Do they? I didn’t check it because I was almost sure that halbs attacked faster. Then, I guess it’s balanced.
On the other hand, if viets get a good bonus, all 4 civs that use elephants would have the means to afford them (malay have them cheaper, and Burmese and khmer have great economies)
Another downside of elephants that no one ever mentions is that they are big and have trouble moving between clusters of enemy buildings.
Maybe they should cost more food but have a lot more HP?
And an additional tech to make them 50% more resistant to conversion(Unique tech maybe)?
Since they can bust buildings, not that big of a deal. Also, faith is laready available to all ele civs.
Then play Persians.
Holy monkeys, I went to work, got back, and this thread had +80 replies. Clearly some individuals are independently wealthy.
tl;dr (cause ain’t nobody got time for that) while I think battle elephants are still in a fairly good place for their role (team games, DM, black forest, etc), I do think that the -2 attack nerf to Elites was slightly overdone, and I’d love to see them get +1 of that damage back. Alternately, I could live with them receiving 10 less bonus damage from halbs, but I wouldn’t go much further than that, since they should still be hard countered by the spear line.
Welp actually it’s only true for Vietnamese (4 hits —> 5 hits) and Khmer (3 hits —> 4 hits). Ooopsie
Even if those 2 got a +1 attack buff they wouldn’t get their old treshold vs halbs back. I really think that this -2 value was chosen because -1 wasn’t enough to nerf them, and that there are many other matchups were -1 only still allowed the eles to get the kill in the same number of hits.
Just saw the last vid from Viper. Holy moly did his elephants got exposed by onagers and mangudai after trying every Vietnam combo. At the end he was perplexed. Didn’t know what to do or what he could have done better and then some guy just suggested early elephants to which he replied they have no mobility(that’s another reason elephants pathing is horrible. Perhaps I wouldn’t complain if they actually fix their pathing and hit reaction. Meaning they insta hit the moment someone comes nearby. Anyways so even viper thinks they are not viable early although not for the same reasons.
Yeah, Rate of Fire is 3,05 for Halbs and 2,03 for Elephants.
He thinks they were not viable in this particular game.
He sometimes uses a few early elephants (probably more than any other pro) against a Feudal army or a group of Skirms. Yes, it’s situational, but it’s not that there’s no use for them.
I fully agree that the main purpose of elephants is being a lategame unit though. But that’s totally fine.
As much as I love elephants I think the current balance is fine, elephants should not make the bulk of your army and should only be thrown in as a supporting shock weapon. the bulk of your army should be composed of infantry, archers and other cavalry with a few elephants thrown in for some extra trample damage. That is how they were historically and how they should be in game. People just want to be able to have an army that consists of nothing but an endless stream of elephants and I think its a good thing the game does not accomodate that.
Well, ussualy you only have 1 kind of gold unit. Yeah, you can play elephants + skirms, for example, but playinng elephants + archers/cavs cost a lot of gold. Heck even + infantry is expensive.
His main mistake was to build Arbs instead of building Rattan archers. The eles did their job of soaking arrow fire, but he had the wrong support unit, which caused him to lose. We don’t claim that elephants should always make people win, but that they are balanced, ie.not an auto loss nor an auto win.
They did just that in the last hotfix
Then why he keeps trying? He did that several time and it worked most of the time.
Well you shouldn’t be having elephants as the main unit that your army is composed of. It would be ridiculous. So you should be spending your gold on other units, cavalry or infantry for example. Think of elephants as multipurpose siege weapons, you wouldn’t compose an army of just siege weapons and expect to win. Having said that Persians now get trashbows so you could actually spend some gold on elephants and have resources for trashbows to support them.
Their siege is horrible. Many units outshine them on that regard. If they were siege then they should be classified as such. Pretty sure the creators didn’t make them with siege in mind. And it feels as if the Persian elephants actually take extra damage from castles in that regard not to mention because of their large size and pathing. In large numbers they easily get stuck in between narrow buildings structures and will get killed while they are unresponsive to attacks or movements for a couple of seconds. FACT Those couple of seconds punish an elephant push much more than a paladin push that got stuck in the same situation because paladins normally don’t get stuck. Counter units attacking the elephants deal ridiculous extra elephant damage + cavalry bonus Also elephants cost massive resources so every unit you lose counts dearly. And finally once they are out of their dumb pathing they cant run away or fast target objectives like paladins.
They get bonus damage vs both buildings and stone defense, so they are definitely made for killing buildings. Also, Persian elephants don’t get bonus damage from castle (they have the same armor classes as the other ones, so all of them would be affected) and are actually even better than the Battle eles since they are so much more bulky.
