I think this is the best elephant balance suggestion I’ve seen, for three reasons:
I think those are all desirable properties, and I don’t think any other suggestion I’ve seen satisfies all three. Good job.
Elephant civs DO NOT have heresy (except the Malays who have the weakest one IIRC) specifically because of monks.
Elephants can bruteforce through most units, even halbs will have a bad day. So the threat of monks mean you need to account for them for support, keeping some quick-response units do deal with monks.
That’s only particularly true in the late game. In the early parts of the game, they actually gain power more slowly than other unit types because they mostly have more hp, not more damage.
As the game currently stands, if your enemy goes for elephants, there is only one real choice, and it’s an easy one; to go for monks. Monks are so incredibly effective against them, not to mention having so many other benefits in the early parts of Castle age, That it is the only effective solution. And generally speaking, it’s a bad thing when there is only one way to play the game. That’s why this change would be so good. By increasing the cost of being able to convert elephants, it pressures players more potentially towards pikeman, instead, increasing build diversity and adding more strategic and tactical thought to the game.
Wait until the April PUP kicks in. The buffs to elephants might be enough. Not every unit in the game needs to be strong in small numbers in early castle age. The whole point of elephants is to surprise and overwhelm with a decent number of them. Not to just trickle them in one by one like knights, who have the advantage of being able to run away from unfavourable engagements. Lots of units are designed this way; strong in numbers but weak in small groups, e.g. Cav Archers. You need a good ball of them to be effective and it’s usually a losing play to go straight Cav Archers without a transitionary unit like knights or crossbow first. So its the same deal with elephants. It’s OK to have some units which shine in late castle age or imperial age.
it wont be enough, people still won’t make elephant because monk is in every single game. they make 1 or 2 monks which is the norm and 99.99% of the player will back off from it.
even with the PUP cost reduction elephant is still too expensive on food and not factoring all the other techs you need to make them semi-viable. adding scouts ontop of that to counter monk? no chance.
changing stats of elephant dont work here, it needs to come from the monk’s side
You can fast castle into elephants and go all in with them. That way your opponent can’t make monks and will be forced to go spears or rush his way to castle age to get monastery up. Either way you can do serious damage in the mean time. Especially if you have Malay discount.
enemies can fast castle monk faster than you can fc elephant. gold comes easy in feudal and early castle age than it is for food. farm is risky, slow and gold has market from every other resource. your strat wont work before it even has a chance to start
You’re assuming way too much. Sure, if you only play closed maps then FC is the standard play and you can’t avoid monks. But if you play 1v1 Arabia, FC is not always the standard play and typically there will be a decent amount of feudal fights so you can do damage if opponent is not expecting FC elephants. So it really depends what kind of games you’re choosing.
theres very little assumption here. if you can fc in x amount of mins opponent can do the same. and gold comes in faster than food this is not an assumption. theres really no ground to argue here imo so assumption shouldnt even come into play
Why not? If we can make a unit viable where it currently is not viable, it will only make the game better.
I think it would be great for the game! 
If we consider BE only, Dravidians one is the weakest.
Like the idea. Also it would make Armored elephants inconvertible without a tech.
Technically speaking they already are, thanks to needing redemption, but due to the recent changes in Garrison Behavior though, they have fallen behind ordinary Rams a bit, so actually, needing two technologies to convert them might or might not be a terrible idea.
You could always make them strictly Siege at a later date if they turn out to be overpowered, but I would be surprised if that were the case.
It is viable just not in the specific context you described. Currently it’s a late game unexpected tech switch which overwhelms with numbers and surprise. Or it’s a 1v1 FC all in strat with market abuse on open maps. Lets see how the April buff improves things.
I don’t like the idea of needing a tech to convert elephants. But giving elephants more base conversion resistance, i can get behind that idea a lot more.
It’s completely unviable in 1v1 games, as well as in early game in general, which is what this is intended to address.
In essence, it’s not that they aren’t viable in the specific conditions I highlight, it’s that they only are viable in the specific conditions you highlight. Not being viable in one small area is fine, but not being viable in what is most definitely the predominant aspect of the game is not acceptable.
And I believe that’s the general viewpoint, as well. Hence the constant suggestions on how to fix them, as well as the fact that the devs are trying to make them better in the latest PUP, not to mention the general poor performance of elephant civilizations as a whole.
Anyway, the reason I bypass conversion resistance is because that will always be more potent in the later parts of the game than the early parts of the game. Conversion resistance makes very little difference when you are trying to convert a single slow unit, it largely has an impact when you are trying to convert a dozen units at the same time and you run into limits of APM.
Basically, adding more conversion resistance will only help them where they are already good, in the late game. However, it will leave them ineffective in the early parts of the game, where they most desperately need it.
The only thing that will help in this regard is giving them complete immunity. But bear in mind, the technology I am proposing is by no means expensive. The only time in which it will be anything approaching a hindrance will be in the very early parts of the game, where every resource is scarce. As soon as you get past that early Castle age, there will be more than enough resources and build time to go around to grab it, and any further impact will be eliminated. The only result will be making elephants a bit stronger in the very early parts of the game.
Which is exactly what is needed.
They would be converted and lose half their HP, or else it would be better then Heresy, wouldn’t it.
Yes that’s exactly what elephants need to become a bit more usable. And imo the cost of this tech should be a bit higher. Either 350 gold or 150 food 175 gold, so that the defense player has to spend atleast the cost of 2 elephants to be in a position to defend against them.
Its terrible if elephants were a cheap, easy to produce and use meta unit like steppe lancers or knights. But they are not. Think of the game having no redemption and siege can be converted by monks right away. Thats how the game is right now wrt elephant units. The balance is terrible for elephant-based strategies.
while this is a good tech in general for other units, this still puts the burden of making elephants work on the elephant player. That unit is 100 food (from next patch) and 70 gold while the player who opts for monk defense has to spend a lot lesser. Such a tech will atleast force the defender to spend more resources.
If you’re already spending 100 food and 70 gold per unit, 500 gold is A LOT. This split of heresy will actually favor civs that play cavalry unique units more.
I can say for sure that it won’t. We’ve already had several such changes - 0.85 to 0.88 speed, faster training time and food cost reduced from 120 to 110, addition of devotion. Still almost no one plays elephants. And its for this simple reason addressed by this thread. Current patch changes will be analogous to the addition of gambesons, very situationally beneficial.
That’s all good but you can’t always “surprise” your opponent with 20+ elephants. And the comparison to cav archers is absurd. They’re ranged and move faster than 90% of the units in the game, so they can run away from unfavorable situations. Expensive melee units have to be effective even in small numbers.
This will probably work only with Malay because they are extremely cheap and Malay get a huge timing advantage, free armor on infantry to buy time with a drush opening. Otherwise there’s no way you fc into elephants while your opponent stays in feudal but deals zero damage to your eco.
They actually don’t need Redemption to be converted now
When did that happen? The wiki article makes reference to it, but it’s not listed in a changelog.
Ever since Armored elephant was introduced I guess?