Elephant Archers Suggestions

Just ask anyone that ever played around with the engine.

To be honest, this forced simplicity is exactly why this game stood the test of time so well. RTS game in which units can have multiple attack and abilities, often fall into the trap of having overly-efficient units that just do too much, and that is really not much different from a MOBA, which was what killed the genre.

RTS has been figured out, no need for evolving mechanics, else they start losing the Strategy aspect, and become micro-click fests like Starcraft 2.

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Lets say They are in late game OK Huge cost and the enemy has Trash Units They can literally take down entire armies of them cost effectively . The Only use they have that I find useful probably once in like 100 games is As Beefy defensive units either at the back of the castle or near it providing extra Fire thats it even at that time I would use crossbows instead of them

That is precisely what the enemy cannot do against Elephant Archers. Elephant Archers, with a screen of Hussars, will destroy Halberdiers and Elite Skirmishers, extremely cost-effectively, unless you only have very few of them.

The Sultan UT is there to make sure you will have enough Gold in late Imperial, to afford a core group of 30-40 Elephant Archers, which go through Trash units slowly but surely, and almost with impunity.

Crossbows are bad offensive units by the Imperial Age. If you are not Persians with Kamandaran, or do not have Arbalests, your Foot Archers become a waste of Gold by them, when Elite Skirmishers with Bracer just murder them by the hundreds, for almost no resources.

Xbows with bracer are better than Arbs without them. More important to have Bracer than Arbalest.

I don’t see why I couldn’t use Xbows with bracer in lategame against pretty much anything if I really need an archer backline and there’s not a better option.

On the subject of better options, the Indians get a fully upped cavalry archer that costs roughly half the total resources to make, isn’t built at a castle, and better takes advantage of the mobility that the rest of the army has. Did anyone else mention the Elephant archer inexplicably has a fire rate of 2.5, as opposed to practically every other archer’s 2.0? Because that doesn’t help it, either.

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I already said this. The upside of EAs is that they are almost impervious to Elite Skirmishers, while CAs are weak against them.

But you have the problem of not effectively countering the thing that counters your Hussar in that case. Better to trust the Hussar to handle Skirmishers and the Cav archer to handle Halbs, like every other army in existence, and have the benefit of taking whatever fight you want rather than suffering the positional disadvantage of using a slower army composition.

If you want to handle massed halbs and you’re using Elephant archers, it takes a separate unit to actually deal with it given their pitiful damage against them once you count in a lower fire rate and missing +4 damage against them.

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That is the thing, EAs counter both Halbs and Elite Skirms. Their only counter is Monks, which is why they are so grossly overpriced.

If they were not, they would dominate the game, and Indians would be broken OP.

The prohibitive cost, and long training time, are all that is holding EAs down, and the game is better for it.
Just play AoE1, and see how EAs were brutally overpowered there. It is clear the devs wanted to avoid that issue.

EA’s do NOT counter halberdiers.

Elephant archers are pretty much the only cavalry archer that gets really run over by Halbs, They don’t have any innate bonus against them (unlike generic CA) and they only get the unique +2 bonus from Parthian tactics. That, and their slow fire rate means halbs really, really ruin Elephant archers.

Starting at the near-perfect distance, 40 halbs vs 30 elephant archers + 10 hussars, Elephants have ~22 remaining units on average with no micro involved, 30 CA + 10 hussars have ~19 left. Any micro situation falls to the advantage of the Cavalry archer, so we’re ignoring that. Any situation where there is a higher number of frontline units also favors the Cavalry archer since it has a higher base damage output and when protected it’ll simply kill the enemy faster. Any situation where there is no frontline favors the Cavalry archer because it outspeeds the generic Halberdier, something the elephant does not. In a mixed army composition, the Cavalry archer has the benefit of speed to choose precisely what it wants to fight, whereas the Elephant archer gets to hope the unit it’s fighting doesn’t particularly like hitting one of it’s five armor classes.

The Cavalry archer is better in every scenario against Halbs. It also costs less. The Elephant archer is distinctly, definitely, bad against Halbs. I am not claiming this is a bad thing.

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Go to the Editor, and put 100 Elephant Archers against 100 of any other unit that is not a Huskarl or Genoese Crossbowman, and see the difference.

Heavy Cavalry Archers only have a +2 damage bonus vs Spearman, so EAs only get a third of their FULL bonus when they have Parthian Tactics.
Elephant Archers also have better line of sight (+1), 4 fram delay (HCA has 10) and 100% accuracy WITHOUT Thumb Ring. They also have a lot more HP (280 for EAs, 330 for EEAs) which makes them more comparable to buildings, deal +3 (+4 for EEAs) bonus damage vs Buildings and Stone Buildings, and train in 25 seconds (27 for HCAs, which is ofset by hiow easier it is to make more Archery Ranges, compared to Castles).

If I had to choose between 30 CAs or 30 EAs, I would go with the Elephants.

Of course you would, EA’s are dramatically more expensive.

For the price of 30 EAs, you could have 54 CAs. And nobody would pick 30 EAs over 54 CAs.

Even if you’re at the point where you could theoretically produce 100 EAs(which would be absurdly, ridiculously unlikely), you’d still get run over by other civs producing more cost effective options.

For example, against Persian Paladins, you can afford four paladins for the price of three elephant archers. Four Paladins absolutely shred three Elephant Archers! I focus fired and I literally did not kill a single paladin!

