Honestly I’d rather have even Turks stables. It’s pretty rare to FU every stable unit when all of them are just smacked by halbs.
Maybe not the worst, but certainly one of the most boring civs. Slavs are the same, but at least they have their budget Krepost tech now, so you can play UU with them more.
I wouldn’t mind rebalancing their ele and move it to the stable and give them a different UU in the Castle or something
i think if you use siege, slavs really arent that boring. their siege is so cheap that it makes it so much more approachable, like playing berbers for knights +camels
also not a bad idea, just needs a lot more work than changing a UT and/or a civ bonus.
how would rebalanced war elephant differ from battle elephant
Cav Archers make up for their lack of bonus damage with mobility, which combined with Parthian Tactics is enough to fight all Pikes, while Huskarls and Malian Champions can be dealt with by their FU Paladins (Not just Cavaliers). Camels would be a problem though, but that’s why Persians have Halbs (Though even Pikes are enough to deal with Camels imo).
Which is why Kamandaran needs to be targeted for a rework into another tech and not Mahouts (War Eles NEED that movement speed, it’s not negotiable). Something like giving all mounted units bonus damage resistance would take some pressure off their cavalry for sure. A nerfed version of Kamandaran can be incorporated into a civ bonus instead, considering Persians only have 2 civ bonuses (Both of them economic). This would pave the way for giving them Bracer so at least they have viable Cav Archers and XBows.
I think the point of the thread is give the war Elephant more speed by default and the. Change mahout into something cooler. War elephants Speed suck even with 30% bonus anyway
I agree that Speed is the problem of Eles.
But it’s also the thing that holds them back from becoming OP and their Identity.
I don’t think else should get a general speed buff.
But I think they could and maybe even should get a speed charge when ordered to attack a unit so they could at least force some favourable fights if there is the opportunity.
I never argued with that, I agree that they need a base ms increase. But increasing it to the same as BE is op even if you change Mahouts into something else as it straight up removes their main weakness.
No 30% definitely helps. They start moving almost as fast as TK without Squires. It’s not enough, but it helps. But if you were to change it what would you suggest?
You mean like how Hunting Wolves sprint on attack command? I like this idea, though it would be busted without a cooldown of some sort.
it helps in what situation? war ele are never going to catch anithing they want to fight, and are never able to avoid something they do not want to fight. spaer speed base is 1, so the 30% speed means nothing when spear even without squire can catch you, and halbs have like 60 bonus damage against elephants. let alone the kiting from arrows
i think make their speed base at 0.8 and change mahout to something different would be much more interesting. atms mahout is merely a tax to barely make your elephants usable, but they are still a meme. even at 0.8 that weakness would most deinitely be there, it’s not like they are going to go from meme to dream at 0.8 speed.
i do not know how to change mahouts since i’m not that into persian history for the middle ages, but maybe make war elephants train at stable could be useful to mass them more easily, or 100% faster train time, or increased blast radius damage against building and more bonus vs buildings, or maybe something not even related to elephants but for cavalry, since they are a cavalry civ after all with just the team bonus to reflect that
Sure. But I don’t see how the only logical solution is “scrap Mahouts” (indeed, there’s mixed messaging between your thread title and post content…you seem to be asking for them to get the tech for free and then get another tech…because…reasons?)
I’m okay with units being slow-ish as long as they still have utility. Ranged units like ele archers are okay because their range makes them useful in spite of their low speed (being countered too hard by trash might be another issue though). That said, perhaps a small base speed increase for eles would be appropriate, or perhaps have mahouts do more (e.g. 35% speed, add a bit of conversion resistance).
This would make them less useful. Persians already have Siege Ram and BBC. They don’t need their food-heavy Castle unit to be far, far worse against everything except buildings.
Also, War Elephant is one of the OG AoK units. Fundamentally changing its role in this way would be like deciding that the huskarl should no longer be good vs archers and making it a Urumi clone.
Yeah, I wouldn’t improve any of their stats except a small-moderate speed boost.
I find some of the responses in this thread to be a little contradictory.
There seems to be this belief that giving persians strong CA is somehow less problematic than giving war elephants higher movement speed.
If you’re worried about war elephant movement speed you should be just as worried about war elephant and buffed CA interaction effects. Movement speed is a small concern relative to making elephants unkillable thanks to protection from strong CA (who due to their speed need not baby sit and can run to the rescue).
Especially when in a 1v1 you dont need to upgrade your elephants because 470 HP, 19 attack and 50% splash damage is basically as strong as a chatras + tusk sword EBE. Except you dont have to pay 500 for chatras, 750 for tusk swords, and 2100 for EBE. Meanwhile the unit only costs 34% more than an EBE and has a further elite upgrade.
