So what exactly is the weakness of elephants after your change? Seems kind of random and all ovsr the place. The only clearcut weak point is, if you ask me, heavy cavalry dur to lower base damage, but ecen thats circumspect as they have a ton of hp
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I mean this has always been the main problem for me, eles just seem to lack a role / purpose and, outside of pop efficiency, there’s always a better unit you could build instead; they kinda just act as a bad paladin for civs that don’t have paladin.
I quite liked the old anti building role but it’s clear the devs don’t want that as they nerfed their anti building damage. Another idea could be purely a meat shield role, I.e. increase defence, lower bonus damage against them but also lower their attack.
Honestly though given that they can’t run away from pikes I think just reducing pike efficiency from ~45% to ~75% would be enough to make them viable as they otherwise trade effectively against most other units
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Add +10 ele armor to them so they take longer tl kill
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I mean yer I’m very pro the idea also of retaining the existing efficiency but slowing the fight down , gives more opportunity for support
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Well, after all is a Brainstorming thread, anyways is not random:
Clearly, less weak to pikes
Better to deal with all kind of infantry
Make it less overall powerfull, maybe I would remove bonus against buildings too. We already have the ram elephant to fill that role.
To balance their weaknesses. Now you’ll have to mix your army to engage BE. After all, is an expensive unit.
I would like to see the staggered advantage between pikes and eles in terms of speed. This is: Pikes>Eles, but Eles with husbandry>Pikes, but Pikes with Squires>Eles with husbandry.
It is similar to KTs vs Cavalry archers, or Camels vs KTs.
This is to balance too. I would make it even a little more, maybe 35 secs.
Yeah except youre still talking about a unit that has 320 hp. Even at 2 pa base, 4 damage a shot you’re talking 80 shots to die and they can actually move faster then archers now
Well… remove all pierce armor…
That just makes them largely useless as archers will murder them.
No reason to redesign the entire unit.
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Murdering is to say much I think. Still have great HP and can force fights vs archers as you said… And again, Eles shouldn’t be a solo unit, should be mixed with something else… thats the fun about this game… Unit compositions…
Brainstorming…
One concern with this is this will make other units with bonus vs Eles much weaker. Scorpions, GenBows, Kamayuks and other units I now dont remember, will have their bonus entirely or greatly reduced. Also civs without Halb would suffer greatly after this change.
Hi, please remove damage bonus from camel to elephant. Say horse scare camel :)))) yes maybe. But both of 2 animals all scare elephant why let elephant give bonus damage from camel? Want to improve elephant need make it first. Logical lose AOE 1 origin
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Frankly I dont trust the developers to have enough of an economics background to trust those kinds of decisions. These kinds of decisions never seem normalized for cost and in an RTS optimal intertemporal allocation of resources is like 90% of the strategic challenge (with micro and execution being 90% of the tactical challenge).
If they can come in here and give a good justification for why vs most masonry structures a castle age battle elephant have only 20% more DPS as a knight despite costing 40-50% more and masonry being available to 93% of civs im sure we would all love to hear it. On top of that they should be able to give a justification for the methodology which led to giving a green light to such a change.
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Yeah I think they just didn’t crosscheck.
Maybe there were some claims that eles eat buildings or whatever, which is certainly true if you have like 50 of them. But then it’s more about the sheer mass of units you have there which make that happen.
In small numbers Eles are not really better than knights against buildings cause they cost so much more.
BUT I think changing the anti-building damage alone won’t make it a usable unit. I think it needs something more to make them more appealing in castle age. And it can’t be just a blank buff cause this would make them surely OP in the situations they are already strong.
Yes, elephants shouldnt go alone. Thats why vietnamese elephants have imp skirms to guard them.
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No remove camel bonus :))) it better for all. And true with real
Can’t do that, Gurjaras and Turks have no pikeman, and half camels civs have no halberdiers.
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tbf devs have reverted changes before. they have also been known to make over corrections, they are human after all
goths(reversion) and step lancers(over correction) for example. I think BE and EA now fall into the same bracket. either unwilling or unclear on exactly how to tweak these things so they either arent polarising or unused.
im sure itll eventually happen though
Sorry but no. Currently Eles are most of the time played with no comp. One reason for this is that they are so pop efficient. It just deosn’t make sense to add anything way less pop efficient to a unit that is basically designed around it’s pop efficiency.
Most of the time IF Eles are played in the midgame (which is rare enough) they are accompanied by either a small amount of scorps to deal with pikes or scouts to deal with monks. Don’t say there aren’t other options but these are the main additions cause they don’t need much extra investment to be kinda effective. If you make an ele rush you are on a timer, you need to add units that don’t need much to tech in as addition.
Not so sure about that, but I personaly think it would be a good change. But it won’t be enough to make eles viable in the midgame imo. They need something more special going for them.
Here is a discussion about how devs have changed elephants over time. The devs seem to think BE is strong in team games, so they keep nerfing them. I think the best we can hope for in 1v1 is them making it cheaper to get to BE with FU.
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I think weakness to halbs isnt thst important in TGs tbh
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