Cannot put up with elephants!

[praetorians cavalry]

Yes, as the title says,this is an annoying problem for me.I am playing as the Egypts(VH/VH) -one of the easiest faction in the game.I want to make some changes to the world of RTW.
I tried to make an alliance with the Carthage,offered them tons of money(as gifts),helped them fight the Scipii.I have some diplomats ready to bribe any roman armies threatening Carthage's land.My fleets defended their beaches and harbours.I even sent my armies to harass the Scipii,quickly captured their cities then burnt them to ashes.And,I have to repeat,I gave those Carthage gold very often.Finally,they could beat the Romans and gain domination in Numidian and Spain's lands (with my help,too.I bought cities then gave them to Carthage).
Please have a look at what I 've done,but now how they repay my generousity:betray me and mount a full-scale assault to my castles!The main problem is, I am unable to beat an army with five units of Armoured Elephants( huge mode).Most of the time,those beasts take no lost,and my troops seem to be born bird.They only fly and fly,no fight.The biggest battle,I could take down 1,500 of theirs,include three elephants.I lost nearly 4,000.So what is javelin bonus against elephants?My six units of javelin throwers rained fire at one unit of elephant,but couldnt kill a single one.I dont have onagers to test.Balistas seem useless,too.Also lack of phalanxes( can phalanx fight elephant?).I focused on chariots, axemen and bowmen.
So what should I do now?Please share what you think with me.Thx.

[Emren]

Get flaming pigs?

[Basileus]

phalanxes would be needed but as i understand it you will still have big problems, try attacking the elephants with flaming arrows and attack them with troops from all the sides perhaps you can rout them.

[Rosacrux redux]

Facing the Selucids and the Egyptians and their armored eles as Greek cities, I can tell you that javelin infantry is completely helpless against those beasties. Phalanxes don't help much either - they inflict some losses to the elephants, but you have to sacrifice three armoured hoplite units to wipe out a single Arm. elephant - and even in that case the eles might still be standing. I did not want to use flaming pigs (death to Battlefield bacon! ) so I had to find another way to counter the elephants

Two things you can do (that's what I did):

- Get onagers, put flaming projectiles on, target the elephants and pray that at least one projectile goes home (instant route, or actually rampage, in most cases). Found that out in a previous campaign (I was playing as Seleucids), when a Greek onager got both my armoured elephants with flaming projectiles before they even started to move, and they destroyed my top notch army while rampaging.

- Have all your archers target the elephants with flaming arrows. You will hardly inflict any casualties if against armoured elephants, but if you are a tad bit lucky, they'll rampage. Doesn't work all the time, though.

If none of these works... you better retreat, or else you are dead meat.

BTW, get your own elephants. It's huge fun to counter eles with your own eles

[The_Emperor]

As always with Elephants the key is to make them rampage... Flaming Bacon, and Flaming Projectiles are always your best hope at doing this.

Failing that sustained missile fire is certainly the way to go.

If however you do not have any missile or bacon, you are gonna have it bad. A Phalanx can work but you need to be sure the formation is not disrupted. Also war dogs can be handy for attacking elephants, given the unit's rapid replenishment...

Given your doing an Egyptian campaign I do not see how you are having problems with them. Egypt's bowmen unit has more men per unit than other factions... This means more arrows.

mass-target the Elephants with fire arrows from multiple bowmen and soon enough the stampede will begin... Then you can send some desert cav to hit them in the rear and wear them down (desert cav again has more men in the unit).

[Siris]

I personally use my phalanx, it works just fine in wipping them out.

My Uncle did a 1v1 with me online, I used a phalanx of my wonderful, you guessed it, Spartan Hoplites. The elephants charged into them, but were repeled back, taking sever losses, and they rampaged backwards through his own lines lol! I won the battle with a 95% win.

[Red Harvest]

On VH you are probably just screwed. I've faced the same basic scenario before. It isn't winnable in a single battle. With current stats archers and javs are wasted if targeting them--8 units of archer auxilia could not get any kills as they approached in a medium test (and the chances of killing anyone in the archer towers is negligible.) Javelins don't kill them. Javs should be used for melee against them (that is where the +6 bonus applies.) However, you can't succeed with that and deal with the rest of the army and other elephants as well. The javs will rout because of the other units hitting them. Flaming arrows might help to shake their morale...I don't use them because of some issues with them.

