Yeah. Or like other cav UU, very similar to knight line. Boyar is probably the best example, slower but tougher version of knight.
If thing goes wrong that could be another steppe lancer which is totally useless. But no harm because the current state of elephants is somehow similar to steppe lancer
As long as this unit is both expensive and countered by monks there will be no use of it, knights are countered by monks sure, but, not totally annilate ; you can still take engagment with knights vs some monks where the elephants are too bad, and you can also avoid getting converted with knights because of the mobility, and still boom or get a combo behind your knights already created, however, elephants are just too expensive and slow to do that.
By removing these “issues” (which are not, elephants is a post imp units and do their goal quite nicely, even if these can be tweaked to be both more accesible, but less instopable when afforded in tg’s game). you are creating a knight-like unit and you also touching to game balance in deep, for wanting to make players go for elephants when they shouldn’t only because of historical reasons for a game and also removing units from the game and make the game towards more xbow / skirm meta.
A civ which doesn’t get knight need something to take their role otherwise you are very easy to deal with skirm xbow.
That is like saying removing knights to cumans tatars mongols to make the steppe taking the same spot which is impossible without making steppe a knight because that’s simply not the same unit or saying that india’s civ don’t need knight and need to use either camels or elephants or shrivamsha which is a bad design to me, because you NEED knights or a unit which have the same role camels do not , elephants do not, shrivamsha do not.
In conclusion, either you revoming knights and players will still play as usual with xbow, or you do make elephant a knight, and so you are changing very deeply game’s balance, and you are removing a unit from the entire game wich is currently commonly used in post imp in tg or with gold’s income like on marketplace.
2 Likes
I agree with everything you said except the conclusion, I mean,
This is true
And this, (more or less what I’d like to see), what’s the justification for this?
Like, if BE become similar to knights, then it doesn’t affect balance that much.
Just one last minor thing.
I want to make clear that historical accuracy is not and should not be a priority. I’m fine with byzantine cathoilic churches, aztec crossbows and mamluk throwing scimitars.
But a broad, more or less representative reflection of the civs’ most iconic historical aspects in the gameplay experience is a core pillar of this game and must be respected. The fact that khmer are mainly played as a heavy cavalry spamming civ is a deep design flaw.
3 Likes
By admetting you transform elephant into knight-like:
Elephants civs lose acces to the current elephants and have only acces to paladin like instead ? So you cannot go elephant anymore in tg, so civs bonus like howdah will affect the knight line instead so you can get paladin with +6 armor wich is completly broken in late game as well, so you can get knight with khmer wich move faster + more attack and with farm bonus, while currently, you are stopped to generic cavaliers and there is a reason why and no only due to the fact that khmer did not use paladin in reality.
Well maybe it is, but khmer are balanced and get variety in their gameplay, i do put a lot more of importance in this even, if the civ badly represent the reality, when i play khmer i always thought more at a civ which can go else on very agressive play with archers due to the non necessary barracks or with knights scorpions, or at a civ which can go on heavy boom with archers and that’s a very interesting thing to see variety in a civ.
I really don’t like at all being forced to play anything due to my civ (look at civ like goths, mayans) wich are boring to play, maybe goths, mayans, dravidians, celts, vikings… represent better the civilisations idk but what i know is that gameplay wise they are boring. making khmer into less options and more one dimensional is boring while also changing balance.
The chance is way lower. SL civs doesn’t lack anything. They all have top tier LC and above average knight line. Meanwhile half of the BE civs already don’t have any usable knight line. If Khmer and Burmese lose knight as per the thread, players are bound to use BE.
Eh. Mongols id put ar below average and tatars average.
Sorry, I don’t quite undertsand this. Khmer losing acces to elephants? Howdah affecting knights? Paladins?
I was talking about making the battle elephant stats a bit closer to that of the knight line. Speed, damage per second, maybe even reducing their life points a small amount. This is just an idea, I’m not even sure it would be good.
Oh, I really like the versatility that khmer offer.
I may have not make it clear enough. I don’t want to make them a pure elephants civ, or make them revolve entirely about elephants. My wish is to keep the same traits you mentioned: versatility, economy, but with elephants instead of massed knights (the removal of knights was just a more extreme idea).
If BE can fill that job or not, that’s where we may disagree, but I didn’t want to delve deeper into the balance and design of the BE, cause there are numerous threads about that already. I considered an ideal fixed version of the unit for the discussion.
2 Likes
I was assuming you wanted battle elephant to be a knight-like 
so currents elephants go away.
Ok i think i understand your point of view now, you want elephants to be viable in castle age instead of knights (without making it a copy paste of knight) (while keeping open the possibility of knight if strictly necesary).
Malay has, i think, the better approach than i can imagine to that, however this has limits in imperial and tg arabia where elephants simply don’t work and malay tend to use xbow way more often but that’s also due to aging bonus which is way easier to use with archer than elephant.
Forgot Mongols lack last armor. At least they have better melee resistant LC. Tatars is average but throwing some knight/cavalier to your CA is a good mix. Of course you’d rather prefer LC or Keshik. BE civs, maybe except Burmese & Khmer, don’t have this option at all.
You will just end up with a Boyar trained in stable.
Will be very difficult to balance. If they are knight but stronger and slower, they will dominate TG super hard. Camel have a visible weakness against archers. Elephants, not just BE, all elephants don’t have any weakness against archer (excluding skirmishers vs EA).