Exactly! Paladins are way more efficient than elephants. They kill halbs better, and can always dodge them. Plus, you can start mass them from castle age. BE have more or less the same problem than Teutonic knights.
âLetâs ignore all the arguments mentioned from the other side and just proclaim the thesis once more. That should convince them for sure!â
In other words: Letâs buff a unit thatâs perfectly fine!
No
True, but it makes sense for a juggernaut unit to not be too mobile
The same goes for elephants
Nope, BE are used frequently under the right circumstances (teamgames or specific 1v1 strategies) and they are perfectly fine. The only problem they have is some noobs coming up with the idea to change them because they dont like the possibiltiy of them being countered by a standard unit.
5 Likes
This means you didnât read anything that leads to the conclusion at all. Zero. Absolutely nothing.
You miss understood the whole point. Iâm proposing 2 possible solutions because there are concerns about them being too pop efficient in late game (but isnât it the whole point of BE, expensive but pop efficient?). At their current state, their disadvantages outweight their little pop efficiency they have comparing to Paladins (reasons explained above, at least read my other post).
I personally lean towards making them a bit more resilient to Halb (taking +2 more hits would be a good compromise)
Yes, except that for their cost, knights are a viable strategt in castle age, but elephants arenât. Plus, you can micro a few knights, but you canât probably micro a few elephants in order to avoid conversion.
Youâre really cocky and didnât read anything we had written. Itâs not about them being countered. Is about being countered so hard and so efficiently in comparison with paladins (and lacking the mobility they have)
No, you missunderstand the whole point.
There is no concern about them being too pop efficient. Their pop efficiency is just part of the argument here. Itâs a strength of them, not a concern. Itâs fine!
Also their disadvantage doesnât outweight their âlittle pop efficiencyâ - thatâs your opinion and Iâm pretty sure no good player (and they are good because they understand the game, not mainly because they click faster) shares that opinion. I tried to give you a lot of reasons why thatâs the case, yet you seem to completely ignore them, but rather come up with â2 possible solutionsâ for something that just has no problem. Therefore every solution is bad and the best thing is to just stay where it is.
Elephants being to weak against pikes is your personal interpretation. The fact that people with a much better understanding of the game donât agree with that (not even refering to me, just go to a Viper (or any other pro) stream and ask him if he thinks elephant should be better against pikes if you really want to know) should at least make you reconsider your opinion. Yet you are here just stating it, straight up ignoring every argument against it.
Just go to the scenario editor and test elephants against halbs. Probably you didnt even do that and just looked at the numbers and thought â60 is too muchâ. Itâs not as bad as you make it seem.
I literally quoted about every 2nd sentence of it during my last posts lol
You not reacting to it is why I get cocky.
Okay, hereâs the main point again: If there is a slow and strong unit which gets basically all its value from raw fighting power (just like elephants), it needs a clear and strong counter unit. Otherwise it will just attack move through everything and thatâs not fun to play. Therefore Halbs/pikes countering elephants hard is needed.
2 Likes
And hereâs the counter point:
Why would you go for a juggernaut unit that is unstoppable, except for the unit that your opponent gonna make, and gonna easily destroy your unstoppable unit? Even more, knowing that the hard counter is far cheaper, and easier to spam?
And since you named Viper, letâs take him in example: best playee of the world, mad about Khmer, the civ with best BE of the game. Even now, with their new food bonus (which should justify going for elephants) he always go for scorpionns when playing Khmer, or even arbalest. He preffer arbalest without thumb ring before the best BE of the game. Why?
Nah sorry mate, I do not agree with you nor believe you, unless you can provide a source to back that claim.
Being a slow unit by itself is already countered by a lot of other units that are fast and can hit and run at range. Being a slow melee unit add insult to injury, meaning there is no flanking, no surprise attack, no sniping onagers, no harass villagers, no refusing to engage a bad fight, no escape from monks, and so on⊠Have you seen BE used to raid villagers 
The elephantâs slow speed limits its usability a lot. There is absolutely nothing other than being meatwall. In that case they should at least be a good meatshield.
If you proclaim yourself understanding the game so well, give me a solid counter argument as to why taking halbs 2 more hits to kill BE is bad. Given that Halb can easily outnumber BE and can kite the BEs around until they can reach critical mass. If you canât, maybe go back to play the game a bit more?
(PS: Comment meant to reply to TohoBuWaha sorry OliveCereal4714)
Can you guys do my a favor and just go to the scenario editor and test some elephant against halb battles? Keep in mind that your own units will perform better if you dont set it up correctly, so be sure to play it from both sides or just set it up so that both groups are patroling.
20 elephants actually do not too bad against 30 halbs. Yeah, itâs not cost effective, but if the matchups was as bad as you make it seem, the elephants shouldnât stand a chance there. 30 halbs seems to be the number where you can even starting thinking about stopping 20 elephants (you will still lose most of the halbs, if not all of them). With your proposed changes that numbers would become 40. And thatâs the hardest counter there is (arguably monks too). I donât think that sounds like good balancing.
Because 1v1 is a bad setting to go for elephants. Too expensive. How often do you see Viper go for Paladin in 1v1?
Also Scorpions are more fun to use for him and he doesnât fo full tryhard most of the time anyway (not saying he would sue elephants in 1v1 if he did).
I did so (even before this post), but you probably will get mad anyway if I dont quote this, so here you go^^
So youâre saying, that 20 elephants should absolutely slaughter 30 Halberdiers? Because if elephants get any stronger thatâs whatâs going to happen - right now itâs a pretty even fight. I donât think thatâs good, considering Halbs should be the best counter and halbs can easily be sniped.
