Dark Elf Buildings

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Dark Elf Buildings

Dark Tower
Dark Towers are dissatisfying large buildings. Fortunately though, they don't offer much that would provoke a need for more of them. The Runes don't really delay tiring and only a single new rune per level becomes available, allowing you to steadily research them without being overwhelmed, and Wisps can't be sent to the mines, so you wont be spamming them. Although Wisps can become Ancient Wisps, producing them between keep upgrades is more than adequate as the Dark Elves don't rely as heavily on Ancient Wisps as the other Elven races due to the access of actual minefillers in the form of Thralls and Zombies. Because of the building's large size and long view range, it can keep a watchful eye out for pesky opportunists that have found a gap in your defenses.

Tower (Dark Elf)
Comparatively to other towers, Dark Elf towers sacrifice hit points for more damage, as well as an elemental attack type. Unfortunately, they sacrifice a lot of hit points! This usually results in the towers falling far too easy and can even be destroyed outright by a single blast from a Titan's Ring of Fire death explosion. They also cost a lot, too, which when combined with the constant need to repair them, they can simply cost too much to be cost-effective. They do pack an incredibly powerful fire attack, though, which not only by-passes missile resistant units, but also can burn down buildings that the AI thought would be a good idea to build within its missile range. Further more, the Dark Elves have access to other missile types that can garrison the the towers, giving them broad options on how to prepare their defense, not to mention also having access to magic type attacks from another building entirely.

However, as hinted above, these towers aren't the only defensive structure that the Dark Elves have access to, the other one being the Void which boasts for more hit points (more than any non-starting tower in the game!), cheaper to build and thus cheaper to maintain. Because of this, Voids should be built as the first defense against enemy attackers, with these towers positioned behind them - garrisoned with missile units to help reach over the Voids. But of course, doing this means your defenses essentially only ever have a missile range of 12, as Voids can't be garrisoned. Still, Voids plus the raw power and attack type customisation of the Dark Elf towers can make for a fantastic defense.

Tree of Pain
Tree of Pains produce all Dark Elven units and therefore nearly all units available to the Dark Elf race. This makes the Tree of Pain the common production building, and so it's a good thing that these buildings are about average in size, as you really will be building many of them. They are also cheap and durable, too, with their only sub-par stat being their poor 5 view range - which doesn't even matter. Finally, since all units produced from the Tree of Pain are all 1x1 footprint sized and the building has a very simple shape, you don't even need to put much care into how close you place these buildings together.

Tomb
Although Tombs produce three different units, you probably wont be building more than a couple of them. This is because the three units they produce aren't exactly game defining - they do have their uses, but more situational or novelty than practical. Despite this, you'll end up with at least one Tomb as the skill trio "Black Ward" is fantastic. Not only does the improved resistance it offers make your units (and Hero!) physically tougher against elemental attacks, but it also makes them more resilient against psyche effects and illnesses, too.

Gravestone
Gravestones produce only Skeletons, which by being produced from their own building can free up the building queues for your Tombs, assuming that you plan on using Skeletons. Unlike Undead, the Dark Elves can't get much use out of Skeletons and must rely on their missile fodder role to have any need of them. However, as Skeletons are produced rather quickly making only a couple of buildings necessarily to mass them, unless you plan on producing Spiders / Queen Spiders along with them, then you wont need to build Gravestones at all.

Spider Eggs
Spider Eggs are never directly built, but instead are immediately created by Queen Spiders after once they kill an enemy unit. After a while, they will automatically destroy themselves, spawning up to four Spiders for your army. These spawned Spiders are affected by the same army limit as the rest of your army. So if you have reached said limit, then no Spiders will be spawned when the building destroys itself. Spider Eggs pre-placed on a map will never hatch.

Gallery
Galleries are small and cheap, research only three upgrades, produces no units nor is it required for the production of units else where. As such, you'll only ever need one of these and even if it gets knocked down, as long as you've obtained the researches from it, then you wont even need to rebuild it. This makes them ideal to be pushed into the corner of your base that's somewhere out of the way.

