the elephants issue

**Pycckuu** · 03-09-2005, 16:31

i dont know if many of you guys find this a major issue, but most of the time the games for factions who have access to elephants are only a challange untill you can get your hands on one. after that, the game only consists of you routing elite enemy armies with your full stack of war/armored elephants and reciveving 0 casualties, which certainly gets old after about 5 provinces you capture this way.
i was wondering if EB was planning on introducing some sort of a system in order to prevent the appearance of such elephant armies.

**Sarcasm** · 03-09-2005, 16:52

Why don´t you restrain yourself? In my campaigns as Carthage, Seleucids and Parthia I only had one elephant unit at a time. Also, I never allow myself to have more than 2 elite units per army (like spartans, bull warriors, etc...).

**Pycckuu** · 03-09-2005, 17:58

well, thats one way of doing it...

**Urnamma** · 03-09-2005, 18:54

We've changed their behavior and made javelineers and archers deadly to them. Siege engines (which the AI now builds) are also exceedingly deadly.

**Pycckuu** · 03-09-2005, 20:13

sounds good, thanks Urnamma

**[cF]HanBaal** · 03-10-2005, 17:20

Originally Posted by Urnamma

We've changed their behavior and made javelineers and archers deadly to them. Siege engines (which the AI now builds) are also exceedingly deadly.

Well I dunno if I agree much with this. Since patch 1.1 (at least) archers and especially siege engines are already a REAL menace to elephants. I mean, do you guys play online MP? The poor elies aren't guilty that the AI sucks. In MP, it's enough to hold them with some cheap javelineer unit (who have +8 combat bonus againt elies already), keep an archer unit or 2 firing at them (fire arows are especially VERY effective) and there you go, you got yourself an UBBER expensive enemy unit routing in no time. OR simply target a siege engine at them (since siege machine's aim rises A LOT when aiming at elephants, even fire balls!) and there you go again... an ubber expensive unit cut in half and routing with a single onager shot.

Again, imo, we're not guilty the AI suks and so are not the poor elephants, so let's not exagerate on downgrading them.

**jerby** · 03-11-2005, 15:48

ok, playing RTR 5,2 now. and boy does it suck from time to time. it takes two velites in two salvos to rout armoured elies. 3 died in second salvo. other two died in rout.
pleae keep it balanced, and make balllista's and scorpions ( or whatever your version will be) kill them at ones.
make archers and peltast deadly, but not that much, keep it balanced, but i'm am VERY confident EB will manage to deliver.
also, elies were primarily a scare-unit, or a counter-cav unit. so if you weaken them vs soldiers, try to up thsoe other two.

**Red Harvest** · 03-11-2005, 18:52

Originally Posted by [cF]HanBaal

Well I dunno if I agree much with this. Since patch 1.1 (at least) archers and especially siege engines are already a REAL menace to elephants. I mean, do you guys play online MP? The poor elies aren't guilty that the AI sucks. In MP, it's enough to hold them with some cheap javelineer unit (who have +8 combat bonus againt elies already), keep an archer unit or 2 firing at them (fire arows are especially VERY effective) and there you go, you got yourself an UBBER expensive enemy unit routing in no time. OR simply target a siege engine at them (since siege machine's aim rises A LOT when aiming at elephants, even fire balls!) and there you go again... an ubber expensive unit cut in half and routing with a single onager shot.

Again, imo, we're not guilty the AI suks and so are not the poor elephants, so let's not exagerate on downgrading them.

+6, not +8. The problem was that elephants in 1.1 were invincible to infantry missiles: slingers/javs/archer--except for some siege weapons, and flaming arrows. So in 1.2 there is now a greater tendency to run amok. Unfortunately, it amplifies the stupid flaming arrows. In 1.1 I ran tests with 10 archer auxilia vs. a single elephant unit and the elephant always reached the archers without casualties as long as regular arrows were used. The only chance the archers had was in melee. Usually their numbers were enough to rout the elephants. Flaming arrows were another matter.

