Elephants in a siege

I am wondering if anyone has a good tactic to defeat elephants when they are defending a city, or can point me to a thread where that was discussed? Causing them to rout does no good, because they just reform in the city center. I was on my way to taking Carthage as the Julii just by overwhelming numbers, but two units of elephants came rumbling out of the city center and annihilated just about my entire army, including units of triarii, hastati, cavalry, velites, mercenary hoplites, rhodesian slingers, it didn't matter. I lost my archers to a stupid mistake earlier in the battle, would they have been effective with flaming arrows? I know that can cause them to rout, but will that actually kill them?

I must admit I haven't played a large number of battles yet, I can only find time to play on the weekends, so my overall inexperience with the game might be to blame, but generally I am able to win with even a slight advantage in numbers, including other sieges.

I had excellent success with mercenary hoplites. The elephants attacked while the hoplites were marching down a city street, a few elephants died, they routed, then attacked again and again with the same result.
The hoplites were in phalanx formation and were marching down the street, they hadn't been given an attack order. And the elephants were the plain kind (neither war elephants nor armored elephants).

I don't know what my general's rank was; that may make the difference.

I'll have to try that. I was too disorganized to use the hoplites effectively, next time I won't be caught by surprise. Thanks!

or u can use spear army...spear is effetive to elephants in ver 1.1

The standard elephants tend to rout easily, especially when faced with phalanx units or chariots. Even larger elephants struggle with phalanx units crushing them on either side. Of course, usually they don't let you flank them without throwing half your unit up in the air straight away and then stamping on the rest.