Brood level 1
As the Dark Elves cannot fill mines early game (without starting with Sorcerors), they depend heavily on mine capturing and thus map control. Like all Elves, the Dark Elves have access to a basic flier than can greatly help them with this task via its ability to convert - the Phoenix. Because of this, you may find yourself building a Brood or two as soon as you hit tier 2. Come tier 4 and you'll still find yourself producing Phoenixes and, even though Harpies can be useful under certain circumstances, they are situational at best, usually leaving you with no need to upgrade the Broods just yet.

Once tier 5 rolls around and you can start producing Dragons, you also have access to the Dark Elf General - the Blackguard. This reduces the dependence on Phoenixes but as they can fly, you may still wish to produce these over Blackguards for quicker (but not safer) map control. As such, you'll then start to need more Broods to help continue production when the Dragons start clogging up the build queues.

Reformatory
Up until tier 3 the Dark Elves wouldn't have had any way to fill their mines, unless they started the game with any Sorcerors. The Reformatory offers one of two ways obtained at tier 3 for the Dark Elves to produce mine fillers, and arguably the better of the two. Once the Slavehorde skill has been researched, the Reformatory can "summon" up to 10 Thralls immediately, which can then be sent to over-populate a mine. Since the ability has no time delay to be used again, you can then just re-cast it and have enough Thralls to fill all of your mines then and there! At this point the gameplay changes, matching that of the typical races of the game, but yet still maintain the extra map control from Phoenixes and extra crystal income through Ancient Wisps. If you didn't start the game with any Sorcerors, or simply lost them over time before you could get all your mines filled, then the Reformatory should be the first building to build when you hit tier 3, and even worth speeding through the tiers to get.

The building itself is similar to the Tree of Pain in the sense that it's cheap, yet durable and not even that big - about average in size if not smaller. Still, only one of these is really ever needed, but the Slavehorde ability still give it use once all the researches have been had.

Void
The Void is a research building that doubles as a very sturdy defensive structure, comically out-performing some race's main towers. The building even offers a lot of researches that encourages you to build more of them to obtain those skills in good time. They are also small in size, almost matching that of a normal tower. With its high defensive stats, respectable offense and dirt cheap cost, one could argue that the Void is broken! However, they cannot be garrisoned and interesting, they don't stop defeat, meaning your foes wont need to destroy them to vanquish you from the game. These two factors may help "balance" them, but regardless, they do certainly help defend your base and should be built in masses to support the main Dark Elf towers, which are naturally frail.

Kargothian Gate
As you would expect from its name, the Kargothian Gate produces their Dark Elf titan - Kargoth. Other than that, it doesn't really do much. Imps without the Daemon upgrades aren't very good late game and the Meditation skills only have any use of spell casting Heroes who can't cast a spell at their highest level with 100% success. The building itself is large, costs quite a bit and is among the Dark Elves list of most fragile buildings. Something else to think about is that Kargoth isn't even that strong for a Titan. With all things in consideration, there is no rush to build a Kargothian Gate. That is not to say you should never build one, Kargoth is still a Titan after all, and so is still a powerful unit.

Interesting note: The Kargothian Gate is Internally referred to as Aranean Gate. It looks like Kargoth wasn't originally planned to be the star of the Dark Elves.

Brood level 2
The Dark Elves acquire Harpies in tier 4 when they upgrade their Brood to level 2. As Harpies are very situational and the core of your army will tend to be mostly missile units, you may not have need for Harpies in your current game and thus wont need to build extra Broods to compensate for the added unit production. Although, you would still want to upgrade them at some point before tier 5, getting them ready for the final upgrade later on.

Brood level 3
The Dark Elves choice of Dragons can make some of their previous units obsolete - namely Skeletons and Harpies. Where as those two previous units served only a single, limited role, the two Dragons that take their place can perform those roles and also function as a powerful, terrifying units in general. The Dragonliche is the main reason to reach a Brood level 3 quickly, as they can single handily change the shape of the battle through being a flying, missile resistant behemoth that can even immobilize enemy units with its terror. The cost to get a Brood level 3 shouldn't be too much of a problem for the Dark Elves, with only the gold needing some form of management as Sorcerors and Assassins require it, too.