Resolved: The Ballista Elephant Is the Crappiest UU in the Game

[Bhruic]

@Bhruic
If I recall Numidian Mercenaries in BTS have str 6, and with +50%vsMelee and 20% withdrawal are real kicker, only problem is to get enough gold to tech Horseback Riding and Archery AND other worker/early wonder techs.

Nope, Numidian Cavalry are str 5. They do, however, have the 50% vs Melee, and start with Flanking I. The strength reduction was almost certainly so that they didn't overpower Spearmen (if str 6, the fight would have been equal, with the NM gaining with any Combat promotions).

Bh

 

[futurehermit]

they are a lame uu in single player. in multiplayer they are *slightly* better.

first of all you have the rareness of ivory.

second of all, it's not like the ai (prior to cavalry) send a large stack at you that is made up of > 5% horse-based units.

so what are you supposed to do with this unit, leave one in each city to pick off the single horse archers that the ai sends in on pillage duty???

regular elephants and spears do that.

so i'm left wondering what this unit does exactly to justify it being a uu--and a rarely-used one at that given the rareness of ivory.

i expect a uu that depends on a rare resource to be much better than this one.

 

[Bhruic]

You don't get HA/Knights in the enemy stacks? You're pretty lucky then, I get hit with them fairly frequently. Not that I've been playing the Khmer when I was, but I can definitely see where they would have been useful. Much more so than Jaguars or Carracks are in my games, anyway.

Bh

 

[Diamondeye]

Just out of curiosity: why? I mean I prefer fractal myself, it always gives a very unique landmass spread that actually looks like it could happen in nature, as opposed to the standard 2-3 ovals of continents, but I am curious why Boreal or Ice Age maps are bad.

I guess it's just no my kind of game, freezing to death in your size 3 cities, no food, no hammers, no commerce, at writing at 1AD... Let's put it that way. I prefer the Arboria or Donut where everything is fertile compared to Boreal and Ica Age where everything is, well... Cold and dead.

 

[Desert-Fox]

The only situation when Ballistaes are useful.. when you get declared on and the enemy comes with a large stack of doom where are for example 15 knights, 10 musketmen, 10 catapults/trebs, and you have 15 ballistaes in defence. But still when you kill of the knights, enemy still has cats and musketmen. And when the musketmen are on hills/forest, then you suck anyway. If the ballistaes have some chance to do flank attack then they had more use.

 

[danieldaniel]

For me the most useless UU is the fastworker, because I always play marathon, where improvements take a lot longer to build but fw save you the same amount of turns as in normal speed.
I never tried the ballistas, but the AI tends to use a lot of horses, so i guess they could be very usefull.

 

[madscientist]

Well, I am late to add to this argument but my opinion of the unit

1) Lack of Ivory. Similar to egyptians or persians without early horses.
2) Immune to spear/pikes when attacking an enemy stack which includes mounted units.
3) Can be killed by spears when attacking a city that has mounted units.

Proposed changes (just listing options, not saying all should be included

1) Immune to pike 100% attack (but no spear). So the war elephant would have an edge over pikes, even money against spears. Eliminate the current targeting benefit.
2) Movement of 2. remove current targeting.
3) Allow current benefit to be applied to cities, meaning targeting mounted units.
4) Normal war elephant that can be built without ivory, but limit ability to 25% versus mounted units. Still stomps horse archers but even money versus knights.

As it stands I will agree with the original poster that this UU is the weakest in the game. An odd unit for an odd leader.

 

[bovinespy]

they are a lame uu in single player. in multiplayer they are *slightly* better.

first of all you have the rareness of ivory.

second of all, it's not like the ai (prior to cavalry) send a large stack at you that is made up of > 5% horse-based units.

so what are you supposed to do with this unit, leave one in each city to pick off the single horse archers that the ai sends in on pillage duty???

regular elephants and spears do that.

so i'm left wondering what this unit does exactly to justify it being a uu--and a rarely-used one at that given the rareness of ivory.

i expect a uu that depends on a rare resource to be much better than this one.

Thank you. Somebody groks me .

 

[ShunNakamura]

If we are talking changes; my question is why do elephants have special effects against horses anyways. Were they not usually used to break infantry lines? Also were not the usually panic the elephant tactics employed by cavalry[I know infantry also utilized it when necessary however].

