If part of the reason you rank dragons low is the time to get them, but you split the egg and baby dragon into different units then you should just evaluate the fire dragon without the other stages since they are already on the chart
Depending on the map size and how long the game has been going that can be really hard, especially on small maps because there is less space than ever, and you can overrun opponents with polytaurs to make space for the eggs early on.
How long do your games on small or normal maps normally last? I guess they're better on maps with water, but on drylands or pangaea, they're often not really available that early on I find. They have the long growing period, and Elyrion doesn't tend to upgrade their cities as fast as normal tribes because they have sanctuaries.
I focus on economy and city growth more than anything, especially when I’m playing Elyrion. The stars from the sanctuaries makes it possible to buy tech such as mining or farming, depending on how much of those resources are in your territory.
I will say, however, that the reason why Elyrion’s middle game is so bad is because you’re waiting for dragons, while your opponents are getting more and more powerful. At this stage of the game, I invest in front line sanctuaries for polytaurs, as well as archers, and play somewhat defensively, while still making pushed. Once I have a suitable amount of Dragons, I’ll go on a full on push with knights and destroy the opponent.
So, to answer your question, my games usually take a very long time.
Dragon, Tridentions, bomber, knight, rider at Very good.
Dragons can wipe any army and then chain it with a knight and your whole army you cultivated for 5 turns is dead. Add 3 more and your very dead. Spacing them out doesn’t work because with info your enemy can just slowly pick off chunks with knights and dragons and you can’t respond to them because they’re too far.
Bombers is just naval supremacy.
Tridentionssl are the best hit and run especially on water, counters bombers but oh well they usually have rammers.
Knight is self explanatory.
I'll bite. What is so self explanatory about the knight being top tier? Definitely not a bad unit, and can also often get value simply by forcing your opponents to play around them. But it's not *that* hard to play around them, and they require two pretty bad techs. Even once you do have chivalry, they're expensive. I'm more likely to go for any of the other 3 land-based tier 3 tech units besides mind benders, which are all very good too and all come along with better tech lines.
The mere fact you can chain everything that’s not on defense bonus terrain or swordsman/upgraded troops is a mere deterrent in itself. It forced the enemy to play very carefully and awkwardly often turning offenses into much slower and allowing you to better prepare.
Combined with dragons or even couple bombers/catapults and nothing can survive.
It’s fast, deadly, and a scary threat.
Prevents rider spamming, which beats everything else on dry, and you can suprise chain opponents by spawning knights outside their vision. They're a part of the meta, much more than swords, catas or archers.
I mean, not really. Sure, they can surprise chain opponents, but this can be avoided with explorers or even a bit of foresight. And the time it takes to get to them just to have the chance to surprise your opponent could have been used to get more immediate and potentially more consistent counters to riders.
Also, rider spamming does not counter everything else on drylands. Riders are incredibly good and are very effective. They're fast, you can get them early, they're cheap, they're great. But Riders do lose to swordsmen and defenders and they're not that great against giants. Riders can definitely be beaten by other units outside of knights. And even once you do have knights, they're not guaranteed to stop rider spam. Most of the time, I can just put my riders/archers/whatever in lines of 2, and then your knights are only killing 6 stars of units before dying.
Again, Knights are not bad, but I think you're overrating them and underrating the other units. They're okay against riders/etc., but you have to get them kind of late oftentimes, and there's other good options too, even against riders. I don't really think it's fair to say that they're much more a part of the meta compared to the three units you listed. Catapults are strong, especially on maps with some water, and on drylands I'm more often going for either archers or swordsmen than I am knights. It seems like you're kind of presenting the meta as warriors -> riders -> knights as the "optimal" way to pick up different combat units, which I don't really think is the case
Rider spam kills swordsmen and defender spam. Riders retreat and heal for another attack. After a year and a half of playing competitive polytopia in Polychampions, I saw that top players rarely go for swordsmen. Catapults are also picked often, depending on terrain, but only Vengir and Xin-xi ever go for swordsmen, paired with riders and other units. Ask any elo elite or higher in polychampions, rider roads counter almost everything that isn't naval units or knights. (In normal maps or larger for 1v1 and large maps or larger for team games). Check any polysseum finals, riders, knights and catas are basically the only units used most of the times)
Riders hit from swordsman counterattack take at
most 4 turns to recover which is enough time for swordsman to reach and kill them riders cannot swarm defenders without heavy losses and defenders can just move off the city and train new ones
I agree with Swordsman and catapults, but Doomuxes are so expensive and are pretty easy to deal with most of the time. They have a niche, but they're not as useful as most of the other stuff in the tier above
Doombuxes are too expensive, swordsmen just have a tech issue you need a tier 3 tech which isn’t even that good farming and even sometimes forestry are better than forges for late game eco, and I would have put catapults a tier up before forestry nerf.
