Delhi Sultanate War Elephant Critique

Age of Empires IV IV - Discussion
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I think I found a “practical” composition for War Elephants.

Most Games I’ve played and seen that even featured the War Elephant, will only field 1 or 2 all game if any (very sad); but the compositions that appear to be COMMON is War Elephants with archers. Even though crossbowman counter War Elephants, the real danger to Elephants in general are spearmen!

But I have an even less intuitive composition that plays into the limitations of this game! That is Veteran Spearman and War as the bulk of your units with a few MAA for soaking a touch of archers to slightly counter act enemy spearman. The reason for spearmen is because they have a high effective HP per cost vs everything except standard archers, nevertheless they have weak dps. But you’re predominantly using them to bodyblock for your War and MAA and make it harder for opposing enemy to focus fire.

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Meanwhile…

Byzantines have better War Elephant than Delhi itself??

Meanwhile

Zhu Xi’s Legacy’s Imperial Guard is beyond broken; cost effect; pop effective; highly mobile; great HP pool; and superior attack power…

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Is it historically accurate for the Byzantines to have elephant units as part of their mercenary roster?

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Only if we consider their alliances with the Turkish Persianates and the Mongols:

  • Between 1200-1300 they had Persian allies in the Persikon corps, and by 1300 AD, the Mongols controlled the Persians in the territory known as the Il-khanate. We could say that elephants could come from there (Syrian elephant, now extinct). If not, it could also be from the Timurid Empire that occupied the Persian area and brought elephants from India, apart from which it caused a lot of problems for the Ottomans.
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In the context that all of these civilizations are close enough to fight eachother in wars it makes sense. While Byzantines recruited excessive mercenary armies, it’s not like they were close enough to Japan/China.

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Ahhh

Delhi i sometimes miss you… but i have byz now and she at times give me my elephants fix.

With all the talks of potential variant civs and what not, i thought I’d revitalize this thread with its focis on the War Elephants.

War Elephants need Trample mech and it needs to track moving targets. Allow for a sufficient speed burst to close the gap while eunning THRU he target into the potential enemy mass.

Next I believe War elephants should continue to be veey expensive with a 60s train time, BUT!! I would like to see their stats efficiency greatly improve especially given their susceptible to NOT being overkilled by much if at all.

The enemy should see War Elephants and be forced to maneuver in ways that respects the prowess of the beast.

Ideas:
Spearman and HC and bombards should be the only 3 unit types that can efficiently demolish the beast. Currently everything but base archers are too optimal vs this creature.

To fix it the base armor of the War elephant needs to be raised by 3 and a unique House of Learning tech should grant both elephants types +1 armor in castle. This alone will reduce the crossbow to a soft counter. The additional +1 will make it exclusively countered by spears and excessive kiting, until imperial age.

Next the base walk speed needs to go up to 1.375 tiles per sec. This will make kiting an even harder task and favor the beast especially given its susceptibility to NOT being overkilled easily.

This will make War elephants a walking mangonel with the trample mechanic. But given the cooldown for trample will be increased to 40s. Its unlikely the one War elephant will be able to execute 2 success tramples unscathed.

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I have already thought of how to change the Delhi elephant. In the history of Delhi, every war has had elephants. In order to shape the Delhi style, elephants should become a tool of war that must be produced. The drummers of the Ottomans were essential units of production. Similarly, Delhi must produce elephants. Delhi must have a building specialized in producing elephants (a universal building).

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54

Worker Elephant available in the Feudal Age that has a huge carry capacity and faster building with a villager worker on it. I think its stats might look like 300hp 20 tusk damage +20 vs buildings 2/2 armor. 1.1 move speed. Villager fighting on top with spear 6 damage +10 vs cavalry 10 torch damage. 200 food 50 gold 2 pop cost. effected by all villager and cavalry upgrades. Castle age unique tech increasing hp.
Imperial age unique tech increasing movement speed.
Siege Elephant available in Imperial age slow moving elephant with a Springald mounted on it effected by both springald and cavalry upgrades/counters.

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For the delhi variant an elephants worker that offers some type of bonus to eco is cool. For example cap this special villager to 2-4 and like zhu xi make landmark and other upgrades permit more of them to be trainable.

Advantages of this work are:
The elephants assisted villager counts as a mobile depot where all nearby villagers, including the elephant assisted villager unit can drop off resources at the elephant. Also All eco upgrades are available on the elephant during the appropriate age. Elephant assisted villagers WILL not be grouped with the eco button…
Gather rate of elephant assisted villager will be 2.3x a standard villager, cost 3 pop, 100F(2vils worth) 100W(ovoo worth).

Hp will be 300HP 0 melee 2 range armor, not be tagged as cavalry (like traders…) , movement speed 1.0. All villager buffs apply.

Imperial siege elephant will be a direct clone from age of empires 3. A bombards/culv unit that does NOT get tagged as a siege unit, but will be extremely immobile to allow counter play with cavalry and spears. However tgis unit will have siege like range armor.

Each siege elephant will cost as much as a great bombard. And be 4 pop.

For cuteness the worker elephant will be a baby elephant.

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56

War elephants I’ve not forgotten you!!

Matter of fact i might go back to playing delhi?? I wanna pioneer delhi 2TC into semi Fc mass range and elephants for support and scholars in the back to heal the low health elephants.

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58

Imperial War elephants with full upgrades are mega cost efficient, especially when both sides have infinite* resources to dump into fights.

What i hope is some of this power would be more relevant earlier in castle.

Baby steps. Give War Elephants a speed boost of 0.25 tiles per second. And give them a maximum xharge speed of 2.0 tiles per second.

This would allow for War elephants to Initially jump on top of enemy units.

This units inability to dictate engagement and the inability to disengage, are 2 glaring weaknesses of this unit.

