Poor guys need all the help they can get. Why would you spend so much resources on these cute living battering rams when they can get murdered by just a handful of spears?
Make a separate category for them because the Dumbos are in a a bad place right now and they want the armor and health to charge free and happy 
Seriously:
Extra armor or Health
Maybe damage mitigation research.
Any thoughts?
They definitely need some sort of help, they lose out vs almost anything besides their what they are made to counter resource wise. AND they are ridiculously slow, which should mean they trade favourably.
If they can’t raid, can’t decide what fights to take they need to be strong for their resource value. The same reason they want horsemen to not be as good in a fight for their resource cost is why elephants need to be good in a fight for their resource cost.
Nerfing springs will help keep dumbos alive. Raiding with 2-4 is highly effective, it’s really late mass springs, crossbows, and handcannons that’s been impacting them imo.
I agree they can be effective if walked into the back of an opponents base, but they walk super slow and villagers can just walk away. Just like MAA can be effective but they don’t compare to faster units and if you have 2-4 elephants for raiding imagine what they do vs their equal cost of 16-33 horsemen or 8-16 knights? Like 20 imperial horsemen will deal 400 torch damage vs the 200 of the 2 elephants. Plus be able to retreat when the enemy comes with their army and actually chase down villagers.
I’d like them to be considered as self defending rams aka siege unit; springalds and gunpowder should be their counter.
The large hitboxes of elephants make them easy to be encircled by spears anyway, so I dislike the idea of them being countered by a trash unit that they can’t get away from unlike cavalry. You have to make them a viable choice, otherwise you will always prefer knights due to their mobility.
I agree the Dumbos are basically living battering rams that need damage mitigation.
As it is now it’s really not viable to make them as they are huge resource holes.
We have to get technologies or make the stronger right of the get go.
Tower elephants should get Xbows on top at Castle and Handcannons with their elite upgrade. War elephants should be 100w cheaper. Lastly a bit more movespeed on the Elephants. Upcoming springald nerf and the handcannon nerf does help them a bit.
Bet Dumbo wishes he was still small enough to fly now.
Springald nerf will do a lot. Elephants wreck cavalry already. I think they need to do a little better against MAA and not be so vulnerable to xbows (xbow buff was ouch).
I do think you have to be able to counter elephants with spears, though you should need a lot of them (maybe 3-4 per elephant). Fast castle elephant rush would be completely OP otherwise. Transport ship elephant drop would be way OP also. Siege and gunpowder (both of which should be countered by horsemen) can’t be the only viable counter. Spears are fairly easy to deal on their own if you back the elephants with archers or mangonels. You can even kite them fairly well with tower elephants.
My conclusions: spears should hard counter in large numbers, springalds should hard counter in reasonable numbers, handcannons should be effective in reasonable numbers, xbows should be a soft counter in very large numbers. MAA, any other cavalry (other than camels - not sure about that particular balance interaction), and regular archers/longbows should struggle mightily.
I think a pierce armor buff addresses almost all of that (since they already wreck cavalry). Maybe a little bit of a bonus against armored infantry to make MAA not trade cost effectively. You could also make elephants their own category so bonuses against them can be adjusted independently of other cavalry units (that would be a lot of work, but probably the ideal solution).
Elephants should deal trample damage, it would give them something special. A slow unit like this has no purpose right now. It needs an ability or a special mechanic to differentiate it from a simple bag of hp.
I really wish they would add the cannon elephant that was in previous titles.
Hopefully they will fix it to better make it viable.
Elephants actually move about as fast as people, having a top speed of 25mph or so.
I’m assuming you are talking about the AoE3 siege elephant, which I just searched up? AoE3 is outside the AoE4 timeline, so I don’t know if an elephant with a cannon is an option.
An elephant with a Springald is totally possible and was used in ancient times.