Fixes to Tower and War Elephants

First off Tower elephants Neeeeed an HP nerf. From 960 hp base down to 550 hp. Secondly blacksmith arrow attacks bonus and incendiary arrows NEED to properly apply to this unit.

Next WAR Elephants need a better defined EFFECTIVE role. This unit is slow, has no splash damage, has low range armor? And has a heavy armored unit tag??huh??
The unit is utterly useless!!! Ram does more siege and costs less pop and res, and 6 veteran spearmen (less than half the cost) displaces EVERYTHING this unit is currently designed to do (except attacking stonewalls…wow).

I have a few different suggested directions.

  1. Remove the heavy armor tag, remove all base armor, increase speed to 1.5 tiles/s, change spear damage to a 12 damage CLEAVE (beefy landsknecht), keep the 40 bonus damage vs cav, keep the 80 charge damage. This version of the unit has a more generic role as a meatshield that hard counters cav and soft counters non spearman infantry mass. The only counters to this version will be sufficient spearman, bombards and sufficient hand cannoners. Benefits to this version is it will fulfill ALL the current functions of the Tower elephant BUT have a proper counter, but not an easy counter since you’ll have to engage this unit in melee to efficiently deal with it which is obviously where this version shines. Also with the faster speed War elephants can counter ALL unprotected seige units!!!

  2. OR increase the range armor from 2 to 4. Increase the speed to 1.25 tiles/s. And reduce the attack delay down to 1s. Change the 40 cav bonus damage to 20 bonus vs cav and add 20 bonus vs heavy!!! This version absolutely counters siege, absolutely scatters cavalry, now counters men at arms also!! This version is a HRE men at arms on an elephanto.

Note: SCHOLAR healing Neeeeeeds to be addressed but that’s a different forum…cap healing of a single unit to 3 scholars per moment.

How is 550 hp fair? tower elephants cost 400 food, 600 gold and 3 population.
A similar costing unit is the bombard which costs 400 wood, 600 gold and 3 population with only 400 hp BUT 10 range and high damage, of course they are very different units but for a unit costing 1000 resources it has to be worth it.

Using the same argument for 1000 resources the war elephant doesn’t do enough, the changes you propose are interesting and aim to make the unit actually do something useful.

And scholars don’t heal more than other religious units do they? the problem is that the Dehli are forced to use great numbers of scholars to actually get a civ bonus, and once they get to end game (that is castle age, because delhi imperial is practically inexistent) those scholars are put to use in battle.

I like the Delhi and the civ is strong in its power spike, but i think there are mainly 2 problems with it:
-first is the dome of the faith is absolutely crucial to the delhi, i think scholars should cost only 100 gold as prelates and the DOTF shouldn’t decrease cost. This may actually help reduce the healing shcolars mass in the later game.
-second is that imperial techs take 15x as long to develop, in contrast to 5x in castle age. This makes the delhi imperial pretty bad or forces you to make a scholar mass. I think 7x would be fair, after all the civ is advertised as the civ " at the forefront of technological innovation".

Did you watch golden league? If so what was the dehli composition each game that made it out of feudal? Tower elephants scholar and trickle of inf and siege. And what’s the counter to tower elephants scholar? Loads of springs/bombards spearman crossbows, the counter costs sooooo much more and requires more management??

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Everyone uses tower elephants because it is the unique unit of the civ, do you expect players not to use them?
Also what game in the golden leage made you think that they should be nerfed? i don’t remember anything looking too imbalanced about the elephants.

And about the soooo much more cost, please say a concrete number or an example to see what you mean because again, elephants are very expensive. 1 elephant is equivalent to 12.5 spearmen if you consider resources as equivalents (which they are not).

Also crippling the tower elephants (halving their hp) and buffing/changing the war elephant would only result in everyone using the war elephant and ignoring the other.

By this logic everyone should use War elephants because it is the unique unit of the…

Everyone transitions into Tower Elephants because the scholar Elephanto is EXTREMELY POWERFUL is highly INEFFICIENT for the enemy to counter, period. HOW about EVERY SINGLE GAME THAT TRANSITONED INTO TOWER ELEPHANTS clearly demo’d the imbalance to their counter system. A single game that comes to mind that perfectly highlighted this issue was a game between Beastyqt and TheViper on High View (abbassid vs Delhi); Beastyqt played superior to the Viper that game (that series really 4-1…), but Tower Elephants forced the game into mid imperial even though LEGIT LEGIT, outside Tower Elephants the game was over 20 ish minutes in; but instead it went on an hour??

Ok, i rewatched the game (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rj2Uz7kA92k).
The two times (around the 30 min then 38 min) Viper used Tower elephants+scholar didn’t accomplish that much and all the scholars died in the exchange, the second time being when he actually surrendered.

That game was long but only 40 minutes and the stalemate was around the central sacred site where both players had castles and went back and forth with units.

While the comentators hype up the elephants the whole match at the 26 min the Viper sends 7 elephants to attack one keep and they fail, losing 3 elephants before retreating while the keep stands.

I don’t see the game not ending before 20 as a bad thing, specially if the two civs weren’t the most early aggresive ones, sure if beasty was using french or something it would be a totally different game…