Unless you play a popular castle drop map like arena or nomad, you wont see a castle up after 25 min or something like that.
War elephant die in 90 shots of FU xbow. It sounds like a lot but when you know their extremely low speed and huge cost then they die very quickly from just 30 xbow, so upgrade is needed. And let’s say blacksmith cav upgrade and stable arent needed.
Then if we follow that scenario there is:
A castle.
2-3 elephants (because 1 elephant without upgrade isnt a big threat)
The new UT
And another unit to make the UT work, most likely xbow due to elephant huge cost of food. 10 of them since it was one of your exemple.
Just the castle and the 3 elephants We already spend 1415 ressources. Then we add to that one archery camp, xbow upgrade, 10 xbow and blacksmith range upgrade. It cost 3040 ressources.
I dont know what cost you want to put on your new UT but i think the cheapest castle UT of the game is inquisition of spanish for 400 ressources.
So basically the total cost is something near around 3300-3400 ressources for a double compo units which is not that good …
‘Just’ 30 FU crossbows? Anything sounds terrible if you give your enemy infinite resources and full techs.
Here’s what adding a war elephant or two will actually cost:
340 food, 170 gold.
The castle you’ll be building at the same exact time you normally would, so that’s not an additional cost.
The new tech doesn’t actually need to be researched immediately; it’s enough for it to be available in the back pocket if they start building monks and you lose control of their monks. After all, conversions will still work, so you’ll still need to kill those monks off. That’s assuming they don’t preemptively avoid monks simply because the tech exists! Nobody goes monks vs xbows or scout cav, after all, so if chances are that’s what they’ll convert, then going monks becomes much less worthwhile.
And the other units you were already going to build anyway aren’t an additional cost, either.
The only real cost of a strategy like this is trading some of your main unit comp for a few war elephants. And for sure, you absolutely would not go for this against every single enemy unit composition. But just for example, in a 10v10 of knights against franks, the persian player will normally win 33% of the time, but swapping just 2 knights for 1 war elephant instead leads to a 98% victory rate.
And that’s the main purpose of this tech idea; not to make them overpowered, or to make this a strategy that they’ll go for every time, but to make it a possible strategy.
it’s still much more affordable than elephant + xbow comp
When you have 2 players going full fight at castle age, it is an additional cost.
Then 30 xbow is almost free in comparison since you can create archers in feudal.
Or, since you built a castle then the franks has just more knights than you do.
It comes too late in castle age and cover only one of many weakness of war elephant
monks are created much faster than you building a castle and research that tech. It’s better to just make some scout to counter it, and give another UT more helpful to persians.
Like others mentioned, something like this would make things awkward from a defense standpoint in the closed map TGs where these units are commonly used. As far as 1v1s are concerned, the low mobility and extremely high cost would still keep them unaffordable. We don’t even see Bengalis use battle elephants as their primary unit. Those are cheaper, faster, have conversion resistance and made from stables.
I don’t think you’d typically go with a slow melee unit against xbows in the first place.
Like I said, if you’re building it at the same exact time you normally would build it, there is no additional cost. There are plenty of cases where you get an early castle, but even without them, it’s not like you’ll use this tech every time. It’s not meant to be overpowered, just balanced.
You wouldn’t want to remove ALL the weaknesses of Elephants, or they’d be crazy overpowered. That’s why this tech idea is relatively moderate in terms of power.
Persians as a whole don’t NEED a more helpful UT. They’re almost exactly 50% win rate, they’re quite balanced. All that needs help is the War Elephants specifically.
And yes, you still would want to create scouts to counter their monks. The point of this tech is not to render enemy monks irrelevant, it’s only specifically to protect high-value units like elephants.
Bengali elephants also aren’t anywhere near as powerful as War Elephants. And generally, mere resistance to conversion is either going to be too small to be useful or too powerful. That’s why this suggestion bypasses it entirely.
There is actually a good way to change the conversion toward elephant units. This is not my idea, it’s someone else.
