Sage_of_Eyes

Apocalypse Reborn: Guide 2

Added 2023-01-25 16:32:08 +0000 UTC

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Wordcount: 2500

Commissioned by J.A.

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Children of the Elm

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A fragile, but dexterous race, the Children of the Elm have long wandered the continent and found the treatment of its lands and forests abysmal. In the wake of great battles, the corpse-strewn lands choked the earth and gave birth to swarms of pestilence that they laboriously hunted. Many rivers and lakes became fouled with corpses and blood, and over the course of millennia, their guardianship over the lands turned into hatred for any that would harm it. So, they searched for power and found it in the Citadel, with every intention of creating paradise upon the bones of those who would deny it to them.

Cruel and petty to all other races, the Children of the Elm will always be lacking in allies, however their long lives are not hampered by poor fertility and they require far less to sustain themselves. In their beloved forests, they sharpen their swords and toil in the shadows of the wood. With the Citadel providing them with what others would never provide, they will strike against the world to create a utopia where only the Children of the Elm rule.

Racial Traits:

The Children of the Elm are beautiful, long-lived, and very capable. In their forests, they toil without harming their surroundings, and gain powerful bonuses for fighting in forested regions. They focus on ranged combat, but have very capable front-line units composed of masters of their craft. High in damage and evasion, their units do not require veterancy and are relatively cheap to manufacture for their high output in damage. However, this comes with certain caveats, as the race’s strengths are balanced. Their goal to create utopia has them facing off against all possible foes, without any allies, and their diplomacy tree is non-functional. But, when given time and not curtailed, the Children of the Elm will have no need of allies because they can and should rely only upon themselves and in their high numbers.

+Fertile and Immortal: The Children of the Elm have increased population growth and very low population loss statistics, as well as a lower requirement for food. This all combined into high production rates and high resource extraction for all their cities, which is meant to curtail their inability to trade and make allies.

+Absolute Pride: The Children of the Elm will not engage in diplomacy beyond simple greeting and casus belli establishment, which they receive for free at the start of the game. They will be perpetually at war with all other factions and ceasefires can only last five turns maximum. However, they will be less likely to be affected by another faction’s culture.

+Glass Cannon: The Children of the Elm are powerful on the battlefield and can produce large numbers of units rapidly. However, this is balanced by the fragility of their units all throughout the game. The Children of the Elm are more than willing to die for their cause, but even their morale can break, and when it does they can be easily run down by even basic infantry.

Cultural Traits:

The Children of the Elm espouse perfection and beauty in their culture. This movement slows their rate of acquisition for many cultural projects and techs, but the projects and techs will have improved bonuses upon completion. Their lack of diplomacy tech tree is alleviated by a larger military tree, which hosts an extra branch for them to investigate and utilize: enslavement. Their usage of this tree allows them to vastly increase the output of their civilization further, while also removing non-Children of the Elm pops from their civilization, which confers demerits instead of bonuses like other civilizations.

+Enslavers: The Children of the Elm have a greatly diminished espionage tree. In exchange, they can pursue military technologies focused on enslaving their foes and using them for their industry. This powerful military tech initially increases outputs for their cities by half at the start, but can rise to a two-hundred percent increase when fully researched. It is also conducive to most of their victory conditions, which typically requires 10% or 0% other faction populations in their faction.

+Perfectionists: The Children of the Elm espouse perfection and care little for time. They seek to make perfect changes to their culture and society, so all Social Techs and some Science techs will have additional bonuses to the bonuses already present.

+Culture of Beauty: The Children of the Elm have vastly increased gains in Happiness and Culture if they are the most eminent of all other nations. If an enemy nation has surpassed them, they lose this bonus, but gain increased production to retake the position by force. The Conquerors cannot have any allies, but their culture has increased spread rates to other factions if they are eminent.

