War Elephants are thoroughly underwhelming, and possibly one of the worst UUs in the game - except in lategame team games, when you can make enough to make them resistant to conversion by sheer numbers.
This, in turn, makes the Persians a lot more Vanilla than they’d ideally be. For example, Viper recently mentioned that Persians seem to lack a real power unit.
Recently, we’ve seen some new bonuses that give area effects on buildings, like Celt castles healing infantry. This raises an idea; why not do the same with Persians?
Mahouts: +30% Elephant speed AND Elephants cannot be converted within 7 tiles of a castle.
This creates a clear zone where Elephants can be useful, while not making them overpowered across the map!
Thoughts?