Elite Battle Elephants need 20 more HP

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
1

Pikes vs knights/eles:

  • vs knights: 5 hits to kill, 27 resources per hit
  • vs battle eles: 6 hits to kill, 31.6 resources per hit
  • vs Malay eles: 5 hits to kill, 27.6 resources per hit
  • vs war eles: 10 hits to kill, 27.5 resources per hit.
  • vs ele archers: 6 hits to kill, 28.3 resources per hit

Halbs vs paladin/elite eles:

  • vs paladin: 5 hits to kill, 27 resources per hit
  • vs battle eles: 5 hits to kill, 38 resources per hit
  • vs Malay eles: 5 hits to kill, 22.8 resources per hit
  • vs war eles: 10 hits to kill, 27.5 resources per hit
  • vs ele archer: 6 hits to kill, 28.3 resources per hit.

Notably Malay elephants die 1 hit sooner in castle but not in imp which is, heuristically, a red flag.

Giving elite battle elephants 20 more hp fixes both disparities. Elite elephants survive 1 more halb hit, except Malay which still die in 5 hits. Also 340/320 is only 6.25% so unintended side effects are minimal. Similarly Vietnamese elephants still die in 6 hits just like before.

More importantly the inconsistency with war elephants makes no sense. It might be easier to mass battle elephants but war elephants are much more dangerous when massed with 50% trample and higher attack. Yet elite war elephants don’t lose harder to halbs than war elephants do to pikes.

Then empirically you can see in tests that the pikes still dominate battle elephants. So it’s not like there’s a significant risk of elephants being unmanageable by making halbs vs elite battle elephants similar to pikes vs battle elephants.

2

And why would vietnamese pay for a tech when the main counter of the elephant, a cheap trash unit, still would kill them within the same hits?

Chattras would mainly be useful before upgrading to elite battle elephamt. But that upgrade is so expensive that i would skip chattras to get the elite version earlier.

3

Because it affects hits to kill for almost any other unit including halbs which don’t have blast furnace?

4

Battle Elephants are hard to balance. 1v1, (I think even the Malay Battle Elephant will still win) they will beat a single halberdier with ease. Yes, the Battle Elephant is more costly, but there’s a reason for that.

Before the nerf, they had plus 2 more attack. Which made them very deadly. I’m not sure about undoing this nerf.

Battle Elephants are somewhat a super late-game unit. They should mostly be made when you have huge a mass of farms and trade carts. At this stage, the Battle Elephants become a force to be reckoned with. You basically have an army of rams, that can defend themselves in melee.