I hate elephants

Praets can't stand the shock-axe horror.

They can with cats or trebs backing them up. I might add crossbows to the stack if you're being particularly ornery.
 
Well Prats are incredibly powerful but at least they are a UU.
 
That's not a minus (-) sign Mylene...

What i ment was, Ellies cannot match Curis.
1 vs. 2 movement points, both on str 2 = Curi wins 2/3 battles :)

I do not think they are overpowered, Spearmen in cities win without siege, good unit for Elepults and protecting your stack, but with Cats most units would work for city cleanup.
+ Ivory has more trade value for AIs.
 
The reason why hate elephant is because, when I use them (principally against camel archer and spearman (they still have 50% chances to win)), they ALWAYS lose:(:mad:
 
Each ele just requires me to build 2 spears. An annoyance but not the end of the world. And when pikemen come along that's them all over.
 
For game balance, why is it necessary to have a unit that can defeat every single unit of its era (classic) easily, and that can even give a very hard time to units in the next era (maces, crossbows, longbows, knights)...even knights for heavens' sake! A knight is supposed to be the pinnacle of medieval power, they require the most advanced tech and most resources to build, and they get countered by a classic age unit, I just think it's a horrible game design decision.
 
Elephants get a hefty bonus against mounted, which I understand to be historically accurate, so there is some precedent behind their dominance. You could say the scarcity of Ivory helps to limit their appearance some what, it's not like elephants were common place in medieval conflict.
 
Elephants get a hefty bonus against mounted, which I understand to be historically accurate, so there is some precedent behind their dominance. You could say the scarcity of Ivory helps to limit their appearance some what, it's not like elephants were common place in medieval conflict.

There is some historical precedent for mounted units to dislike elephants and perform worse against them than other enemies, but a historical precedent for *dominance*?

:lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol:

No.

Besides, the scarcity of ivory only exacerbates this idiot problem, more so because it clumps too. HURRRRR here have a MONOPOLY on a unit that is not countered until 1000's and 1000's of :science: LATER on the tech tree, when most counters to units come at comparable or earlier times! Failaxis says HURRRRRRR!

We wind up with a unit that is WAY stronger than it ever was in history, and that completely @#$#s on the small semblance of tech tree balance progression for the first half of the game, given at RANDOM to a small % of players on any given map. You don't see an issue with this? Really?
 
Come on TMIT, just because it's a scarce resource doesn't mean that it will spawn in player controlled lands every time. When it does it lends itself to monopoly (rofl-stomp), but there will be plenty of games where elephants won't be a factor. Unless I'm missing something here and the AI is adept at using elephants? I only play single-player so that's my reference frame.
 
Come on TMIT, just because it's a scarce resource doesn't mean that it will spawn in player controlled lands every time. When it does it lends itself to monopoly (rofl-stomp), but there will be plenty of games where elephants won't be a factor. Unless I'm missing something here and the AI is adept at using elephants? I only play single-player so that's my reference frame.

This posts acts as if this game is SP only.

And while the AI is not stellar with elephants, it does get inflated odds from them in a region of the world that already has great land quality.

However, in the general sense any random mechanic that happens rarely but is completely game changing it utter idiocy in a *strategy* game.
 
Okay for game-play they are a trash unit, and now someone was talking about historical accuracy? Please. I'm quite a history buff and although elephants were used in war reasonably often during the classic age they certainly were not dominating. They were often just far too few in number to have any serious presence on the battlefield. The only wars in which they played a prominent role were the Punic Wars and when Alexander invaded India, and please note that in both these cases the army that fielded elephants lost badly.
 
I didn't mean to offend the history buffs, I just mean to say that an elephant's smell and loudness added an intimidation factor to the battlefield, which horses might find unnerving. Perhaps this was the thinking behind giving them a bonus against other mounted.
 
Well, the only ones with elephants in the time period of the medieval ages were the ones in the far east (and a small part of Africa I think), so I think it's far that ivory only spawns in a small clump. On the other hand, yes they were dominant (against most infantry at least) in their time period, but they weren't counterless. If any of you have ever played the Total War series, they have elephants in those games, and they have a realistic counter to it - fire. In this game, the only time-ready counter to elephants would be Spearmen, but they aren't really a counter due to the number you need to take out the elephants. So yes, they're overpowered.


I didn't mean to offend the history buffs, I just mean to say that an elephant's smell and loudness added an intimidation factor to the battlefield, which horses might find unnerving. Perhaps this was the thinking behind giving them a bonus against other mounted.
I understand the reasoning behind this, except I believe 50% is overwhelming.

Also, if everything has a counter besides these trashiphants, then what's the counter to axemen...? (besides other tactically positioned axemen)
 
Is that in Vanilla? I never realized that...

No, Chariots didn't have the bonus against Axes in Vanilla, but they do in BTS. Don't remember Warlords (tells how often I played Warlords).

Elephants were very intimidating on the ancient battlefield but were notoriously difficult to control. One tactic was to injure the Elephant so he'd attack his own troops. IIRC Hannibal didn't have many Elephants by the time he got to Italy - he used other tactics to win.
 
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