Im 1200 - 1300 elo and I do not count team games where Im totally submerged by elephant spamming.
Usually on close map where opponent can boom easily.
With resist to conversion, monks became useless at Imperial age vs massive invasion of elephants.
The only option is 30 barracks and hallebardiers spam. This is not fun…
Even Hindustanis Imperial Camels are not a hard counter.
Elephants are underpowered and overpowered at the same time.
They are all not cost effective units but they are all the most population efficient.
That creates the issue that they can be useless in Early Imperial while being OP in Late Imperial.
This could very easily be fixed by giving different units different population costs like any other game in the series (after AoE2).
It’s ridiculous that a Spearman and an Elephant cost the same population. That’s why the Halberdier has such a gigantic bonus damage vs. Elephants.
Yeah, they are OP.
Camels don’t counter them because they don’t deal extra damage to the Elephant armor class. Camels should have had bonus damage to this class on top of their anti-cavalry bonus when Rise of the Rajas came out.
It makes no sense for Halberdiers, as anti-mounted units, to counter both Cavalry and Elephants, while Camels only counter Cavalry.
Scorpions can be good choice if they get faith.
Battle eiephants feel cheap for what you get, barely more expensive than a knight.
Yeah, I get the impression that devs want to make elephants viable on arabia, but these units are by nature worse than cavalry on open maps. So every time elephants are buffed, it doesn’t really adress their weakness on arabia and only makes them even more busted on black forest.
Every unit doesn’t have to be viable on every maps, siege onagers are as rare as elephants on arabia and no one cares.
Be aggressive. Even on arena or whatever walled start map you can tower against the walls and keep pushes strong.
against a pocket elephant on black forest it’s gonna be hard. I can make a cheaper army to push before the elephant player is ready, but elephants are still buffed when they are already very strong
You can also be aggressive on Blackforest super early as well.
If you can prevent your enemy from getting a nice far wall because you maybe gambled correctly you can win. Ive seen replays of it before
Im just getting tired of this elephants threads
I simply ban all elephant civilizations, including Gurjaras and Hindustanis. I don’t think I’ll have a fair and enjoyable game when I see something like Bengalis, with a Teuton ally, producing the most busted elephants.
That I can play earlier aggressive is a thing but it’s taking the issue the wrong way. The issue here is : Should a cheap and spammable units should be has strong in late imperial that it is almost impossible to stop in late imperial.
Elephants were unused before so they made them cheaper and buffed them with resist monk. I think they are unbalanced.
As @Skadidesu told they still sucks at Castle Age but there OP later. So they need to be viable at CA and weaker at IA.
The solution other than the population size (which I dont like because it’s a too big change of Gameplay) could be :
That you are “tired of elephants threads” is a you issue.
Elefetant units should cost 2 pop or maybe 1.5 pop
We already have the karambit who cost 0.5 pop
This will barely change them in castle age were you generally aren’t pop maxed and nerf them in imperial, lowering their too oppressive pop efficency especially against even their supposed counters halbs.
Probably a pipe dream.
Ever played the relatively popular michi map dedth match? Persians is like a cheast civ in that for us casuals. It’s rly boring to play against or with them. It’s just not fair spamm elefsnts, win even with 0 Micro.
Or play turbo mode on any map, Persians are outright broken when they get to elefants.
We need a fix like yesterday. Not for the pros, not for 1v1 Arabia, but for all the sub 1100 elo boom till late imperial noobs. We are the majority, we need this fixed
I think the best solution would be:
This way Halbediers can be pop efficient against Paladins and Elite Battle Elephants without crazy high bonus damage.
I insist on my proposal:
Make the camel line deal similar damage to elephants as Halberdiers do to elephants, and rebalance camel civilization bonuses accordingly.
Assuming generic Halberdiers counter elephants,
But 2 pops when have you have 150 villagers then you get 25 elephants… I don’t like this because it’s like forcing players to not having elephants.
I would prefer a nerf that limit spamming without totally destroy the possibility of spamming. Something a bit more natural and soft.
And spearman 0.5 pop will make all games spearman spam parties + lag
Elephants are only OP at lower elos. That also happens to be where other strategies work quite nicely. Bombard Towers, for example, are much stronger at lower elos, where apm and overall skill levels are much lower, and they also are comparatively more effective against elephants.
Make more bombard towers.
Elephants are OP at low elo is a fact at Imperial age but they suck at early game for any elo. When they were expansive and without resist monk they sucked at any elo and any moment of the game.
It’s not necessary to make them suck again but just change them a bit.
I always thought they needed some way to protect small numbers of them from conversion so they could be more useful in the early game.
Like, imagine you could put an archer on their back, and the archer would be protected and could still fire, but if you tried to convert the elephant, the archer would be converted instead. That way early on you could use a few elephants plus sacrificial riders to be way better, but later on effectively doubled population cost of an elephant with rider would be too expensive, so you’d have to run riderless, which would make you much more vulnerable to conversion.
Currently there are units that are clearly less then half as strong als Elephants that cost the same 1 population so if those units are ever worth it then Elephants can be worth it too.
It’s not like that’s a totally mystery that has never been tried. AoM, AoE3 and AoE4 have different population costs for different units.
And I know, people go absolutely crazy whenever someone suggests anything from AoE3 as if that’s the worst game ever made.
If would maybe mean +50 units per player not 2x the number of units, half of the population is still villagers and you will likely want to have some other military units.
Also balancing Spearman is relatively easy because they have their own armour class that takes bonus damage from pretty much any ranged unit.
Even 0.5 population Halberdier still die to anything from the Archery Range.
AoE1 had 0.5 population for every Barracks units (so not the Hoplite line) with the main Infantry unit having pretty high base stats and it still worked out. Ranged units can still counter Infantry effectively.
They can already be very annoying vs skirms. If you give 0,5 pop to spear line then u must give the same to Skirms. Not mentionning the new Aztecs that would have super easy attack bonus on Jaguars Warriors.