peter450:
Again, I have to take issue with your assumptions. Your point about Elephants at Construction coming way after Swordsmen at Iron presupposes that you're going to attack strong points with Swordsmen and Axes rather than with a stack using Catapults. With few exceptions, the window of opportunity for that is rather small, and the Praetorian's higher hammer cost works against it in that scenario where attacking sooner is of the utmost importance.
If you're going to wait for Catapults anyway, then there is only a marginal advantage - you will need to queue Ellies after Cons, whereas you can build Swordsmen before, though it's not like you can't build other buildings instead of Swordsmen (like Stables, for instance).
Against Longbows, Combat 3 Ellies and CR3 Swordsmen will have similar odds - I'll take your word for it because I'm too lazy to check the math.
The point here is that
you don't HAVE CR3 Swordsmen. What you usually have, especially if you build them early is CR1 Swordsmen, and you're going to be running that against Combat2 Elephants, which favors the Elephant far more.
Aggressive Swordsmen fare better, but even then the Elephant has field advantages - a Combat 2 Elephant is BOTH city attack unit and stack defense, whereas a CR Swordsman is a more specialized unit - it's really only good for attacking cities.
Praets with CR are far better than elephants at city assault
Were the elephant scores well, is in it's open terrain str were praet aside its high str will win out vs all but spears, but it's a niche unit and ultimately one that see less use due to high cost, for the price of 6 elephants you can have 9 swords
I would much rather have the Elephants. I use it to devastating effect whenever I have the chance, and it's not because I like it for the graphics or anything. I've tested it out in similar scenarios by saving and reloading the scenario - doing the war various ways.
6 Combat2 Elephants are available to any Civ with Ivory, and are comparable to an Agg's Swordsmen when attacking cities, while also being comparable to
Pikemen for anti-mounted and general stack defense.
It's the Swordsman that's the niche unit here - it's only good for attacking cities. A stack of Swordsmen and Catapults is just asking for a HA/Axeman smackdown. Axemen make that stack more resistant, but it's still very vulnerable to HA attack (and especially Knight attack).
An Ellie is useful stack defense and city attack. An Elephant/Axeman/Cata stack is very strong against attacks and is powerful against cities at the same time, for less units.
You do not have to take my word for it. WB Ivory in any one of your games and try out the Ellies with Stables - they're very excellent units.