Elephants

[HopliteElite]

I'm a big elephant fan and this has been bugging me for awhile: Why do the armored elephants have fairly useless javelin throwers on their backs while the unarmored elephant riders use the admittedly not much more useful bow? I'm talking about Indian elephants only since my experience with African elephants is non-existent so I'm not sure if this applies to them too. Is this a historical facet of elephants? Did the armored elephants historically only carry javelin armed riders? It isn't really a problem for me but I am curious.

[Titus Marcellus Scato]

I think armoured elephants are intended to deal with armoured heavy infantry. And javelins are armour-piercing weapons, while arrows are not.

[bobbin]

They are not armour piercing, at least in the game. Although I suspect that was why they had them in real life.

[Ludens]

This probably is one of the area's were we lack information, so the team simply went with what they thought best. Perhaps the unarmoured elephants were given a long-range weapon because keeping skirmishers at a distance is more important for them. I doubt that war-elephants would be restricted to one missile type in reality, though.

[Weebeast]

Elephants were hardly brought in for their missile skill. That's probably why people don't talk about what's on the back. Mahoots naturally carried long spears as they do today except maybe less sharp and shorter for peacetime. Bows didn't make javelins obsolete either as they're easy to make and cheaper so they carried what's available to them. Not surprising to see a javelinman stand beside an archer especially in the "cheap" Indo-Gangetic armies.

I got no Greco-Roman written record though only Ramayana and Mahabharata passed down to me orally (and through Bollywood lol) so take it as a pinch of salt with a little bit of turmeric.