Siege elephants are disgustingly OP

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
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✂️ siege elephants are disgustingly broken - YouTube 4 siege elephants destroyed a TC before 3 BBC and 2 mangonels could kill them.

This unit needs a nerf. I’d like to see its building bonus damage reduced.

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The BBCs and mangonel damaged the town centre heavily too. I don’t think damage was out of ordinary, they’re 4 imperial age siege units against a town centre after all

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4 Siege Ram even without SE would destroy the TC faster.

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Mangonels and BBC aren’t the counter to elephants, melee units are, especially the spear line

Also I’m pretty sure the mangos are actually helping in destroying the TC because of the blast damage, but I’m not 100% sure

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I think main advantage of Siege Elephant over Ram is speed and most importantly pathing. If Rams pathing is fixed, Siege Elephant will be equal to generic Ram.

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  1. Those are castle age armored elephants.
  2. The Mangonel and BBC shots did like 80% of the damage to the TC.
  3. That’s the work of armored eles (destroy buildings lol).
  4. Armored and siege elephants aren’t broken, only ones that are OP are the Gurjara armored elephants because of the bonus damage, which is wayyy to high in castle age.

Side note to the devs, PLEASE don’t nerf the whole unit just because how OP are gurjara armored elephants ( don’t repeat Khmer flu lol).

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I always find Rams weak comparing to Trebuchet and BBC. Trebuchet and BBC give similar damage to building without approaching buildings. Ram is better against walls and that is all advantage of ram comparing to Trebuchet and BBC.

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The only advantage? How about cost? Rams are dirt cheap compared to trebs and bbc

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Cost of 4 treb or BBC is equal to 7-8 rams. 4 Trebs destroy buildings as fast as 7-8 rams. Defending Trebuchet and BBC is easier, it waste no time while approaching buildings (ram wastes a lot of time).

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They are actually buffing them as Siege Engineers apply on them in PUP. I guess OP can cry more.

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and yet you still see pros use rams a lot. says a lot right there.

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I agree only “broken” classified are the Gurjaras, but elephants rams are pretty clearly superior to regular rams since they are also better against regular units and basically immune to villagers with the splash damage (since everyone of the indian civs is bound to have some sort of melee so they are going eventually to get the melee attack upgrade), which is no small advantage since you need a specific unit from a specific building (spears) instead of a random close bunch of your 100+ villagers. they are also getting affected by SE…personally i would like to see their MA reduced by 1 to make them worse against melee units, and they would still not be as bad as rams

to be fair i do not remember the last time a pro went for ram. they always go mango or straight imperial for trebs/BBC. Some pros, like Hera, even have a crusade of hate against rams. that says a lot too

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i see them a bit. not as much as trebs and bbc. but that’s not surprising. trebs and bbc ARE superior (just very expensive), but Rams are not useless, and i even remember viper vs Yo i believe in the t90 titans league where they saw great use.

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well no they are not useless of course. i was jus saying that they are not the optimal unit and probably pros know that it’s worth to pay more fro trebs than invest into rams. Rams are cheaper but they do need 2 food intensive upgrades which BBC and trebs don’t (since Chemistry and castles are great things for more than just trebs and bbc alone)

that sayd, of course they are useful. probably their pathing should be improved still…

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never denied that. i’m just stating that they do have advantages over trebs and bbc beyond damage against walls.

only one i would call food intensive. 300 food in imperial is chump change. even 1k food isn’t bad after your boom is over.

trebs require a castle and bbc requires chemistry, one of the longest upgrades in the game. an upgrade that costs 300 food. you know, the same 300 food cost you just said was intensive for rams?

chemistry may be useful for archer civs but cav civs have less reason to research it

no denying that. but pathing in general needs love.

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as i’ve sayd in my post pretty clearly, they do require castle and chemistry, but both those things are far more useful than just getting trebs and BBC while rams upgrade just get you better rams. and on the rams upgrade, shure they are cheap in late game, but not in early imp, making a push with them more difficult than just get a few trebs from the castle that you eventually want aniway.

so their advantage kicks in later in the game when gold is scarse

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castles? i’d agree - chemistry? it depends.

but that also is limited by your castle production, and can be a bottleneck, especially if you’re a civ dependent on your UU like mongols or Bengalis.

no. it also kicks in when you have

  1. limited number of castles.
  2. no bbc.
  3. castles being used for your army.
  4. gold intensive army eating up your income.

it just isn’t when gold is scarce.

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I think rams are also stronger or weaker depending on the opposing civ, whereas Trebs and BBC are always good or even better.

For example siege ram with an archer civ Vs a melee civ, is really not as great

A treb with any civ is always amazing. A BBC is always good, and just gets even better if there’s opposing siege and even better against trebs (which there will almost always be)

I think a lot of it has to do with the level of babysitting required for rams. It hurts their utility, because in the end you are still paying a fair gold price for them, so they aren’t infinitely spammable throw aways in late game. You can get 3 rams for a treb but, you can lose those 3 rams infinitely easier because you have to commit them to a fight.

You can’t stone wall a ram while it does it’s job

And in castle age rams are very expensive for what they bring Vs how easy they are to counter, like one mango can almost counter a limitless number of rams, while by the very nature of the ram, makes it much harder to counter the mango

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i wouldn’t be opposed to castle age ram buffs or changes, i’m just not sure how you could make them better without

  1. making feudal cumans an issue
  2. making them blatantly op.
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This is another advantage of Siege Ele over SR. 650 food only, half of CR and SR upgrade, and you’re ready to go. I believe the only reason siege ele looks stronger is right this one. You can’t expect how early this push actually comes.

Especially when it is only to unlock BBC.

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