They hardly ever get played, almost never. They die to pointy bois so easily, they can hardly run away and cost so much. I think one of these area’s needs to be tweaked to make them viable again. It doesn’t make sense to go elephant’s over knights in 99% of situations.
This time last year elephants were my favourite unit to play with. Playing with archers and thicc bois was a dream combo. Now its always archers and knights.
On infinite resources death match they are nearly unstoppable.
Elephants work fine in heavy resources maps with tight choke points. They are meant to be a late game unit in team games where you have tons of trades. Like on a map of black forest/michi, or infinite resources death match.
The only thing holding back elephants is their cost. If they were cheap, they would be totally broken. Imagine Persian War Elephants/battle elephants costing the same as a knight for example.
[laughs in Malay]…
Elephant archers are your answer (only when enemy turtles)
disclaimer: this was a very low elo match played by me sent to that caster
Well unfortunately the developers gave Malay an absolutely monstrous discount in imperial so they’ve put themselves in a pickle. Despite missing 2 armors, Malay elite elephants are still tanky vs arrow just due to raw hp. Any additional buffs will probably break Malay.
I did make a post a while ago talking about how elite battle elephants needed 20 more HP.
While it obviously needs testing the benefit is Malay elephants see relatively little gain. But other than things like this where the Malay elephant receives relatively little benefit, the problem is Malay elephants are very strong as is.
Also the order of some of the changes for elephants was weird. Trample damage and elite elephant main hit damage changes didn’t make a ton of sense. For example vs 3 targets with 5 melee armor the damage per hit went from 30 → 26 → 19.5 and the last drop was a 25% reduction. They should have reintroduced the 16 main attack damage when they reduced the trample to get a smoother progression of 30 → 26 → 22.5 with a final transition of → 19.5 only if needed.
This all being said you can still use them well if you practice with them. But I wouldn’t be surprised if the elite upgrade being buffed slightly would be better for balance/more varied play.
The only one thing eles “need” is some utility that scales with the skills of the players to make us of them.
Eles seemed to be strong in low elo tg and were nerfed therefore. In high elo and pro they are almost useless except for very situational things. ANd malay eles…
Was just a nonsense buff for malay tbh, they already had a very strong lategame. Just, complete nonsense that change.
My proposal always was to give Eles a “Speed charge” when attacking mechanic. WIth that they can force some favorable fights but their weaknesses would stay.
With that I mean that the eles get a speed buff when ordered to attack a unit for a short time (like 5-10 secs) they need to recharge over time.
That’s all it needs imho to make them a more viable unit. Cause from their sheer stats they are already insanely strong.
And it would fit, as eles in historic battles were used exactly like that. Just charging into the enemy frontline to break it.