A thought on adjusting anti-Elephant bonus damage

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
1

The original +60 bonus damage against Elephants for Halbs was designed around Persian War Elephants, but is (IMO) too high for Battle Elephants and other Elephant variants. This leads to Battle Elephants struggling a lot even in late-game against Halb spam, with even Bengalis having a lot of trouble (especially after they lost Parthian Tactics).

I think that the bonus damage of various units against the Elephant armor class should be reduced, but that the devs should also add a new “Heavy Elephant” armor class exclusive to War Elephants. Then, for whatever anti-Elephant bonus damage was lost, those counter units could deal extra bonus damage to the “Heavy Elephant” armor class.

For example, Halbs presently get +28 vs Elephants (along with their +32 vs Cavalry). This could be reduced to, say, +18 vs Elephants, and then the Halbs would also get +10 vs Heavy Elephants. This would result in Battle Elephants taking 50 bonus damage and War Elephants taking 60 bonus damage.
(These numbers are not set in stone.)

This could help make Halbs and other anti-cavalry units less oppressive against Battle Elephants, Siege Elephants, etc., without making War Elephants too strong.

3 Likes
2

Maybe this could be achieve by reducing halbs bonus but give war elephant -10 to elephant armor class.

2 Likes
3

It does feel like elephants are too heavily countered by halbs considering how expensive and situational they are - not sure I’d even differentiate War Elephants

4

Actually, elephants are in a better position than war elephants, but by far.

5

I think it’s more that Savar is i a much, much better position than Battle Eles.

But I don’t think the damage they take from Halbs is the main issue for Eles.
There are actually a lot.

Low Mobility + Clunkyness, Monks, Siege, high eco required, no micro feature…

And from a strategical point of view it would make way more sense if Eles would be countered by Skirms and not Spears. It would also be historically correct. And it would allow for interesting comps even in 1v1s like light cav + ele.

PS: What’s interesting to observe that the extra bonus damage against Buildings did seemingly nothing on typical lategame ele spam Maps. Funnily I saw some War Eles on non-Ele maps. Though this was probably just to try how much that bonus does now.

6

Problem is War Elephant will take 10 more damage from scorpions.

2 Likes
7

We have shotel receive -4 from cavalry. Maybe we don’t need to make a new armor class? Battle elephant receive -10 from spearman.

8

battle elephant has double HP compare with knight line and they have the same gold cost so elephant should take double bonus damage as well.

2 Likes