Basically, converted elephants become neutral units (aka Gaiga), if you want the elephants to be on your side, you have to convert it again. This give elephant players a window to convert back the elephants or at the very least prevent other players from getting free elephants. Meanwhile, other players temporarily remove the threat from elephants.
nor against any other units since they cannot catch them.
And what is a “normal castle building time”? Because unless you want to go UU opening, castles are rarely up before 25 min on a constant fight in castle age. For me they are an additional cost because your opponent can just boom faster into imp or has a bigger army than you do.
One exception is when you already won most of your trade fights and try to castle drop your tc opponent. But in that case it’s better to rush imp than doing war elephants after the castle is up.
What i want to say by that, this tech doesnt change anything about how you play war elephants at all since they cost too much, too slow to get map control or escape an unfavorable fight on castle age. This is only helpful on imp age where they are already commonly used.
If you want to help war elephants other than what they are already used to, then it’s better if this tech directly increase their conversion resistance than this weird mechanic. And yet i’m not sure that will be enough to make them viable on castle age.
As for their winrate, they are so few played that their winrate change a lot through the patches.
That’s not true. Siege is the perfect example; you FORCE the enemy to engage them by being highly dangerous and resistant to arrow fire. That’s the reason I compared them to siege earlier. Of course, normal siege is vulnerable to other siege, but elephants are actually more of a siege counter than anything, because they’re able to tank fire from small amounts of siege and destroy the siege in turn, whereas even one mangonel can counter multiple attacking mangonels just by trading effectively. Adding one or two elephants to a force of knights or xbows could largely nullify that weakness and more than justify the cost.
Depends on the map and the enemy, really. But castle drops and defensive castles are both common enough to make it a reasonable option in many games. I don’t think games in the majority of ELOs are consistent enough to make any universal statements. War Elephants still might not be viable in the absolute highest reaches of ELO, but the tech would be valuable for other reasons there so that’d be fine; being able to shield your knights with a few scouts could be very useful for a high-ranking player, for example.
There’s almost no such thing as an unfavorable fight with elephants in castle age, unless it’s against pikes or monks, and pikes can be countered in turn. It’s only really monks that are their most ridiculous weakness. I think this would open up many new opportunities for them to shine.
I disagree. Conversion resistance on such a slow unit is going to be basically meaningless, because the risk of losing them is going to be so high. The big advantage of units like an elephant is their resistance to quick death; having the chance of losing them in, say, 8 seconds instead of 5 is basically irrelevant.
They need a more consistent protection than that, but it needs to be one that doesn’t A: Render monks irrelevant, or B: Make elephants overpowered.
This solution solves both of those problems by still allowing a unit to be converted, and by lowering in effectiveness as more elephants and high-value units are worked into the composition.
This is such a bad comparison. Siege do force engagements by dealing a high amount of damage from range. WEs on the other hand deal a very small amount of damage, from melee. WEs dont force engagments; they can just be walled out, kited or ignored.
But not with persians. Castle drops are not something you do with just any civ; to gain any value from it, you need to have a UU that can pressure. Otherwise you just invested 650 stone and exposed your vills for…nothing.
Lets be honest: In a normal arabia game, the castle is placed about the time you start thinking imp; sometimes shortly before, sometimes even after the click. The only two exceptions are when you are defending your 3TC boom vs a push with slow units (mostly monk/siege) and some niche civs that can justify going for their UU, mostly spanish.
True, because your opponent mostly wont fight them. Killing your villagers is much easier, and much more rewarding. And you wont be able to do anything about it, because your army barely moves.
I wrote this before, but ill repeat: WEs in castle age can’t really work without a fundamental rework, because if they were strong enough in castle age they would be absolutly OP in imperial age (where their strenghts really shine). And thats fine. If you want WEs, make them - make them in teamgame imperial age, the place they are designed for. But dont try to buff them to the point where they are viable in castle age (which, just to be clear, your proposed buff wouldnt even be enough for) and break the imp teamgame.