Military Overview:

The Children of the Elm are focused on creating strong stacks of units that annihilate the enemy from afar. They are highly mobile and can kite everything short of cavalry or aerial units, and the latter is easy prey for their bows. Their greatest advantage is their ability to ‘shoot and scoot,’ and kiting is a required technique for all their players, as is map awareness. Unlike most other factions, veterancy is not required for their units, and neither does every army need a General Champion to look over them, give them buffs, and lower costs. They will out produce their foes, overcome them through sheer weight of attacks, and retreat when they cannot win only to have another army reinforce them.

If you’re playing the Children of the Elm:

Early expansion and acquisition of Artifacts is not as important as defending your current holdings and increasing your economy. The midgame is when you want to start building up and taking the fight to the endgame, because that’s when your economy will begin to overtake the enemy and your population will begin to skyrocket. Focus on getting Administrative factions that will accelerate your economy and the rate you acquire your cultural techs. The sooner you get your bonuses, the sooner they’ll pay off, and you’ll get more for them cumulatively. Do your best to not hit any negative incomes at the start, manage your settlements, and acquire resources that’ll be increased by your multipliers.

The Children of the Elm’s midgame is when they shine the most, but they require Champions specialized in running interference against the enemy with melee units, such as mercenaries. Though you’ll be able to produce a lot of ranged infantry, which will deal damage even without buffs, they will be more likely to miss if they’re on the move and you’ll lose out on DPS. A Champion that improves the longevity of your ranged units should be focused on taunting enemies and creating tarpits that your archers can fire into. Though the Children of the Elm’s spearmen are comparatively fragile to other races, always have one unit guarding your ranged units, in case of a cavalry attack. They’re weak and easy to kill, but they’re as fast as your ranged units, thus they can guard the flanks.

Your late game is heavily dependent on how well you’ve managed to do in the midgame, and if you’ve correctly managed your economy and the techs you’ve taken. With your ability to enslave enemy populations, you should have very well-developed cities capable of churning out T2 units and even a handful of T3s. Focus on getting tough melee units, such as the Elm Swordmasters, and try to get them some veterancy points. They’re the sole unit where veterancy matters. Do your best to lay siege to enemy cities and take economic regions. Citadel sieges will be too tough until the endgame, when you acquire your specialized units for the task, so focus on city sieges where your best Archers can hit the enemy garrisons no matter how high their fortification ratings are.

For endgame strategies, refer to the endgame strategies page.

If you’re playing against the Children of the Elm:

The Children of the Elm are heavily dependent on their domestic economy the entire game. It’s essential that they are raided and kept crippled, so that they don’t drown you in arrows. Focus on making agreements and alliances with other races against them, which should be easy given their perpetual war stance against everyone else. Send in tough Champions with lots of cavalry and heavily armored infantry that can tank their attacks at range, and make sure to farm veterancy and heal your troops as much as possible in your fights against them. The key to defeating them is making sure you lose less resources than they do and overcome quantity with quality, while also making sure that quantity is never enough to overcome you completely.

As for Champions, focus on getting Unit-Killer Champions, because they’ll serve as capable destroyers with the AoE attacks, lifesteal, and high armor and regeneration. If you can’t afford cavalry, sending a correctly-built Champion at the Children’s ranged units is a great choice. Still, it’s worth mentioning that Espionage Champions should be deployed to kill their Administrative Champions, so that their economy doesn’t ramp up too quickly. The sweet spot should be that the Children of the Elm send only T1 Fodder your way for EXP and don’t build doomstacks because they know that they don’t have enough money coming in. Use their industrial way of fighting to your advantage.

In the late game, like with any other faction, it’s best if they’re weakened. However, unlike other factions, its best when their economy is struggling and their population low due to continuous destruction and raids. Should they be at full strength and with recent conquests, it’s best to be on the defensive and rely on allies to defeat them. Their ranges units will outrange all but artillery, so focus on artillery and give them as much accuracy bonuses as possible. If you’re playing Guardians, you have access to Familiar Swarms, which can be given defense bonuses and regeneration to act as a rapid, cheap force that can bog down their ranged units. Temporary defenses won’t be good enough, so focus on creating fortresses on chokepoints and manning them with artillery. Increasing attrition through technology and certain heroes is also a good strategy to tie them down.