1.25 tiles per second would bring the movement in line with spearsman. And the 2.0 tiles per second charge speed would allow it to gap close the initial time.

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About the situation of Delhi Elephant’ Units (May 2024)

Ranked 1vs1.- Well, in 1vs1, we have to be honest: Most games end either in Feudal or in the Castle Age, which limits the possibility of using elephants for Delhi, especially when your army in Feudal is already quite good already. Yes, they even have a unique unit in feudal (It was a great success to give him that unique unit, the Ghazi Raider).

In general, I think there should be mechanics to increase the diversity of options in Imperial, so that the game does not stagnate in skirmishes of unlimited production without a winner until one of the band resign. I have the idea of resurrect the Armory building, but with technologies that improve the 7 basic units (spearman, archer, crossbowman, M-a-A, knights, horseman, handcanonner) to improve more their power in Late Game, the elephants and camels would be includad for civs that has them.

Another Gameplay Modes

  • Of course, ranked 1vs1 is not the only way to play the game, there is the Fornite mode… I mean, “Dominion Free for All”, and also the Ranked in Teams where there is a lot of fighting in Castles and especially in Imperial.

  • The real problem would be that elephants weren’t used un either Team or Dominion games, then there is a thing that is being doing wrong.

Well, about the last sentence, it’s not like Delhi is that popular in FFA either. Demu actually made a video titled: “Can we win and FFA with Delhi?!” as a irony, and he won, and he had his army of little elephants.

Demu winning with Delhi en FFA Dominion
Demu winning with Delhi en FFA Dominion1599×898 244 KB

I agree: In general, considering that with the new DLC the experimentation with new civs is more open to being unique and special (Prottoss Order of the Dragon, Dota Joan de Arc, ####### 2 or Zhu Xi, Japan with 14 unique units), and well, specifically speaking:

  • The Cataphracts’ Trample ability is great, why not give a similar “Stampede” ability to the War Elephants? It would work similarly and would be cool too.

“Stampede” would be a great name for that ability.

Well, with the proposed improvements to “Stampede”, if it turns out to be very broken, an extra counter aggaints Elephants could be the anti-siege unit:

  • Culverins and Springalds could have an extra bonus against elephants, historically they were used that way, and with elephants being “Easy Target” for siege weapons, it would well make sense that the anti-siege have bonus against them.

Of course, the damage that the War Elephant does to buildings could be increased, so at least they would have a useful role, a role that the Siege Elephants of AoE II already have in the Indian civs, including their Delhi version, the Hindustanis.

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GREAT JOB; MIGHT EVEN BE OP (WHICH I LOVE)

TY DEVS!!! We might actually be able to play the Elephants civs and make elephants?!!

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62

As a person that has forced Elephants; even War Elephant mass for years?? I “think” War Elephants my now be S+ mass frontline units…

MAA still soak more damage/cost vs most units; and spears are the most well rounded; but When you as Delhi can afford to resource dump several hundreds into units?? AND you have sufficient scholars to mass heal; these War Elephants start to feel really really good.

Just went Mass War Elephants spears MAA vs Malian with their sofa/donso/musofadi and the comp literally walked thru a superior mass of Mali units; it was … unstoppable?!

10 War Elephants, 10 scholars with herbal medicine and a dozen spear/maa mix; vs easily 90+ Mali melee units!

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But Mali is very weak in terms of units compared to other civilizations.
I’ve even had the AI ​​lose badly… For example, a “very hard” Mali lost to a “hard” France. I thought it was impossible for this to happen without some kind of “help”, but in this case I hadn’t intervened at all, I just watched.

Mali does a good amount of damage, but they die easily.

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Nerf is incoming… with delhi TOV archers/crossbows already being cancerous; now you have War Elephants that can now kill essentially anything in melee range cost for cost (spears being the only exception); when you pair the unstoppable War Elephant with TOV archers/crossbows? I don’t know how you stop it; IFF you do not have a significant eco lead over delhi to begin with?

And I’m talking in Castle; so no bombards? Maybe when they redo springalds; springalds will be everyone’s counter to Elephants. (side note: I hope springald becomings a sniper siege to take down high value targets; super long recast time almost like a treb; with notiable wind up; but does 300+ siege damage on single target with a very small splash zone).

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Yeah, the nerf is coming.

But I don’t think it’s for the area damage or for the unique technologies, those are here to stay, and they have very nice and Historically Correct names (Paiks, Mahouts).

The only thing broken is going to be the Elephants. Since these are just created in Castle Age (III), like you say, I suppose their counter will also be in that age, like springalds.

In fact, if in the future they plan to bring civs like Timurids, Mughals, Burmese, Viernamites or another of South-Asian civs, there will be many civs with Elephants, and so far the only counter to the War Elephant is the “Spearman”, and well, it’s not enough, especially if we’re talking about the Sultan Elephant. Most units in every civ have at least 2 counters.

So when they announced that in the next patch there would be extra changes to THE SIEGE, I’d like to assume that they might give “Anti-Elephant” bonus to siege weapons, mainly Springalds and Culverins.

Historically, Babur used long-range cannons as a “Counter” to the Delhi Sultanate elephants. If they plan to release “Mughal” as a Delhi Sultanate variant or a new civ of their own, and want to recreate that, then they’ll have to include that bonus. In theory, elephants are “easy targets” because of their size, the only difficult thing when aiming at them is their hard skin and the mail armor that was put on them in the Middle Ages (In the Ancient Age there was no technology to make full armor for elephants, but in the Middle Ages there was); therefore, siege weapons with penetrating bullets (bolts, or small cannonballs) should have more bonus against them.

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67

I’d like to see this in play.
I’ve always used cannons against elephants… but using Springalds and Culverins would be perfect.

1 Like