I’d much rather War Elephants be made more practical. Elephants in general, for that matter; right now they’re just not useful in the early parts of the game, and then become progressively more OP as you mass more of them, which IMO is kinda the opposite what you want for them.
If War Elephants were more practical earlier on, the whole gameplan could change for Persians.
Based on pro critique, the biggest issue is their crazy vulnerability to monks, with War Elephants especially being a major outlier even among elephants. Converting one war elephant is much easier than converting a knight, but gives 85% more value just in terms of resources, and something like 250% more value in terms of combat capability.
Even a rank amateur can convert a war elephant, and it’s all over. SOMETHING needs to be done about monks and elephants.
Personally, I’m thinking of some sort of elephant civ specific monastery tech that somehow makes elephants more resistant to conversion, but somehow only in small numbers.
Ooh, I asked chatgpt and it gave a decent idea. What if you could garrison a single unit on an elephant, which would be converted instead of the elephant if the enemy tries to convert the elephant? The thing about this is that it would require the player to manually garrison units on their elephants, which would be useful early on with small numbers of units, but would become prohibitive in terms of both apm and pop cap in the later parts of the game.