Why are War Elephants weaker than wild Elephants?

[Skitters]

capture a couple early enough and have them work in tandom pillaging enemy by taking advantage of their HN status and they make a nice little - not exactly discrete - "black ops" units

 

[Valkrionn]

wish to had the mammoths from age of ice back in game

Mammoths are actually in FFPlus (Slightly stronger than Elephants, Amurite mammoth rider art used for everyone but Illians and Doviello), and I BELIEVE it's in Orbis as well, but I wouldn't quote me on that.

 

[psychoak]

Think of it like a total, the elephant has eight strength on defense, the war elephant has six on both offense and defense.

Logical problem solved.

 

[Tasunke]

Im not agreeing or disagreeing with the OP, but it would be nice for these rare petunits, WarElephants, to be upgradable to something stronger at a later tech.

 

[Lord Alvon]

In fall further, the animal units gain strength the longer they remain uncaptured. As long as you wait a while to capture your elephant, you can have it have 13-15 strength... which is a disincentive to capture it for early conquest. Hmmm....