You cannot, otherwise it would be Ranged area damage, and that makes no sense. They have a range attack, and Trample Damage is just a modifier for you attack, not an extra Melee attack.
I use Arbalests because they deal alot of damage, have good range and are comparatively cheap and mobile, plus I can start massing them in Feudal Age.
Only thing thatâs an effective counter against them is mass Cav and Siege weapons.
What about EA? They deal okish damage, have sub par range and can be trained from castles.
Their counters are skirms, halbs, mass Cav, Monks and siege weapons.
So whatâs the use of these things then? Being countered by every unit in the game cost-for-cost?
So I train an elite âcavalryâ archers from my castle to gun down⊠houses? Really?!
Seriously if I want to siege a base I choose BBC, rams or Onagers. If thereâs no BBC I consider using Trebuchets or just massed FU Cavalry. All things which Indians offer, too.
Indian Battle Elephants need to actually serve a role. Slow Cav Archer with building damage bonus is amongst the worst design ideas for such a unit.
Give them this
- shoot on the move
and this (rewards micro) - allow garrisoning of skirmishers and archers that increase the number of arrows fired
or this (more simple) - make them a skirmisher type unit that counters other skirms and archers with a large damage bonus and high pierce armour, and increase the base range by at least 1. EEA could get +2 in total. Also consider a dmg boost against spearmen. But on the contrary they donât benefit from parthian tactics or other cav archer techs anymore
This way EAs fit well together with Indian gun Powder, other archers, infantry and cav. They replace Skirmisher trash units in Imp and support everything else.
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Rate of fire increase will already make this unit useful, a ranged meatshield that has actually some damage potential too. It already has 3+6 pierce armor, donât think anymore is necessary.
Shoot on the move is just op as F.
Garrisoning also sounds op.
Donât cataphracts have trample damage?
Cataphracts are not ranged
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The fact is no one uses EA, no matter how good it is.
I would like to suggest that make it has two archers on the elephantâs back. Then, make it can fire to âtwo different targetsâ in same time by those two archers, one by one. The front archer shoots what the player command to attack and the behind archer automatically shoots the closest unit.
This hero shows the looks about the two-men elephant archer.
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Well, no doubt, those would be strong buffs for any archer unit. I donât know that it needs 5 range, but normalizing the rate of fire to that of the Archer line seems like an obvious change that would make it somewhat better. Better enough? Hard to say, but if you buff more than 1 or 2 aspects of the unit, it has the potential to become too strong.
Thatâs just gimmicky, and a similar effect could be achieved by just improving the rate of fire. Letâs save the fully manned elephant for our boi Dagnajan.
Edit: Just posted this in the other thread, but I think if the rate of fire was the same as arbs, they got +1 melee armor and +1 damage vs cav, I think theyâd be in a pretty good place.
Viperâs Elephant Archers game.
Iâve seen 45mins of Camel usage. And the elephants exactly accomplished what apart from dying?
https://youtu.be/nWJ6Zln_1V0?t=2028 starting at ~34:30 All I see is a bunch of elephants that neiter does damage, nor actually helps pushing forward nor help other units around them. Also, talking about 4v4 teamgames always is a bit different from 1v1/2v2.
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I posted this because it is better opinion, explaination, and demonstration, than anyone else can perform in this thread.
I think 5 is needed because the Elephant doesnât have the mobility of a cav archer so the 4 range is more limiting than it is to cav archers. It canât be too strong with two changes because it still costs 100 food and 80 gold and its a ranged unit
Yes, his explanation in one Sentence regarding the performance of EA after they were annihilated by Skirms/halbs/Arbalests âlol they MELTEDâ - and there were not even Onagers involved.
Starting at 06:50. This one actually explains a lot of the math behind elephants and why their buffs/nerfs were pretty pointless in the first place. I checked, after Africans there was no more change to EAs.
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You do realize that, in the end, he won with Elephant Archers, and just said: âOh, weâre killing! Weâre killing, actually!â, do you not?
He was a bit surprised that the EAs cleaned out all the Arbalests.
At 38:05.
@CactusSteak2171 You once were trying to prove me that Indians can play without camels relying on elephants only. What will you say about this?
So flat out damage boost by a dramatic value (+20%) against every target is fine, but giving them a specialized archer/skirmisher counter role that can shoot while moving at slow speed is op? lol, what a nonsenseâŠ
Cause itâs the most basic solution you can do to the unit. Also, the point of EAs is to be used in numbers, not like a tower every here and there that you garrison some units inside of. The unit itself is to be useful, even if you have nothing to garrison it with, capiche? Also, no unit in the game shoots while firing. Why would EA get this privilege? Not to mention, that would just make halbs completely useless to the unit, even if it moves so slow, with parthian tactics and in numbers, halbs start to not even be cost-efficient. So no, your words are nonsense, not mine.
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- a skirmisher is not a cavalry archer, so itâs not affected by parthian tactics (which doesnât even make sense anyways since Parthian tactics rely on horse mobility). Which is what I proposed.
- a unit that costs 100f,80g and only trains from castles is to be used in numbers? Tell me moreâŠ
- EAs are countered by : Siege, Monks, Archers, Skirms, cavalry/camels and halbs
- considering that EAs are usually accompanied by gunpowder units halbs are mostly useless against them anyways
- shoot on the move actually makes sense since standing/sitting on a platform on the back of an elephant is a stable base for shooting. Also Elephants lack speed and damage against non archer/skirms with my proposal.
Edit: considering this they actually ARE walking towers when I think of it.
Why the F you want to even make it an skirmisher, is beyond me 11. Completely ridiculous and worthless.
Just like the war elephant. Yep.
Now you wouldnât even need HCs anymore. Just keep reverse moving till no enemies are left and then push up again. You donât even need to micro. And you donât see anything wrong with that? This would also work very well against camels then. (how do archers counter EAs when they only do 1 damage?)
If mangudai donât have this ability, why should EA have it. Also if they are now completely useless against other units than archers, why would you even make them wtf. 100f 80g unit to counter archers only, otherwise useless. Would be even more useless than it is now.
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All I saw was the atlatl skirmishers melting the elephants and the bombard cannons doing the major damage to the tightly packed skirms. No doubt theyâre good against archers but they start to suck when there are skirms or halberds in front of the archers. The skirm bonus is too much. They suck in too many ways for such an expensive unit, its a meme.
To complement gunpowder units obviously. IF thatâs the case you can also reduce their cost or increase their health.
EAs counter skirms, archers while handcannons counter halbs. Camels can counter cav if they want to.
So hand cannoneers counter archers and skirms now? interesting observation⊠Must have been missing something then.
You can adjust their cost accordingly or beef up their stats. Ever considered to think at least A BIT creatively?
Regarding mangudai: so these guys ride elephants nowadays? Thatâs news to me. While Mangudai are an entirely different unit, the last time I checked Mangudai have access to the technology âparthian tacticsâ already.
But the other guys say EAs are FIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINE mom!!!