I know mister Ballista was used to pierce cavalry quite often however, would you not think it would also be equally effective on infantry troops.

My proposal would be to make the B. Elephant a siege-collateral weapon that has bonuses against cavalry[like the korean rocket weapon that I can never recall how to spell/say and its bonus vs. Melee... I would let the B. Elephant kill though... I don't think I would get back up if I had a ballista projectile shot through me]. It would have less defense reduction than a catapult but could be used that way. My reasoning is that B. elephants likely didn't charge the frontlines[why but a siege engine on the thing if you are going to use it to charge?]. Thus, they were likely used from a distance as portable, movable Ballista[Ballista could be a pain to transport and set up].

 

[KrikkitTwo]

^ I'd go with giving the Ballista Elephant collateral damage (works with the name) and can use Terrain Defense

Because the unit is so rare it needs to be made better.

The ability would be Great if you gave it to a Spear or Pike unit

 

[Andvare]

If we are talking changes; my question is why do elephants have special effects against horses anyways. Were they not usually used to break infantry lines? Also were not the usually panic the elephant tactics employed by cavalry[I know infantry also utilized it when necessary however].

I know mister Ballista was used to pierce cavalry quite often however, would you not think it would also be equally effective on infantry troops.

My proposal would be to make the B. Elephant a siege-collateral weapon that has bonuses against cavalry[like the korean rocket weapon that I can never recall how to spell/say and its bonus vs. Melee... I would let the B. Elephant kill though... I don't think I would get back up if I had a ballista projectile shot through me]. It would have less defense reduction than a catapult but could be used that way. My reasoning is that B. elephants likely didn't charge the frontlines[why but a siege engine on the thing if you are going to use it to charge?]. Thus, they were likely used from a distance as portable, movable Ballista[Ballista could be a pain to transport and set up].

I believe that the reason for the mounted bonus is the same as it is in the TW series, namely that these big fellars causes panic in horses, and as such, makes it hard for the horsies to charge. Probably based on Alexander's problems in India.

And you probably wouldn't get back up either, if a catapult hit ya.

 

[MrFrodo]

I agree it is teh suxxor

If you compare it with something like the Persian Immortals which you have an awesome chance of using for a super-effective, lightning fast rush pre-BC which can give you an additional capital city and space to grow and ride to a victory in the game it is no contest.

On the other hand, I don't want my Immortal stack to run into those guys

 

[Tecibbar]

Balista Elephat is the UU that has the longest life span in game. It is cost effectly even against calvary. You can just keep building it and never worries that it goes obsolete. It has few counter. AI build horeses a lot. Ivory is easy to acquire; Just explore early and keep good relationship with whoever owns the elephant farm. AI is much more willing to trade ivory than other strategy resourse. I would say it is overpowered.

It is only useless if your play style is keeping concequring new cities. I usually keep my elephant near home, so my cities won't get pilliaged.

 

[axident]

I don't play Khmer but if their UB and other traits and stuff are good, perhaps this is the throwaway element to make up for the powerful Khmer UU/traits/starting techs? Khmer UB is some sort of +1 food aqueduct or something right? That's very powerful; think of it as +1/2 a specialist, including +1.5 GP/turn. Hunting/Mining.. well you could definitely do worse than that. Cre/Exp doesn't seem that powerful to me, but maybe in the right hands it would be; the AI Khmer often do well in my games.

Other combos: the Dutch for instance: East Indiamen aren't that much better than galleons, and starting with Fishing/Agriculture is below average. However, their Cre/Fin/Dike combo is excellent.

Or how about France, another favorite of mine. The UB is good (salon - free artist to go with observatory; does well with cultural victories, pushing culture in general, and it's +4 baseline beakers with Representation). The traits depend on the leader but they aren't overpowered. But the UU is a somewhat lame musketeer which is a 2-movement musketman.

 

[futurehermit]

Good, someone reminded me that the khmer elephant's bonus only applies in the open field and not for sacking cities.

