Your most hated enemy unit?

[Octavius Julius]

What is your most hated enemy units?

Elephants and charoits i'd presume if you were fighting Carthage or the Britons.

However, I played a VH/VH Julii game and found myself getting whipped by the gauls because they had Chosen Swordmen and all I had were a few Princepes and mostly Hastati.

[Lord of the Isles]

What is your most hated enemy units?

Elephants and charoits i'd presume if you were fighting Carthage or the Britons.

However, I played a VH/VH Julii game and found myself getting whipped by the gauls because they had Chosen Swordmen and all I had were a few Princepes and mostly Hastati.

Armoured War Elephants. Total Realism mod, me the Parthians against an Egyptian army with a unit of 12 of those babies (36 men on them). Couldn't kill a single man despite surrounding them with 4 units of Persian HA, then tried some archer & slinger fire, then hillmen. Eventually was running short of options so sent 2 fresh units of cataphracts (54 men each) charging into them. Half the cataphracts dead and still the original 36 elephant crew.

Only won the battle when all other 19 Egyptian units had routed and half my original forces were left, on top a hill waiting for the elephants to reach them. Charged everyone at them as they approached and, glory be, they ran amok.

Still had the original 36 crew though. Tough mothers.

[The_Emperor]

Elephants certainly....

I played a Rome Huge city assault game 3vs2 (though it was three players defending and only two assaulting, so it was always rigged against us) one of the defenders stacked up on armoured war elephants, so even after we got past the Walls and the arrow towers we then faced them in the main plaza.

After successfully startling the elephants, they ran armok in the plaza square and still ran after our armies!! it took us forever to fell them all, and then at the end of it we still had to take on the armies of two other players.

Elephants in a city assault are not good.

[R'as al Ghul]

I play without any mods attached.
Those Elephant units on very hard are really tough to kill.
In my current Parthian campaign I yet have to kill a single Elephant.
All I manage to do is to pummel them with arrows from all sides until they run amok and hopefully leave the field. Chariots aren't that big a problem when you habe Bedouin Warriors, once you brought their numbers and their morale down with constant arrow-fire, you can charge them with the Bedouins and escort them off the field. Those two units are annoying but the real Nemesis for Parthia on VH is any fast Cav which can catch your HA and due to the +7 attack bonus will most likely kill them.
Playing Greece there wasn't much capable opposition but I quit that campaign before I met Elephants, Chariots can be broke by a combo of phalanx, archers and light Cav or Camels.

R'as

[Bob the Insane]

Desert.Axe.Men...... ggggrrrrrrrrr....

[warlordmb]

Elephants - definately.

I was assaulting a Numidian town once when they sortied against me.

They had this one unit of 10 standard elephants (no armour, no archers).

They charged pretty early on, without much support and mashed two of my fine upstanding cohorts. I attacked with everything - pilum from my infantry, L. cav and H. cav. Sent my velites in to sling some big pointy sticks at them. Still no good. had my velites melee the elephants as I remember this had worked well in one of the Time Commnder battles (can't remember which one except both sides had elephants). This failed as well.
Masses archer fire, standard and flame, failed miserably.

Eventually, my single onager got a lucky flamer hit - they were aiming at the foot troops coming through the gateway to deploy. Killed four of them in one hit, toasted elephant anyone? The remaining 6 then went into berserk mode for the rest of the battle. I spent the next five minutes shuffling infantry out of my nice orderly battle line away from rampaging tuskers until they eventually shuffled off around the city walls and dissappeared off the back of the map just as the battle was finally decided in my favour.

I acquired a very healthy respect for elephants after that experience and whenever I played as Scipii was sure to recruit a mercenary elephant unit as soon as poss.

Elephants definately.

[Red Harvest]

CA seems to have taken a step backward with the multi hit point approach to units like elephants. It makes them LESS vulnerable to sharp pointy projectiles. You end up having to wipe out almost the whole unit's hit points before you start getting kills. It collapses rapidly once it starts taking casualties.

Some of the same applies to chariots. What I think we should see is the mount breaking down (elephant/chariot)...even if the men aboard don't.

[praetorians cavalry]

Of course Armoured Elephant.Scythed chariot and Egyptians chariot are annoying,too.But Britons chariot is easy to cut down.

[R'as al Ghul]

CA seems to have taken a step backward with the multi hit point approach to units like elephants. It makes them LESS vulnerable to sharp pointy projectiles. You end up having to wipe out almost the whole unit's hit points before you start getting kills. It collapses rapidly once it starts taking casualties.

Some of the same applies to chariots. What I think we should see is the mount breaking down (elephant/chariot)...even if the men aboard don't.

Could you elaborate further?
Who has the hitpoints, the mounts or the riders? I guess it's the mount.
How long do you figure has one to shoot with, say 4 units of HA, to wipe out all the Hitpoints? So far I didn't manage to kill a single one of them.