Sometimes I wonder how many players even bother analyzing non-FU units and the interactions between them.
That being said Persians might need a little polish purely from a design standpoint. For example you could have mahouts be a civ bonus (war elephants gain 20% speed in imperial age) while buffing their base speed to 0.65. This makes it clear to players that they should be considering non FU elephants as this is the only reason to have the speed as a civ bonus rather than attached to the elite upgrade. Replace with an expensive tech to buff war elephant production. Maybe like 600w 600f for a 30% boost to production speed designed for when castles are destroyed and production needs to be kept up. Or move kamandaran to imp and have the new castle UT give war elephants bonus damage vs castles (like 10 bonus damage). Or have the UT give cav archers some defensive bonus like 5% speed, armour, or anti (cav) archer armor.
Did you miss the part where the base speed of war eles was increased above the current speed + mahouts
Matches do not work out like this, unless you’re facing a fairly easy AI. You cannot tech into HCA AND paladins man nevermind that paladins are rarely achievable in 1v1
You mean like Mayans? And this is an eco bonus then. On top of their already very good eco bonuss. No thanks
You mean like Sicilians. No thanks
Or make their UT increase their CA damage above bracer. Which makes them even more viable.
Partly yes. But primarily their cost. Similar to battle elephants
You did
What kind of comparison is this? TK are hardly seen because they are slow and they aren’t even as bulky as war ele, which makes war ele even harder to use
Because war eles are too slow and you shouldn’t have to tech into getting a usable speed
They should get another UT to make the civ more exciting. I’m sorry you struggled to comprehend this.
Because reasons
You mean actually reduce their true counter? And you imply my suggestion is OP
The difference being that WE are almost never seen. So Essentially we should keep things the way they’ve been, just because of reasons?
Lets be real, Unique Tech just for Unique Unit is basicly waste of slot, and is just draging this Unique Unit down in usefulness. Is understandable if this Tech is insanly powerfull, like Byz Logistica, but when is something what can be adjusted with simple stat tweak, it is bad design. Originally was probably designed to make War Eles additionally hard to get, but now is just balast.
You do realise monks exist? 
You need to lose over 4 monks for every WE conversion just to break even (400res swing, even more important is thats primarily food in castle age)
How does a currrent Persian HCA with bracer suddenly make them OP,? +1 damage and range is suddenly the difference between WE being OP and WE being unused?
Not that I want bracer, I just don’t see how a change like that can swing the game so much wrt WE
I really like this though.we will likely only see WE start being trained late castle age on the way up to imperial but at least there is an incentive
Tbf monks aren’t a great counter to war elephants in practice. War elephants are so expensive that assuming you play that 1 out of 100 1v1 game as persians where you get them what probably happens is you are popped capped and you’re spamming hussars in your opponents eco with 70+ farmers while banking lots of gold. If you stop the hussar production you will actually have enough res to tech into war elephant but monks won’t cut it at that point anymore. You need halbs.
If you open war elephant in imp with normal eco that won’t work. It dies hard to halb. And it does even die hard to monks if you give them huge conversion resistance.
Congratulations on managing to miss my point entirely while being arrogant about it. Maybe you find Persians “boring”, but that itself isn’t a reason to give them 2+ buffs that could significantly improve their power levels (and you yourself say “they definitely aren’t a weak civ.”) In lieu of making any compelling argument for your case (buffing Persians 2x), you jump to assuming that the only way to fix this is give them their UT for free and give them another UT that could prove to be quite strong. Even the civs you referred to in the original post (Slavs and Saracens) didn’t just get the replaced techs free as bonuses (not that it would have been much of a buff if they did; they were both pretty weak techs and far less combat-relevant than the Mahouts tech). I suggested a less heavy-handed approach of just improving Persians’ UT (more effects, reduced cost, possible castle age availability), or buffing ele speed slightly such that their speed with the UT is better.
“Because reasons” indeed, since you’ve made no argument for why Persians need a free UT + another UT from a power/balance perspective, as opposed to what I and others have suggested in terms of just improving the tech and/or base speed. I also would like to see elephants used more (although they’re honestly not that rare in closed map TGs), and improved speed should be on the table. But I’d be wary of making the most powerful land unit in the game too accessible right out the gate.
IIRC something like Faith (50% resistance) only adds a couple seconds to the avg. conversion time. I said “a bit,” perhaps 15%, which would be a boost, but a very minor one for a slow unit. Also in Imp, nobody except maybe bohemians or Aztecs makes monks vs. more than a handful of eles. Halbs > Monks.
Again, congratulations on ignoring the part of my post where I was sympathetic to some sort of speed boost/buff for the Persians. You’ve created a false dichotomy where it’s either “change nothing” or “change the civ significantly by giving it the effects of its old UT for free + another UT,” and you keep ignoring the middle ground that I and others have offered. Because apparently if someone doesn’t agree with you 100% on the internet, it’s more fun to straw man their position than to actually make the effort to engage in a reasonable discussion.
