Ancient Wisp (Army)/1.03

Ancient Wisps are both advanced builders and missile units for the three Elven factions.

Dark Elves
Made by combining 4 baby Wisps and spending 100 crystals (takes a grand total of 200 crystals). It generates crystal at a rate of a level 1 mine and can be a lifesaver for the crystal hungry elves. They can construct buildings and are a decent missile unit with long range electrical attacks. They have more hit points than most of your units, but are vulnerable to physical attacks, so you'll either want to keep them protected behind a melee wall or accompany them with so many other ranged units that nothing will survive long enough to do much damage to any particular wisp. They can also be recruited for your Hero's retinue, allowing you to bring them over to other crystal hungry races, such as Daemons and Plaguelords.

Ancient wisps are significantly more powerful the stronger your hero's merchant skill (from Charisma, or from the Merchant class), because decrease in cost of purchases is equivalent to an increase in the rate at which wisps produce crystal. Without any mercantile upgrades, wisps have a geometric growth rate of doubling your number of wisps every 7 minutes (not counting the costs of the buildings used to produce the 4 baby wisps and to increase your supply cap). With mercantile upgrades, you can instead reach a geometric growth rate of quadrupling your number of wisps over the same time period. If your income is quadrupling every 7 minutes, while the other player's isn't, then time will definitely be on your side.

Benifits from Black Ward research.

High Elves
Made by combining 4 baby Wisps and spending 100 crystals (takes a grand total of 200 crystals). It generates crystal at a rate of a level 1 mine and can be a lifesaver for the crystal hungry elves. They can construct buildings and are a decent missile unit with long range electrical attacks. They have more hit points than most of your units, but are vulnerable to physical attacks, so you'll either want to keep them protected behind a melee wall or accompany them with so many other ranged units that nothing will survive long enough to do much damage to any particular wisp. They can also be recruited for your Hero's retinue, allowing you to bring them over to other crystal hungry races, such as Daemons and Plaguelords.

Ancient wisps are significantly more powerful the stronger your hero's merchant skill (from Charisma, or from the Merchant class), because decrease in cost of purchases is equivalent to an increase in the rate at which wisps produce crystal. Without any mercantile upgrades, wisps have a geometric growth rate of doubling your number of wisps every 7 minutes (not counting the costs of the buildings used to produce the 4 baby wisps and to increase your supply cap). With mercantile upgrades, you can instead reach a geometric growth rate of quadrupling your number of wisps over the same time period. If your income is quadrupling every 7 minutes, while the other player's isn't, then time will definitely be on your side.

Benifits from Healing research.

Wood Elves
Made by combining 4 baby Wisps and spending 100 crystals (takes a grand total of 200 crystals). It generates crystal at a rate of a level 1 mine and can be a lifesaver for the crystal hungry elves. They can construct buildings and are a decent missile unit with long range electrical attacks. They have more hit points than most of your units, but are vulnerable to physical attacks, so you'll either want to keep them protected behind a melee wall or accompany them with so many other ranged units that nothing will survive long enough to do much damage to any particular wisp. They can also be recruited for your Hero's retinue, allowing you to bring them over to other crystal hungry races, such as Daemons and Plaguelords.

Ancient wisps are significantly more powerful the stronger your hero's merchant skill (from Charisma, or from the Merchant class), because decrease in cost of purchases is equivalent to an increase in the rate at which wisps produce crystal. Without any mercantile upgrades, wisps have a geometric growth rate of doubling your number of wisps every 7 minutes (not counting the costs of the buildings used to produce the 4 baby wisps and to increase your supply cap). With mercantile upgrades, you can instead reach a geometric growth rate of quadrupling your number of wisps over the same time period. If your income is quadrupling every 7 minutes, while the other player's isn't, then time will definitely be on your side.

Benifits from Eagle Eye and Healing researches.

=More info=

Campaign
No more information available.

Quests
The following might include spoilers!


 * One of Imp's quest gives the player an ancient wisp.

Etherian Lore
No lore acknowledged.

Trivia

 * Given wisps are often associated with the dead in folklore and fantasy, both types of elven wisps could be seen as the spirits of formerly fallen Elves. The process of making an ancient Wisp out of four basic ones wouldn't make any sense though.
 * Merging (and consuming) lesser units to produce a new, stronger one is used in other games, such as in Starcraft.