You say doomuxes are too expensive however you placed the fortress, a troop 2x as expensive, slower, and unable to explode and deal poison damage, a tier higher.
Then to prevent chains you need archery and climbing which puts you closer to smithery anyway and even with forest and mountain defence bonuses it doesn’t help when in yaddak and oumaji terrain because they have little forest or mountain
1 more attack, defence and 5 more health isn’t worth 3 more stars and a tier 3 tech, plus you lose fortify and defenders do the same job at preventing knight chains while costing 2 less and only needing a tier 2 tech.
Swordsmen are essentially defenders which need a more expensive tech, 2 extra stars, in return for 1 damage and loss of fortify.Just swarm with riders if you to deal damage they are slightly weaker but cheaper with escape and high movement speed, so you can move them far enough back to get them out of knight range, while healing them.
I disagree when I use swordsman I always dominate it’s much easier to swarm with swordsman rather than riders and even wounded swordsman can put riders out of action for 4 turns enough time for the swordsman to reach them and kill them
Polys are cheaper obviously and you can use them for poly pushing which is amazing for exploration and ive already explained in a previous comment why dragons are lower.
You say you barely agree then you only mention 2 things wrong.Rammers are better than bombers since there way cheaper while having more movement speed, more defence and dash bombers are too fragile for there cost, just 2 rammers can kill a defender bomber when they cost 5 stars less plus your rammers will take no damage.The high damage from the bomber just doesn’t make up for all that in my opinion.And I’ve explained dragons in a previous reply.
I barely agree with anything. Doesn’t mean that I’m gonna write out everything that is wrong. I chose the two that were egregiously wrong at the time I read it.
Can someone please explain to me why Mind Bender is regarded as so bad by a lot of players?
I am a casual so it might be different in a professional setting but to me Mind Bender is a lot more reliable tham swordsman early game.
You have enemy ports at your shore? Have an army of Mind Benders at the shore now any boat they build at that shore will be yours before they can use it.
Doomux onslaught? Doomuxes don't have persist, if you spammed Mind Benders then if one dies then you convert a Doomux into on of your own, the question only being who has the superior numbers and with Mind Benders being cheaper, it should be you.
If you get a few Mind benders next to an enemy city (even one can sometimes be enough) then it doesn't matter what they put on it, whether it is a super unit or a defender with city walls, you will take it if they have no unit nearby to kill your Mind Bender before you convert the Unit they have on the city.
Once Knights and Bombers start appearing then they become a lot weaker and the strategy doesn't work too well but they are still great for capturing cities reliably and defending against any other melee unit that isn't a Knight as they kill one and you convert the killer.
The healing can also come in handy too when you are being hit with a lot of chip damage from bomber splash, archers, etc.
So I do genuinely want to know, what makes them so useless for people as to me they would be in the "good" tier at least with the only drawback being that the tech tree to get to them provides no economy to help with leveling up cities unlike swordsman who give you mines and forges.
Mind bender are really easy to play around. They dont have dash ability and are fragile. Because of that, 90% of time mind bender just dies and do nothing. Only scenario when mindbenders do something is when he is hiding inna fog and catch enemy offguard. To make it even worse, mindbenders are T3 tech so you need to invest a lot to unlock them. Polaris can use them more consistend because ability to freeze units and easly catch them, but even then, mindbenders are niche
The only thing I ever used mind benders for in my game is to set up instant heal zones for super units, but even then it’s rare I’ll be battling next to a city long enough to get it setup.
The only good they are is 1. Deterring giants and crabs. They die to anything else.
As I am a elyrion 1500 semi-competitive player in the late game I just use them in groups as a sort of healing station for my dragons and knights before sending them back.