Overcoming their industrial advantages will be nearly impossible, but you can stall them until you can deploy end game units. However, if they’re weak and just keep sending units, it’ll be nigh-impossible for them to win. Use their spawning units as free XP and rack up relationship points with your erstwhile allies.

Should they reach the endgame without being gimped, be ready to face massive armies of Children of the Elm surrounding their siege units designed to take on maxed out Citadels and win. Good luck.

Faction-Specific Leaders and Champions

Leaders:

The King of the Children of the Elm: the original leader of the Children of the Elm, but the weakest. His shtick is that he can act as a a defensive Champion when the capital is attacked, is designed to sit and advise the Citadel and provide artillery support to militia units when needed. Given the obscene production rates of the Children of the Elm, his bonuses are insignificant and militia units are unnecessary since you can simply have an army on standby to assist your capital at all times. He’s also too weak to beat a proper rush designed to deal with a Champion.

The Scholar of the Lost: Arguably the strongest of the Children of the Elm’s possible leaders. The Scholar’s focus is increasing the number of artifacts found when exploring ruins. His ability is very important for most Children of the Elm’s strategies, due to their reliance on their own territory and limited amount of freedom on the map. He also provides an increase to their rate of technology acquisition by increasing the speed with which Ancient Technology is researched.

The Reclaimer: A leader that emphasizes the Enslave tree and expands on it further. Choosing him as a leader practically guarantees that you’ll be seeing a nonstop tide of enemy armies in your lands, but that’s fine, because every defeated army will result in automatically-enslaved pops that you can use to invigorate and supercharge your economy. This leader also increases the rate that enslaved pops die, but many consider that to be a benefit. With the Reclaimer at the helm, you’ll enjoy a powerful economy all throughout the game and a constant tide of arrows will wash over your foes.

Champions:

The Ranger: Tira: The finest Champion available to the Children of the Elm. One of the best Champion-Killers and Unit-Killers in the game, Tira is a reliable method of curtailing the weakness of the Children of the Elm at all stages of the game. She can hunt down enemy Champions before they reach your DPS, or fire entangling branches at aerial units or cavalry, so that your squishy forces can fire on them before getting squished. With the right artifacts, her simple but reliable kit can shine in the endgame. If she dies, she can be revived via the Shroud and will return as an Undead version with largely the same skills and higher health, with the only debuff in the process being lower evasion rate.

The Huntress: Leah: A General-type Champion, which surprisingly focuses on cavalry. This Champion is meant to increase the speed of the Children’s cavalry and the firing rate of their archers. A strong early-game defense Champion, which will keep your armies alive and enable them to gain veterancy. However, in the end, even at full veterancy the Children of the Elm will have low HP values and Defense, even with buffs. It’s better to replace losses rather than keep units alive for this faction.

The Sentinel: Revas: A rare, Support Champion focused on searching ruins and finding high rarity artifacts and technology. The perfect Champion for any person running the Scholar, Revas is essential to filling up the treasury with exotic artefacts and enable the deployment of Administrative Champions or General Champions that will lead the Elm’s armies. Weak and easily killed, it’s best to retreat when confronted.

Opposing Champions:

Save for The Ranger, the Elm’s Champions are weak against single-target Champions and specialized assassins. Though Rita is a special case, the Elm’s other faction-specific Champions are irreplaceable and don’t return as good after death. However, targeting the battlefield champions is foolish, when you can target their Administrative Champions. Once again, focus on hampering their economy and making sure that they can’t ramp up, and you’ll win the day. Assassinate any Champion that provides any form of boost to the Children of the Elm’s economy.

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Comments (11):

Rara43:

The only good elf is a dead elf (in this game.)

Nublet:

Damn, no one likes these guys.

Ex-Nub:

They’re for masochists and people who just want to get stepped on and die. Without consent. Therefore, they’re plain crazy.

ChocolateIsTheBest:

Man, I’m a pervert, but these guys take it way too far. Even if they are hot.

Nublet:

I was talking about the low comments, lmao.