Greetings! My name is Farsight, and welcome to my Guide.

I have played Conquest of Elysium 3 (COE3) for almost a 1000 hours now. While I've had a chance to play all the classes, I definitely have my favorites, and my not so favorites. Still, I hope that I'll be able to give them all an equally good and fair showing, without too much bias.

:::::Description:::::

The Dwarf Queens (known ingame as the Dvala) are the literal mothers of the Dwarf race, they give birth to fully matured Dwarfs each and every turn. Each Dwarf Colony can only have one queen, and it is expensive (250 gold) to found new colonies, which can be founded in larger mines (coal mine is too small).

So why play the Dwarf class? Because, it's DWARVES!!! They're Awesome!!!

Well they're okay... -ish...

The Dwarfs start off as above average infantry that have the potential to produce better and good solid infantry, but that's it, that's all they'll ever do. They have the potential to thrive massively in the early game, but will likely die off before the early-mid game. They're in the same boat as the Baron and Senator, they simply lack the capability to create competitive mid and late game units.

So really, why play the Dwarf class?

1.) You like Dwarfs.
2.) You hate games that go on forever. (You're either going to win or lose, really quickly.)
3.) You want to get all up in your opponents face as soon as possible and bury an axe in their skull.
4.) Your either a glutton for punishment, or you appreciate the challenge.

:::::Millitary:::::

Firstly, Dwarfs aren't drafted, their spawned... Like so:
Each turn the Dvala will produce a Dwarf Worker. These Workers can be upgraded in blocks of 1-5 using the the Recruitment tab screen. You'll always be charged the price for 5, so it's best to wait until you actually have 5 before issuing the recruitment order. The Queens can later be upgraded to Wives of Dvala that'll give birth to three times as many Workers per turn.

So how does the Dwarf Millitary function based on that? Remarkably well actually.

Dwarfs start with several squads, almost a full line of infantry, and can defeat most of the lower tiered Neutral guards, along with some of the mid-tiered ones. They're just that good in the early game, that if they start too close to another player, even the Troll King, they can take them out of the game with ease.

Their military structure is simple:

Dwarf Worker > Dwarf Warrior > (Then one of three elite versions)
Dwarf Worker > Dwarf Guards > (Then one of three elite versions)
Dwarf Worker > Dwarf Arbalests (Really strong ranged unit)
Dwarf Worker > Balistas

The Balista gets special mention for being better than the Catapult (it deals lower damage, but shoots twice) and is recruited in squads of two, albeit at double the cost.

Special mention also to the elite units which come in one of three flavors: Cold Restance, Fire Restance and Chosen of Dvala (super elites).

:::::Economy:::::

The Dwarf economy is driven by Gems, fueled by Iron (of which they recieve a 100% production boost), and bolstered by Trade.

While you can purchase Mercenaries with Gold, for the most part you'll be ignoring Gold generating structures (Settlements) in favor of Iron/Gem generating structures (Mines) and Trade (Larger Settlements) which you'll use to buy more Gems, or if you're really desperate, Iron. That's not to say that Gold is useless, you'll still need to found new Colonies to spawn more Workers.

The most important resource is Iron, which is used to upgrade all your units from Workers into something better. Then there's Diamonds which are used for all your important unit mastery upgrades, to spawn new Rune Smiths (only they can found Colonies and upgrade elite units) and to Sense Mines (an ability that reveals Mines hidden by the fog of war).

:::::Strategy:::::

The Dwarf Queen's strategy is relatively simple and straightforward.

1.) Capture Mines.
2.) Upgrade Workers.
3.) Trade Gold for Gems.
4.) Upgrade Guards/Warriors to elites.
5.) Use elite units to steamroll opponents.
6.) Rinse and repeat until Victory is secured.

Your strength is rapid accelerated breakneck speed expansionism, focused solely on one agenda: To immeadiately search out and destroy your opponent by capturing all their Capitials.

This class was so good at bum rushing opponents that they had to nerf it by making the Balista take 100% longer to obtain, which gave opponents at least some time to build up a decent defense.

What makes them so good, is that they can purchase Leaders with 100% accuracy at the cost of only 10 Gems. Potentially, allowing them to spam Leaders and spread them out to zero in on opponents Capitials.

Also, they can form the largest, best equiped army straight from the start by leaving only the Dvala behind, who will passively spawn new workers each turn to replace the ones that you've ran away with.

Update 1 (12/02/2017) - I corrected a spelling mistake.

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