‘A very small amount of damage’ is not accurate. It only takes 3 to take down a fully-garrisoned town center, for example. They have significant bonuses against both buildings and stone defenses; a single one can kill a palisade wall in like 10 seconds flat. By default, they do about 11 building damage per second, compared to 12.5 for a mangonel, and because of their additional bonus against stone defenses, they actually do significantly more than a mangonel against those.
They’re more than threatening enough to force a response if used properly.
I disagree; I’ve seen castles go up in any number of situations, far too many to limit it to any specific strategy. It depends entirely on how the game is going. Not to mention you really shouldn’t limit it to just arabia. Golden Pit, for example, plays entirely differently.
Sure it does, 90% of your army will be exactly as mobile as before. I don’t know why I have to keep reiterating that I’m talking about mixing in a very small number of war elephants, not a pure elephant army! This tech would do absolutely nothing for a pure elephant army.
Which is why, per my last three messages, this tech is designed to be useful specifically in cases OTHER than the op lategame deathball.
Maybe if your opponent is afk they do. Their DPS is only slightly above that of other units, and actually below longswords and most infantry UUs if we talk bang for buck. Sending 3 WEs against a TC will result in them beeing ignored until enough army is massed and then killed with barely any losses.
Link those games then, instead of talking about them.
The problem is that mixing in say 3 elephants (plus that tech, plus a castle) reduces the size of the mobile part of your army (probably kts) significantly, so you cant fight the enemy kts mass head on. 10 kts+3 WEs might be able to fight 20 kts, but that does not matter because your 10 kts cant chase the 20 kts (they will be slaughtered) and the enemy will never wait for your 3 WEs to catch up.
It would help lategame enormously, because by lategame, mixed army comps are a lot easier to afford while in castle age, mono armies are seen a lot more. Thats just because the longer the game goes, the easier it is to justify teching into different units.
For equal cost, the longswords lose about 75% of their hp and damage in that fight, while the war elephants lose about half, and only 33% of their damage. Not to mention, getting longswords for Persians is a pretty bad idea, since that’s where they cap out. Of all the options Persians have available, War Elephants are probably the best, if they weren’t easily convertible.
As for preparing an army, it’s pretty difficult getting an army that can take down even three war elephants in the ~80 seconds it takes for the TC to go down. Especially if the persians are going into crossbows. Throwing out 2-3 monks is quick and easy, countering infantry is also pretty easy, but speccing into pikes takes significantly more time.
Why on earth would I have recordings of mid-elo games? I don’t think ‘castle drops are common’ is so absurd a statement that it needs video proof. Not always the most tactically sound option, but that’s mid-elo for you. The point is, it happens, and if it happens, strategies like this could happen, as well.
This addition would make Castles a much more appealing option in any case. After all, monks are often a first defense against a knight rush, and being able to divert even a few conversions onto some scout cavalry could more than justify researching the tech, at which point the castle is already built and the elephants are available.
You could use exactly the same argument to say that Siege is useless, which is obviously untrue. They can’t just sit back and let you destroy their entire economy, so they’re forced to engage, and if they engage, they’re forced to deal with the elephants.
Monk micro also becomes much more difficult in the lategame, so randomization at that point would have much less of an impact. With the exception of siege, of course, which is why I specified that it should probably be excluded from the tech.
You think when your opponent see one elephant coming out of your castle he wont make a huge mass of pikes or monks? And imagine you make xbow to counter them, dont you think he wont put his own or knights to destroy yours? Plus if you make war elephant your opponent is sure to have a bigger army than you do.
No they are pretty uncommon outside arena and nomad (and their clones). All you think in early castle age is raid your opponent vills or push his tc with siege, with castle drop too. But even with that the castle drop is rarely out before 25 min in game. Of course on the condition you won a one-sided fight before that, or your ennemy did a triple tc boom.
Basically the time needed for 30 xbow with +2 blacksmith upgrade to kill one elephant without upgrade (like you said before as an example).
Siege ram are much more resistant to arrow and easier to mass since they dont need a castle and food. As for mango they outrange TC, and destroy archers if there are 2 or more.
and elephant are very vulnerable to pikes. And at least on a mangonel fight you can win if you have better micro than your ennemy.
