Elves are a very powerful faction when it comes to a 1v1 on FoI II. Their ability to quickly take warg lair's and collect the money with the backbone of every elven army, archers, tends to give the elven player the upper hand in the early game. This guide will focus on utilizing the given advantage as much as possible.
When it comes to the Ent pushing strategy there are a few things that you need to keep in mind:
1. Avoid getting spread thin by your opponentYour goal is for everything to happen in the middle of the map, where you have your units, possibly a hero or two, ent's and in some scenarios a tower, Galadriel mirror and/or the statue of liberty. Elven armies are super strong when fighting on one spot all together. Therefore you don't want to have little groups of units all around the map, giving your opponent opportunities to crush your archers with cavalry units and destroy your trees with fast units such as corsairs, Nazgul's or any type of units with higher movement speed than your archers.
To prevent that from happening, you build your trees down the middle of the map, not the edges. You quite simply expand towards your opponent, not away or around. That way you push the issue and force him to attack your position that you have time to set up in and prepare your defensive offense.
2. Don't lose unitsThere is no real guide on how not to lose units, you will just have to learn that. Don't send archers out of position to take out warg lairs without pike protection when you know your opponent does have cavalry and you have no vision of his units.
Keep your archers mixed in with the pikes and simply keep the micro game up. The ideal ratio of archers to pikes against an opponent that produces cavalry is usually 2 to 1, but if you are on host and played micro intensive games like SC2, you will probably get away with 3 to 1 ratio as well.
Pikemen Micro
If you send your archers behind your pikes and vice versa, they will go right through each other. Whenever they are covering each other, select them both and press S or H. You can also set the pikes into their porcupine formation. They will deal less damage to the horses going through but they will efficiently slow them down and you can use the backstab bonus damage when they try to ride away.
Remember, if you lose more than 2 units before you made an ent moot, this strategy will most probably not work, so don't push it and just get your heroes out, expand and continue in the normal game, the creep reward will or probably already did make up for the losses you've taken, like losing the units.
3. Watch out for wild cavalry startsThis one could also be - use
farsight, not the rally call. Farsight is too valuable not to be used right away. It will give you the information you need and it will pay off huge amount compared to rally call even when it comes to the speed with which you are taking warg lairs. If you see your opponent is not going for cavalry then you will get away with three units of lorien archers before having to produce any pikemen. Remember, the sooner you have to make pikemen, the slower you will kill the warg lairs(they take longer time to be produced, move slower and have really low damage per hit+they cost 50 bucks more). If you see your opponent might be going for the horsemen, just get pikes as a second or third unit, depending on the build.
Alright, lets get to the juicy stuff, the build!1xMallorn Tree ->1xBarracks ->3xLorien Archers ->2xMallorn Trees ->2xMithlond Sentries ->1x Mallorn Tree -> 1x Ent Moot ->Ent -> Mithlond/Archer OR
1xMallorn Tree ->1xForward Barracks ->1xMallorn Tree => Proceed the same way (this build gives you one more RB for the cost of your Barracks being exposed)After you get those two buildings within the range of your fortress, you check on your opponent with farsight.
If you see no cavalry coming, get three archers produced out consequently. Producing the archers is the priority, only build a tree if you are sure there will be no time gap between the unit production.
Take out the two warg lairs in the middle of the map and either the one on opponents half of the map or your own. Any other faction that likes to creep early(Dwarves, MotW) can not contest you if you meet them at the warg lair. You can even try to hunt their unit down and kill it but remember -
the money is the priority, don't get yourself lured out off position.
The build is the same if you see your opponent going for cavalry, but instead of going for three lorien archers you get one, then mithlond sentries, again archers and once more pikemen. This way you will probably only get to creep three warg lairs, not all four but it will still give you enough money to get your Ent out and gather a decent force to babysit it.
Execution: Take the warg lairs ->expand towards your opponent ->claim the middle of the map (use a tower if necessary) ->get an Ent(very important, without the ent your force in the center of the map can easily be ignored because your army has close to no building damage) ->babysit the Ent, which is firing at the fort or another production structure
Farsight on Archers
Don't forget to use farsight on top of your archers as it widens their shooting range and effectively gives them more dps against armies that are coming to the close proximity of your force.
Powerpaths:
Farsight ->Tom Bombadil ->Eagle Summon ->Flood
Very strong powerpoint path that gives you the advantage of vision, one fight that you will very probably win using Tom Bombadil followed up by eagles that are just very powerful against pretty much anything except for a very large archer spam. Flood, one of the very best 25 PP spells speaks for itself.
I think this might be the best PP path as it very much serves the purpose of our Ent push strategy where Tom Bombadil helps you win the fight when you have to protect your Ent's or Ent moot. At least and Eagles that can either finish off a wounded fort or, again, be very helpful with babysitting your Ent's that will try to bring your opponents fort down.
Farsight ->Elven Woods ->Eagle Summon ->Flood
Basically the alternative of the first PP against opponents who used Elven Wood onto your forward base and you can't take the risk of being overwhelmed by sheer numbers if the fight is going to happen on the land. If everything is about to be decided by one fight then I would prefer Tom even if that meant fighting on enemy land. If you expect more little skirmishes and do not have a big advantage built up, giving up the power of the good old Tom might be worth it to get the advantage of your own land or at least forcing your opponent not to use his own.
Farsight ->Heal/Rallying Call ->Elven Woods/Tom Bombadil
Archers that get buffed by Rallying Call and Farsight at the same time are really scary. Especially in the early to mid game where you usually fight basic infantry or archers. With this PP path you are expected to gain a very big advantage at some early clash, claim the center with towers and keep pressuring with lancers on the sides, so that you can keep your rally call used on units that are always dealing damage.
Final thoughtsThe game doesn't always have to end by the Ent siege. If you macro up behind the siege you can transition into late game easily with some heroes and maybe a couple of lancers, that will require your opponents attention when the Ent's are not enough of a threat anymore or you cant keep the siege up.
Remember, you do not always have to go for the fort, destroying a couple of level two or three farms or stables, archery range or a barracks can be very devastating as well.
I hope you enjoyed reading this guide, let me know if it worked "
here" !