And in vanilla, the first time I faced onagers they killed two of my elephants with one shot. I have "issues" with onagers as well. They are implemented fantasy style.

**lomeinchef** · 03-15-2005, 02:58

Hey this is my first post on this board, so just saying hi. But I wanted to suggest something that many people seem to overlook when talking about elephants and cavalry. They don't need to have their stats turned down (maybe a little on the elephants) as much as they need to have their upkeep costs driven through the roof. The cavalry (including elephants, well, most of the time) in Rome Total War is quite accurate I think in terms of its vast superiority over infantry in most cases (huge charge bonus etc.) If you just make maintaing more than one unit of elephants far too expensive to be worth it you would solve your problem. One unit of elephants is not difficult to defeat at all, and the resulting chaos is an advantage to you.

**Sarcasm** · 03-15-2005, 04:19

I´m pretty sure they´re working on reducing the number of horses, and adjusting the upkeep/recruitment cost per unit.

Vanilla RTW was far too ahistorical when it came to cavalry....when you start reading on the forums how Roman players are squshing everything with cavalry, you know something is terribly wrong with the current system.

**Red Harvest** · 03-15-2005, 06:58

There are some oddities about how powerful cav are on the field, vs. the raw stats (which will skew autocalc against them, when in fact they rule in RTW.) Coupled with cost and how AI does recruitment, this can pose real problems to realistic costing/upkeep as well.

**lomeinchef** · 03-15-2005, 07:33

Yeah the whole thing where romans have elite heavy cavalry was a bit of a mystery to me. But that's simply a poor decision on the part of EA. I don't think cavalry (and elephants) are overpowered, they are just too cheap, which turns their role from a supporting one into a primary one. But I don't think "nerfing" elephants until they are walking targets of little use to the player is the correct way to go about solving this issue, because elephants were a huge terrifying force on the battlefield that often scattered (generally undiciplined) armies or terrified cavalry. The reason they are overpowered is because they are too easily attainable so that the player can make stacks of them. But one unit of elephants as part of a balanced, realistic army is not too much trouble to deal with in vanilla RTW if you play right (think phalanxes and flame), and conversly adding a unit of elephants can help you out a lot. I am just afraid that instead of making elephants hugely expensive extras for your army that can spread terror in an undiciplined army like they should be, they will end up as weak, useless cannon fodder that is not worth building.

On the note of elephants however I would like to suggets to the EB team, if possible (I don't know much about the modding process but this doesnt seem too farfetched) that maybe elephants could have different morale lowering effects on different units. So a german swordsman (since they have never seen elephants) would be more effected than a bactrian warrior. Just a thought. Keep up the good work, this mod looks even better by the day.

Oh and by the way, there are tons of things that autocalc doesnt compensate for (and who plays a beautiful game like this on autocalc anyway? no offense if you do, I've just never heard of someone doing that) so I wouldn't be particularly worried about autocalc problems, but I'm not the mod developer and probably for good reason.

**Red Harvest** · 03-15-2005, 08:08

You don't understand. All the factions except the player's are fighting nearly every battle in autocalc. So yes, it matters, ALOT! There is a lot to keep in mind when you do balancing.

This autocalc issue is one of the reasons Egypt is such a powerhouse. It has two oversized units. If you match up two 20 unit armies, and half of one army is filled with cheap 50% oversized units, how do you think that AI faction is going to fare vs. other AI factions? It's going to kick the snot out of 'em. That was a very strong reason for modding Egyptian Bowmen and Desert Cav to correct sizes. (I did adjust cost as appropriate comparing to similar units.)

I don't disagree about upkeep and I have adjusted it in my game. But you need to think about it carefully, especially when considering horse archer factions.

The real problem with TW series is that the population growth tech tree doesn't work all that well anymore. We really want representative armies, rather than "all elite" armies when we hit certain population levels. The rule set doesn't handle this at all.