How to defend against Elephants?

[Sinyail]

Hi all, in my last game I was playing as Cyrus of Persia. I was doing fine. Building shiny monuments and conquering the occasional warmongers city or two when all of the sudden, bang! I was hit from the south with a SOD full of swordsmen, horse archers, catapults and elephants. All a courtesy from Suleiman. I tend to really focus on my defense because I hate it when the ai gets close to taking on of my cities, but I really could not find a counter to these elephants. I had my usual catapults, axemen, spearmen, and Immortals in reserve waiting for an enemy ai SOD, so I moved them into attack position. Catapults went first. I had roughly 5 of each unit. I ate through his SOD, but suffered heavy losses as a result. I enjoy preserving many of my units from the beginning of the game all the way to the end. Much like a specialized team of Achilles but Suleimans elephant SOD prevented me from doing this and to a large extent. Any advice on defeating the mighty war elephant? I mean spearmen, reall? A base 4 strength versus base 8? What gives? I was still a few techs away from getting Pikemen. Elephants are available much sooner than pikemen and the only obvious counter to them is the spearman, but spearmen really are not a good counter at all to massive attacking elephants. Please help a hurting warmonger out

 

[krikav]

How to counter elephants.

Spearman, +100% vs mounted units makes them 8 stength, which is equal to the elephant, and they are much cheaper.
Pikeman after that, but as you said, they come later.
A third alternative is to counter elephants with elephants.


In your situation, there is probably no way to come out of such a struggle unscarred, you will have losses.
Having losses might not be prestigious, but it wins wars, and there is much to be said about winning wars.

 

[Sinyail]

Ahh well said. As I suspected. Wars usually are not very clean I guess hehe. I'm going to amass catapults.. I will show those elephants.

 

[coanda]

5 spears (175 hammers) will do just fine against 3 elephants (180 hammers). What doesn't work is 3 spears against 3 elephants. That's because you were reckless and let your enemy build up twice the size of military you have, not because the elephants are invincible.

 

[Dirk1302]

Better defend a city against a stack like this. Spears are a good counter to phants but if you attack a stack in the field spears will be countered by axes. You also lose lots of cats against phants in the field due to the high base strength of phants. Be sure you have enough units in the city or collateral from ai stacks will hit too hard.

 

[vranasm]

over the months I found out that diplomacy is the cheapest form of defense...

 

[TiglathPileser]

over the months I found out that diplomacy is the cheapest form of defense...

And when all else fails, longbows.

 

[OneLeggedRhino]

On defense: Spears.

On offense: Catapults and swords, particularly vs the stack you described. Promote the cats for more collateral damage, and make sure you have enough of them to damage all his units, and enough swords to finish them off. (So basically, a stack as big as his).

Edit: Rawr! Rhinos beat elephants, even with 3 legs missing!

 

[Kid R]

I saw the thread "how do you defend against elephants" and the most recent reply was "one legged rhino". I had to take a look but it was not as exciting a thread as that

Obviously another good advice is if there are elehants between you and the next civ make damn sure you settle them and not the next civ. Ignore much better sites. Eles are visible from turn 1, and there's 1 thrown in too so it's never a total waste of a settler anyway.

 

[vicawoo]

The turn before he attack you (your city or stack), attack with all your catapults, but let the rest of your units defend.

Now it's half health elephants vs spears, half health swords vs axes, and so on.

That's the most cost efficient way to defend.

 

[OneLeggedRhino]

The turn before he attack you (your city or stack), attack with all your catapults, but let the rest of your units defend.

Now it's half health elephants vs spears, half health swords vs axes, and so on.

That's the most cost efficient way to defend.

I don't mean to be dense, but wouldn't he just take 3 turns and heal? I mean, that's what I do when the AI attacks my stack. Does the AI just ignore the damage and attack anyway?

 

[s.bernbaum]

I don't mean to be dense, but wouldn't he just take 3 turns and heal? I mean, that's what I do when the AI attacks my stack. Does the AI just ignore the damage and attack anyway?

In my experience, the AI will attack, no matter how badly damaged, once it has a stack adjacent to a city. I have watched entire AI stacks destroy themselves by continuously attacking a well defended city of another AI. OTOH, when there is no one to attack immediately, they will stop and heal. I have stopped SOD advances that were crossing neutral territory simply by bombing them on every turn. They were continuously healing and never moved.

 

[Zx Zero Zx]

Smash a couple cats at his stack and kill it in the field.

 

[Gumbolt]

Let's not forget you can still give spears +10/20% and +25% vs mounted once at level 3?

Overall Vranasm got it right. Diplomacy is key. Never start a war unless you think you can crush the AI easily. Never let your power rating compared to an Ai get to 0.4 or below. Some Ai below pleased will attack.

This is even more likely if you refuse help or adopt your own religion too soon. Don't be afraid to gift pointless cities to Ai for peace. pointless cities in tundra are harmless.

Overall I think 1-2 catapult spent on a stack is fine. Don't suicide 4-5 and

 

[Mylene]

Usually you don't want to attack his stack if it is well balanced, the AI is stupid enough to attack you in fortified cities, forested hills etc.

Spears are not expensive at this point, you can build enoguh to make his stack suicide and to stop roaming HAs.

 

[coanda]

Never let your power rating compared to an Ai get to 0.4 or below.

A good guideline if you're in a rush. If you're really paying close attention to the game, there shouldn't be a need for more military than you need to provide happiness in cities and barb defense, except when you are anticipating a war soon.