(Yes I know 30 halbs are still quite a bit cheaper, but you need to consider things like pop space and production time as well)
@HighPingLord And dont you like roses when they are red?
âŠ
Okay seems like you need some light on the matter, if they nerf something is because is too strong. If they buf something is because is too weak. Got it? nice, elephants were nerfed in november (too much? I dont think so; only -2 attack on elite battle elephant).
Anyways, balance changes discussions only mean something when done by the pro players (and some few others), who really understand the game.
Viper only used elephants as a surprise attack. Then he was forced to change to light cav/knights and scorpions, just because Larry had a few monks. And were effective just because larry took like 3 minutes to notice he was being raid.
We donât need to agree on every modification they do on the game. Persian trashbows. Not even pro players agree on that. Got it? Nice.
Mayor BS. Being good at the game doesnât mean that you have the best ideas for it. Once I heard Hera claiming that Mayans should get bombard cannon.
We donât want an unstoppable unit, like S lancer when they first came out. We want an usable unit. They nerf the attack because they performed too well agains anything that wasnât a counter. Okey, I get it. But then, they should nerf the counter a little bit as well
Itâs difficult for anyone to get mad at someone who doesnât know anything about tatics and micro but still self proclaim as a good player. Itâs far easier to laugh them off 
You donât have to engage an unfavorable fight. One thing a more mobile army can do that a less mobile army cannot, it can utilise terrains and hills and/or force engage the latter.
Reality check here, by the time you muster 20 elephants, enemy is already in imperial age 2400 food 1400 gold doesnât fall from the sky dude.
Elephants cost more than 3 times halb but cost gold, move slowly. By my proposal Halb win by 2:1 ratio while costs no gold (atm they win with 1.5:1 ratio). Pretty good trade. Tell me whats the problem wirh that?
Wow. Didnât know you couldnât understand sarcasm.
The fast moving elephant is scary. The slow moving villager has no chance to escape whatsoever. Surely this is an overwhelmingly common strat to use Elephant to harass economy instead of the inferior cheap scouts or knights rush. Next pro strat: hit and run with BE?
I think my points are pretty clearly explained above, just roll up and read so we donât have to re state everything over and over again?
I wasnt asnwering to you but okay, I have a nice evening all!
Seriously this is still going?
Elephants are never going to be valid option in 1v1 games especially during castle age vs castle age, during imperial age they are just too expensive just like Paladins which are completely useless in 1v1 too.
Teamgames, Elephants are one of the MOST population efficient unit especially when youâve unlimited gold available to you, you canât micro monks against a mass of them, making halbs in TGâs makes your team weak as opponents need to only send someone with ranged units to wreck you completely. So there is use for elephants, if you are making trash in TGâs youâre trolling or youâve already lost and just try to hold against opponents while other side of your team is wrecking their side.
Elephants are fine as they are, theyâre not meant to be 1v1 units and halbs âcounterâ them, but still trash does not belong into teamgames.
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I can agree with you that elephants are more useful in TG than 1v1.
Still thatâs very plague.
What kind of team game is it? 2v2, 3v3? BF? Open map? Early rushes or non early rushes? Isnt it too niche that they are useful as very late game unit and confined to 4v4 in BF with support from good archer civ ?
Isnât the whole point of the post to make BE more creatively used than that?
TG with 1700+ voobly players. Does not matter if itâs 2v2, 3v3 or 4v4 most games that go past 40-50 mins where elephants are an option have them used, unless the other civ in the team has only cavalry options and your civ is an archer civ.
So in terms, when the level of play gets decent and players actually understand meta and can execute along itâs lines the most efficient ways to play become only useful.
Given the context, they did really well, especially since he was under heavy pressure, had to rebuild his eco, and the Khmer werenât buffed yet.
Wanna see more? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DztmWyRSSo0 (with onager sniping from elephants included!)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQENvuebmMw Of course there are other exemple where he loses or he goes with other startegies, but to me a strat is balanced if itâs neither an auto-win nor an auto-loss, and if itâs not the only viable strat for its civ.
Welp the persian change was definitely because of high tier game (https://aoestats.io/stats?elo=2000%2B#?orderby=win_rate) Their win rate was between Goth and Portuguese fro high elo players⊠And anyway, trashbows are an indirect buff to elephants so thatâs a plus according to this thread, right?
Itâs a good point but not enough, or else all civs would only use cav archers.
The population limit exists.
If you wait for your 20 elephants to be out sure, you lose. But thatâs not how you use them.
I clearly understood that it was sarcasm, and you were implying that this idea was so dumb that no one could ever have possibly tried that. Which is false.
Thatâs not because itâs uncommon that it means elephants are useless (since they also get other uses)
Iâve read everything, and it looks like you donât want to understand the concept of pop efficiency (after all you refused to understand it for rattans as well), nor that 30 halbs are useless to push, unlike 20 elephants. Or that you donât read patchnotes
Welp in voobly they still have 16 attack so thatâs not relevant
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Going along with this logic, should we all just use whatever unit is most pop efficient? Ie bombard cannons, onagers, scorpion (not even cuz less pop efficient). What if opponents make paladins? how can you counter without trash unit Halbs.
Yes it is, because Elephants are still population efficient power unit that takes a lot of eco to produce and still overwhelms other units by a mile. You canât disagree with that.
If you do disagree, then youâre only looking at it from your POV from games where players are inefficient and make loads of mistakes, which means literally anything someone better does in a game like that would result in a victory. You canât balance around that.
For the second time in this thread: all these good people lose to a trash unit, the scout line, and they canât even defend themselves properly!