Quote Originally Posted by Nestor
(I suppose we are talking about elephants that are with the enemy. We can decide if we want them or not in our armies)

For the unarmoured units of elephants:

-You can run them into amok rather easily with velites, javelinmen, flaming arrows. Just drive them to a side of your army that you only have light infantry: they are difficult targets for the elephants, elephants hit them but cannot kill them in numbers.
When they run amok the elephants are themshelves easy targets for any unit of light cavalry you have.
I don't find them overpowered.
Driving an elephant in RTW? I've never been able to do it on the field. The elephants go where the elephants want to go. What I saw with elephants was this: I sent out skirmishers and used pila in an attempt to shake them, whittle them down, etc. NO EFFECT! The cav and infantry charging in behind the elephants quickly broke all units in the vicinity, skirmishers never had much chance for melee with the elephants. No chance at all of "driving" the elephants. Battle over. Repeated this three more times vs. the same army until I had it whittled down enough that I could easily deal with the rest of the army, then face just elephants. Those were some of the few battles I've lost in RTW. The stack started containing four base elephants and by the final battle only about 1/4 to 1/3rd of the animals were gone. Elephants did not survive that well historically...

Another battle I had I was facing a weak army containing a single elephant unit. I had several javs and one unit of archers as well as good cav and infantry. I tried "softening up" the elephants with archers while the AI just sat there watching with its inferior force. Emptied my quivers...no effect. So I started engaging enemy units out and flanking them individually. The elephants began to advance and I started working them with skirmishers...no effect. Fortunately the elephants finally tired after chasing my skirmishers around the field and I rushed them with a bunch of units. None of this would have worked had the enemy just advanced en masse. In that case my infantry units engaging the elephants would have routed (I've seen that a number of times.)

As to the other poster's comment about archers being like darts, archery was supposed to be effective in making them run amok. Sure a couple of shots aren't going to do much, but making a pin cushion out of them would. I've done tests with EIGHT roman auxilia archers and they couldn't cause any casualties until melee started. There wouldn't be a human rider left alive under that hailstorm.

Haven't messed with flaming arrows. They are a bit silly in RTW, and cause problems in the game so I avoid using them.