What I have done now is simple...I modded elephant stats. Right now I have the armoured elephants at 6 hit points (vs. 12 in the patch, and 15 in the original unpatched version of the game) and I reduced their armour down to 9 with a boost to their defensive skill as compensation. I had to boost their strength vs. cav--because high charge bonuses of some cav and camels was allowing these units to kill elephants. The new combo will make them somewhat vulnerable to missile fire and yet more likely to die in melee.

If you hold back some cav, you might be able to hit individual elephant units and get them to rout. It is a bit tough with the 12 hit point units. Yes, this is completely non-historical use, but CA's stats don't do much to emphasize proper use. They get swamped by charge tactics. Cav armies are far more effective than infantry.

Focus on beating the rest of the army first. Elephants will almost all heal after battle, so focusing on killing elephants won't work, unless you win the battle outright.

[Lord Ovaat]

Bless you, Red Harvest. You did what I did. At some point, we must remember that an elephant, while large and thick-skinned, is still an animal. It should bleed. It should bleed to death. Ain't no reason in the world why 160 auxilia archers can't bring one down. At the very least, drive it insane from pain.

[hoof]

Ah, but on Very Hard, elephants aren't animals. They are armored robots dressed up to look like elephants. Just look at their stats, then add the huge combat bonuses that Very Hard get, and voila, you have an M1 Abrams Tank with no guns dressed up like an elephant. At best you might get a little oil leakage ...

Now you just need some anti tank missiles, and your Elephant Problem is solved! It shouldn't take more than about 2400 years to reach that point on the tech tree!

[Zatoichi]

Ha ha ha! Yes, like the analogy there! I'm having mixed success with elephants versus the Egyptians in my game right now (Carthage H/H) - it seems the AI's best counter is massed fire-arrows, this seems to get my 'phants all shook up pretty sharpish (I'm playing without the patch, so their hit points are way up there). I'm thinking also that my general has a lot to do with the outcome too, seeing as the 'phants get spooked a lot sooner when it's just a captain leading the army. Plus running about in the desert with all that armour on fighting against 300 odd archers plus chariots, phalanx etc who get the desert combat bonus... Anyway, so far I've been lucky/unlucky enough to never actually face an army that has elephants in it - so maybe when I have, I'll be back here starting a 'How do I stop these robo-elephants, I had 2000 archers firing at one unit and all it did was make them angrier' thread...

[Somebody Else]

Got a better idea...

Bribe them. End of problem.

[Spino]

Even better idea...

MOD THEM! If you're into historical accuracy then this really isn't cheating... well yes it is but if you're really sick of these ancient pachyderms behaving like modern main battle tanks then what other option is there?

Forest War and Armored elephants possess an obscene number of Hit Points, 12, 15 and 15 to be exact. So even if your troops punch through their Armor (10, 13 & 16 respectively) you still have to knock those HPs down to kill a single beast. It's ridiculous. I cannot imagine what it must be like to face down 5 units of unmodded Armored Elephants, especially if they're experienced and possess weapons and armor upgrades! You should not have to waste such a huge portion of your force to handle these beasts!

I modded the Hit Points of all elephants down to 3 each. I also lowered their Armor ratings and purchase costs. My modded elephants are still tough and can still ruin your party but the days of these beasts going where they please with virtual impunity are over! Given sufficient time, the missiles of most skirmishers and archer/horse archer units will now have a noticeable effect on elephants instead of being utterly useless against them with their default stats.

As an experiment I am also tempted to try raising their Hit Points back to ridiculous levels and lowering their Armor ratings even further but I feel that will make them too easy to kill at a distance with prolonged missile volleys.

[Red Harvest]

It's certainly not cheating to mod them. I did it so they would be vulnerable. I like to use them for specific tasks, but I've felt guilty using such an overpowered unit (I only need a single base elephant to cause all sorts of trouble.) And they reincarnate too!

It really gets me that cavalry do reasonably well vs. elephants compared to other troops (that should do better.) That was one of the things that had to be adjusted.

I've been modding up some of the anti-cav stats for spear units, and increasing the small phalanx unit sizes as well. This should make infantry counters to cav more effective to match historical perspective. This should make the game harder for me, since cav heavy armies will have a harder time.
I've also reduced the inflated shield stats for equites and some other cav units using small shields. Probably will also reduce the charge stats for selected cav, like the light lancers.

[hoof]

My recommendation: If you plan to mod the units in the game, don't bother with the difficulty level. Hard and Very hard apparantly only add combat bonuses (no tactical changes), and if you're going to mod, why add an unnecessary variable? (the difficulty modifier). I recommend playing modded games on Medium difficulty.

