Elephants are OP

Since when Lithuanian Paladins with relics can take fights vs Halbs? 20 attack still need 4 hits to kill one, while the other two indeed can take 1 extra hit, but still not a cost effective unit vs halbs.

Don’t take my answer in the opposite way, it’s how we start some off topic things without end. I was answering to a guy comparing paladins to elephants and telling the only counter was hallebardiers (he excludes camels because it’s “regional civ”, which is a none sense because they are much more camel civs than paladin civs).

Anyway, I was explaining here that it’s a bad comparison because with elephants you can take fights with hallebardiers then heal. With paladins you better avoid them and maybe take a fight if you better paladins than average.

The thing is Paladins fear hallebardiers, elephants don’t.

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Michi is the most commonly played dm map - subjective from my personal dm experience, and I played dm ladder before empire wars replaced it. Loobys love hosting michi

  • Elephants taking up more than one population space is a step too far and unnecessary. Reducing their stats or increasing the bonus damage they take from certain units would already be enough to balance them.

  • The Persian War Elephant is actually more balanced than the others. It’s slower, more expensive, requires a Castle, and is more vulnerable to Monks. Sure, they’re more powerful and have higher HP, but Monks don’t care about those stats. Even mediocre Monks can somewhat handle them, as long as they don’t reach critical mass.

  • The newer elephants are a different story. Since they’re cheaper, faster, and easier to mass, they’re not as vulnerable to Monks as War Elephants. And lacking Block Printing is a huge disadvantage. Especially when facing Elephant Archers.

  • Some civilizations, like the Turks, have absolutely no answer to them. That’s because Turks were originally designed around a reality where they didn’t have to deal with 320-HP ranged elephants that are almost as cheap as Knights, or 320-HP conversion-resistant Battle Elephants.

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Monks are for countering elephants in castle age and early imp, not forever. Massing many elephants with full upgrades is extremely difficult. Elephants cost 100 food 70 gold, elite upgrade costs 1100 food 700 gold. Its a terrible play to just chill and do nothing until opponent has massed that many elephants. So NO. Elephants are not OP, booming for 40 mins without doing any disturbance is terribly weak and poor play.
Even after that if you have civs like Japanese, Bohemians, the halberdiers will melt them. You don’t need 30 barracks, around 10 should be enough. You should just remember to delete vills and have atleast 80-100 halbs at that stage.

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Do elephants have some splash damage? If not, I think they should! I like elephants seeming massive and worth the cost

I also think it should be rellllatively hard to amass huge quantities of them without laying out a lot of ca$h. They should definitely be a lot harder to spam produce than cavalry, if they’re not already. I’ve played Persians a few times recently, and at least in late game, they’ve been pretty easy to spam, imo

Actually, gaining control of part near opponent base and then building 6-7 bombard towers suddenly around opponent base is quite terrifying. MbL has done something like this as teutons.

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Yeah exactly. Persian elephants are fine, it’s super expansive castle units. It’s impossible to mass. The problem are these cheap regional elephants from stable. They cost almost same like knights. It’s obvious that they need a nerf.

Buff them at Castle age if necessary but nerf them at Imperial Age.

There’s always a better decision to make, but are bombard towers really meant to counter elephant spam? If that’s truly one of their intended purpose, then why doesn’t it say ‘weakness against bombard towers’ in the elephant’s description?"

I think my suggestion to make elephants weaker against chevaliers and heavy camels (excluding basic cavaliers and camels) or at least vs heavy/imperial camels would solve the issue. Just give them free faith at castle age for they resist monks earlier.

Or make an “elephant stable”, a different building that costs 5 stone 175 wood.

Another solution would be to change the monks’ behavior by adding a behavior toggle that makes them aggressive as soon as an enemy unit enters their line of sight. Or at least provide a monastery technology that enables this option.

At the very least, there should be a distinct visual indicator for monks who have full faith and are able to convert an enemy. This should be clearly visible on the battlefield without using a mod.

Or implement a hotkey that selects all monks with faith and all monks without faith separately. It’s been 25 years since gameplay has been improved, but monks are still played like it’s the year 2000.

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Not always the best. It depends on the stone stock and stone price in market. It can be a good surprise to raze opponent’s base. Besides, adding a bunch of halbs can deny elephants/rams access to those towers.

Mass xbow is also actually fine against knight and specially good when there is choke point which isn’t found in any description.

Scorpion is actually pretty decent against elephants but you don’t find description like that.

This sounds interesting tho.

It makes no sense that even Hindustani Camels can’t counter Elephants.

Berbers, Gurjaras, Hindustanis, Malians, Mongols, Saracens, and Turks all lack Halberdiers, so their Camels should have filled the anti-Elephant role instead. Even Mongol Camels should have countered Elephants—just not as effectively as Halberdiers.

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When you have a camel civ without hallebardiers you can only pray that your team mate will spam hallebardiers faster and give him wood for he builds barracks.
Even if you have 20 - 30 monks, they gonna melt if the ennemy has few scoots and they produce slower than elephants. Micro potential of monks is too bad to be a counter at Imeperial age.

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Elephants can’t run away from Halberdiers. Neither won’t you have the time to heal them.

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yes, but only one thing works in 4v4 against mass elephants. Bigger mass of halbs wich are countered by 50% of other units on the field. For my friends around 950 elo elephants are hard to play against.

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The solution really is get good.

I know it may sound arrogant, but you get better by understanding the dynamics of the game than by complaining that a civ its strong when it is full boom at minute 30.

Let’s take an example with the Poles:

  • Noob: Poles have nothing against spamming elephants → civ lose; cry about it
  • Decent player: Poles have such strong eco that if untouched I will do imperial in your face, even arbalests are good, even before you can do 1 elephant.
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How good you are for I get my elo target and be as good as you ?

Because the weakness is indirect. It’s not not Cavalry Archers say ‘weak to towers’, even though in practice the zoning capability of towers weakens their greatest strength, their mobility.

In this case, it’s not that bombard towers do MORE damage to elephants - it’s that they do LESS damage to everything ELSE, because everything else gets overkilled massively. This is similar to mass onager; elephants aren’t really ‘weak’ per se, it’s just that mass onager can actually do their full damage to them. In reality, elephant archers are actually rather resistant to onagers, but that doesn’t make onagers an ineffective answer to them.

If there is a problem here, it’s that people aren’t willing to do anything other than spam units at the enemy, and when they encounter a situation that can’t be won by spam, it seems unfair. But that’s a player problem, not a game problem.

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Yes, in summary, you mean that bombard towers are not a specific counters. It’s clear.

But it is the problem. For civilisations without hallebardiers there no specific counters for elephants in late imperial team games. It’s what I am trying to explain :

Pikeman = too weak
Camels = no bonus
Cavalry = no bonus
Monks = to complicated to micro because of lack of hotkeys + easy snipe buy archers, scoots vs mass elephants

Scorpions and Onager?
Scorpions do bonus damage vs. Elephants. Maybe it should be more.

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That’s only an issue if these Civs have no advantage at other stages in the game.

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If your 4v4 doesnt have at least one halb civ then your teamwork needs work

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