Wood Elf Buildings

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Wood Elf Buildings

Haven
The Haven is really no different to the other Elven keeps - it produces Wisps and researches Runes. Like the average keep, the Haven is also a large building with a long view range. Unfortunately, the Haven isn't the only large build the Wood Elves have, as their main production buildings, as well as even some of their research buildings, are also huge and cause serious competition with each other for space. Because of this, it's just not practical to build a second Haven to speed up Wisp production, unless the map is a barren wasteland.

Tower (Wood Elf)
Wood Elven towers are fragile yet expensive and time consuming to build. Although they deal decent damage, the attack type leaves them prone to being over run by common piercing-resistant units as well as offering little diversity with the Wood Elven race, who's main missile units also deal piercing type damage. Due to their sheer cost and poor hit points, you'll be spending a fortune in maintaining these towers - something that the Wood Elves really could have done without. With such large buildings, the Wood Elves have need for more towers than the usual races, and with such a terrible economy, it's difficult for them to even get them built up.

There is a glimmer of hope, though. The Wood Elves have access to magic dealing units that can garrison towers, changing the tower's attack into a serious weapon. High magic type damage is enough to scare any unit and will transform the Wood Elves' towers into a true glass-cannon.

Tree of Life
The Tree of Life is an appallingly large building - almost the same size as the Haven. As the Tree of Life also produces all Wood Elves, which makes for nearly all their units, this makes the building's size all that more horrible. With constant demand for more of these buildings as the game goes on, its cheap cost simply can't negate the fact that you just wont have the room to build the amount you need. And with each one planted, your base defense also takes a hit by giving your shaky towers such large amounts of ground that need to be protected.

Healing Orb
At tier 1, the Healing Orb has little use. With nearly all the Wood Elven units possessing terrible amounts of HP, a fast HP regeneration isn't needed to get them back to full HP, and most the time the units die to a single hit. Elcor's Balm is ludicrously expensive, both for the initial cost and to cast. However, as it requires only crystal, it should be fairly easy to use late game once you have a large collection of Ancient Wisps. But again, with so many Wood Elven units having such little HP, the ability sees little use as there are only a select few units that can take advantage of the ability (and the healing skills for that matter), and those are the Treants and Dragons. Because of this, you could very well wait till later on in the game before building the Healing Orb, but keep in mind that your Hero is also affected by the healing skills and can come in handy early game for Heroes who are constantly harassing the enemy.

Forest Tower
Forest Towers are just like all other scout towers in the game. They have a pitiful attack that strikes only aerial targets and researches only view range bonuses. Although not a large building, the Forest Tower is still quite bit for what it's worth. All the other typical scout towers are very small, but yet the Forest Tower follows the Wood Elves' trend of big buildings. As with all other scout towers, the Forest Tower has no use in games without Fog of War or / and Hidden Map. As such, there is no need in building the building in such scenarios. Further more, even in games with a concealed map, the Forest Tower becomes obsolete once all of its skills have been researched. Therefore it can be knocked down to make way for another building once you've got all you can get from it - its aerial attack is hardly worth keeping it around for.

Rangers' Guild
The Rangers' Guild is a very game defining building for the Wood Elves. Although it is only a research building, the researches obtained massively power-up Gladewardens (and prior to 1.03.23, the Elven Hunters) to almost game winning machines. As such, it is quite fortunate that the building is obtained early game and is pretty cheap - costing just 100 gold. It is also rather durable with a hefty 600 hit points. But it's not all good news for our tree dwelling friends, like with many other Wood Elven buildings, the Rangers' Guild is very large, especially for its purpose. This makes it difficult to add to your base without compromising space or needing additional base defense. The building also has an odd shape, further causing wasted space. In addition to that, the two main game-defining researches it offers are very expensive. But as the sole purpose of the building is for the four researches it holds and does nothing more beyond that, once they've all been obtained, you could very well self-destroy the building for that much needed space.