However, if you're trying to change only one or two units, that's a different story. Then you can control just the unit in question, and tune that change to the difficulty level you play at. If you like Very Hard's combat bonuses, but don't want to change every unit to mod that same bonus in, then leave the game at Very Hard, and mod "down" the unit in question. Keep in mind that if you do choose to play at a lower difficulty level, your "tuning" will make the unit unusually weak at more sane difficulty levels.

[praetorians cavalry]

Oh,thanks very much for your help.I tried flaming arrows+cav charge last night.They worked.The elephants went amok,then my heavy cav could kill one or two of them . But that's not enough for me.In total of 120 elephants (count on animals,not riders) I only sent 5 of them into the underworld so far.I am still losing this war terribly.Some victories,but huge lost.They succeeded in reaching Memphis (my gold-making city) and laid siege .Now I am taking part in some kind of Stalingrad battle.I am Red army and they are Axis with Heavy Elephant Tanks.Perhaps Poof is right,I need some bazooka or grenades. .Or at least a elephant-killer like Legolas!



P.s:I dont want to bribe them.That's too easy for me (and for them).I want to cut them with my own sword.

[Zharakov]

In my opinion the best way to kill elephants is to remeber theese 5 things.

1. Elephants DON'T like pain. Just hurt them enuff and thell go beserk.

2. Elephants DON'T like croweds. Thats why you used light infantry on them.

3. Elephants DON'T like sudden noises. Thus pigs and dogs and warcrys do well VS them.

4. Elephants REALLY DON'T like slingers and javalins. Sticks and stones will break there bones.

5. Elephants REALLY DON'T like anything that can hit them and run away. Cavelry archers can really save the day.


I hope this helps


P.S. theese 5 things were tested as the Armenieans.

[Red Harvest]

Oh,thanks very much for your help.I tried flaming arrows+cav charge last night.They worked.The elephants went amok,then my heavy cav could kill one or two of them . But that's not enough for me.In total of 120 elephants (count on animals,not riders) I only sent 5 of them into the underworld so far.I am still losing this war terribly.Some victories,but huge lost.They succeeded in reaching Memphis (my gold-making city) and laid siege .Now I am taking part in some kind of Stalingrad battle.I am Red army and they are Axis with Heavy Elephant Tanks.Perhaps Poof is right,I need some bazooka or grenades. .Or at least a elephant-killer like Legolas!



P.s:I dont want to bribe them.That's too easy for me (and for them).I want to cut them with my own sword.

You can bribe them for peanuts. Ok, I was dying to say that.

It's the multiple hit point thing that is the heart of the Elephant problem. You can't kill them until you have depleted nearly the whole unit's hitpoints. It would be like attacking an infantry unit, and them suffering no losses for a very long time, then suddenly routing and/or dying because they each had a dozen hit points to start with. They might not even die then, just run away. And then after you kill them, they come back to life unless you destroy the whole army. That is the healing effect.

The flaming arrows do seem to be able to send some amok on occasion, but not easily. I was testing two units of archer auxilia with flaming arrows on medium against Elephants and War Elephants (with my greatly reduced elephant armour and hitpoints.) If the AI dallied, the two archer units could make the base Elephants go nuts. However, in a separate test the War Elephants were not stopped and still plowed into my line.

[The_Emperor]

Essentially with Elephants you need to tie them up with a cheap unit and then force fire flaming arrows into them. it requires a bit of Micromanagement to do this and keep your archers out of the fight but it does work.

On Normal in my Greek Campaign I faced off against Carthage on turn 2 at Syracuse. My lone unit of Greek archers were forced to pepper the Elephants with fire arrows while the assault went on around them.

It did work and the normal Elephants ran amok without even getting within range of the arrow towers. But it does take a few volleys to really scare them.

[Hotspur]

My tactic against the elephants is to tire them out. The armoured elephants tire very quickly and then become brittle when they are very tired or exhausted.

Try luring them away from the main battle with cavalry or skirmishers then let them chase em around the map. In the meantime, close with the main army and finish it off. When the elephants return, with luck their conventional army will be defeated and the elephants knackered and easy prey.

There are a few formations that encourage the elephants go chasing light troops (skirmishers, cavalry on wings). In fact luring unpleasant units away from the main battle has led to some spectacular victories. Its fun watching cataphracts and companion cavalry belting after my no talent militia cavalry only to return into the teeth of a victorious phalanx.