No. Monks with Block Printing, Theology and a couple of Siege Rams in front, will make his expensive Elephant army, into YOUR army, so cost-effectively, I doubt the other guy will play an Elephant civ soon afterwards.
Monks are a brutal hard counter to Elephants.
What if you are a civ which doesw not get these research technologies?
What if the enemy just micros his ballista elephants to shoot the monks? Since they both have range? Sice monks will take awhile to convert a unit form most civs. 2-4 seconds is a long time in an RTS game. 
Oh yeah, let’s make them slow again so that they get their place back in the trash bin shall we? And the increased age up would also force them to waste gold. And lastly, only downsides that civs directly get as civ bonuses are less starting ressources, and never anything else.
Who in their right mind would build archers in Feudal on Arena?
We are speaking Castle age. No way you could have enough Ballista Eles to threaten a Castle, especially since without Elite Upgrade they have both a weaker attack and no anti-building bonuses. And if you force them to interrupt their boom to build Ballista Eles you just denied them an easy access to Imp and good eco, so it’s a win anyway.
It’s a rush ie. you attack your booming enemy early to destroy their eco. He just won’t have a castle (or anything tbh) up yet! I guess Khmer have the advantage of not needing a barracks to have their stables, but it won’t matter anyway when you will have converted/rammed it.
Monks still work, you just need micro.
Then the Siege Rams will get to them, and they do a lot of extra damage to Siege units, while being almost impervious to the Pierce damage, not to mentions that Rams do AoE damage.
It is lose-lose to the Elephants.
Ballista eles are both short-ranged and slow. You can’t micro that.
You can, but against Halbs or Skirms, not against Monks.
Ummmm… Someone trying to stop a tower going up while staying inside their own walls??
Perhpas i was not clear. However, i did not see anyone state that anything was being referring as being “in the castle age”. However, i was referring to using them for killing the villagers, while they were building the castle, BEFORE the castle is completed.
Do you not need to be in imperial age to get the convert building technology? Unless i am thinking of a different technology.
I know they can work. I have did it before when converted war elephants. The point is. They both have range. By the time, you start connverting and the time it takes to actually convert the unit, the ballista elephant would have fired at least 1 shot if not more. Then your monk is dead, and you have no conversion. So you just wasted 200 gold. Unless you have A LOT of monks. Like about 15 monks for every 20 ballista elephaphants, and you have insance micro skills. It ewould be far too difficult more 99% of players, would it not?
I am not exactly sure what you meant by this. By the phrasing, it appears as though you are implicitly stating the ballista elephants are classified as “siege units”. Is that correct?
Correct. And most monks are “slow” to convert an enemy unit.
I just did a test using the AoE 2 DE scenario editor. I made P1 and P2 both post-imperial and both Khmer. Player 1 had the monk and Player 2 had the ballista elephant. I used the monk to convert the ballista elephant.
The ballista elephant did NOT move to attack until AFTER the monk had “already started” the conversion process. Guess what? The monk died. Not to mention approximately “half” or more of the shots fired from the ballista elephants actually MISSED.
EDIT: I just did a test whereby i changed both civs to castle age. This proved more favourable to the monk. This allowed the monk to actually convert the ballista elephant. However, this was only 1v1.
Ballista Elephants are classified as Siege units, correct. They take extra damage from both Rams and Scorpions.
Did you put Rams in front like I told you? Unless individually microed on almost every shot, Ranged units will auto target Rams, a unit most of them cannot even properly counter. They will waste a lot of shots, and end up converted.
Let’s be real, the time for you to build your archery range and have enough archers to kill the villies, the enemy will have 2 towers covering each other and ur archers will be useless. What you can do is build counter towers… but then you need tons of villager on stone and you spend wood on towers instead of farms. So even if the enemy countered your tower rush you slowed them down and delayed their deathball.
Because it’s obvious you don’t castle drop an enemy in Post-Imp with a full army.
Then again, to field Ballista Eles in any significant quantities you need to boom. Castle drops are here to prevent this from going smoothly, and chances are they will have to abuse the market to build a counter castle. It means that they won’t have any UU to kill your villies. And given how food intensive Ballista eles are, trying to build them in this situation would kill your boom.
