Research: Elephants, Healing, and Multiple Hit Points

[Red Harvest]

RedHarvest, actually, what I meant was that the AI has no clue what to do when the player charges its lines with elephants following it up with cavalry... The best the AI has done in my obervations is surrounding elephants with insane amounts of troops and kill a few. Of course, once the follow-up cavalry hits the messy crowd in the rear and flanks: they rout...

Ok, I see what you mean. However, I also have no idea what to do if the AI uses that same tactic (unless I have a "long_pike" phalanx wall to greet it.) I was on the receiving end and it was devastating. It really shouldn't work as well as it does. Historically armies had to keep the elephants a bit separated from their own men in battle or they would trash their own troops if they startled/ran amok. I'm not seeing much negative from charging them in together.

A lot of the problem though goes back to the multiple hit point modeling. Exhaustion will generally make the animals rout, but it takes time you don't have in the face of a proper attack. To get them to rout from combat you have to kill off most of their hit points, again this takes a lot of time. Animals don't seem to die or run amok until most of the hit points of the unit is gone. This is very much amplified for missile attacks because they tend to rather evenly disperse their hits. Ballista and onagers pack the wallop to kill individual beasts, but others to not. Even in melee the elephants don't take many losses until on the verge of routing--although localized kills are more likely at points of contact.

It seems we need some attrition throughout. Right now it is very much all or nothing. We don't have single beasts running amok, we have the whole unit doing so. I would like to see the elephants taking losses gradually as they tear through, rather than group routing when two or three succumb. Even when an elephant charge is successful, animals should be lost. All units with multiple hit points display some of this same behaviour. The higher the hit points, the worse it gets.

[Slaists]

To Red Harvest: I have seen cases in which my elephants routed even without having any casualties. Unfortunately, we cannot do battle saves, as we could in MTW, to see what really caused the rout. Nonetheless, I suspect it was a combination of being exhausted and being peppered by flaming arrows. BTW, has anyone tried the classic counter to elephants: flaming pigs? Supposedly, romans were using them exactly for that purpose: to make the elephants run amok.

As to charging together with the elephants: they do not cause "friendly" casualties directly. Nonetheless, they do trample your troops, messing up their formation and consequently making it easier for the enemy to counter-attack. Also, troops in a messy formation lose their charge bonus (I've seen that happen exactly for this reason: Elephants messing up my own formation; eventually, my general got killed in the same attack by some low-lever enemy troops...).

Bottom line: my tactic playing as Carthagians was to charge the elephants (one unit was sufficient) through the enemy lines (not letting them stop and get bogged down), following up with a long shield cavalry charge into the crowd trying to recover behind the elephants (don't use round shield cavalry for this purpose - the do not have any charge bonus (+2) to speak of). once a few units rout, it turns into a chain thing... if you have: send a few round shield cavalry units to clean up the routing ones...

p.s. there was one case in which my elephants took heavy casualties against the AI: it was when they faced camel warriors... i am not sure whether there is no hidden anti-elephant bonus for camel guys...

[Red Harvest]

I send my elephants charging from unit to unit as well while my cav chases behind tearing up everything in sight. As long as I keep the elephants moving they are deadly. When they start to tire, it is time to pull them out before they rout. Routing from exhaustion is their biggest vulnerability.

Wierd about the camels. The unit stats file says elephants get +4 vs. camels, while camels get -8 vs. elephants.

Incindiary pigs work. I tested them in custom once and they routed the elephants immediately.

[Red Harvest]

Ok, started testing vs. camels and cav...arrggg. The base elephants are getting killed when two cav units charge them. They are also suffering against camels...I'm beginning to wonder if mount_effects is even working. So I've got elephants playing decently vs. infantry and missile units, but the cav is tearing them up? Of course, with charge bonus some of this cav is +17 attack... The camels have me puzzled though...I'm wondering if stats are wrapping or something.

[Red Harvest]

Ok, progress again. The mount_effect factor does work, but small steps don't do much. This time I went to -12 for camel riders & long shield cav vs. elephants (was -8), and gave the elephants +8 (was +4) vs. the two. This made the elephants tough vs. mounted units, but still killable by multiple units when trapped in melee. I suspect the problem is the very large cav charge values...but hey, cav seem too powerful in RTW. I don't think cav or camels should even get a charge bonus vs. elephants or it should be halved or something to account for the mounts natural fear of pachyderms.

Conclusion: The default elephant vulnerability order is reversed from what I expected. Elephants are probably most vulnerable to medium cav and camel warriors & long_pikes, moderately vulnerable to skirmisher melee, somewhat vulnerable to infantry, and nearly impervious to javs and arrows.

Still I need to see if both aspects of the mount factor are working: the elephant side AND the cav/camel side.

I have not modified the non-phalanx spear unit mount effects vs. cav yet, but my experience here suggests the modification should be huge. A +4 factor is not much, when you consider medium cav is often getting +8 for a charge (and they probably shouldn't get a charge bonus for frontal on spears, or at best half the normal bonus.) I'll probably try +8 mount effect for all the non-phalanx spears vs. cav.

[Warlock]

Is it possible to give the pikes/phalanx a dynamic bonus depending on the type of cav that's doing the charge? As a rough cut, a bonus equal to the cav's own charge bonus? So "unstoppable densely packed mass" into pike results in pony kebabs while "we'll charge if we have to, but we'd really rather just ride by and throw something" will have them balk at the line of spear points?

[hoof]

One of the most effective ways to kill an elephant unit is to a) get them to rout (throwing a bunch of units at an isolated unit usually does the trick), then b) send cav after them.

The normally nearly indestructable elephants die about as quick as any other unit when routing from pursuing cavalry.


On a related note, I remember once having a unit of skirmishers chased by a unit of elephants. The elephants had caught up with my guys, so I told them to withdraw in an attempt to save them. After about five minutes, I noticed that my guys hadn't taken any casualties. On a hunch, I turned off their withdraw orders. Sure enough, my guys started dying. Then I put them back on withdraw. The dying stopped. In all cases, the elephants were in direct contact with my unit. But as long as my guys were withdrawing, they were invulnerable. Strange.

[Red Harvest]

Is it possible to give the pikes/phalanx a dynamic bonus depending on the type of cav that's doing the charge? As a rough cut, a bonus equal to the cav's own charge bonus? So "unstoppable densely packed mass" into pike results in pony kebabs while "we'll charge if we have to, but we'd really rather just ride by and throw something" will have them balk at the line of spear points?

Hardcoded, probably; for modding, no. Or rather, not just for charge, it would apply to attack and charge. We don't have the power to do anything dynamically, CA does. I wish light cav would balk at charging spears and pikes frontally. Medium cav should probably get little or no charge bonus, and heavy cav would still suffer basic mount effects. As it is all phalanx/long_pike bonuses vs. cav appear to be hard coded--they are not in "mount_effects" and they work against elephants too, to some degree.

What I see looking at a lot of the numbers is a game that is geared for "fast action." The attack values are fairly high, and playing on advanced levels boosts them even more (perhaps without boosting any defense?) A charging long shield cav (med. cav on med. horse) on "very hard" in AI hands would have a charge attack rating of 9+8+7= 24. Give it some experience and weapons upgrades and it gets even more insane. Light lancers get 7+15+7 =29! Granted both of these units have spears/lances, but these values are incredible.

I have a notion to boost "defensive skill" values +4 or so for every unit in the game, this would take a lot out of the cav charges. The kill rate mod has some of the same effect, because it will make the cav bonus short, and reduce back to standard attack stats.

I am rather discouraged though, because it is obvious to me that the changes that look necessary to me cut completely against the grain of the programming and unit stats.