Nest level 1
The Wood Elves have a very difficult game with their poor economy - one of the faults come from their inability to fill mines with workers. This means they must rely on the raw number of mines captured for reliable income, and this is where the Nest comes in. A level 1 Nest only produces Phoenixes but these units have the ability to convert buildings that can drastically help the Wood Elves economy. Because of this, building a Nest and getting a few Phoenixes out should be number one priority after reaching tier 2. Outside of converting, Phoenixes are terrible and should only be used for the converting role. Therefore there is no need to build any more than just a few at once and thus no real need to build any more than one Nest in the early stage of the game.

Hostel
The Hostel is the second research building available to the Wood Elves, offering Morale bonuses and, more importantly, the Trade skill. With the Trade skill researched, the Hostel can exchange that spare crystal and gold the Wood Elves acquire through free means for metal and stone, allowing them to start fighting back against their economy. Of course, crystal is in such demand early on where you wont have enough Ancient Wisps around to give you a reliable crystal income, and Magic Wells come in tier 4, this makes the Trade skill not too important in tier 3. But nonetheless, can still be used to help balance out your resources in tier 3. This does mean that you will need this building to stick around and, once again, the building is pretty big for its purpose, making it difficult to place down to begin with. It is also one of the more expensive Wood Elven buildings, too. But it is quite durable with 600 hit points and fast to build.

The Hostel also offers morale bonuses which not only improve attack speed across all of your units, but also slightly ups your population cap, allowing for some extra units without the need to build more buildings. A plus for a race that owns an unsavory amount of large buildings. The Hostel itself also adds a bit more to the population cap, too.

Magic Well
The reoccurring pattern of large buildings final comes to an end in tier 4. The newly added buildings in this tier are not only small by the Wood Elves' standards, but among the smallest in the game. This is a great boon for the Magic Well, for its ability to generate gold would encourage you to build plenty of them. The gold generated is akin to a Gold Mine level 1 and can help the Wood Elves overcome their poor economy with free gold that can even be traded for other resources via the Hostel's Trade ability. Aside from generating gold, the Magic Well has little use. It only researches spell casting bonuses for your Hero, who could potentially have no need for them. The building is pretty expensive, though, costing a lot of crystal that'll slow down your construction of them. Although crystal can too can be generated (by your Ancient Wisps), building multiple Magic Wells at once or just one after another will soon take its toll.

White Tree
Despite being much smaller than the Tree of Life, the White Tree actually costs more. It is also pathetically weak and has a poor view range. The White Tree's main purpose is to power-up Treants with researches and produces a couple of Fey units - Pixies and Sprites. However, due to the lack of upgrades that affect them (in 1.03.1, Sprites are no longer affected by the archery researches) and naturally poor stats, Sprites and Pixies don't really do much for the Wood Elves. After the nerf to Sprites, they became all but useless, and Pixies are really only useful for randomly freezing very tough, single enemy units, giving your Gladewardens and Elven Hunters more time to hammer them down. This role clashes somewhat with Treants, who can also slow down some enemy units, but also act as a blockade between the enemy and your units. (Although Pixies can still perform a hit and run role.) This usually results in the Tree of Life being used mostly for its upgrades, and therefore you rarely would need more than one of them.

Nest level 2
The Wood Elves' Nest level 2 offers Griffons along side Phoenixes. Griffons can be used to help your Phoenixes safely get around the map to convert mines by removing enemy towers and stray enemy units. If you plan on using Griffons for this, then you wont need particularly many. Two level 2 Nests is sufficient, as Phoenixes can be quickly produced before or after your platoon of Griffons are ready, thus not really needing any more than two Nests at this point, which should help keep that hefty stone cost to a minimum.

Nest level 3
With the combination of free gold and crystal generated from Magic Wells and Ancient Wisps, respectively, the Wood Elves can acquire Dragons a little more easier than most other races. Because of this, you should take the opportunity to upgrade your Nests when available. As the Dragons can take over from the Griffons for aiding your Phoenixes around the map, (as well as many more tasks) their production could very well be ended, or at least drastically reduced to be produced only when you have no Dragons on the field. As such, you wont even need to build any more Nests, with the possible exception of an additional Nest level 1 just for Phoenix production.