Funn fact: Battle Eles don’t kill buildings faster than knights with the same investment.
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Yeah after the attack bonus vs building is reduced they are not good enough against building.
Sad elephant noise.
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That fact isn’t fun!
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ouch, fact hurts. Now that you mention it, BE literally has no advantage over knights.
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Xbow is .96, ele archer is .9, and husbandry brings it up to .99, se they are NOT faster except against dravidians.
That’s what i said in my post.
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Seems I read that backwards… whoops 
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Sorry for the necro, but I feel like it’s important.
There were several threads like his some time ago and I don’t know if I picked the “best” one.
But here’s my point to the devs:
PLEASE read this kind of topics to get inspiration for your Elephant buff attempts.
The current way of “just reducing the cost until they get more used in the meta” is not only very blunt, it’s also almost ensured to fail massively. The reason for that is the current design of the eles, which makes them almost unusable at high elos whilst lower elos can get massive trouble with them.
And then is the aspect, that they aren’t a “revarding” unit for your control. It’s very little you can do in an actual situation to improve their performance. So WHEN Eles become meta, it’s a very toxic meta cause people will rightlfully complain about “broken uinits” that require “no skill”.
There are atm these flaws of the current Elephant design that NEED to be fixed to bring them to a state where they can become meta:
A) Interaction with Monks: The swing is just too much and there is little you can do to protect the eles, as they are so slow.
B) Scaling: Eles scale very well in the lategame cause to their super high pop efficiency, but also due to the “attention economics” development. Translated: In mass Battles having a bunch of tough bulky units which performance isn’t depending much on your attention is no downside, but actually helpful. Cause you can focus more on stuff that requires attention.
C) Speaking of that: It is also required for a “poer unit” in the midgame to have some micro capabilties that can be leveraged against the other power units in the midgame to get an advantage in the direct stand-off. The reason for that it is. Would there be a unit that doesn’t have/needs to be microed to be competitive, this would be a very unfair advantage. Ofc there can be huge differences that benefit different playstyles differently. But there needs to be at least something.
D) Composition partners. Battle eles currently don’t really have one “simple” addition. Knights have Skirms, Archers have Halbs. CA have Cavalry. Damn even Ele Archers have Onagers. But what’s there for Eles? Very much depending on what the opponent does sometimes Archers, Skirms, Light Cav, Infantry, Siege… Most of which has much lower pop efficiency and needs a lot of upgrades. So in most cases it’s actually way better to just make more eles, especially when the opponent has multiple threads active that can’t be answered by a single addition. I don’t say we need to add a new unit as comp partner (though I already shared Ideas for that). But if not there need to be tweaks to existing units (including the eles themselves), so there is at least one “simple” addition that helps against most of the threads against eles in the game.
As this post is already quite long, it would possibly be too much to list some already posted ideas for the battle eles to be more viable. Also these ideas are currently scattered across multiple threads, so it’s very tough for a single person now to fish them out. But IF the devs are interested I could possibly do it and make a list of these ideas as much as I can find them.
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Just make a new thread and copy paste this, please. That will be more effective.
TBH I like it more this way.
If I made a new thread all the past contributions of forum members won’t be visible - and I don’t want to act as if the past never happened. Also ofc just to respect the people who (hopefully) brought some thoughts into their posts.
Battle elephant changes from patch notes:
(Elite) Battle Elephant cost 110f 70g → 100f 70g
(Elite) Battle Elephant speed 0.88 → 0.9
Malay: Battle Elephant discount 30/40% → 25/35% (effectively -2/1 food, +3.5 gold)
Monks will always be a weak point for elephants (just as they are for knights). Making battle elephants slightly faster is a slight improvement on this (though very unlikely to make a difference). Reducing the food cost will make them easier to afford in castle age (since gold tends to be more readily available than food at that point in the game), but would have less of an impact in imperial. Still nice (may mean that you can afford to maintain production with one less farmer/fishing ship), and reduces the effective “swing” that results from losing a battle elephant to a conversion (Elephants might remain about the same power level, but it’s less investment stolen).
