Here’s an idea. What if Mahouts was replaced for the Persians? War Elephants are as fast without it by default.
‘Elephant Armor’ tech. Plus 1/1 armor, receive 50% less bonus damage from spearman-line units. How powerful would War Elephants be then? Could they become viable in 1 vs 1? Or would War Elephants still be bad units outside of boomfest games? Michi/black forest, infinite resources games, etc.
You know the whole reason Battle Elephants receives such a ridiculously large amount of bonus damage from the spear line is that War Elephants exist and the Elephant armour class was “balanced” around War Elephants?
War Elephants are already unbeatable in Michi/black forest, infinite resource games, etc. I don’t understand why you’d want them to be even more unbalanced.
I am actually in favour of making WE fast by default, as you suggest. Mahouts could confer monk resistance.
And PS: War Elephants should cost 2 pop
Ehhh.
Why Mahouts should be replaced is that the bonus for War Elephant is unnecessary to be separated from War Elephant itself. So making the new UT focus on War Elephant again is unwise.
Let the new one benefits economy or other units.
If they cost 2 pop. I want them to have 1200 hp to make for it.
200 Paladins have a total of 36000 hp
100 War Elephants with their current stats have a total of 62000 hp
Of course you’re free to want whatever you want.
As am I. And I prefer units to be somewhat balanced.
100 War Elephants with their current stats also have comparable dps to 200 Paladins (it’s less, but not much less, due to trample damage), and comparable resource cost.
I think that war eles should be easier to get to, maybe weaker, not even harder to get to, but stronger.
They are already so super niche in long games that it doesn’t make sense to buff them even more in the department where they are good at, considering we never see them otherwise.
Yes and you can have 20 stables and paladins are almost 1.5 times faster.
The best part of it: Persians have them and with extra dmg vs archers.
Imo the only way to make Eles working also in 1v1s is to give them some utility.
Currently they are so slow they can’t run away from unfavorable fights aswell as they also can’t force favourable ones.
My Idea always was to give the Elephants a speed charge (that’s also how they were used historically). This way they could at least force some favourable fights at times.
If we would give Eles continously direct speed bonusses they would just slowly become yet another form of standard cavalry.
The Idea is: When you are targeting an opponent enemy unit with your elephant he will get a say 50 % speed boost for 10-15 seconds. After that the ele needs to recharge that speed boost over 30-45 seconds like the coustilier needs to recharge his charge attack.
Ofc to set this off both war and battle eles need a minor nerf, maybe in their cost. But it doesn’t really matter much where.
Edit: I wouldn’t mind if mahouts would give battle eles this speed charge just to test how it really interacts. As Burmese need a buff/overhaul anyways, why not just trying this first on them before touching the other ele civs? I mean the design of burmese can’t really become much worse, can it?
Good way to call Geojak 11
monks go brrrrrrrrrr
Elite upgrade should have the effect of Mahouts
Then you can have whatever Imperial UT you want
Doesnt make any sense.
The problem in 1v1s just like every Elephant civ, isn’t the Spearman-line bonus damage… but rather Monks.
You misdiagnose the problem and therefore a pointless “solution”.
It’s both. Ofc Monks are even more of a problem to eles, but also spears are so much more effective against eles than other cav. As Eles can’t even run away from them.
In general it’s reducable to “elephants can’t force their favouring battles and not run away from disfavouring”.
And that’s also one of the reasons why eles are comparably strong at low elo as players don’t really use mobility there.