The new ballista elephant cost near 2.5 time the springald, but the dmg is the same, the extra hp is not wroth the cost, it even loses the ranged resistance for flat armor, i see no sane situation which i would not rather have 3 springald than 1 ballista elephant
Been trying them out and have to agree. At some point you’re just trying to mow down their Infantry, and Crossbows are just more damage efficient to be massing than these guys. They also have the bonus of being good against Knights, which Ballista Elephants can do nothing against.
Though, this is likely because Crossbows are still overtuned quite frankly. Their damage output against light armour is still adequate to justify spamming them against Spears due to the potential of MAA and Knights showing up.
They also don’t offer anything new or different. You would think, hey, the Ballista is strapped onto an Elephant, maybe it can move faster. Barely. Or, maybe this is a bigger Ballista with some effects like the Fire Bolts from Macedonians, but nope. As it is, they’re strictly tankier Springalds which is very uninspired.
I’m not a fan of them being considered “heavy” either. Spearman, Crossbows, Cannons get bonus damage against them, which defeats the purpose of their tankiness. If the idea was that you can heal them to full with Imams, then that is a very lame type of gameplay that units should not be based around.
Additionally, I really hate that they have the same skin as a War Elephant. I would’ve preferred them to look like the Worker Elephants instead, at least for Castle Age. Give them some more armour in Imperial but not the same skin as any of the existing Elephants, please… Same goes for Healer Elephant.
Also, a unit that’s given the name “Ballista Elephant” is for a Khmer civ. NOT the Tughlaq Dynasty!
No!
Elephants equipped with a weapon equivalent to a “ballista on their backs” were not used only by the Khmer civilization.
NOTE:
Perhaps that’s not the true historical name.
However, the Tughlaq Dynasty had access to this technology.
We have a colleague who dedicated part of his time to locating this information.
This information cannot be thrown away!
In my opinion, if a more realistic name were to be used, the names should be changed as follows:
- For the Tughlaq Dynasty, the name should be “Arrada Elephant”
- For the Khmer civilization, the name should be the classic “Ballista Elephant”.
And here is the research data, carried out by our colleague @GoldenArmorX:
It’s absolutely shit for its cost just like the raider elephant, both need significant buffs.
Looking at research that @GoldenArmorX did, the model of this elephant unit of the Tughlaq Dynasty is historically correct, which I wasn’t referring to as being stupid (I was only referring to the unit’s name as being stupid), but doesn’t use the correct name (which is why I thought it was stupid for it to use the “Ballista Elephant” name) and honestly, renaming this elephant unit to “Arrada Elephant” would be a good idea because then, the “Ballista Elephant” name would be given to the Khmer civ’s Springald replacement, which would also happen to be an Elephant unit.