Elephants are still OP in many team games. If people start teching into halbs too early (and they kind of have to vs elephants) the team with elephants already has good value for elephant player. If halbs were weaker, the elephants would just wreck all.
They are a multipurpose siege weapon in that they are good at destroying buildings but can also fight units. Ofcourse other dedicated siege weapons might be better against buildings but they dont have the versatility of elephants.
Viper was right, BE couldn’t be used because they will be target practice for Mangudais. They have too little mobility to fight Mangudais + LC + Mongol’s Onagers. Mangudais + Onagers will rekt them before they can cause damage.
Rattan wouldn’t make a difference neither. 1st, they can’t chase down Mangudais, 2nd there were too many LCs (LC is the most cost effective against Rattans), 3rd they will die to Onager quicker than Viet Arbs.
The Viet combo Rattan + BE is a terrible exchange with Mangudais + LC + Onagers thus has absolutely no use in this scenario and only eats up your gold reserve. Imp Skirm + LC (Cavalier) + Bombard Cannon should be the the way to go but this is too expensive on gold and Mangudais could be very dangerous to BC.
The reason why BE isn’t used that much is because they are too easy to pick on. Persian War Elephant is a different story as they have double HP and higher attack so they can hold themselves much better.
Easiest solution is to give them a little speed buff. Come on, they are at least cavalries not siege units, they should be a bit better at running from Halb or hunting down onagers/trebs/skirm.
I can imagine this fight happened in medieval time, where a horde of Battle Elephant comes out of the jungle from behind the enemy line destroying the slow siege weapons and wrecking havoc…
This speed buff shouldn’t be too much as they still need to be caught up by Halb and Archers. They can chase and flee a little bit better to distinguish themselves from looking like a half-ass ram.
BTW I think OP should change title to make clear that we are discussing Battle Elephants (or Indian Elephants Archer if you like) cuz Persian War Elephants are fine.
Welp, I did provide you with a game where the eles hold Mangudai and kill onagers (this game being likely the reason the Viper tried the strat again) So here it is again:
Of course the strat can fail, or else it would be OP SL all over again.
Let’s forget the fact arbs die to Mangudai in 6 hits, while Rattans fold after 23 arrows, shall we?
They are faster than normal arbs so by your logic those are even worse. I mean, according to this, the only thing that can catch up that Viets get is the Heavy cav archer, so they were the best answer right?
You shoudln’t really care that much for wood efficiency in a late game setting you know.
Onager damage can be quite random, so I don’t think the+3 hp that Viet arbs get when compared to elite rattans will save them more often.
Regardless of how accurate this is (no use, maybe not, but hard to pull off, I guess since the Mongol army is so good) this combo is still better than the Arbs+eles combo since you waste just as much gold with your archers, but they go down much faster…
But cavaliers aren’t light cav?
Even a Malay ele still take 50 hits from arbs before dying. Of course archers can eventually work in a 1v1 because you won’t have as much eles as they have archers, but 1-in team game/BF you will have a good mass of eles, and then good luck to those who will try to counter you with archers 2-not all civ have good archers/scorpions and 3-you made a mixed army right?
A BE after husbandry has a speed of 0.94… Onagers have 0.6, trebs 0.8 (but are also immobile for 11 secs when packing themselves to flee, ad chances are the enemy won’t pack as soon as he sees your eles) and skirms have 0.96 (and it’s not like they need 320 hits to kill…)
I know those are jungle elephants but stealth still isn’t their thing…
Welp, strangely, when I task an elephant to attack a unit, it often wins, while my rams always lose. I wonder if anyone else noticed the difference…
I don’t think it’s his opinion
If you think halbs counter elephants, try to mix the elephant with literally any unit that doesn’t get countered by halbs. Elephants+halbs, elephant+skirms, elephant+hand cannoneer, elephant+champion, elephant+arbalest, elephant+scorpion… Any of this combos will dab on halbs super hard (because half the time the halb will attack something against with it has no bonus damage, or will take a lot of damage from a ranged unit and melt), I promise you can literally make 200 halbs and I’ll still push you with one of those, +60 or not.
Elephants are already a broken unit in TG because of this, you absolutely need other elephants to stop them in late game. And please get gud before suggesting balance changes.
I don’t think their weakness to halbs is the problem because halbs can be easily countered by archer units and gunpowder units.
Their really big weakness is monks.
Elephant archers and Persian War elephants need a bigger buff than battle elephants, in my opinion. I say give Persian War elephants more speed and reduce their cost and buff elephant archers’ range, attack and HP until they’re actually viable.
Welp, they already take 5 whole onagers shots before going down. That’s crazy!