The speed changes gives them the same speed as elephant archers and several infantry units. It doesn’t make them faster than any generic units (that they didn’t already outspeed), but I haven’t checked unique units (or done the comparison for Khmer battle elephants).
What about skirms/monks? Skirms counter pikes and ranged units. Monks heal the elephants back up when they get injured. And the battle elephants work as a meat shield (helping keep the skirms/monks alive). Still would be weak to enemy monks, but you’d also be able to potentially convert the elephant back. Light cavalry could also be a problem (especially in late game, but by that point you can afford to add some halbs to guard the monks)
This is still weak to enemy Siege/Monks. Also, as Skirms are so low on pop efficiency you need a lot of them hurting your ele numbers massively.
Skirms usually just pair better with the more mobile cavalry options as they can deal better with siege units. Also Skirms are a expendable unit. It’s not that you want them to die, but actually you don’t need a frontline protection for them, especially not a expensive gold unit.
And for the changes you stated that they also help against monks kinda… yeah they help against “anything”. So only focussing against the monk aspect is very constructed imo. Also “helping” doesn’t mean bringing them to a usable state against any skiled monk player…
Okay, then.
Yep. Let’s just overhaul BE like …Arambai, Elephant Archer.
Cost 100f/70g → 110f/80g
TT 24 sec → 28 sec
Speed 0.9 → 1.05
Attack bonus vs Building +4 (+7) → +3 (+5)
Armor class Elephant +0 → Elephant +13 (Castle Age = 2 more hits from pikeman for Vietnamese before UT, Burmese, Khmer, Dravidians, Malay, 3 more for Vietnamese after UT, and 3 more for Bengalis. Imperial Age = 1 more hit from Halb for Dravidians, Malay, no UT Vietnamese, 2 more for Bengalis, Burmese, Khmer, UT Vietnamese.)
[Scorpion attack bonus still works]
+2 min conversion time, +2 max conversion time (Same as Ship).
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How about swapping cost… 110F 70G to 70F 100G…
An then add a imperial age tech that swap to 110F 70G.
This way you make eles affordable in early game but drain your gold. Tg keeps the same, because you will prefer eles woth less gold cost.
i’d buff the elephant by breaking castle age heresy into two techs like whta they did with faith. pre heresy in castle age and full heresy in imperial.
pre heresy being losing 50% hp that someone else suggested while full heresy is the same as heresy right now, with pre heresy + full heresy costing what it is currently with heresy.
monk is too hard of a counter to elephant and its pretty much seen every single game. need to reduce the effectiveness to an extent as theres also spear/pike.
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I still think the “best” way to “buff” eles would be to add a new trash unit that synergizes well with them.
I made once concept idea of a “chariot”, which is a trash ratha with very low HP and selective bonus damages. I think it would optimally synergize with the eles as it is frankly the total opposite: Needs attention, fragile, fast and revarding when you manage them right. Also with only costing wood there is no res overlap and it needs not much economy to be added.
One of my Chariot Designs can be found here
Especially with the high bonus against monks it can possibly compensate for the Elephants weakness, but in an interactive way that requires skillfull use of both units.
I think the best way to balance Elephants would be to give all Elephant units 2 pop cost and then buff their speed (with the exception of Siege Elephants of course) to be a little faster then Infantry.
The idea being that actual real elephants are faster then humans, even when carrying humans but they require a lot of manpower to be maintained.
Just giving them 2 pop would be nowhere near the pop costs of Elephants in AOE3 or AoE4.
With 2 pop cost they could also take up more slots in a transport and have an increased conversion resistance.
The other thing they should to is make the Spearman Line 0.5 pop so they don’t need to to such religiously high bonus damage vs. Cavalry and especially Elephants. But that’s a whole different topic.
I think the idea of a trash Chariot is inherently stupid (and yes it is very stupid in AoE1 too).
The main reason Chariot armies died out was because they were expensive to maintain. Chariots where so expensive they bankrupted whole Bronze Age Empires.