Elephant Archers are unbearably bad.

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The point is, EAs are more population efficient, and have only one counter, while anyone that masses Skirmishers can repel CAs.

No, you don’t get a third of the CA’s bonus. Base damage on the Cavalry archer, counting everything against Halbs is 13. Elephant archers get 9. But that’s just the beginning of the comparison. Elephant archers have a base fire rate of 2.5 whereas CA’s have a fire rate of 2. Meaning that the actual DPS of the Elephant archer against Halbs is 3.6 compared to the CA’s 6.5. Once you factor in thumb ring, the dps numbers are about 4.2 to 7.2, meaning every Elephant Archer is doing about 58% of the damage that the HCA would do in the exact same circumstance.

The fact that the Elephant Archer has a slower attack rate than normal archers is a massive, massive weakness and it really doesn’t do your point justice to argue that they “only have one counter” when there’s a long list of units that absolutely do not need to counter it to beat it clean because it’s damage is so poor.

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Go to the Editor, and put 100 Elephant Archers against 100 of any other unit that is not a Huskarl or Genoese Crossbowman, and see the difference.

For the sake of argument, sure. I put 100 Teuton Paladins (lacking husbandry but no lacking upgrades or extra bonuses otherwise) in, and the Paladins won easily. Despite a good third of them being unable to engage due to being melee. And despite the costs not being even near equal.

Then I put 64 Ethiopian Heavy scorpions and 8 ethiopian siege rams in, and it was an elephant graveyard. Again, despite this being ridiculously out-costed by the elephants.

Then I put 100 Burmese Elite Battle Elephants in, and I can’t tell you how many the Battle elephants won by, because it’s all blurred together and you can’t have more than 60 in a control group. But more than 2/3rds survived for sure. The first relatively even costed matchup and it wasn’t a match.

Then I put 100 Elite Ballista Elephants in, you know, that terrible unique unit on that once terrible civ you’ve never seen used? They beat the Elite Elephant archer too. Funny enough since they have the same exact cost, and statistic wise they appear to be worse than the elephant archer in every way.

Then I put 100 Incan Elite Kamayuk in against it, and the Incan Kamayuk won with ~40 left. Pretty handy unit, the Kamayuk.

Then I put the Indian Camels in against the Indian Elephant archer and the Indian camel won. Turns out the best option in the Indian mirror is to not make it at all. What a shocker. The Saracens win that Camel v Elephant matchup as well.

Then I put 100 Elite Konniks in against the Elite Elephant Archer, which also cleaned it up. Konniks are deceptively powerful because enemies tend to find a new target to hit while the rider stands up, meaning for a bit longer you get to keep all that damage you would have lost if that were a normal unit dying simply because it’ll need to take the time to finish what it’s doing before it’ll re-aggro the infantry.

Then I put 100 Elite Tarkans in against the Elite Elephant Archer. Huns have two separate units that handle the deathball. How quaint. I love the Tarkan, tbh. It’s just too expensive to spam it out of the stables like I’d want to most of the time. I generally prefer the Keshik. Speaking of which:

If I put 100 Keshiks in, they lose, but in the time they are fighting, they amass 1,300 gold (at minimum), or enough for 32 additional Keshiks (at minimum), gold free. If I let the entire 100 v 100 settle as normal, then send in the extra 32 (at minimum) I’ve earned for free afterword in a second wave, the Keshiks win in every test I’ve ran (melee unit pathing will always be a major x-factor for this though, it’s close.)

Is this enough examples of “whatever I want vs 100 and I’ll see the difference?”

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Dude We all know EA will loose to pretty much everything. They are one of the worst units in the game in fact easily my least favorite unit.

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NO , They are not even that especially if its small map with less population. Micro is easier with CA’s.

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I seriously don’t understand what the devs thought while designing this unit. 100 food and 80 ■■■■ gold for a unit that’s poor offensively and not even that great defensively because it takes more than normal from skirms and performs badly against melee units.

Atleast ballistas actually perform when massed against non-siege units

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Ok, I admit defeat, just every time I tried them, I had huge success with them, because my opponents never knew how to counter them with anything.

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Fair enough. Call it a truce.

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I found it funny that Paladins can beat Elephant Archers, and you said that it was cost-efficient, since the Paladin upgrade costs 1300 Food and 750 Gold, while the Elephant Archer costs only 1000 Food and 800 Gold, not to mention that you must also first upgrade them to Cavalier for 300 Food and 300 Gold.

This means you can field EAs much sooner than Paladins, and for -600 Food and -250 Gold, which can field an aditional 3 EAs, 4 if you sell the Food at a good rate.

Well I just did a test cause I was bored myself, 39/100 paladins lived against 100 EEAs and most of them hadn’t even lost any health yet. And paladin is cheaper so I guess that can be called cost-efficient. (I actually first made the test with dark age Paladins and EEAs by accident and then realised my mistake, but then the result was 38 alive so seems like it didn’t affect the test after all. 11)

Of course in smaller numbers those 3 or 4 EEAs are going to have a bigger impact, but would still lose and they still cost 33% more resource, be that most of it is food. But normally, elephant units cost more cause they are supposed to be more population efficient than non-elephant units. Of course, it is an archer unit and on that account is not supposed to be an actual counter to paladins but one could hope it would get a little more value on its useless hp that you are paying that food for.

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