Wow, that's an amazing bonus:

1) If the AI has horses in his stacks

and

2) If you spend a lot of time on the defense getting attacked during the medieval age by huge stacks

#1 rarely happens frankly and #2 shouldn't happen if you are good at monitoring your diplo situation

YOU should be the one on the offense

as a result, the regular war elephant is just as effective in 99% of the situations you will encounter in a normal game as the uu.

and whoever said the jaguar isn't that good hasn't used them effectively. in fact they can be quite good when used properly and especially when you are lacking copper and/or iron. the fact that they can be built immediately in all cities once you have IW means a pretty darned quick rush. and that's all you need really to get going early and start developing a larger empire (= key to winning imo)

 

[slobberinbear]

and whoever said the jaguar isn't that good hasn't used them effectively. in fact they can be quite good when used properly and especially when you are lacking copper and/or iron. the fact that they can be built immediately in all cities once you have IW means a pretty darned quick rush. and that's all you need really to get going early and start developing a larger empire (= key to winning imo)

Montezuma's Revenge: An Aztec Guide for Beyond the Sword

 

[Bhruic]

#1 rarely happens frankly and #2 shouldn't happen if you are good at monitoring your diplo situation

YOU should be the one on the offense

I wish people would quit judging by their own experiences and assuming that everyone has the same thing happen. I generally play with 2x the number of "default" AIs (in fact, I changed the default to that amount), which makes for a more crowded game. A more crowded game makes for more wars, and I am going to get declared on at some point. This frequently happens in the early/mid medieval times. And when there are 6+ Civs in your immediate vicinity, I can't be "on the offensive" against all of them simultaneously. Nor can you manage to appease that many Civs diplomatically.

So in a situation where you are going to be forced to be on the defensive, the Khmer Elephant is a good defensive choice. Again, maybe you don't have many Horse Archer/Knights in your AI stacks, but I frequently do. The ability to specifically target them is off significant tactical advantage.

and whoever said the jaguar isn't that good hasn't used them effectively. in fact they can be quite good when used properly and especially when you are lacking copper and/or iron. the fact that they can be built immediately in all cities once you have IW means a pretty darned quick rush. and that's all you need really to get going early and start developing a larger empire (= key to winning imo)

If you've had time to research IW, then it's not a "quick rush". But yes, if you happen to find yourself without copper or iron, then having a resourceless unit is good. On the other hand, I can count on my hand the number of times I've been without both copper and iron. Of course, I'll be the first to point out that your experiences might be different. But the reality is, despite their resourceless nature, and their free Woodsman I, they are a decidely sub-par variant of the normal Swordsman. If I have a choice between building a Swordsman or building a Jaguar, there is no situation where I'd choose the Jaguar. That certainly doesn't qualify them as a good UU in my books.

Bh

 

[kniteowl]

I suddenly had a strange Idea why not make jaguars have +1 str with Iron... so if you have Iron hooked up all Jaguars become 6 str... I wonder if that'd make then overpowered... well they can't be as overpowering as the Prat lol.

 

[Bhruic]

Can't see why that would make them overpowered. Basically they'd become a Swordsman with free Woodsman I. About the same as the Gallic Warrior, and I don't think you'll see too many people claiming they are overpowered.

The only problem would be whether the game supports actually adding strength to a unit based on resource availability. I can't think of any examples where that currently happens.

Bh

 

[futurehermit]

If you play with 2x the # of default AIs then yes diplomacy becomes more difficult, however should still not be neglected, and I would still say that the odds of you 1) getting ivory and 2) getting hit with huge stacks of horse-based units is highly situational at best.

Can the b. elephant be useful if x + if y + if z + if a + if b + if c + etc. infinity?

Yes, of course. But is it still the worst uu in the game, maybe next to the carrack which really blows also imo? Yes, of course.

And researching IW is something you can easily do in time for an early rush if you beeline it. Simply go mining-BW-IW with monty while whipping out a couple settlers and then come back to the ag-ah-fish (if nec) path to get your food online and go nuts. I've easily hit a close AI around the same time as I normally would with axes. You just have to tech a bit differently. Being able to delay the wheel for example is research turns you can put into IW and not having to develop and hook up copper means you can delay workers initially (unless you want to chop your settlers out which is not a bad idea although it is situational) until your food techs come online.