I The Elemental Empire can seem confusing to play as compared to Order and Chaos. Most users agree it is rather unbalanced at the moment, however you can still achieve a decent rating with it.
Here are some tips to help you improve your Ele gameplay:
Note: It is important you are familiar with "Micro Tactics" like kiting, cycling, miner splitting, etc.
1. Morph Earths as close as possible to gold mines, and turn your low health ones into Chomplers when you are done using them. Doing this will give you a fairly large economic advantage.
2. Get passives. Try to get Passive Income III by 4 minutes, and you will be able to only use one or two Chomplers on mana. Passives are often overlooked, but they are quite good if you can utilize them.
3. For strategies, it is best to use different combinations of elements, for example, Air and Charrog can load faster than Fire and Charrog--Airs can load at the same time as Fires and Earths, wheras with Fires as your main ranged unit, there is overlap between the Charrogs and the Fires, making it take longer to accumulate your army.
4. Using Earths to their full potential: Often in early game battles you have 2-3 earths, and the opponent has 3 Swordwrath. Try stun locking one of the enemy swords with two of your Earths by placing them on either side. Then, when that sword would normally garrison, it can't and you can get a kill.
5. Pressuring: There are a few things you can do to pressure, a tactic that is good is 3 Airs, a Tower Spawn, and (opitional) a Cycloid. Run in every time TS comes with your Airs and Cycloid. Cast the protect spell on your Charrog, and make the three airs attack an archer or miner. Three bolts will instakill un-upgraded miner, archidon, crawler, bomber, or do immense damage to units with two bars of health. The protected Charrog will stay alive longer than normal, run out once it is almost dead. Also, it is important to keep the Cycloid far away and out of harm so that you can reuse it.
6. Turtling Starter: To turtle with Elementals, (only on long maps--Forest, Ice, Gates) buy three Earth Elementals. Send the first one to the tower, capture it if you can, and morph the other two into Chomplers as close to the goldmines as possible. It is likely you will see one of the following: A Swordwrath, an Archidon, or an Archer and a sword. If they do not have any of these, you can build a large economy fast. If they do, get a Castle Air, and build up your economy to get Trees or Charrogs.
7. Fires: Start with a fire elemental (swamp, Halloween, desert, castle) and try to get close to an enemy archidon to out kite it and kill it. Three shots will do a lot of damage, then the burn will finish it off. Fires are good at pressuring miners, so what you can do is put it at the bottom of the map, run forward and attack the miner, then, if they have a Castle Archer or Dead, run diagonally left-upwards to dodge the arrow or gut (it is easier to do this against Castle Deads). Practice this against the AI in custom matches--if done right, you can repeat the process and kill of miners without your fire being touched.
8. Scorch: Scorch can be hard to use--however, if the enemy does not have a miner wall, it can be very powerful. What you want to do is put the Fire several units lengths IN FRONT of the Water (depending on the map, for shorter ones only put it slightly in front), then run forward and hit scorch once your units are in the middle of the enemy's miners. Either dodge the Castle Archers/Deads as you go in, or grab an Earth to protect your Water and Fire.
9. Trees and Towerspawn: It can be powerful to get 2-3 Trees and TS I. Position your Trees close to the second row of the enemy's goldmines, and constantly pressure with your Scorplings and Charrog. Get a Cycloid to protect the TS I and ward off flying units that are trying to kill the trees if you have the money.
Spell caster tactics:
1.Cycloid: They can be hard to fit in sometimes, but protect is good for using on tower spawn then running in with fires or airs. The tornado spell is most effective with two cycloids, as you can cast them one after another (it is good to wait for the stun to wear off first, to maximize the time your other units can attack the enemy.) If the opponent has an archer mass, put a cycloid at the top of the map and cast it diagonally down towards the archers--this will hit more. Attack them with your charrogs or scorplings and when the stun wears off use your second cycloid to cast another tornado. This should kill nearly all of them. Make sure to keep your cycloids out of harm in the process. Use this against miners or albows, too. In the case of flying crossbowman, cast protect on both cycloids, attack the albows. They'll probably retreat. Cast the tornadoes and you can finish them off.
2.Inferno: Vastolis is very slow, and if not used proper only works in laggy situations. If the enemy is running forwards with archers, swords, crawlers and other low health units, cast the vastolis close to the infernos (melee units attacking) and at a distance away where they are likely to be (ranged units attacking.) Fire rain is pretty much useless, so it important to upgrade to Meteor Strike. Try using this spell at the enemy's base, where it is most powerful, as they are either forced to garrsion or must lose archers/miners. In other fights, place the meteor behind the enemy so they cannot escape without killing their archers. Use this similarly on turtling by getting to infernos and casting meteor one after another, once the other has worn off.
3. V: The V, albeit low on mana, is very high in gold so you must be careful in deciding whether or not to get it. It is very powerful if the enemy has high tier units (e.g. Giants, Magikill) but your main focus should be to possess your opponent's shadowrath and use it to assassinate their magikill. This way, you've turned the threat to the V onto your side and eliminated a key unit of the opponent.
If you had possessed their Mage or Giant their shadowrath would have killed your V and you would lose the possesed unit. Flash is an ability that is often overlooked. Use it to escape shinobis, or dart in to the enemy's base, posses a unit, and once that unit has died, teleport out again. Clones, when upgraded fully, work well with Trees and TS so you can constantly pressure at a little cost once set up.
Post your thoughts here if this helped you and tell me how I can improve this list as well.
