Looking at their stats battle elephants seem like they are very powerful but they rarely see use in high level play this is because they are hard counter by Halberdiers and monks.
Currently generic elite battle elephants take 30/47/60 from the spear-line that means they can take 5 hits from generic halberdiers the same as paladins. I purpose decrease their bonus damage to 26/40/52.
I purpose giving elephants a buff to their conversion resistance. Currently monks are a good counter to knights since they are converting units which is worth 135 resource.
Battle elephant cost 190 resource and move 37% slower making conversion even harder to avoid and much more costly. mixing in light cav to counter monks is not viable because
- they cost food which is already hard to afford when making elephants.
- they also get countered by the Pikemen which your opponent should be making to counter your elephants.
In imperial age battle elephants are even less viable because
- The elite upgrade cost 2100 resource
- Monks have 12 range now.
- Faith and heresy are extremely expensive and only Malay have heresy
- Even if you do have faith and heresy you just invested into 3850 resource worth of upgrades to be counter by halbs.
also scorpions should do plus more bonus damage against elephants 8 or 10 should be good
Thry have such huge weaknesses to monks and pikes because those are literally the only weakness they have.
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Tbh yesbut they are a bit too weak to spears. They srent quite War Elephants and also arent Eles balanced on TGs despite spears practically not existing there?
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You make some good points. Imagine if we could do an Elephant + Eagle combo to counter monks without dying to Halberdiers or needing more food. Too bad the units are geographically incompatible.
But in teamgames there slow speed makes it harder for them to defend their ranged support.
Battle Elephants are meant for booming fest team games like black forest. (lots of trade and whatever) They are very strong in those games. If you have great booming economy, your elephants beat nearly any unit in a 1v1 up-close fight, apart from a Persian War Elephant.
Yeah but they are just waaaayyy too weak against spears imo. If only war elephants took 60 bonus and the other eles took slightly less I think we would see eles way more than currently
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Those same spear units will lose in a 1v1 fight. Make some scorpions, Militia units, and Hand Cannoneerears and those spearmen won’t be too much of a threat. If you have an ally who’s the teutons, those spearmen will melt fighting Teutonic Knights.
Doesnt seem to be the case, otherwise we would see more elephants
Play a team game of black forest? They appear a lot in those maps, since you can wall up and boom, unleash the horde. If they were cheaper, let’s say much cheaper, they would be OP.
In those maps spears dont matter at all so buffing eles against those wouldnt matter that much.
Again, my proposal to make eles more viable in higher ranked games:
Give them a speed charge. If Eles were at least capable of forcing some advantageous fights they would be much more viable there.
The main reason Eles are so terrible is that they can’t force any advanatgeous fights and can’t even run away from disadvantageous. If at least they could force some advantageous fights they would be much mor viable.
This change would change basically nothing for low elo and black forest maps.
If you wanted to make them somewhat more viable on say Arabia, require Redemption to convert them. This would provide a precious boost for the Malay in particular. The truth is that they are quite demanding on the economy, and going full Battle Elephant is fairly difficult for such maps. I do not know if there is a good way to balance them with Halbs, and Halb/SO is a fairly effective combination in Black Forest play. Heavy Scorpions can also ruin their day.
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That why I purposed buffing scorpions against elephants.
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A unit should not be balanced around being only viable in black forest. Scorpions are still used outside of black forest
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2 extra damage from the worst siege in the game, that is rarely used and requires a lot of them to even be effective isn’t even close to fair compensation.
furthermore just imagine what your proposed pike change would do to making them fight against war elephants.
You can just give BattleElesnegative elephant armour though or a new armout class like the mameluke
By pure population efficiency War Elephants and Battle Elephants are the best units in the game. They pretty much beat any unit up close in a 1v1 fight. The only thing that’s holding back elephants is their cost. If they were much cheaper then they would be much more powerful.
But the cost is there for a reason. So, you don’t just spam elephants, and wipe the floor with the enemy every time. Khmer can win games without even making elephants. Burmese have good infantry to fall back on. Malay have good infantry, and cheap elephants but lack armor upgrades. Vietnamese have good archers.
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I suppose you could give war elephants and their own unique armor class. as for the scorpion buff I purpose 2 or 4 extra damage and I’m open to increase it further in the future, but I prefer to do balance changes incrementally and observe how it effect the meta otherwise you might do something crazy like give Cumans 75W archery range and stables.
Elephants are already really strong in some situations. Even if it’s only really in post-imp, if people can reach 200 pop whilst still having gold.
I agree castle age elephants are a bit weak. They get countered not only by monks and spears, but also by xbows and knights, even by cav archers. (The Malay Elephant rush is a special case which can be easily adjusted for (by changing their discount %).)
I can’t see elephants receiving a significant buff as long as they cost only 1 pop 
That said I can’t see anything particularly wrong with giving elephants a bit of conversion resistance.
PS: It feels weird to me that elephants are slower than infantry. Surely real-life elephant riders could move faster than spearmen?