How to kill Elephants?

**supadodo** · 12-08-2006, 02:19

I got my own band of mercenary elephants and so I tested them against some rebels. The rebels got completely pwn as expected so I'm wondering what are my chances once the Timurids arrive. I'm planning a defense at bridged areas. I'm Turks and already have access to all gunpowder units including jan musketeers and monster bombards

**Quillan** · 12-08-2006, 02:26

Javelins. Lots and lots of javelins. Any missile for that matter, but javelins seem to work best. However, in point of fact you don't want to kill them. What you want to do is either rout them or make them run amok. Doing that, they go crashing through the enemy ranks causing massive casualties, and the enemy either lets them rampage or kills them outright. I've never seen the AI use the spikes on elephants in RTW, either.

**katank** · 12-08-2006, 06:04

Best is javelin cav. Boyar's sons and to a lesser extent jinetes smash eles into the ground. Javs kill eles and mounted ones can stay alive against the rest of their army through mobility. Unfortunately, Turks don't get any javy cavy.

Afghan jav mercs work pretty well but often get overrun by their heavy lancers/archers.

One of the most effective units is actually the ballista. Any siege hit downs an elephant with a single hit (some exceptions). Ballistas are the most accurate ones you can get. Rocket launchers are even better though. In a siege battle, I managed to run amok 4 of their ele units with a single rocket launcher unit. A stray rocket killed one of their generals and an amok ele ran over the other. The amok eles then proceeded to crush about 80% of their heavy cav force and some infantry. Anyhow, I digress.

Naffatun is great if you can keep them alive. In sieges, I managed to get them to nade the eles from above and it was hilarious. The men riding in the box burst into flames and then the ele turned orange and fell. I doubt you can manage them well in a field battle though due to difficulty in preventing crunchety.

What doesn't work against them is archery, even xbows. I've focus fired with siphais before and it's still impossible to kill them before they get to my lines and even if I kill them, I wasted most of my arrows and don't have enough to whittle down the rest of their army.

**Decker** · 12-08-2006, 06:23

I did notice one thing tho when playing a quick battle with 2 units of eles against an army of Aztecs. I had my eles run throught them constantly, and watched guys fly everywhere who would then,to my shock, stand up and fight only to go flying later and then stand back up. Needless to say my eles routed after running back and through their entire army more than 5 times at least. Has anyone else noticed this? The guys standing up after being "punted" rather far by the elephants, I mean?

**andrewt** · 12-08-2006, 06:34

That happened all the time in RTW. Chariots and elephants would knock over everything in their path, but a lot of the infantry they knock down actually survive.

**troymclure** · 12-08-2006, 07:38

I played a few custom games with elephants to see what they're like.

I found that the computer tended to focus fire one unit with all the missile units it had (switching archers to flaming arrows) this was enough to make one of my ele's go amok within about 30 seconds.

I also found that there is no infantry formation which can stand up to ele's. Pikeman, axeman, voulgers whatever the elephants kinda charge through (works best with a bit of room) and don't even slow down no matter how dense they other group is. So i doubt bridge battles are going to help much... though the time they spend crossing the bridge might help.

I only played with the ele's but the idea of javelin cavalry sounds pretty good.

**TheImp** · 12-08-2006, 15:20

The best weapon against elephant: Artillery.

If it's not killing them straight away, at least it has good chances to root them, better chances than Javelins actually.

**Bongaroo** · 12-08-2006, 15:39

I'm crashing everytime I go to battle with the Timurids as well. Just ruined my French campaign. Really frustrating. Does it crash to your desktop with a message about an unspecified error?

Before the crashing problem I was able to deal the Timurids 3 or 4 crushing defeats when in a siege they will march the elephants front and center which after a while I can get to run amok and slaughter their own. I have a funny screenie of a couple Timurids looking around at piles of their own with some random elephants running around in the background.

I haven't faced elephants without a wall between us yet, but I'm dreading it.