0.6 speed for war elephant. 0.5 for ram and 0.6 for mango. Good luck if you try to kill siege with war elephant if your ennemy protect them.
Knights + war elephant both of them are countered by pikes and monks and the amount of food and gold required is ridiculously big and 650 stone for a castle.
War elephant + xbow you just have to land some shot on war elephant first, then if xbow come a little too close shot them and block the path of war elephant with your pikes. And since xbow dont kill pikes as fast as a good mango shot war elephant will probably die first if you force this fight. Oh and let’s not forget about vill, they can repair mangonel in case you damage them so they can tank longer.
If he does, then he’ll be opening himself up hugely to counterattack. Making dozens of pikes to counter 2-3 elephants is a losing strategy.
Even if I agree(which I don’t entirely, you see any number of funny strategies), I’m not seeing the problem. So what if they get their elephants in late castle age instead of early castle age? Pragmatically speaking, that’s where they really need the help, anyway, according to their win rates:
So? In the same time they’d have killed 5 other units. If they’re trying to focus down the elephant, they’re not killing the things that are killing them, so I call it a net win.
Why are we talking about siege rams in castle age?
Run away or stand and fight, either way, they’re losing. If they sit there and try to hit the elephant, they damage their own units AND fight the elephant. If they run away, they’re useless.
Isn’t it great that this technology counters the monks, then? I’d say reducing half of your weaknesses is pretty good.
Making that out to be a lot simpler than it would be in practice, I think. In order to provide adequate defense for the mangonel you need to keep them a fair bit in front, making them vulnerable to the xbows. And if the mangonel stops to shoot at the elephant, it leaves it wide open for the xbows. And even if the elephant does get into the pikes, they’re stupidly tanky, and can easily distract them for long enough to do some serious damage.
Not if they’re getting damaged by elephant splash damage.
Honestly, I’m a bit confused why you seem so vehemently against this tech. To reiterate; It’s not supposed to be overpowered. It’s not supposed to make elephants be used every time. It’s not supposed to remove all their weaknesses. It’s just supposed to moderate their one massive weakness. That’s it. Every time you hear a pro speaking about war elephants, they inevitably mention their huge weakness to monks. Moderate that weakness, and maybe, just maybe, they’d have the chance to shine.
AFTER that, if they’re still not being used, then you could tweak them further. But they’re a very powerful unit, so you need to be very careful with how you buff them.
Which is why this would be a very good incremental buff, making them more powerful earlier on, in small numbers, mixed with other types of units, while having very little effect in late game gold-rich team games.
when you do your archers + war elephant formation you will put war elephant in front of your archers no? If that’s the case they shot war elephant first and then run away from your xbow.
Of course when your pikes hit the elephant, you dont shoot with your mango and let pike do the work. And since war elephant cant escape pikes they die if they come too close.
When you go for any kind of rush you already have a barrack that can make pike and if you did xbow they can support them to bring them down faster without the need to make dozens of them. Beside you dont need such a big number if you want to kill 2. 3 maybe but i think 3 elephants cost more than 12 pikes and no gold
First, late castle is where your opponent is reaching imperial soon so making war elephant at that stage of the game is a big mistake if you dont want to end up facing an army full army of arbalest + pikes and treb from an archer civ. Or being raided infinitely by FU cavalier( and later paladin) or hussard from a cav civ.
Second. does this graph include their performance on hybrid and nomad map? If that’s the case i dont see any problem.
either a knight or an elephant get converted it’s worth the cost of a monk. Worst case scenario all your knights get converted (knowing you cant high mass this double compo unit so the number of them must be low) and everyone run way from your elephant and wait later to get converted again and make this trade even worse for you.
Not really, since war elephant are really too slow and isnt a range unit like mangonel. You can put them in front with pike just behind them and shoot war elephant or xbow. If war elephants try to rush them, the time they reach your mangonel, your pikes are already in front of your mangonel. And since their hp got lowered by mangonel they die faster. And castle war elephant die on 10 or 9 hit from pikes( i dont renember exactly) but with their huge size it wont be difficult to pikemen to be glued on them specially if you try to snipe mangonel with them.
it depend how both of them are placed but if your elephant is in front of the mangonel and your vill repairing is behind it. I doubt splash dmg is wide enough to hit it.
