Btw. lets see about Mccauthons claim that Elephant archers are a good unit on its own.
37 crossbows with decent micro can beat 20 unmicroed knights on a flat surface.
I picked 37 crossbows for this because this is approximately the threshold where I manage to win against knights. Other players might do it with less, with more favourable terrain it definitely is possible with less, too, but lets stick with 37 for now.
So lets think about how Can we compare that to Elephant archers:
Could be done three ways: Population efficiency. Only stat we look at here is 37 units. Sure Elephant archers massacre knights, im not losing a single one.
But thats not a fair comparison.
Resources: 37 Crossbows equal 15 Elephant archers, if you consider alls resources to be of equal value.
This actually works out quite well. I manage to keep 11-9 elephant archers alive in this engagement. Whereas this is around the same number of crossbows I manage to keep alive against knights.
But well, you can only produce them from castles so training time is also important.
Lets consider 1 castle vs 3 archery ranges. That would give me 13 elephant archers. Only now the knights actually win, with around 3 of them surviving. I cant keep them from surrounding me.
Actually I have to admit, Im kind of suprised. Elephant archers in castle age do much better than I expected. They not just population efficient, but even against knights actually cost efficient.
And they ALMOST are training time efficient as well. Remember 13 elephant archers do bad but just 2 more are actually as good as 37 crossbows against knights, if not better.
The downsight of course is, that you cant mass them in feudal or early castle, and they take longer to kill the knights (didnt measure the time), but they are not that terrible. Getting them massed to a significant number should actually not be as hard as most people think.