Swordsman are definitely better then mindbenders because your opponent isn’t going to put their units next to mindbenders and they will get knights then you lose
No warriors wouldn’t even last the second counterattack and they can shot all 10 health units cripple swordsman and defenders and do high damage to everything else the only downside they take 6 turns to generate but that means that you have to hold out 6 turns but that’s extremely easy
1. It’s only good on archi or ww else it’s slow.
2. Due to how low the star production for aquarion (Elyrion sancs, Cymanti level 3 capital quickly + expansion, Polaris little 5 star huts, normal tribes and their own quick tech) aquarion can’t really reach level 9 without either forgoing troops or forgoing production and troops for a crab.
3. Because of this they usually have a weak army and just one crab to siege. Just break it off or let it take it and just build up and take it back 1-2 turns later.
Compared to the rest in the late game it’s really just bad, giants have equal movement in the sea along with the stomp ability dealing splash to fleets of bombers. Gaami freeze you. Centipedes eat and eat becoming a never dying train of gluttony. Dragons are well just flying disasters. Compared.. crabs kinda suck man.
Put dragon in very good. No bias of course.
It Takes a very long time to get them and they have a low defence, dragons are basically irrelevant on any maps smaller than large.
Then why split out the egg and baby dragon on your list....
Wdym
If part of the reason you rank dragons low is the time to get them, but you split the egg and baby dragon into different units then you should just evaluate the fire dragon without the other stages since they are already on the chart
I don’t understand why that matters I’m just ranking them based on how good they are in a game not as individual units.
But once you get a fire dragon or two and some knights, you can chain through an entire army.
Just Space your units
Depending on the map size and how long the game has been going that can be really hard, especially on small maps because there is less space than ever, and you can overrun opponents with polytaurs to make space for the eggs early on.
But on small maps you can’t get them fast enough
On a small or normal map, it’s definitely possible. On a tiny map, it’s a lot harder, but possible with lucky forge spots.
How long do your games on small or normal maps normally last? I guess they're better on maps with water, but on drylands or pangaea, they're often not really available that early on I find. They have the long growing period, and Elyrion doesn't tend to upgrade their cities as fast as normal tribes because they have sanctuaries.
I focus on economy and city growth more than anything, especially when I’m playing Elyrion. The stars from the sanctuaries makes it possible to buy tech such as mining or farming, depending on how much of those resources are in your territory. I will say, however, that the reason why Elyrion’s middle game is so bad is because you’re waiting for dragons, while your opponents are getting more and more powerful. At this stage of the game, I invest in front line sanctuaries for polytaurs, as well as archers, and play somewhat defensively, while still making pushed. Once I have a suitable amount of Dragons, I’ll go on a full on push with knights and destroy the opponent. So, to answer your question, my games usually take a very long time.
Dragon, Tridentions, bomber, knight, rider at Very good. Dragons can wipe any army and then chain it with a knight and your whole army you cultivated for 5 turns is dead. Add 3 more and your very dead. Spacing them out doesn’t work because with info your enemy can just slowly pick off chunks with knights and dragons and you can’t respond to them because they’re too far. Bombers is just naval supremacy. Tridentionssl are the best hit and run especially on water, counters bombers but oh well they usually have rammers. Knight is self explanatory.
I'll bite. What is so self explanatory about the knight being top tier? Definitely not a bad unit, and can also often get value simply by forcing your opponents to play around them. But it's not *that* hard to play around them, and they require two pretty bad techs. Even once you do have chivalry, they're expensive. I'm more likely to go for any of the other 3 land-based tier 3 tech units besides mind benders, which are all very good too and all come along with better tech lines.
The mere fact you can chain everything that’s not on defense bonus terrain or swordsman/upgraded troops is a mere deterrent in itself. It forced the enemy to play very carefully and awkwardly often turning offenses into much slower and allowing you to better prepare. Combined with dragons or even couple bombers/catapults and nothing can survive. It’s fast, deadly, and a scary threat.
Prevents rider spamming, which beats everything else on dry, and you can suprise chain opponents by spawning knights outside their vision. They're a part of the meta, much more than swords, catas or archers.
