What should Indian battle elephants have?

Here, I write the leftovers of the bonus not taken by the other BE civs, that could be applied to Indian BE. But Indians have a lot of options, it is not like they need BE. This is just fun theory crafting.

Maybe faster creation time could be a thing. That helps to achieve the critical mass.

Other possible stats: huge line of vision, more trample damage or trample area, returning resources when dying, partial resistance to conversion, having a weaker version on feudal, bonus damage against a certain type of units or buildings, having one extra range(steppe elephants), quite extra melee armor (boyarphants) or extra Pierce armor (elephuskarles), resistance to one kind of damage (elefracts), giving an infantry unit after dying (konnikphants), taking less than one population per elephant, doing Pierce damage even if it’s a melee unit, including the trample, no gold trashelephants…

There is room for exclusivity.

i doubt this happens, they specifically just nerfed trample and i doubt they would go back on that.

never heard of this happening but its an interesting dynamic.

so kind of like light cav but worse? interesting idea to be sure.

this to me would probably either be incredibly broken due to its power or unusable due to its cost. could be wrong though.

every elephant in the game already has bonus vs buildings as is, it would have to be units

shudders in steppe lancers memories

interesting ideas, but elephants are already pretty arrow resistant as is with their high health.

this scares the crap out of me. elephants that are resistant to pikes and camels?

that’s an interesting take.

i’m not sure how to balance that.

i think the food cost for this would have to be prohibitive to balance it out and is probably not a good idea.

overall i like the train of thought and ones that stand out to me that wouldn’t be too broken (without being bland) are the faster training (assuming it isn’t much faster), boyar elephants (because frankly, the bonus damage against them is what does the most work), the ones resistant to conversion (Because they are still slow, it just means they don’t convert as fast), and the konnik one.

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Saracen monks after UT

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true, i forgot about that nearly useless tech

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you forgot regenerating elephants

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That was one i was going to mention myself but i wonder if it wouldn’t be too weak given how much damage they take from pikes/halbs/camels.
how good is regenerating 40 health a minute if your taking 40-50 a shot from pointy bois?

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anti-infantry attack?

that’s one i definitely could see happening but to me it feels very generic, uninspired and bland.

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in my Sinhalese civ idea i experimented with that for a team bonus, but instead all cav is affected

How could I forgot that!
With that huge hp, I guess that it should be a faster regen than berserks

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Like the karambit warrior. Make the BE cost 0.75 pop. It wouldn’t be stronger, but more pop efficient.

Yes. Or siege. Onagres are good killing elephants too.

they karambit also dies incredibly fast, has minimal attack, and paper thin defenses.
all things that DON’T apply to the Elephant.

only in enough numbers to be effective.

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But karambit a are cheap and fast to train. A 0.75 pop elephant isn’t, it is expensive and slow to mass. That would make it not stronger per se, but more pop efficient.

War elephant is very expensive, and very strong, and still it only takes 1 pop. Burmese elephants are very strong too with one pop. A karambit elephant would be weaker than those elephants, but they would cost less pop, giving them a niche when population is limited, but not resources.

Besides, 0.75 pop means that every 20 elephants takes 15 of pop. You win 5 pop after paying 20 elephants.

Well, make it a bigger number

you realize they literally just nerfed the BE because it was too population efficient right?

and costs a lot more resources and requires a castle to build instead of a stable.

not according to the elephant crowd here who say Burmese and Vietnamese elephants don’t even see much use.

i’m just saying man, they were recently nerfed in a way that specifically targeted how population efficient they are specifically.

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The battle elephants that were viable were the Malay and Khmer. They have bonus to compensate the biggest drawbacks of the elephants, their speed and their prize.

In team games, Khmer could use their good farm eco to mass elephants. And then, stomp with them, their speed makes them very oppressive. This doesn’t happen with Burmese, Vietnamese or Persian. Vietnamese are tankier, that could replace speed, but still is not enough.

Malay can mass the battle elephants earlier, and they can use them as a fast castle strat. That strat is oppressive because at that point is difficult to have defenses. But population is not the problem there, resources and time to develop techs and units are.

Massing 20 elephants with normal prize and speed wouldn’t be that oppressive. Even if they cost 5 pop less. The Indian could use that 5 pop less for camels, for instance, but then they still would have to pay for them, that is more resources. Other option is using this 5 pop for villagers, then we should study if the resources generated by those 5 villagers are OP or not.

Make the elephant 0.8 pop instead. That means 4 extra pop per 20 elephants. I don’t see it broken.

Rather than an a specific BE bonus, I would rather like them to have just FU BE but a strong economic bonus (not as strong as current one though) to keep some of that boom identity they have. Maybe a minor bonus like line of sight or a bit more dmg vs archers, if you want to label the civ as, for example, “elephant and gunpowder civilization”.

I agree a LOS bonus would be safest. Extending the building bonus damage to elephants would also be quite minor.

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How much LOS? It us a slow unit after all. Would you make it a walking outpost?