When Eles are a bit faster they wouldn’t be countered by onagers anymore.
I’m not budging on this issue. Leave my elephants alone.
They are trying to make elephants viable for a 1 vs 1. When it should be left alone. Set in stone. No crazy changes.
Having non-unity popspace would allow to make popspace a lever to fine-tune balance or in this case to dominantly define the unit. Since ele units are so special, it wouldnt hurt if they cost more pop.
Especially facing the issue elephants have: Too slow going in mid game cause of high cost, too strong in late game when you can just have 60 elephants massed up. Changing the food cost to something more affordable in mid game, so you can make eles as easily as knights for those who dont have them, but in exchange you will be hardlocked in late game to like 30-40 eles alone. Still massive army, but just not as deathbally. Also if you want to avoid late game nonsense, when this stands in the way of making eles viable in midgame, how about giving gunpowder bonus damage to eles. This speciality of ranged counter to elephants feels still underused when given to scorpions in hope they would be more seen.
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You’d make Persians unbalanced on maps with lots of stone.
At least if the stone (castle) requirement is a bigger factor than it is for Mongols and WE are balanced on normal maps.
Tournaments would have a harder time including maps with a lot of stone without it turning into a predictable Persians war. On Megarandom you’d get the occasional civ/luck win with Persians + random map with lots of stone.
Agree. It’s a nice design tweak to compensate the pop efficiency problematic. Ranged units thrive in higher numbers. That’s one of the reasons why I proposed to make an ele design where the eles aren’t countered by pikes/halbs anymore (it’s a more even matchup) but instead are soft-countered by skirms, HC, Siege and to some degree CA.
And with this change to the interaction in the lategame with the selected ranged units there is no need to reduce the Eles requiring more pop space.
The issue with that is that eles still need to be slower than knights. And high gold cost usually comes associated with the utility aspect. So they need to be either kinda fast or have range to justify a high gold cost. Eles can’t be faster than knights and are melee, so they basically need to have a lower gold ratio. At the same time the high food demand of the eles makes them harder to afford in the midgame.
That’s a complex issue which needs some creative ideas to solve.
I just made the proposal to increase the ele training time. This could also be associated with a reduction to the food cost, making them easier to afford in the midgame. Though you would need more stables for production. As you can’t explain why Eles should cost wood in the midgame you could explain they need a long time to be trained which would indirectly add a wood cost to the unit.
But still, for me the biggest reason why Eles suck in the midgame is just they don’t offer anything that knights aren’t good in already. Knights stop a lot of other plays in the midgame already cause they soft-counter most units there. Eles don’t add something there cause Knights do that already.
Like eagles. Nobody makes eagle floods vs knight civs in the midgame. Cause knights just dominate eagles in basically every aspect. They soft-counter the eagles and are faster. Same is for some other units like LS. Knghts even make it hard for CA to even get rolling at that time cause they make it hard to mass these CA.
Eles don’t add anything new to that, they shut down the same plays as knights do. But they have more weaknesses than knights and can’t even raid cause they are too slow.
That’s imo the main issue with the eles. They don’t add anything over knights but have more and bigger weaknesses.
A short list of things Eles could be better at than knights to give some emphasis to make them:
A) Counter infantry
B) Don’t get countered by Monks
C) Counter Archers by soaking arrows and bigger blast damage
D) Can blast through walls more efficient
E) Counter Cavalry (probably redundant with camels)
F) Kill Siege even when protected by pikes/halbs (weird, but just want to mention)
G) Specifically designed to run under and destroy TCs
H) Just be a total damage soaker, increasing the HP but lowering the Atk, reduce bonus damage from the counters
I) add a trash unit that covers the Elephants weaknesses (EG a chariot that is good for raiding and deals bonus damage v spear and monks in the ranged form and bonus v siege in melee form)
Or maybe even a combination of some of these.
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eeh no pls thats just weird
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That’s exactly how they were countered strategically in history…
Is reality weird?
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Chariots will take 3 population space.
How about Flaming Elephants?
One boom entire enemy army goes down.
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I laughed so much at this. Thanks 
this is a good idea. Stone elephants. So very high melee armour? And block damage to units behind them like Hussite wagons?
Good thing we have those flaming rats
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Hast anyone already suggested to give Battle Elephants more Armor in the “Elephants” Armor class? So that they dont take as much damage from halbs.
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Yes, that was proposed several times. I think could be a first step, but still I think doesn’t solve the “problem”
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Bengalis have this effectively and still suck.
I also don’t think this really solves it.
I would also just in general question the choice of pikes/halbs as counter to eles. Neither there is evidence for that historically nor makes it sense in the game. It only makes it harder to balance the unit because of the pop efficiency discrepancy.
I think devs only made this cause pikes counter other cavalry. But I think it’s one of the main reasons why we still don’t have a usable Ele unit in the game. Don’t forget that there are some civs that don’t even get halb.
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It would be interesting test change the ele’s counter. Skirms instead of pikes as you proposed.
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It’s the same logic as halbs being terrible units against archers.
It’s just game logic, spear counters big animals, whether it’s accurate or not
Imo I think the whole elephant thing has been discussed so much it’s just a matter of waiting to see if the Devs will do anything about it. There’s tons of different ways they could buff them to at least see incrementally more use, so now it’s just a matter of waiting for the jury to make the decision
In the meantime…
We need to discuss these flaming rats
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I think they could increase eles’ speed so they can at least keep up with monks.
Another idea I have is replacing their weakness to halb with one to archers (along with the speed buff, not either or), thought idk if that’d be balanced or accurate.
The turtle passes by skipping the entire food chain on land.
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OMFG don’t understand this but it’s so funny and I’m trying to drive. Gonna crash
Does the turtle counter both rats and elephants
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What the hell are you doing driving while looking at your phone?!
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Don’t drive and read forums, kids
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