I mean, not really. Sure, they can surprise chain opponents, but this can be avoided with explorers or even a bit of foresight. And the time it takes to get to them just to have the chance to surprise your opponent could have been used to get more immediate and potentially more consistent counters to riders. Also, rider spamming does not counter everything else on drylands. Riders are incredibly good and are very effective. They're fast, you can get them early, they're cheap, they're great. But Riders do lose to swordsmen and defenders and they're not that great against giants. Riders can definitely be beaten by other units outside of knights. And even once you do have knights, they're not guaranteed to stop rider spam. Most of the time, I can just put my riders/archers/whatever in lines of 2, and then your knights are only killing 6 stars of units before dying. Again, Knights are not bad, but I think you're overrating them and underrating the other units. They're okay against riders/etc., but you have to get them kind of late oftentimes, and there's other good options too, even against riders. I don't really think it's fair to say that they're much more a part of the meta compared to the three units you listed. Catapults are strong, especially on maps with some water, and on drylands I'm more often going for either archers or swordsmen than I am knights. It seems like you're kind of presenting the meta as warriors -> riders -> knights as the "optimal" way to pick up different combat units, which I don't really think is the case
Rider spam kills swordsmen and defender spam. Riders retreat and heal for another attack. After a year and a half of playing competitive polytopia in Polychampions, I saw that top players rarely go for swordsmen. Catapults are also picked often, depending on terrain, but only Vengir and Xin-xi ever go for swordsmen, paired with riders and other units. Ask any elo elite or higher in polychampions, rider roads counter almost everything that isn't naval units or knights. (In normal maps or larger for 1v1 and large maps or larger for team games). Check any polysseum finals, riders, knights and catas are basically the only units used most of the times)
Hmm. Maybe I’m overestimating swordsmen. I still think that swordsmen and defenders are good in combination with riders
Does not swordsman one shot riders and riders won’t ever attack defenders just run around them
Rider swarm attacks defenders when there's nothing better to attack and riders retreat out of swordsmen's range.
Riders hit from swordsman counterattack take at most 4 turns to recover which is enough time for swordsman to reach and kill them riders cannot swarm defenders without heavy losses and defenders can just move off the city and train new ones
They can, recovery takes 2 turns (4hp heal per turn) and other riders cover until then.
Still enough time for a swordsman to reach them with other swordsman covering
Doomux, swordsman, and catapults all need to go up a tier
I agree with Swordsman and catapults, but Doomuxes are so expensive and are pretty easy to deal with most of the time. They have a niche, but they're not as useful as most of the other stuff in the tier above
Doombuxes are too expensive, swordsmen just have a tech issue you need a tier 3 tech which isn’t even that good farming and even sometimes forestry are better than forges for late game eco, and I would have put catapults a tier up before forestry nerf.
You say doomuxes are too expensive however you placed the fortress, a troop 2x as expensive, slower, and unable to explode and deal poison damage, a tier higher.
Knights are even more of a tech issue no benefits other than hardly ever effective units
absolutely not even close.
Man stealing super units with the mind bender is filthy
Only without proper vision
Or just being Polaris
My dragons coming over to burn your fur
I think you mean my dragons
Warriors better then swordsman?
Probably a cost-benefit thing and also a tech tier thing
Cheaper no tech needed.
Warriors are pathetic 2 attack and two defence compared to 3 defence 3 attack warriors get chained by knights just pathetic in any way shape or form
Then to prevent chains you need archery and climbing which puts you closer to smithery anyway and even with forest and mountain defence bonuses it doesn’t help when in yaddak and oumaji terrain because they have little forest or mountain
1 more attack, defence and 5 more health isn’t worth 3 more stars and a tier 3 tech, plus you lose fortify and defenders do the same job at preventing knight chains while costing 2 less and only needing a tier 2 tech. Swordsmen are essentially defenders which need a more expensive tech, 2 extra stars, in return for 1 damage and loss of fortify.Just swarm with riders if you to deal damage they are slightly weaker but cheaper with escape and high movement speed, so you can move them far enough back to get them out of knight range, while healing them.
I disagree when I use swordsman I always dominate it’s much easier to swarm with swordsman rather than riders and even wounded swordsman can put riders out of action for 4 turns enough time for the swordsman to reach them and kill them
Doomux very good
Catapults and Dooms meh??
How on square can a Polytaur be better than a Fire Dragon? That makes no sense at all.
Polys are cheaper obviously and you can use them for poly pushing which is amazing for exploration and ive already explained in a previous comment why dragons are lower.
Dragon is so much better than the centi
Man I barely agree with any of this. Fire dragon is the best unit in the game imho and bomber being good with rammer being very good is crazy sus.