R'as

[Bob the Insane]

Could you elaborate further?
Who has the hitpoints, the mounts or the riders? I guess it's the mount.
How long do you figure has one to shoot with, say 4 units of HA, to wipe out all the Hitpoints? So far I didn't manage to kill a single one of them.

R'as

That is where it all starts getting a bit weird...

I don't think the mount exists seperately to the rider in the game and merely provides movement and armour bonuses and gives the unit the property of Mounted. Example is the general's body guard, they have 2 hp (must normal units have 1) this means each individual in the unit needs two successful blows landed to kill them and there is no reduction in effectiveness until all hp all lost... This is one reason a unit of General's Bodyguards can maul a phalanx from the front as they can lose their first hp on contain and then continue to fight on...

How this works with units where there are multiple riders on a mount, I have no idea...

[warlordmb]

I agree with you Red Harvest that CA have taken a step backwards with Elephant bashing. I remember several of the battles on Time Commanders where skirmishers were able to kill some or all of the elephants because they were in a more open formation and had a weapon type capable of doing something nasty to them. I'm sure I remember Ron Noades saying something about skirmishers sticking spears into elephants testicles and how effective they could be.

Every unit in this game should have a counter. Apparently, the only real counter to elephants is flaming bacon which I have struggled to use effectively because they are difficult to control.

Do all the factions have access to Burning pigs?

And besides, burning pigs don't kill elephants they only cause them to stampede/run amok.

Even armoured elephants can be killed - with extreme difficulty of course!!

[Sin Qua Non]

I'm pretty sure Bob the Insane is right on about the hit points being most likely shared by mount and rider, and that's what makes them nigh invincible. It's very apparent when you watch were the majority of your arrows land. Missile units fire at the elephant itself, and even when a rider is struck, the hit seems to come off of the total. Has anybody ever seen an elephant with dead riders on it? Maybe I'm wrong here. There have been times when I've wanted to be able to train a Legolas unit to take care of the elephants (though I don't remember him being so acrobatic in the books).

[Red Harvest]

Each elephant has 10 or 12 hit points depending on type. So each beast has to be "killed" 10 or 12 times (some types of attacks can kill many at once, such as onagers.) They might run amok before this (particularly if they tire.) It can take a lot of archery hits to kill against such stats. I've spent some time peppering single units for a long time to no effect. The problem with archery is that you have fairly even chances of hitting any of the given beasts, so you don't score a bunch of hits against a single beast at a time. The elephant with reduced hit points is still able to fight with its full attack value I believe (this could be wrong...I dunno.) At any rate, it will have its full strength back the next battle, and this presents problems of a "Ground Hog day" effect when using/facing elephants. When facing a full stack with four elephant units I had to attack several turns in a row until I won. By the last attack it was just four units of elephants and a few scraps of other units.

Elephants should be a bit fragile. They often died of wounds after battle or had to be put down. Hannibal had only one elephant left after Trebbia. It isn't clear if he lost the elephants from wounds in battle, or due to the cold weather after, or a mixture.

In RTW elephants often come back to life after battle (as high end units they are more likely to be at the top of the "healing" queue. I marched around the strat map with a single unit in my army sending them into places that should get them killed (and they did rout eventually in several battles because I ran them around until fatigued), but they replenished to nearly full strength repeatedly.

I think "heal" should be turned off for elephants. Elephants are not easily healed... Actually, I could see having some "post battle casualties" for elephants with highly depleted hit points in the battle.

[Bob the Insane]

Cure for the suicide general thing.... Mod all generals to lead elephant units..


Joking aside does anyone have any idea how the multiple riders are handled, as the extra guys (archers in the case of elephants) can definiately die... Do they perhaps die when a certain portion of an elephant's hp are lost maybe???

Each elephant has 10 or 12 hit points depending on type.

I don't think CA handles mounts like this, I don't think they have their own hps... When the rider dies the mount goes down too, they mount itself simply provides bonuses to the rider and is not a seperate entity to the rider... But I not sure how with works with multiple riders as I stated...

[RZST]

missile and skirmisher troops. very annoying things.

[Akka]

Chariot archers, particularly Egyptians.

I HATE these guys with all my heart. Being peppered and unable to catch them, and anyway if I catch them my cavalry is enduring severe losses...

GAH !

Overall, I hate all skirmishing units, horse archers, cataphract archers, chartio archers...

[Red Harvest]

I don't think CA handles mounts like this, I don't think they have their own hps... When the rider dies the mount goes down too, they mount itself simply provides bonuses to the rider and is not a seperate entity to the rider... But I not sure how with works with multiple riders as I stated...

