A small Wood Elves rework suggestion

sykall

The Wood Elves have some problems in their current form. One of the most dire is the amber situation. This unflexable system is hindering the elves during the campagin, locking roughly a third of the units behind a barrier. Also Amber is needed to win the campaign, for technologies, settlements etc.

Its main source are other settlements which have to be controlled through alliances or occupation. But the WE cannot defend occupied regions properly. I cannot say wether or not a rework of their mechanics is coming. Right now it seems DLC factions are excluded from updates.

Still I have an proposal to make WE more fun.

Just make Amber a real currency. Instead of having a fixed amount of it, have an income per round. If your empire has a surplus of 2 amber and you want to have a treemen which costs for, just wait two turns an gotcha.

For balancing reasons the amber prices for units, techs etc. could be increased. And to prevent players becoming passive and just skipping rounds, their could an upkeep deduction for amber depending buildings or a cap system, depending on your tech or empire level.

Also the ability to have a 4 slot settlement in provincal capitals, maybe even with basic recruitment buildings (as norsca has with its costal outpost) would strengthen the WE in provinces away from Athel Loren without taking to much of the focus of their maigcal forest.

Those are fairly small changes, which I think could be implemented fairly easily.

What to you think?

Sir_Godspeed

This doesn't sound too bad.

It still restricts the roster, which I'm not super into (restricting rosters works better for races like greenskins who have a lot of overlapping and mutually redundant units because the model range was so vast) but this is miles better.

Helhound

No to the enlarged settlements outside of the current forests, though I'm all for finding other places to put a Welf forest. Outposts should never be defensible on their own, should rely on positioning of forces to protect yourself. Part of the appeal to the Welf campaign is that you can't build up everywhere.

Yes on Amber becoming a currency ala the Skaven food system. But less depreciation, it doesn't go down every turn, instead costs scale up as the game goes on.

SaurianDruid

I still like my idea where amber remains a finite resource but once you claim a province you get the amber from it permanently. You don't need to hold the territory, only take it once and then leave. Amber from alliances would be similar but instead of getting amber all at once you'd get one amber from a randomly chosen province per turn until the ally's lands no longer have amber.

This makes it so wood elves only need to worry about keeping their forest provinces safe. Outposts would be temporary settlements set up to provide a place for wood elves to replenish their forces when away from their homeland. Disposable once the elves have sacked the region for amber and no longer need to operate in the area.

This also forces wood elves to repeatedly go on Wild Hunts. Sending their armies further and further abroad in search for amber they haven't claimed already. Imagine Orion having depleted much of the amber in the Old World and needing to sail across the sea to Ulthuan or Naggarond to continue his quest to heal the forest.

Best of all this makes wood elves an extremely capricious ally. As is right now wood elves are locked in alliances once formed because breaking the alliance can cripple their economy beyond the point of recovery. With this new set up wood elves would only need to ally with a nation long enough to secretly exploit their amber reserves and then have no further need of them.

All in all this would make the optimum playstyle for wood elves to balance between making temporary allies of convenience and going out on Wild Hunts for amber. Launching unprovoked wars for reasons the AI/rival player can't even see but that make perfect sense to the wood elves.

This would align perfectly with how wood elves behave in the lore and, at least in my opinion, would be a lot more entertaining to play than the current wack-a-mole style of running around trying to keep your supposedly disposable outposts safe or being forced to bend over backward trying to keep your allies happy so you keep your precious amber supply.

Deep_echo_sound

They need level 2 buildings and 4 slots in province capitals and level 3 buildings plus 6 slots in big 10-slots faction capitals. So they will have the possibility to recruit more heroes and armies. (Spellsingers are in level 2 magic buildings.) Lack of income and lack of heroes are a huge problem for wood elves.

And A.I. wood elves are the most passive factions in the game. Make them be defensive, but still go out sometimes and expand, like Heinrich Kemmler now.
Factions that never expand always loose. Wood elves always loose. Currenlty they have exactly 0% chance to live and be big power in the late game. They and the beastmen are always, always 0.