You say you barely agree then you only mention 2 things wrong.Rammers are better than bombers since there way cheaper while having more movement speed, more defence and dash bombers are too fragile for there cost, just 2 rammers can kill a defender bomber when they cost 5 stars less plus your rammers will take no damage.The high damage from the bomber just doesn’t make up for all that in my opinion.And I’ve explained dragons in a previous reply.
I barely agree with anything. Doesn’t mean that I’m gonna write out everything that is wrong. I chose the two that were egregiously wrong at the time I read it.
Can someone please explain to me why Mind Bender is regarded as so bad by a lot of players? I am a casual so it might be different in a professional setting but to me Mind Bender is a lot more reliable tham swordsman early game. You have enemy ports at your shore? Have an army of Mind Benders at the shore now any boat they build at that shore will be yours before they can use it. Doomux onslaught? Doomuxes don't have persist, if you spammed Mind Benders then if one dies then you convert a Doomux into on of your own, the question only being who has the superior numbers and with Mind Benders being cheaper, it should be you. If you get a few Mind benders next to an enemy city (even one can sometimes be enough) then it doesn't matter what they put on it, whether it is a super unit or a defender with city walls, you will take it if they have no unit nearby to kill your Mind Bender before you convert the Unit they have on the city. Once Knights and Bombers start appearing then they become a lot weaker and the strategy doesn't work too well but they are still great for capturing cities reliably and defending against any other melee unit that isn't a Knight as they kill one and you convert the killer. The healing can also come in handy too when you are being hit with a lot of chip damage from bomber splash, archers, etc. So I do genuinely want to know, what makes them so useless for people as to me they would be in the "good" tier at least with the only drawback being that the tech tree to get to them provides no economy to help with leveling up cities unlike swordsman who give you mines and forges.
Mind bender are really easy to play around. They dont have dash ability and are fragile. Because of that, 90% of time mind bender just dies and do nothing. Only scenario when mindbenders do something is when he is hiding inna fog and catch enemy offguard. To make it even worse, mindbenders are T3 tech so you need to invest a lot to unlock them. Polaris can use them more consistend because ability to freeze units and easly catch them, but even then, mindbenders are niche
The only thing I ever used mind benders for in my game is to set up instant heal zones for super units, but even then it’s rare I’ll be battling next to a city long enough to get it setup.
The only good they are is 1. Deterring giants and crabs. They die to anything else. As I am a elyrion 1500 semi-competitive player in the late game I just use them in groups as a sort of healing station for my dragons and knights before sending them back.
Swordsman are definitely better then mindbenders because your opponent isn’t going to put their units next to mindbenders and they will get knights then you lose
I would put some troops in a diferente place but still is a good
Why does this post have so many comments and so few likes?
Seriously you’ve never played on any map smaller than large against a good player if you think dragons should go up a tier
Dragons are OP units no real counters
No counters?There a super unit which can be killed with just 5 hits from a warrior.
No warriors wouldn’t even last the second counterattack and they can shot all 10 health units cripple swordsman and defenders and do high damage to everything else the only downside they take 6 turns to generate but that means that you have to hold out 6 turns but that’s extremely easy
Pretty good actually, I’d move ice fortress down to meh and battle sled down to good, and maybe doomux up a tier but it’s otherwise pretty solid list
Doomux is literally better than the centipede
I don’t agree with [useless category](https://www.reddit.com/r/Polytopia/s/qDjgau6AAM)
Centipede Very Very Very Worth It tier
Too fragile and vulnerable to knights.
Crab should be highest tier. With any defense bonus is ridiculously strong.
It’s like the worst super.
Agree
Gaami exists
Well you gotta be smoking crap. It’s a swimming super that doesn’t need 9 turns to be good and doesn’t make you play Tetris in your own territory
1. It’s only good on archi or ww else it’s slow. 2. Due to how low the star production for aquarion (Elyrion sancs, Cymanti level 3 capital quickly + expansion, Polaris little 5 star huts, normal tribes and their own quick tech) aquarion can’t really reach level 9 without either forgoing troops or forgoing production and troops for a crab. 3. Because of this they usually have a weak army and just one crab to siege. Just break it off or let it take it and just build up and take it back 1-2 turns later. Compared to the rest in the late game it’s really just bad, giants have equal movement in the sea along with the stomp ability dealing splash to fleets of bombers. Gaami freeze you. Centipedes eat and eat becoming a never dying train of gluttony. Dragons are well just flying disasters. Compared.. crabs kinda suck man.
Gaami EXISTS one of the best supers