Elephants in action:

I did some aggressive stuff with base level elephants last night. To see how durable these guys really are...all on "very hard."

Battle 1: The Brutii attempt to relieve a siege. They came at me with onagers and an army that was half triarii, and half principes/hastati. The onager gets the opening shot...killing two elephants waiting for orders (more kiddie entertainment units I guess.) So I sent cav around and knocked the onagers out. As the Brutii closed I shot up some early units with balearics and waited for the main body. At that point I sent in my now depleted single unit of elephants and cav. The elephants trampled through several triarii units, and hastati and principes. They caused the generals cav unit to rout. The cav following behind mopped up the mess and caused the now disorganized masses (from the elephant charge) to melt. I did have one unit of cav on a flank badly handled by triarii--I was busy with the action in the middle, so the triarii charged the isolated stationary cav, still the cav fought quite awhile before routing and inflicted quite a few casualties.

Battle 2: A unit with 10 elephants is present to allow me to knock down the wooden gates of an Egyptian city. This is in the desert, so the rest of my army waits patiently while I set the elephants loose. On the other side of the gate are a unit of chariot archers, and a unit of nile spearmen in phalanx. Two units of axemen also wait nearby. The elephants take no casualties knocking down the gate, so I charge them into the pikemen were they take a loss or two, and then toward the chariots in the corner. Medium cav is rushed in behind the pachys and the pikes rout. The elephants and horses rout the chariots. Now for the axemen attacking my cav, I turn around elephants and charge. The first axe unit routs, but the elephants are tired from the heat and charging. I charge them anyway toward the second axe unit and the elephants finally routed--depleted from 10 to 7 for their efforts (2 of which were "healed" after battle to put them back at 9.)