So, a lot has been said about the recent elephant nerf. Lot of people (included myself) think that the nerf was unnecessary, because is was based on khmers rather than general elephants. So I want to know the community opinion about that you can choose up to 2 answers
The nerf was alright. Elephants were too op
They should revert the nerf and nerf khmer instead
I am so glad that balance changes are not made based on polls, but mainly based on the opinion of players who actually understand the game
The only change that might be an option is to give Elite elephants +1 DMG and reduce the bonus of the Khmer UT to +2 - but even that doesn’t seem necessary to me.
Elephants are tough to balance and it’s way more important for them to not be oppressivly strong at a certain stage of the game, than it is to have them viable at all stages of the game.
While viet have amazing archers and do really well in imperial age, it would still be nice to see their eles buffed a little. I don’t think the trample nerf hurts them much since generally viet eles are used as meat shields anyway? So not expected to do huge dps,just tank hits.
Malay mainly uses eles in rushing(where big numbers aren’t generally involved thus the trample not doing as much) so imo not that affected by the nerf.
If anything i think the Burmese ele was hurt the most. It already struggles to catch anything. And i dont think the armour helps at all vs pikes. And now it’s doing even less when it finally catches something…
Vietnamese are just not a cavalry civ - so that’s fine. They have elephants only as a very situational option.
For Burmese it’s a bit more tricky to explain.
First of all elephants are basically a lategame teamgame unit. The teamgame meta is very straight forward right now. You either play a heavy cav civ or an archer civ. Burmese is neither of those. They rather to Arambai stuff in the midgame (and early lategame). So if you want to fit them somewhere they play more of an archer role than a cavalry role.
So not only would they need to do a radical tech switch lategame. But also they would need allies who can handle their ally doing that much of a tech switch. You dont want to switch into elephants if your ally is doing Paladins for example. So that’s one main reason why Burmese elephants are rarely (basically never) seen.
Then you might ask. If Burmese BE are that good, why not just play them as a cavalry civ and go Scouts → Cavalier → BE? Well, Burmese would actually be decent at that, but there’s one problem: Khmer does the same thing even better. So if you want to win and want to have a civ play that role you pick Khmer.
I actually don’t even think it’s that Khmer elephants are better - their economy is better and that’s probably the much bigger factor here. Especially in teamgames (and that’s what we’re talking about) armor for melee units is very important - so there is some room to argue if you should prefer Khmer or Burmese Battle Elephants (Khmer are faster and win 1v1, Burmese are (actually significantly - taking 20%-33% more damage depending on who is shooting) more tanky).
So I think those 2 things lead to Burmese Elephants being rarely seen, if at all, despite them being very strong units.
Burmese would only use BE at a stage (teamgame lategame) where pikes don’t matter at all.
There you go. You explained better than me. Khmer are too good at playing elephants. It’s them who should have been nerfed
Anyway, maybe it’s just me, but I never come across other civ than khmer when I have to deal with elephants
Malay elephnants are weaker than khmer (less speed, 2 less armor upgrades and no bloodlines).
They have the potential to be early massed, but now their elephant rush is less destructive.
However, elephant rush is effective mainly if the oponent is not prepared for it. So the nerf wont affect this too much.
If a compesation buff is needed, some one has suggested giving them the second cavalry armor upgrade. This would make their cavaliers stronger but they still would lack bloodlines, so i agree with this.
Other posible solution is higher creation speed, although i would give that to burmese
A lot of people consider Malay to have the second best elephants after Khmer. Ofc, their upgradability is bad but they are cheaper than knights so it’s pretty easy to pump out some elephants in early castle age which fits the civ really well because they can counter mango or skirms that your opponent might be making vs your archers. Also in the later stages you can go for an elephant surprise which you get way faster too than other civs because of the costs.
EDIT: Just noticed you were basically saying that^^
