This could backfire against monk civs
Yes, in that case researching the tech enabling the mechanics should be avoidedā¦
Elephant Archer as a unit can either be impractical to use in 1v1 or before late game. Or can be Borderline op if allowed to mass with help in team games, specially against civ that donāt get halberdierā¦
I would like to post a suggestion about rework of Elephant Archer. First want to discuss 2 points.
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Traditionally there used to be 2 or 3 archers on howdah on elephants. They had bows like the archer unit. I think these were phased out from armies by the time crossbow became prevalent.
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Indians have HC with 8 range. And high damage with slow rate of fire. Apart from infantry they do good damage against units with high pierce armor. But weak against archers or skirmishes. HCA with mobility and good attack.
Suggested change-
Attack reduced to 4. (Same as Archer, same range). Los buffed by 3 or 4.
Number of attacks increased to 2, with same rof as now. Elite upgrade adds 1 more. This will be different from cho ku nu or organ gun. Similar to how tower or castle fire multiple arrows. EA would have 2 archers sitting on it. And EEA will have 3 archers. Elite upgrade has same attack 4. Same range. Maybe a liitle boost to rof and los. Same hp.
Intended effect.
This unit would get better against units with 0 or 1 piece Armor. So might be cost effective and seen more often.
Same as now against units with 2 pierce Armor. Which is situationally effective. Not cost efficient.
Weaker against units with 3 piece Armor. Countered by paladdin etc
Interaction with skirmisher will remain same. Ram and skirmishes can counter very well.
Monks still good counter because of its less range and slow speed.
Will do better against buildings. Though this is not important.
Combined with HC they will both complement each other. EA can tank archers and siege. While HC can shoot cav or halb which get too close. Extra los will make even a single tanky EA a good addition to battlefield to complement crossbow or HC. But against many units it might be cost efficient even in castle age.
Edit- Also Food cost should be changed to wood. Adjusted for villager seconds. All other Archer or cav Archer units cost wood I think. And it is easier to combine it with hussar, HC or imperial camelā¦
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Why do you keep saying EAs counter Halbs? Go test it in the scenario editor. They get absolutely murdered on a cost efficient basis, and even with a fewer number of halbs.
I have tried to use them multiple times in 1v1 games both early on and later. Its best to think of them as cool looking skirmishers. You can pair them with lots of longswords/champions, which can cover their weakness to basically anything that isnāt from the archery range. Iām not even sure they counter xbows that well, I remember one game I had 4 EA vs 20 xbows and they lost, I probably had at least the first armor upgrade. (It was earlyish castle age). Its really tough to make them work. Iāve managed before, but its really tough. I remember another game where my opponent actually made lots of them with skirms and pikes, and I just laughed, (but mad respect to the guy for trying to use the unit) and sent a swarm of Japanese halbs and samurai and it melted faster than anything Iāve ever seen. And it didnāt take me that long to mass them up compared to how much effort he put into getting his EAs upgraded and produced.
As EAs are ranged damage soakers best way to buff them is giving indians better siege. Sounds weird, but is actually the best way to make them more viable.
Generally as a mostly defensive nation, indians would greatly benefit from an early to mid game eco or defence bonus.
provided you have the numbers to engage the elephants with ahead of time. if your opponent shows up with 35 elite elephant archers, youāre gonna need a lot of halbs to actually get their and engage them.
so you invested 280 gold and your opponent invested 900 gold and youāre complaining you didnāt win? real talk, assuming full castle age upgrades, a crossbow in castle age will do 7 damage a shot, while an elephant archer has 5 pierce armor and 300 health, that means 2 damage a shot, 80 damage a volley, assuming they all hit, and 4 volleys to kill 1 EA.
the EA in return do 8 damage a shot to 2 pierce armor units, so 6 damage total, taking 6 shots to kill a crossbow. so 2 full volleys.
the EA though, really excels as an archer killer in Imp when EEA have 9 total pierce armor and 350 health.
its a long drawn out process. you canāt expect one or two to work unless you are only using them in front of other units as a tank. for example, throw 3 of them in front of your own crossbows and watch a 35 crossbows + 3 EA turn 40 enemy crossbows into mincemeat.
EA snowball very hard in large numbers though, especially in imp with full upgrades
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Maybe they are only suitable for team games, good luck using them as an anti archer unit in standard 1v1 play. I havent been able to make them work really, even against xbow spam. The other traditional options work just fine.
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Elephant UU in general are more team game units by design, look at the fat cost associated with them, coupled with the fact that they are made from a castle. but if you can mass them up they can do some very good work, Viper recently played a team game where his team was basically beaten by TheMax, practically alone, as a pocket Persians going war elephants.
but yeah if you can get EA up in decent numbers they are a very real and scary threat.
watch the fight at 26 minutes, then realie that all those pikes and swordsman that they just chewed up? Malians, which get extra pierce armor.
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That brings me the shadows of the Carthaginian Elephant Archers of AOE1, here they are so supreme with 750HP.
Long time ago I used them against a Ethiopian player in a 1v1, and I win lol
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the ideas are good, donāt go too drastic like konniks though, regeneration might help, what about an armor ignoring attack? (which is pretty extreme so i dont expect it)
But elephants donāt have to be team game exclusiveā¦ atleast for India. Which historically used elephants more than any other civ and for a longer timeā¦
And they get the Elephant version which is rarest in games as compared to war elephants or battle elephants.
