spam wings (400|150 x 7) and get out a few spell casters (500|400 & 400|400) and you need cycloids, (750|100 x 2), Fires (450 x 4), Waters (350 x 3), and Charrogs (600|100 x 2) to deal with it.

That's 3700|1850 against 5550|400.
Okay, even with that not hugely in favour of either side, Chaos functions before then against Ele with some of this, and ele does not suitably cope against Chaos till it can force a fight at Chaos's base. Also, chaos can buy the units with no queue time conflict, unlike ele.

if you're that close with your fires that you let a marrow hell fist you... fill in the rest.

cycloids can still throw a tornado spell backwards regardless of what happens.
most of the time you dont throw all of your cycloid spells at once on nonmoving wings which is the case most times vs a spellcaster and wings unless the marrow also moves back or the chaos user simply leaves it to die as they will either control all or one of the two (unless they have extremely fast hand speed) the ele user can simply cast shield on the furthest cycloid to keep it tanking for a bit as the arrows will still hit the one in front and wont phaze through.
if they move foward to avoid this they will be in range of the fires.
your water should accompany as it will autotarget the nearest ground unit. if it happens to be a wing mass that would leave only the marrow(s) which makes it extremely easy to play off a scorch.
the only real option they have is to play it safe in the base with the wings and stall until they know they have the advantage. or one player slips up bad enough

I should have made it more clear I was assuming Chaos was never stopping with the free arrow harassment. Hence protect is to get close to the base or cycloids are already hevily damaged in the base when they use protect.

Okay, that's a good point on the backwards and delayed tornadoes, but it's just delaying Chaos's wing response. Once chaos waits out the torndaoes, or kills cycloids by reaping them, the wings are hitting fires and charrogs for almost free.

The tactic works, it just, eh, it relies on shutting down every single thing Chaos can do and if you fail to shut down one of the numerous wing counterplays you're going to throw away your army, or at least most of it. Cycloid mass at least is reliable when it has a chance of working.

@skeleton@pumu Good clarifications, but to reply to post #8.

There are a few things I want to point out. Firstly, I will not be going for CHfire, cycloid and waters all at the same time. CHfire first, getting waters doesn't really affect me as they aren't a main part of the build, after I get a decent amount of fires, it's very easy to get cycloids from there.

Second, how are you going to get turrets (which cost 300 gold), with spellcasters, and mass a good number of wings? I presume that with your strategy you will be on the defensive which isn't what chaos is good at.

I take tower which will give me a big boost economically, and I will be guarding second row if I can. Once I take tower I'll be harassing constantly, if you have turrets that early you shouldn't have too many wings, besides fire rip through turrets very easily. As you have no tank you will either lose miners or make them garrison, making me even further ahead in eco. If you have your spellcasters that early your number of wings will be depleted even more. With this, ele fighting in the base can be alright.

If you're running in with wings, fires will keep you away, charrogs make great tanks and I have ghost. I should be finished with fire production in around the 5-6 minute mark, then I can keep a constant stream of airs for cycloid and infernos and waters for healing, making my pressure more effective.

Quote from nutsophast

@skeleton@pumu Good clarifications, but to reply to post #8.

There are a few things I want to point out. Firstly, I will not be going for CHfire, cycloid and waters all at the same time. CHfire first, getting waters doesn't really affect me as they aren't a main part of the build, after I get a decent amount of fires, it's very easy to get cycloids from there.

Second, how are you going to get turrets (which cost 300 gold), with spellcasters, and mass a good number of wings? I presume that with your strategy you will be on the defensive which isn't what chaos is good at.

I take tower which will give me a big boost economically, and I will be guarding second row if I can. Once I take tower I'll be harassing constantly, if you have turrets that early you shouldn't have too many wings, besides fire rip through turrets very easily. As you have no tank you will either lose miners or make them garrison, making me even further ahead in eco. If you have your spellcasters that early your number of wings will be depleted even more. With this, ele fighting in the base can be alright.

If you're running in with wings, fires will keep you away, charrogs make great tanks and I have ghost. I should be finished with fire production in around the 5-6 minute mark, then I can keep a constant stream of airs for cycloid and infernos and waters for healing, making my pressure more effective.

What I mean is Chaos will be on the offensive with wings, but hold spell casters back.
Chaos would go wingspam into towers into spell casters for when you're bringing out cycloids

CHfire against wing spam will chunk your charrogs. You might take tower but at a pretty huge cost. Also, Chaos can in most circumstances bring out the cheap first wing a lot faster than you'll have both a charrog AND fire.

Guarding second row? You'll never stop taking arrows to the face.

I know ele can harrass, but Chaos can always harrass first and pull back before ele catches up. You shouldn't be able to get a foothold in Chaos's base against so many free trades for chaos unless your eco is wildly ahead - in which case Chaos should have bomber spammed you because you were devoting so many resources to chomplers.

With pure wings you can't hold much ground, this makes it very easy for me to take tower without taking "a pretty huge cost." With tower I can easily harass, since you have no tank you will either garrison your miners, lose some miners (which will make me way ahead in eco), or fly over, which will make you get in range of my fires or a scorch. Since you're getting turrets and spell casters later, you won't have those to defend and 3-4 wings won't do much.

Let's say your first wing will come out at around 2:30 minutes, by then I should have a fire and another one queing, earths take 4 seconds so that's not a problem. Wings can't outrun tornadoes, aimed properly, it will always catch at least a few wings, then my fires can finish them off. I also clearly explain how to defend against bomber rushes in my original post.

How the hell is my first wing going to come out after 2 fires and an earth?

It's not, my second fire will be either queing or I'll have money for it. In my original post I also state that you should get a large economy, with just 7 miners, it's fairly easy to get 450 gold. I also say that getting earths isn't a problem because they come out in four seconds, 150 gold isn't a lot.