And i repeat with some others who said the something similar. This tech change nothing about how we already play them because on castle age monks arent the only huge weakness of war elephant. It’s only a buff on TG late game imp age where they are already used. This change is just adding a cherry on a cake.
Probably not; they’d never catch them, so there wouldn’t be much point. Rather, you might set them on a production building like the range, in a manner similar to rams, but far more resistant to common melee counters.
The pike and mangonel player is stuck in a no-win scenario; try to attack with the mangonel, they kill their own units while only damaging the enemy slightly. Try to attack with the pikemen, and they get massacred by the xbows. Of course, all the xbow player really needs to do is snipe the mangonel with their trashbows and then kill the defenseless pikemen.
Yeah, mangonels can be threatening to xbows if you let them mass up enough, but that’s just a mistake you avoid. If anything, using the elephants to draw out the pikes instead of building more mangonels is already a win. No matter what, the elephant player has already won, by forcing their enemy to build new buildings, research new techs, and put together an entire army just to counter 1-3 units.
In late castle age, your eco should be in full bloom, so the relative cost of 3 elephants should be quite minor compared to the other resources you’re dishing out. If anything, you’ll end up saving resources from not needing to construct as many other production buildings.
Sure, but convert a trashbow or a scout cavalry and it’s no big deal.
I’ll repeat; this change would make zero difference in lategame, because the random conversion would just convert an elephant anyway. The main time it would be useful is early on, and maybe in the extreme lategame during trash wars, both places the persians really need help. I’m just…am I not being clear about something? This is a core part of the idea; that it would be helpful early on by protecting small numbers of isolated gold units, but become less useful in the lategame, when gold units are massed.
Worst case scenario, this suggestion still gives them Mahouts for free, and I find it very hard to believe that giving them a high chance to protect their knights and elephants from conversion would not be significantly beneficial.
Ill just respond to this, because it encapsulates everything you fail to understand.
Other slow units (monks, siege) can force engagments with their enormous damage output and/or range. Thats why they are useful. You compared WEs to siege a number of times in this thread but they lack those charateristics; what they do have is a big HP pool, but that can’t force engagments.
So what is the role of the WE, then? Since they can’t force fights on their own, they obviously are a support unit. They are tanks; not in the RL sense of the word but in the RPG sense. But since AoE2 is no RPG, there are no abilities to force enemies to attack your tank (yet…). The concept still works, if you mass enough WEs to form a solid wall in a confinded space. And thats where they suddenly excel: Their low speed does not matter anymore, as they are simply protecting the siege behind them that is just as slow. Their weakness to pikes does not matter anymore, because the confined space means not enough of the pikes can engage at once.
If we look at actual games (not the meme games you talk about, actual games from good players) we see them used exactly that way. A wave of WEs rushing forward, with ranged units and most importantly siege behind them. All the WEs will die, without doing much of anything, but they force the opponents siege and monks back, so your own siege can take down a castle or two. Watch Rubenstock vs MBL RF G3 for an imperfect example.
Now back to your statment: The problem with your tech is that it absolutly would not be enough to make WEs viable in castle age; it would make them less terrible, but still a bad option. But if you watch closed map teamgames, it would absolutly wreck the balance there because monks are already the only option to stop the elephant mass. I dont care what the tech is “supposed” to do; im arguing about how it will impact games.
Half or more of these threads where some weird new mechanic is introduced as a purported solution always seem to follow this pattern: the OP has some grand vision of what the changes are “supposed to do,” but players with (usually) more experience and/or better intuition explain why they don’t think the change will not have the desired effect, or why they don’t think it’s a good idea. Sometimes the OP will consider the feedback and perhaps revise his proposal, but more often they just double down in defense of their idea and invoke their alternate-universe understanding of how the game works. IDK what the point of the discussion is when people just have completely incompatible ideas about how the game currently functions, much less how it would with some hypothetical change.