Redemption is in Castle age.
1 monk costs 100 gold.
Just like with Eagles, if you wait for the enemy to have a lot of BE before trying to use your counters, you’re disadvantaging yourself. Anyway, since they really need their numbers each conversion weakens the deathball, and they will waste their former buddies’ time (because BE are really good at tanking the p.iss poor damage of fellow BE)
100% correct
Khmer monks lack Block printing but still have more range than BE and take 3 shots to die. Sometimes you will be unlucky but most if the time it will work. And since, as said previously, each converted BE is gonna be a pain to deal with for your enemy it’s well worth it.
I did not know that.
I did not put rams up front. However, in castle age 1v1 the monk will convert without rams. However, in post-imperial age the ballista elephant weill win in a 1v1. Also, it is not a very reliable test to put a ram up front, since, pressumably, one would be fighting a human and not an AI, correct? Therefore the human would just set the ballista elephant to target the monk and not the rams.
Unless you mean that after “each shot” they will then “change” their target? However, i have never heard of such behaviour in any unit before?
It still is, specially since Ranged units are oprone to disobey orders and attack the Rams anyway. Also, even if they kill the Monks, the Ram will get to the Ballista Elephant, and kill it fast.
Would this not also slow your own economy?
I know that. I was referring to the fact that you presume that with walls and a “boom” without needing to build any buildings thast there will even be a chance to muster the force necessary? By the time someone would get to castle to use monks. The Khmer civ player would probably be either close to getting to the imperial age or they would have something like 10 ballista elephants, would they not?
Are they not 100 food and 80 gold? If i remeber correctly? 100 food does not seem like much.
My bad. I never particularly used monks excelpt for cheesing.
What if the enemy stays behind a wall to amass ballista elephants before attacking? Since they can age up faster?
Yes. JonOl12 explained how ranged units will auto attack the closest unit after each shot. I think i understand what you are saying now. You state that, since the BE will auto attack the closest unit, even just one conversion will cause all other BE to attack the other elephant, buying time for the other monoks to also convert the BE, thus causing a snow ball effect. The RAMS will also allow for the conversion to happen by having the BE direct their attack after shot towards to rams. Since the rams have an extremely high defense, even when not upgraded, they would be able to withstand such an attack from multiple BE (at least for 5-10 seconds), which would be enough time for the monks to conver the enemy BE.
The rams distract the BE. Monks convert. The “Auto fire (re-targeting)”, will then cause the BE to fire at the rams again or at the recently converted BE. Thus effectively countering the mass BE. Since the BE will also be highly difficult to prevent from firing at the rams and the recently converted BE which will be mixed in with the non-converted BE. Is that correct?
Yes. I just tested that. The ram was way to OP. It did 47 damage each hit. Yet the ballista elephant did almost nothing.
I presumed that rams were only strong against buildings. So they are also strong against other siege units? And BE other classified as a siege unit, is that correct?
100 Food and 80 Gold, with 25 seconds training time, 70 seconds Elite upgrade, and benefit from no Attack upgrade outside of Siege Engineers.
It is very hard to mass Ballista Eles, you just let you opponent boom, and lost because of it.
Yes, that is correct.
But i had a game where i vs someone and about 20-25 minutes in he had like 30 ballista elephants?? And was in the imperial age.
I was in castle age and had like 60 pikemen and some battering rams. The infantry were destroyed easily.
Ballista Elephants are anti-Infantry, so that is not surprising.
Put the Infantry into the Rams, and charge them in, you will win fast, specially if you unload on top of the Elephants.
You lost the tech war, if by 20 minsn on arena, you are not in Imp too, with an Imp army. You were just too slow.
Except you planned the deal so you (hopefully) adapted your eco, while the enemy will have to react and change their plan. Leading the pace of the game is always a good thing.
Because you can’t pay for Ballista Eles if you don’t boom.
It’s “just” the equivalent of two villagers. That’s still enough to hinder booming if you build them too soon.
What if the 3 rushes I mentioned already happen super early, so that the enemy being Imp didn’t happen yet? And no, there is no way Khmer can be Imp before you could perform these rushes (assuming equal skill level)
Sounds good.