Killing your own elephants?

**Excalibur Bane** · 10-15-2004, 15:20

I noticed in the description for War Elephants that it says the rider carries a spike and hammer (or something like that) to drive into the head of the elephant if it goes on a rampage and needs to be stopped. Is this possible? I've never used elephants before. It would be a nice feature if you could. Especially if they start trampling your own units, you could just suicide the unit.

**HicRic** · 10-15-2004, 15:31

I wonder if doing that in the middle of an enemy unit would result in the elephant falling over and squashing lots of people?

Timber!

**Excalibur Bane** · 10-15-2004, 15:34

That would be funny as hell.

**Lord of the Isles** · 10-15-2004, 15:43

Originally Posted by Excalibur Bane

I noticed in the description for War Elephants that it says the rider carries a spike and hammer (or something like that) to drive into the head of the elephant if it goes on a rampage and needs to be stopped. Is this possible? I've never used elephants before. It would be a nice feature if you could. Especially if they start trampling your own units, you could just suicide the unit.

Same for ordinary Elephants (the unit down from War Elephants). I've never used this special abilty in my campaign as the Carthaginians, since at the end of a winning battle I like to get my Elephants back. In quite a few battles I've had my Elephants run amok but just let them, while trying to keep other units out of their way.

Which brings me to my own question. When a unit of elephants is moving under command through other friendly units, they will knock lots of soldiers down but they always seem to get up afterwards and no casualties are caused. In my hard/hard campaign, I can't remember even running-amok Elephants killing any friendly soldiers as they move through the units. Maybe I've just been lucky, only a few casualties have been sustained and I haven't noticed them. I remember in the demo watching Carthaginian Elephants kill 50% of a Sacred Band Cavalry unit by running amok through them but I've seen nothing like that in the game.

Anyone taken "friendly trampling" losses and how many?

P.S. A tip: Consolodate Elephant units that have taken casualties at the end of a battle. I had 2 units with 8 & 3 remaining in them and left them as they were. In my next two battles, the 3 pachyderm unit ran amok almost as soon as it took fire for the first time, while the 8 was much more dependable. Made them one unit of 11 after that and no more problems.