Look dude, at some point you gotta understand that reading tool tips is very easy, everyone knows about monks and there IS a reason why its not enough - that reason being simple archer support.
Games are more than just two units slapping each other in a vacuum.
Speaking of vacuums, its easy to say camels for BE’s and bombards for ele archers (camels are bad vs battle eles btw, you need pikes) but in practice its alot easier to support elephants against their soft counters than it is to enable hard counters.
Please no. I really dislike this type of thing, and is part of why I don’t like AoE4 too much. Keep it in AoE4. AoE2 has done just fine for decades without such a nonsense mechanic. If the game is broken with elephants, they can fix it in other ways, as has been done for other OP stuff for decades
Next thing everyone will propose and latch onto as a great idea is to give elephants a stamina bar. They can only move 20 terrain units before they have to stop and rest for 10 seconds. Serenity now. Let’s keep those type of mechanics for AAA titles that think they have to do neato gamey things like this so they can market it as a feature when it is actually just covering up a shortcoming, or doing it because every other game does it, or they somehow perceive the gamey mechanic as ‘fun’
If we make elephants to 2 pop how are we going to counter monks(+support unit) with elephants (+ support unit)?
Imo one of the big reason elephants got buffed is that monk exists. If not so, elephants were in a good shape.
At later games (afaik) we dont have a unit that can convert expensive units (or in some sense, hard counter expensive units) but we do have one in aoe2
Pop cost would be counter-productive idea.
Units like Paladins, Halberdiers, or War Elephants are meant to be pop-efficient but not cost-efficient or wise-versa.
You know what is also not fun? Hint: Elephants get converted by monk.
If you find spamming halb isn’t fun against elephant then I can say the same thing with paladins as the only way to counter them effectively in late game is…guess what? 30 barracks with halb. Camel is a regional units so not everyone has camel to counter paladins.
I don’t think elephants need any nerf themselves, they need more counter options instead. I also think camel should have more bonus vs elephant units.
Maybe once the elephants are converted, they should lose 50% of their HP or something, and that is their new HP cap. They can’t be healed to the former 100%. Would that be good compromise, or no…
Yes, healed by 50% of their max HPs.
Conversions feel too swingy. You assign your monks to convert a couple of enemy units, then micro your other units. Sometimes the units you try to convert end up in the front and die before being converted, heavily injured or still almost completely fine. Them getting healed upon being converted would at least make conversions less random.
Nobody uses monks at low elo. Not enough skill and apm for it. But patrolling 60 elwfants in for an easy clap is possible even for noobs and it’s outright unstoppable because you can’t spamm hslbs fast enough, they aren’t even cost effective due to war elwfants aoe. Try 60 halbe vs 60 elfetans
This is funny because there are more camel civs than paladin civs… And only few of them can really take good fights against Hallebardiers (Franks, Lithuanian with relics, Teutons).
This is about your meaning about “nerf”. Buffing camels vs elephants is a nerf to elephants and I suggested to buff heavy camels/imperial camels only for not nerfing castle age elephants which are already weaks.
I like the idea of tweaking population costs for elephant units, but this should also extend to mounted units as well. That way cavalry civs aren’t so oppressive either and this will allow future civ bonuses to work with population costs.
My suggestion would be as follows:
Foot Units - 1 Pop
Mounted Units & Siege - 2 Pop
Battle Elephants, EAs and Siege Elephants - 3 Pop
War Elephants - 4 Pop
This would be a big nerf to elephants and a buff to foot units, but should allow a lot of room to buff elephant units without them being overly oppressive. Every other Age game has been able to healthily incorporate elephants and mounted units into their games, pop costs are a big reason for this.