If the Elephant Archer becomes more useful by a rework. Then there wonāt be any argument to add battle elephants to India. Which is arguably a bad idea imo. Reworking a single underused or difficult to balance unit is better than reworking a civ.
What do you think about my suggested changes in post above?
Btw please share the link of that persian war elephant game of you canā¦
they arenāt team game exclusive, just expensive for a 1v1 perspective across the board, but the fact is, this game has never put historical accuracy over game-play or balance.
its only the rarest because indians usually go camels to counter enemy cavalry.
while i agree with this, i have suggested reworking it before (lower stats but lower cost), and have been given the cold shoulder by hardcore buff elephant archer fans before.
i honestly donāt think the idea would work as well as you would like, due to the low attack, anything with even decent pierce armor is going to laugh at you.
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That rework intends to buff Elephant Archer selectively. So that units like cav Archer and hand cannoneer are still relevant. And EA doesnāt become op like in aoe 1, if able to mass.
Letās compare its attacks current vs reworked version
Pierce Armor - EA - EEA - Reworked EA - Reworked EEA
0 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 12
1 - 5 - 6 - 6 - 9
2 - 4 - 5 - 4 - 6
3 - 3 - 4 - 2 - 3
4 - 2 - 3 - 2 - 3
5 - 1 - 2 - 2 - 3
6+ - 1 - 1 - 2 - 3
Here Pierce Armor doesnāt include blacksmith upgrades. Which get cancelled by attack upgrades. Those civ which donāt get any Armor upgrade are more vulnerable.
Any other piece Armor buff like parthian tactics or civ specific buff or tech should be counted.
The attack boosts against certain units make it cost efficient in some situations. While not being op and able to kill everything if trained as a single unit composition army.
Also the added los buff is a major part as well. Monks are the most brutal counter. And better scouting information helps both with keeping them safe. And making even a single unit benefiting the survival of whole army.
Well, after the last time that they were buffed, they seemed a bit more viable, though they seem to need something else:
I propose for EA to have +1 range, now they have the 4 range of the CA, since technically they are, but since EA are slower than a CA, and that indians lack arbs, I think that EA having 5+3 range could compensate that.
If that isnāt still enough, then a small buff to their buildings bonus damage could do it, that way they could further become the tanky slow unit for long pushes, that can also take out the enemy buildings production, and at the same time have enough range to support all other units.
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I would rather have them left as is. Instead of a range buff.
Just because of how I percieve they were designed. Which could be wrong.
As elephants they should be an expensive unit which is countered most easily by monks. But increasing the range has potential to make them more easily kill enemy monks once massed. Also increasing the range make them not tank for the other ranged units of the army. That defeats their whole purpose imo. And is better to get a more cost effective damage dealer in that case.
For making a unit viable I am not in favour of making a unit do good as a one unit composition army. That is bad for a strategy game and also could lead to balance issues in some part of game- team, or post imperial.
They do seem much better than before. If used like 2 or 3 of them along with other ranged units like crossbow or hand cannons. When an Indian player is going for a ranged army. Against another Archer civ. The crossbows would do much better against most ranged units. And hand cannoneers can even fight off skirmishers like this. I wonder if itās possible to micro by collecting your ranged units in 1-2 tiles and surrounding by 4 EAā¦
But still something extra should be given, to justify their cost. And being useful tanks only against ranged units, that is in certain situations.
Decreasing this cost, increasing range or attack will possibly change their role to solo damage dealers with very few counters.
If we want minimal changes. Then just increasing the los by a good amount, could be tried. It gives more purpose to adding a EA to your army. And allows you more time to react to enemy monks.
Because losing 2 out of 3/4 of your EA supporting a ranged army to monks is an instant loss in early castle age. And a strong deterrent against using this expensive less dps unit.
If something more is needed, later on. Then reworking them is an option instead of a direct buff to a stat.
When massed, any units is difficult to be converted by monks, even paladins, and a monk would still have more range than an EA.
Though, the +1 range could be given to the EA only after the elite upgrade, to avoid them being too difficult to counter with monks in castle age.
You could micro them so that they stay in the front lines.
However, they work better with Indians HC, who have 8 range, so EA and HC would have the same range, and they could still tank.
The WE works pretty much that wayā¦ when such unit is spammed, not even hard counter as halbs can stop them.
And paladins, EEW, huskarls, tarkans, keshiks and halbs+skirms (if enough of themā¦) would still counter EA, you need to add HC or IC.
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I get your point.
But is it really necessary to add micro to bring the unit to front, only to lose the benefit of additional rangeā¦
Getting a better los. 10 for EA 12 for Elite. Could make them safer to use. Giving more response time against monks. Which convert very fast in DE.
I believe this should be enough. But I understand if people want damage potential to be buffed.
If you use them as a ranged support unit (with IC and hussars) you benefit a lot from +1 range, if you use them as a ranged meatshield, then yes you have to manually put them in front, but that the strength of this buff, it gives the EA more versatility, which would be only fair since you pay them a lot.
The monks are a counter to EA, but I think that the main problem is that EA arenāt simply viable for Indians, they have no reason for training them.
To counter infantry, xbows and HC are better, they also get FU CA, which are more cost efficient and versitile than EA as a ātanky archerā.
I get that EA are more tanky than CA, but often mobility is a lot more important than health, having 5+3 range would compensate for their slowness.
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