Not necessarily. It offers a powerspike when the UT is researched. Techs like Berserkergang and Bearded axe also only affect a UU, but the UU is still good/usable without them. I do agree that pre-mahouts eles are bad, which is why I’m sympathetic to a base speed boost, a more available UT (potential Kamandaran and Mahouts could both be Castle Age techs), or a tech that does more to make it worth the wait. Then again, I don’t know that ele will ever be particularly common in Castle Age, due to the ease of countering it (even with a speed boost). The amount of buffs you would have to give to make the unit a good idea in Castle Age would likely just make it ridiculous in situations where it already shines (e.g. closed map TGs)
A) there are a lot of weak monk civs. It seems prudent to keep this in mind when talking about elephants.
B) even FU monks are well countered by cav archers. Monks missing block printing or sanctity are sitting ducks for cav archers in both castle and imp. With 7 range its even faster and easier to snipe monks.
C) regular war elephants are objectively an imperial age quality unit. The whole reason they are slow in castle age is because if they werent youd have chatras + tusk sword EBE type units running around. But this also goes for having imp elephants protected by strong cav archers.
You do realize that parthian CA (not HCA) with bracer kill FU halbs in exactly 5 hits? The problem isnt HCA being overpowered. The problem is making very strong CA being available too cheaply. Saving 1k res on that breakpoint is potentially pretty strong, especially when pike + no last armor is another break point for parthian CA w/ bracer (4 hits).
Skipping over the interactions between CA and bracer just now is kind of the point im making when talking about players not analyzing non-FU units. They do matter because they control timings and dynamics, even if they dont matter as much for equilibria like extended castle age or extended imperial age.
I just think bracer being available in imp, or offensive buffs to CA is a problem which has significant implications, just as having regular war elephants be fast in castle age has significant implications. Its inconsistent to act like one is automatically less of a problem.
I dont really know how something like scouts into CA into CA + elephants plays out in practice at a high level. But making that unique playstyle easy to spot goes a long way toward generating data which can be used to refine it.
What are you on about? War Eles are always going to fight what they want to fight. Besides you’re not going to send them in alone anyway, they’re always backed by other units depending on what the other player sends to counter them (e.g. Ranged vs. Spears, Hussars vs. Monks etc).
But it’s a necessary “tax,” because base 0.8 speed War Eles in Castle Age is too strong. Then after researching Husbandry they’re basically moving at BE speeds. They need more base ms yes, but not so much that they become overbearing to deal with that early in the game. And Mahouts is there to keep them viable in Imp. It doesn’t do a good job due to their current base ms (Which is the main problem we’re trying to address in this thread), but that’s what it’s there for. Getting rid of it will create more problems than solutions.
No, as I clearly mentioned before in both this comment and earlier comments that’s going to be more problematic than helpful. 0.65 or 0.7 base ms is fine but anything higher would be too fast imo. Sure you wouldn’t think of it as a big issue late game, but try dealing with 0.85 ms War Eles in Castle Age, or 0.94 with Husbandry. That’s why War Eles only need a small base ms buff for Castle Age, and Mahouts needs to exist as an Imp Age tech to keep them relevant lategame.
So Paladins are rarely achievable in 1v1 or Persians have very good eco bonuses, which is it? If you can’t FU Paladins with Persian eco bonuses then you’re either doing something wrong or their eco bonuses aren’t strong enough to facilitate their FU Stables and War Eles, because that’s the whole point of said eco bonuses.
The Sicilians civ bonus covers all their land military units and Bengalis civ bonus covers their Eles. What’s wrong with giving Persians bonus damage resistance for their mounted units behind a tech.
No, I argued with increasing base ms to 0.85, not that it needs to be increased. I am completely in favour of it needing an increase.
A valid one because it’s a comparison between two slow bulky units. And TKs ARE bulky against melee.
Except that’s not true since with that speed literally anithing, even villagers, can outmaneuver them, so they basically are Stick to fight whatever and whenevwr the opponent feels to do so, except in some very map dependant situation like BF, but even there, with 0.8/9ish speed, you have all the time in the world to make a few pikeman
And if you manager to mass a good number of elephants and also a unit to support them, like trashbow, you probably are already clearly winning or playing against a potato
In a game a tax is always a bad idea. It’s like putting an extra cost to a unit just to make it existing in the first place. And besides, war elephants are unplayable in early game, they literally cost too much to be of any use in Castle Age. You need a Castle up, and a hell of a ton of resources and time to make even a few of them, only to then watch them die to a bunch of pikes that moves at Ferrari Speed compared to them