Fact: siege elephant is classified as both siege unit and artillery.
Now that hand mortar gets increased multiplier vs siege units,(X6), a single hand mortar does 566 = 180 dmg, you only need 4 hand mortars to one-shot a full HP siege elephant 
Oh and culvs get X1.8 vs siege units as well.
Well siege eles and hand mortars are supposed to counter each other, now it’s a bit one-sided.
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it is intended. same with culverins. multiplier vs both siege unit and artillery.
Pretty sure it was not intended that 4 hand mortars should 1 shot siege eles.
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Take a look at Monitors. It’s even worse for them versus Hand Mortars.
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Culvs used to have the same multipliers for siege eles only, they just made it generic so culvs are behaving the same as before.
The hand mortar change is a bit tough though.
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I guess one way is to remove the “siege unit” tag of siege eles? Not sure why it was there in the first place
It gives them resistance to building damage. That’s really all the tag was intended for but they’ve thrown a spanner in the works with making it apply to units.
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true dat, 4 hand mortar (5 at the most if elephant combat/british consulate) are even fewer than the card (7), and to send the 2 siege eles you need extra 350 food
Have to say, if you need quick anti art or anti building in age 3, currently the 7 hand mortars card is the best one you can find among almost all civs. Kill falcs, siege eles instantly, handles turtles well (forts or castles or multiple TCs)
sure, but how come other artilleries lack this lag?
Because only culverins for no reason got bonus vs siege units.
All we know EurOPeans needed a buff
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You will need to add back the siege ele multiplier to culvs else siege ele will sorta hard counter culvs
right now they take 3 shots from culvs, without it they take 5 shots from culvs
Culverins have more range and cost less population.
In any case Indians lose artillery fights
I’ve been testing this as I have a separate post about the issues with hand mortars VS MASS art. Hand mortars do about 168 damage to a siege elephant (in age 3 no upgrades) on a DIRECT hit. Even against a cpu they are still being used as they are supposed to and that is hit and run tactics ( more like bob and weave). The travel time of a hand mortar projectile is slow, VERY slow about 0.4 of a second from max range doesnt sound like much but everything starts to add up eventually. The movement speed of a siege elephant is 4 and with free movement (no bombard mode) with a very similar response time to fire/attack commands to a musketeer/skirm ( attack then move micro tactics). In essence it has the ability to avoid ALL direct hits and what little splash damage it takes as the hand mortar has only 1 area damage with no bounce effect is less then 25% damage from a direct hit(read my post for more information about this). For the cpu games i tested this on it was either a direct hit or no damage at all (miss/dodge). Now for theoretical damage as in head to head ( no micro) siege elephants lose hands down but that clearly isnt their role as they are the fastest art (non bombard mode unit) in the game. Ive played team games where i tryed to counter mass siege eles with mass hand mortars never ends well for me, hell ive seen them dodge culverins shots before and they have the fastest project tile that has a bounce effect. As does the siege ele has a bounce effect so it can devastate a ball of hand mortars with its only 1 area damage effect.
if it takes 5 shots from culvs to kill siege ele (while siege ele only needs 3 shots to kill culvs) then even if they have longer range the culvs will not trade well, since even a batch of culvs killl 1 ele first, they will still take out 1 culv when they get in range (and they are also faster) and then the remaining culv cannot kill the next ele while the ele can still kill the culvs and this will cascade.
Its also the same reason why hand mortars can never have more than 160 HP, as after that they tank 2 culv shots and will trade very well against culvs
But you dont need culverins to counter siege eles. Indeed, I wouldnt train them vs an indian player. All you need are skirmishers or any type of unit to counter SEles.