AI Elephants are OP.

[SkyInfernal]

Elephants always ravage my early wars no matter what is the situation, so I decide to test out just how strong elephants are.

About 50 turns egypt breaks our peace tready for no reason. He then arrives with 3 ele's. I have about 5~6 legionairs, and amazingly a single elephant proceeds to kill them 1 by 1.

So this is the situation while defending with legions~ (4/2/1)

1 Forted in a jungle/river.
1 forted in a mounter.
1 fortes in a hill
1 walkin in the woods, two more in plains/grasslands.

So the timid ele gets a kill on a grassland legion no problem, but he gets to low red and forts, i move in with the second legion near by, next turn he hits him with no damage return. Few turns later the damaged ele now in high green health kills my hill-forted legion. Finally i kill him with the hill legion, who gets killed by the second ele in the next turn (him @ grassland, me at hills.) Gets the second ele to deep yellow.

I then decide to fight in my city, bad idea.

Third ele jumps in, kills phalanx, i proceed to kill him with last legion, while still in town. The second ele now in high green proceeds to what I call "HEASHOT" my legion, taking ZERO DAMAGE attacking a forted legion in a size 4 town. Ele then proceeds to kill that city and the next before i contain them.

Eventually i run them out and kill them, but the point remains, WTFBBQ elephants.

TL/DR 3 eles can EASILY destroy 5~10 units, even if forted in a city, so watch it..I guess.

Thoughts?

 

[luke2345]

never get legions!! only get elephants

 

[Prof. Garfield]

Luke is correct that legions are not worth building (if you need a "middle of the road" unit, archers have similar capabilities for 10s less). AI elephants may appear overpowered, but humans can get much better results out of them. In civ 2, defending is a losing proposition in most cases, the exceptions being walled cities and fortresses on good terrain. You build defensive units mostly so that the enemy is slowed down, while you amass attacking units to counterattack.

The best military counter to elephants I can think of are horsemen. They are half the cost, have 2 movement points, and can kill elephants when attacking. Either horsemen separated by a few squares can hunt elephants (if one gets killed, another can kill the elephant, or the horse gets to attack first), or you can keep horsemen in cities with a defensive unit with greater defense (fortified warriors if the horse is a rookie, or phalanx), let that unit get killed, and then kill the elephant with the horseman.

More advanced strategies involve letting frontier cities be captured and bribing them back with diplomats for a low price (and getting the units in the city as a bargain). In the most extreme variants, most cities get no defenses and the saved resources get invested in more cities, giving your empire the resources to make a swift counterattack once you know where the enemy is.

 

[SkyInfernal]

legions are not worth building

But....but...but...they match the sound they make when they attack

I just felt like spamming them that game, tired of going eles into crusaders with leonardos. guess its not worth it, at all, but it was still fun. In the end you can win with pretty much any unit, as long as you bait the AI into your guys and keep it in rough terrain its easy going. Also, veteran legions are underrated