AE and SE so far are by far the best iteration of elephant. Specifically good even without any tech. If anything they might be too oppressive with such a huge discount along with the fast age up.
I think Malay should get the AE, but perhaps limit it to AE (no SE) and possibly reduce the discount (if any discount at all)
Hopefully we see a generic BE buff which might come with a reduction of the discount anyway, and then the reduced discount applies to AE anyway…
Cholas are a subset of Dravidians. The Dravidian castle is based on some Karnataka castle, not Tamil. The Urumi Swordsmen is Malayalam, not Tamil.
who cares about these details, urumis and individual languages. My point was game is not 100% history based. Wiki citations indicate that kingdoms that lived in South India had cavalry but in civ they don’t. So its inappropriate to oppose balance suggestions by citing historical accuracy.
The points I made regarding Hindustani & Gurjaras are secondary, even Vietnamese/Malay are debatable… But Khemer and Burmese should absolutely get both new type of Elephants, Archer & Armored.
They are both classified as an Elephant Civ, and I think it fits their overall theme. Plus, Elephant Archers will help Burmese A LOT!!
Ok, first of all I am assuming that both Elephant Archers & Battle Elephants are going to be buffed eventually, and the Armored/Siege Elephants nerfed (unfortunately)
But I think you are sleeping on the idea of Burmese Elephant Archers being affected by both Howdah and their Civ bonus, their EA will have +4/+5 Armor thanks to Parthian Tactics, Howdah & Civ Bonus!! They will finally have an answer to Archers, potentially even in Castle Age they could be used successfully since the civ bonus will negate lacking second Archer armor and Howdah can be researched once a Castle is built!!!
Devs could even go wild and extend Manipur Cavalry to have a reduced bonus for Elephant Archers instead of not affecting them!!!
Yeap, I think the devs are going to preemptively nerf Armored/Siege Elephants, which scares me since I fear they are only absurdly strong atm because people treat them exactly like Rams and attack them with Villagers 
Devs should wait until more pros use these two Elephants in tournaments so we can see their performance on real matches.
Yeap, the devs increased the discount after the huge nerfs to BE IIRC, which will probably require some readjustments when they inevitably get buffed.
The Gurjaras ones with 50% more bonus damage are quite strong like celt siege. They’re fine for other civs. They can’t be killed by vills but get shredded by pikes, camels and are converted by monks without redemption.
So it depends on how they’re buffed. If cost and bonus damage from counters are reduced considerably or if min conversion time is increased, then fine. Otherwise its simply not worth investing that much resources into these units even with +4/+5 armor. Usually when they buff, they’ll be changing something minor like cost changed to 90f, 65g from 70g or cav archer armor increased to -6. Changes like this still won’t make the units a usable option to counter big groups of crossbows and skirms with a few cavalry.
One point that I don’t think anyone’s raised here yet: What about the Siege Elephants that get gifted to the player in Gajah Mada 5 after tributes of 300 gold?
Plus if you give Siege, Battle & Archer Elephants to the Persians, how does their UU of the War Elephant fit into that?