(Edit: Clafication--They do have their own hit points in the unit file, under health, it is primary and secondary, but it is not in the descr_mounts. However as I state below these seem to be lumped and there are probably not individual "hit boxes." Horses and camels do not have their own hit points.)

That could be what they are doing. You never see the unarmoured rider killed on base elephants. And you don't see individual charioteers killed either. But in essence you are modeling the mount, not the rider, because you are assigning the special attack or defense to the unit as a whole, and adding up total hit points.

I just did two tests on medium in grass land with archers:

1. Two units of horse archers vs. one unit of base level elephants. No kills even after firing all their arrows. One kill in melee after arrows depleted. Result: Loss.

2. Four units of Roman archer auxilia vs. one unit of base level elephants. I took them off skirmish and formed a line to see if massed archers could kill elephants. No kills. The unit did rout after it routed my generals unit, but it suffered no casualties.

Sorry, but we are side tracking the thread, so I'm going to move this part of the discussion to a new thread.

Back on original topic:
I do hate the axemen because of their screwed up stats. The only units I hate are ones that don't behave historically...unfortunately, there are a lot of these.

[Praylak]

I broke down in anger and edited several Egyptian units. Elephants and Chariot archers are troublesome, but I think I have the most trouble with mass fielded units. I would personally rather go up against a unit of Elephants, one or two chariot archers anyday then go up against an army full of platemail Vikings, er.. I mean Desert Axemen. What ever happened to heat induced fatigue while in the desert and wearing heavy armour? Guess it was only an issue in 14th century and not BC. I just don't see exhaustion making any real effect on battles with the exception of movement.

[Szun]

try siege engines as in onager/balista vs elephants you'd be surprised

oh and my most hated unit is my own onager fireing firebolts 100 meters short right in my own troops.

[Oaty]

Funny in the demo were'nt the rider and elephant seperate?

I could almost swear some of my elephants were riderless in mid battle

[andrewt]

The weird thing about elephants is I can't get them into a city I'm assaulting. However, if I'm defending, my elephants start inside the city. How did they get there?

[Spino]

It used to be elephants, especially the War and Armored variety... until I modded them to be less than nigh-invincible... I reduced their hit points and more importantly, their armor ratings, to more realistic levels. After modding elephants are still quite fearsome but at least my missile units can make an impression on them now.

Heavy Chariots are also a pain but thankfully they have crappy Defense ratings and are easier to kill once you take the fight to them.

Beyond this I'd have to say that enemy Cataphracts consistently bring sweat to my brow, especially when there's two or three charging across the field and they're not impaling themselves on my spear and phalanx units. There's nothing worse than having enemy Cataphracts trash your cavalry and then take on your general unit or proceed to outflank your infantry only to have you count the moments until it all goes to Hades in an handbasket.

[Red Harvest]

try siege engines as in onager/balista vs elephants you'd be surprised

I've seen this before. An onager killed two of my elephants with its first shot from extreme range. That was the first time I faced onagers. I immediately put onagers in my list of "fantasy" units as opposed to realistic ones.

[Lonewarrior]

I'll have to say, Chariots.

[Silver Rusher]

You are proabably going to disagree with me here, but I absolutely hate spartan hoplites me'self. I know I don't really attack them properly, but they still hurt my Bull Warriors.

[Spartakus]

Onagers, especially the heavy ones.

It's a cowards weapon, killing units from such distance that they don't have even the slightest chance of retaliation. Even the weakest, most badly trained army, can field an onager and blow away several Spartan hoplites with a single, lucky shot.

Not that taking the onagers out is any trouble, I just wait until the enemy has advanced and then send some light cavalry around to dispatch them. Problem is, as a general I feel sort of responsible for my men (okay, virtual men, but still), and there's little I can do to counter those early shots from the onagers. It's so painful to see one of those fireballs explode amongst some of my finest units, making little, fiery ragdolls of them.

The barbarian factions are nice that way, they fight fair.

[Mikemyers64]

bull warriors, DIE!!!!

[Jacque Schtrapp]

Egyptian chariots are the spawn of the devil!

[Maltz]

I hate horce archers (esp. those who can shoot from the back) when I can't catch them up.

For example, HA defending a town is always a nightmare. They keep bouncing between the city square and my troops, pouring arrows. I can never touch them. So I had to rush everyone to the city center as soon as possible to cut down my loss. Even after that they still shoot at me. I had to charge all of my cavalry to HA so it will finally rout.

I wish I had a shot gun, and as Uesugi Kenshin did in the Japanese "Sky and Earth" movie to Takeda Shingen's concubine...

"Bang!"

"URGGGHH~~"

Elephants are easier to deal with. As long as I keep pouring arrows on them, they will flee "out". They give up defending the city and just flee out the map. I am not sure whether all elephant does that.

[Basileus]

I dont hate any units but some annoy me at times heh