I support that opinion. HUGE bonus damage of spear-line to elephant was originally intended for Persian War elephant, which has insame 620HP and kill 7 Franks Paladin with Trample damage. But Battle Elephant has significantly weaker stat, even destroyed by Boyars. They don’t need that huge bonus damage from pike.
I think we should separate armor class of Battle elephant and War elephant and reduce the bonus damage of pike to battle elephant.
I don’t think it is necessary. Monks are intended for counter high value unit such as knight line and elephants, and monks have their own weakness of huge 100 gold cost and extremely slow. Monks aren’t that common unit outside of Arena and it is good to see monks as counter of elephant.
Elephants aren’t a primary 1v1 unit. Its mostly used in large numbers in team games or in later stages of closed map 1v1s. At that stage of the game its very hard to micro monks and halbs trade very ineffectively in the presence of a large number of ranged units. Adding conversion resistance will make it very challenging to stop some of the Battle elephant civs that are already very good like Khmer.
In general I agree with this suggestion. I even think bonus damage reduction should be more significant.
I see 2 issues with battle elephants:
Very slow. Even with husbandry they slower than crossbowman.
Normal (non-elite) battle elephant has no advantages over knights in castle age. But much more expensive.
Let’s compare knight and battle elephant (non-elite). Pikeman kills both in 6 hits.
With your suggestion it will be still 6 hits for battle elephant (you forgot about non-bonus damage).
But even if it’ll be 7 hits to kill – not exactly impressive considering other weaknesses. That’s why i want even more significant bonus damage reduction. For it will survive 9 hits.
Knight – 135 resources, 6 hits to kill. Battle elephant – 190 resources, 9 hits to kill. (190 / 135 = 1.4, 9 / 6 = 1.5).
Some people here pointed out that elite battle elephants are very strong in team games. That’s true. But this problem can be fixed by nerfing elite battle elephants.
Overall, I’d like to see castle age battle elephants more viable even if it requires to make elite version weaker.
Also make battle elephants faster then crossbows.
If the problem is that the elephants can’t force fights, what about giving them more bonus damage against buildings ? if opponent avoids the fight, he loses his buildings faster.
I’m against any other change, because i think elephants have their place in the game at the moment.
Pikes and monks are supposed to counter elephants, and it has to stay that way.