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Bringing up “historcial accuracy” in a thread about Elephants is stupid.
Cause it was actually them who were disconued cause they proven to be not reliant and frequently attacked their own ranks. Most famous for this is the infamous Pyrrhus’ Victory.
If you try this kind of “killer argument” you should make sure it doesn’t bite you in your own butt…
And I don’t even agree with your statement about Chariots. There were different type of Chariots, also in different cultures (Celts famously had chariots btw). A good example is the Egytian Chariot which was an improved version of the Hyksos basical weaponry. The Egptians made it a very effective elite unit. Showing that the same principle could be entirely different in it’s military role and still effective.
I tend to believe that Chariots were discontinued cause the Battlegrounds changed. Antique battles were almost exclusively fought on flat open terrain were chariots could manouvre freely and didn’t get stuck. But at some point using of the landscape became inherent part of military tactics which rendered chariots useless as they couldn’t fight well on every terrain type.
But as there is a high tendency in this game to fight on exactly flat open terrain I see no reason why in this alternate reality chariots would ever have been discontinued, they seem perfectly fit for the most common map types in this game.
But the game isn’t historically accurate, so who cares. Maybe you don’t like chariots appearance. But then please state this and don’t construct fictive arguments that come back at you immediately.
no no you are understanding me wrong.
I love Chariots!
But I hate to see them only existing as trash units. One of the worst decisions of AoE1.
The game is based on history.
That means the game doesn’t just add completely random things that are not fitting in the setting just because they think it’s cool or it’s needed for balance.
Like there are no Space Marines or Dragons in AoE2 for a reason.
There where multiple reasons:
- High cost
- Horses becoming strong enough for people to actually #### ## ############# * Changed in battlegrounds like you mentioned
Chariots mostly died out around the end of the Bronze Age where most empires collapsed or at least had a major internal crises.
Some parts of the world still used them in smaller quantities and they stayed around for none combat roles for a while.
In the Age of heavy cavalry they don’t really have a place anymore, they are therefor kinda anachronistic in AoE2 but so are the Huns and Romans so I’d say they are cool as a Unique Unit.
Elephants where discontinued in the Mediterranean but they stayed in usage in India during the Middle Ages and even beyond that.
So the game is not really wrong here.
It’s cheaper to just get a horse then to get a horse (or 2) and a chariot, isn’t it?
Light Cavalry should therefor always be cheaper then a Chariot.
It makes little sense to turn historically expensive units into trash units.
I know this game is not a historic simulation but it would just feel wrong to have expensive looking units be weak and cheap.
Like the game could give the Paladin model to a cheap trash units and the Skirmisher model to a super heavy elite units but it would just feel wrong to use those units.
Imagine an army of Paladins charging into none Elite Skirmishers and just dying.
It could be perfectly balanced but it would feel totally wrong and not fun to play.
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Many of the “cheaper” chariot variants featured horses that weren’t combat trained. Combat trained breed horses were indeed very expensive, but as explained especially for the chariot archer variants not required.
For example the celts chariots were mainly for the mobility aspect and when the fighter had to go in melee the chariots moved back just far enough to provide a retreat option.
And ofc in general Hoses were kinda expensive, but the scout cavalry line is also a trash unit.
The issue is, that as the Ratha showcases, a hybrid CA/Cavalry unit is notoriously difficult to implement in a balanced manner. Because it’s the strongest army comp we have in the game that would be built up by a single unit.
And I am very confident to say that the devs can try whatever they want, the Ratha will never be in a good spot. It’s because of that double role, there will be matchups where it will feel completely dominant and others where you seem to go nowhere with it. It’s a really bad idea to make in a game that is currently well driven by the dynamics of the different unit compositions.
Ofc there would be options to make only ranged or melee chariots, but these would basically only be reskins/variants of the existing CA/Cavalry units.
That’s why I think a trash Chariot makes way more sense, as it would be quite easy to implement and thanks to the weapon switch ability could optimally complement the battle elephants.