Of course they are not. Because they are trash units that hard counter over a third of the units in the game.
OK so how do you beat war elwfants masses cost effectively? If not by halbs, then where’s the balance (monks don’t work against mass elwfants in late imperial )
Monks does work tho…?
Or just mass siege onagers in case of close maps
That’s just flat out incorrect.
Monks + halbs ends war elephants utterly.
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Ya know what works best against mass elephants?! not letting your enemy get mass elephants!
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Damn what a smart tip, you must be 3000 elo to know that.
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See if you were this aggressive INGAME instead of out of it, you might be higher than 1200 and elephant spam would never be able to get started because you sniped villagers and drushed etc
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There is always that guy to repeat some obvious theory.
Onagers are easily the best way to beat MASS elephants. Protected by halbs, of course; not just to do damage, but to block them from approaching.
Four onagers will just about shred even elephants, while costing substantially less. Of course, they can be sniped as well, but that’s only fair.
In the case of Turks of course they don’t have onager, which is why Bombard Towers are probably the best move. A bombard tower has the DPS of a castle for 1/5th the stone and is only outranged by a treb.
Unless the backline of archers picks that comp apart.
You keep ignoring the key problem; a valid counter need to be a real comp - else the secondary support units can shut down whatever on-paper counter you put out.
Lets not ignore the gold cost on every one of those. BBT’s have too many weaknesses; a static defense that’s almost a third of the cost of a castle, needs age 4, misses most of its shots, is hard countered by rams, and contributes nothing to offence. Even if you hold the line, then what?
With the elephant conversion, speed, and cost changes you really need either the dedicated counters, good siege, or a veeery good counter unit. Best turks have is scorpions and maaaaybe bombards, but their options for a disposable meatshield ends at hussar. Scorpion/hussars as turks.. its not nothing, but barely adequate isnt really a payoff.
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Elephants are the most expensive unit in the entire game outside of bombard cannons. If your opponent has 60 of them AND archers, they have been given tons of time to build up resources, and thus you do as well to have prepared far more units as a countermeasure.
Yea sure, do that in michi death match
You can’t prepare far more units, pop cap, that’s the hole point of this, discussion. You need 3v1 halbs to elefeatns just to trade slighlty cost effective.
Against 60 elwfants, at best you can field 80 halbs since you need villagers yourself.
The result is, that the so called counter unit for elegant loses the fight and is not cost efficient either
This is why making Elefant 1.5 Pop would alreast help so their is a fairer chance for the halbs in imperial age when both sides are pop capped for example in team game death matches
Imo, battle elwfants are OK, it’s Persian elwfants that break the balance.
I don’t think you’re quite looking at this from the right perspective. For example, you say it costs a third as much as a castle, as if that was a bad thing. But that’s actually super amazing. Castles are considered to be fairly effective defensively, and here you are getting the same Firepower for a third the cost. Firepower that elephants in particular have a hard time dodging. While they do tend to lose a little utility at higher skill levels, so do elephants, so in practice, pretty much anytime elephants are useful, so will bombard Towers be.
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IMO a better way of measuring cost-efficiency in the late game is :
- start with an equal amount of units, this assumes an economy easily able of reaching the pop limit even with expensive units (sure elephants are pricy but not much than knights)
- count resources lost after the fight ends. Maybe add a multiplier for gold at this point, depending on the situation.
The result would be a middle ground between equal resources (doesn’t take max pop into account, you cannot keep sending 5 halbs per elephant at once if the enemy has over 20 of them…) and equal pops (ignores resources). But I haven’t seen testers using that method.
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The point is you SHOULD have been preparing. Because you have the same amount of time.
If you have been spending the game wasting your time, that’s your problem.
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In a 1vs1, if you let your opponent get to their late game death ball like War Wagons, Mangudais, Magyar CAs, Houfnices, Ballista Elephants then the fault is on you for not using the timing window when your Civ was stronger.
In team games, especially on maps that almost always go into late Imperial age, the fault is also on you if you do not have included one or more Civs with a death ball as well on your side.
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Scorpions have bonus attacks against Elephants. It seems to me that a lot of people have forgotten this, yet now they also have Ballistics.
Yes, but after 26 years that’s part of the charm of the game. If you don’t like it, maybe AoE2 is not for you.
No.
True, with the exception of the Gurjaras.
And Cav Archers.
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Battle elephants are 35 res more than a knight for +150 hp and splash damage. Elephant archers are 15 more than a knight for +130 hp and being a ranged unit. And here you are comparing that to a 450 res unit.
Reading you responses, it seems you think there’s alot more breathing room against elephant civs than there actually is. So I’ll remind you that 4 of 6 civs that can field elephants have very good early bonuses and/or secondary units to support their elephants.
The top ranked civs have the eco to race ahead, but the majority DO struggle - as seen but the winrates of elephants civs peaking around late castle/early imp - and there are even a certain few that dont have any counter at all.
Thus, there is a valid problem here.
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They’re also way slower. Knights arent good because they have good hp/armor, but because they can run in before you rally up, and then run away before they get killed.
Same for cav archers. Imma raid with those over Eles
How common are those?