Should there be an interim upgrade between Battle Elephant and Elite Battle Elephant?

I think that in the same way as Knights are upgraded to Cavaliers and then to Paladins, I think there should be an upgrade between Battle Elephants and Elite Battle Elephants. For example:

Battle Elephant → Armoured Battle Elephant → Elite Battle Elephant, mirroring
Knight → Cavalier → Paladin

I think it would be much harder to justify going Knight line in Imperial Age if there was no Cavalier upgrade in between Knights and Paladins. The fact that you can upgrade your Knights cheaply and quickly once you hit imp is a big deal, because it gives you a cheap, easy powerspike.

Battle Elephants do not have access to such a powerspike. You have to invest 100% into going Elite Battle Elephant if you want to make the elephants in Imp, which is not often feasible in 1v1s, because the tech costs even more than Paladin.

I think if a cheap upgrade of around 300 f, 300 g for Battle Elephants in Imp were available that gives them a bit of the boost (as Cavalier does for Knights), they might be more usable and be seen more in 1v1s, whereas Elite Battle Elephants would still mainly be seen in team games. Just like Cavaliers are common in 1v1s whereas Paladins are more often seen in team games.

In terms of visuals, an Armored Battle Elephant could have silver/steel armour, to distinguish it from Battle Elephants (no armour) and Elite Battle Elephants (gold armour). Maybe Elite Battle Elephants could be given howdahs to distinguish them further.

What are your thoughts? Would this be helpful, or is it a bad idea? Any other suggestions?

Please be kind :slight_smile:

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Cavarly is generic unit but paladin is some kind of unique upgrade. Elite battle elephant upgrade, correspond to cavalry upgrade so if you want to add new upgrade to elephant line, it must be after elite upgrade but battle elephant civs already has unique upgrade on their own; therefore an upgrade after elite battle elephant u. will be to broken: Like, giving to malians paladin upgrade.
By the way cavalry upgrade is not giving power spike, it is just modify knights to imperial age.

Kts having two upgrades makes sense because the immense majority of civs does have knights in the first place, so the cavalier upgrade is the end of the line for most civs and paladins is given to a select few. But you can’t really do the same with a unit available to 4 civs that is already distinguished between those civs by unique techs and bonuses. There is also the issue of stats difference. The paladin has 60 more HP , 4 more attack and 1 more pierce armour than a knight, and the cavalier upgrade basically gives you only half of the HP and a third of this attack. Not this much but its significant enough that it can be bundled in a cheap upgrade. The elite ele only has 50 HP, 2 attack and 1 Pa over the normal one, while having a total upgrade cost cheaper than the one of the knight, so spliting the upgrade is harder. Tbh if castle age eles were weaker/more civs had them ur idea would have likely been implemented just like it was implemented for knights.

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Sounds sweet, would be interested in seeing some figures that would justify it.

No idea what the other bloke is on about “not a power spike” lol.

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Cavalier is relatively cheap and fast to tech into, meaning it basically is a powerspike. As soon as you hit Imp, if you start researching cavalier, you will soon actually have cavaliers, meaning that suddenly their stats, and more importantly, their appearance :wink:, get buffed, hence it is a powerspike. Paladin is even better, but it is very expensive, and takes forever to research, so it can be a massive powerspike again, because Paladins are really good, but it takes ages to reach.

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Not at the moment.
At the moment elephants suck in 1v1, in team games it depends on the map.
Having an intermediate upgrade would be useless if the unit is not used.
Once they become viable in 1v1 it might be nice.
But I don’t think they’ll ever be viable, apart for Malay in some cases.

But do you think such an upgrade would make them more viable?
It could add, for example, +1 pierce armour and +1 attack of the Elite Battle Elephant upgrade.
I’d just love to see elephants used more.

Sadly not.
If you don’t start massing them in castle age, you’re not going to take that upgrade in imperial age, you would rather spend those resources on improving other units instead.
Cavalier is nice upgrade because it’s very affordable even in 1v1, and a lot of civs have decent knights in castle age, but elephants are just too slow and expensive to be used imho, except Malay, but even those are still very slow.
I always talk about 1v1, in team games the elite upgrade is already affordable and elephant viability is much better, albeit not on every map.

That make sense. Looks like Battle Elephants really need some buff in Castle Age first so that they can be massed. Thanks for your constructive comment.

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i think this would backfire.

You see the other player making some elephants, you make a few monks to counter. That’s all fine, then the other player will either continue making eles or change to another unit.

However if the other player invests into a tech, you start making pikes and monks to counter. From this moment on, the player making the elephants is too deep into it to switch to another unit and will probably lose the game at this point. (at least in 1v1, hard to afford counter to monks and pikes and still make and tech into elephants) For team-games it’s a bit different because one player can go eles and the other goes another unit to counter the counters.

in 1v1s the elephants are very easy to counter, unless you’re completely surprised by them.

One thing that could help the battle elephants is give them a bit more trample damage, to help deal with the pikes.

anyway, hope this helps :slight_smile: xD