How would you buff the Battle Elephant?

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
1

Battle Elephants are one of the coolest unit in the game, but usually don’t make a lot of sense in 1v1 games. I guess they are fine in team games where they provide a good population efficient unit.

However every civilisation that has Battle eles in their stable and is also described as an elephant civ/reliant on elephants seem to struggle a bit. Especially Burmese and Bengalis, with Malay and Vietnamese being good civs but they generally want to play arabalest.

So do you think it’s a good idea to buff the Battle Elephant so it is more viable in 1v1 games but not overbearing in team games? I mean especially Burmese an “elephant” civilisation is almost never making elephants because they are just too expensive.

  1. I think it would be a good idea to change their cost from 120f 70g to 100f 75g or something along those lines. This would make them more affordable in castle age.

  2. Another idea is to just increase their elephant armor so that they endure more pike attacks, this could of course work too. As of right now they are countered pretty hard and are unable to disengage effectiveley. It seems to me they are bottlenecked by the elephant armor class which makes sense for War Elephants, but not so much for Battle Elephants.

  3. A third approach I have read was to increase the base movement speed so they can catch xbows. This of course would make them more viable, but first you would have to re-balance the Khmer and this wouldn’t make them better in 1v1, but even more viable in team games.

So for me I think a cost reduction would be a great approach, so Burmese and Bengalis could try to play these units as a back bone unit. What do you think? :slight_smile:

5 Likes
2

I would give them a speed charge when ordered to attack (for short time + then recharge).
This would also fit how eles were used historically.

This way they would at least be able to force some favourable fights instead of being to slow all the time.

2 Likes
3

I dont think its possible currently to balance all elephants as long as Malay have a 30% and 40% discount.

I dont really trust the devs to have done their homework (i.e. analysis) on this kind of stuff. If you think about applying a 30% or 40% discount to any other unit line its obvious the problems that you will run into regarding the base stats of the unit.

7 Likes
4

TBH I really don’t think that “BE as they are now, but slightly different” is a good place to start.

That said, within those constraints, I’d:

  • give BE a bit of elephant armour
  • And also improve the base speed by 10-15% but make elephants unaffected by Husbandry. (Or remove Husbandry from the Khmer & Malay tech trees)
    (Also remove the Khmer elephant speed bonus.)
5

I would like the Elephant armor increases a bit as the bonus of halberds atm is just massive against them, and It was more tailored for war elephants, that have like 200 more HP. Even something slight to make them tank 1 more hit from halberds would be appreciated, but nothing major, since not all civs have halberds

2 Likes
6

Burmese Eles are ok. Just give them Elephant Archer and stack up armor bonus. Finally a good ranged option.
Bengalis need mobility and eco bonus. Bengalis eco is extremely underwhelming. Hussar can solve few things. But eco? Not sure. Mahayana is a late game bonus. Basically Goths bonus but feels weaker depends on how you play.
Elephant Archer in general needs their range match up with xbow. They can’t run away from bad. Just the range. Giving resistance vs Skirms might make them too op.

7

Increase Trample Damage from 25% to 33% and is fine.

8

It does make many engagement unfair if not op. They have 2 issues. They are very expensive and very easy to counter. If you make them cheaper than TG gets imbalanced as you have allies to backup enemy counters. It stays in tricky spot to play around with.

9

Great idea, especially since BE rely so much on Husbandry which is so painful to tech into when it comes to food.

The other two changes however are the easy ones, you basically turn Battle Elephants into Knights, faster and more resistant to Pikes, that’s counter-intuitive, not too elegant, and kinda kills diversity.

Let me offer one more:

  1. Battle Elephants have a flat 3 pierce armor instead of 2 and then 3 for the Elite. No reason for this unit to share the same scaling as Cavalier- Paladin.
5 Likes
10

I think just removing the War Elephant armor class from generic Elephant units could be a good start

1 Like
11

This is actually the best idea, makes Elephantos scale faster, so they will be more usefull in low numbers.

1 Like
12

Thats way too much I imagine

13

But Eles can’t outrun pikes…

14

Its the same as knights vs camels

15

Elephants are good in TG-s, but useless in 1v1-s. Conversion resistance would be good actually.

2 Likes
16

Make them elephant lancers with +1 range

17

It actually shares the scaling with War Elephant - EWE.

18

Not even close, pikes are much more effective vs Eles than Camels vs Knights. Not just because the huge bonus attack but even because of for the same distance pikes can give eles more hits than camels to knights.

Plus, knights with husbandry can outrun camels without it. Eles, even with husbandry can’t outrun pikes without Squires. This, imo should be changed. Eles with Husbandry should be able to outrun pikes.

1 Like
19

Slight less cavalary bonus for anti-cav/anti-ele counters

20

I think that would only make them better in team games, you still can’t really afford them in 1v1 can you? :thinking: