Timurids: Elephants (Medieval Uber Unit)

[giskard]

Hi all.

Timurids came right in to my territory above the black sea and this story is what happened next. Some may find it hard to believe but i took a screenshot of the battle results of that first battle with them.

This is the result that shocked me enough to make me want to tell you guys about it. See screenshot.

http://www.respawn.co.uk/temp/m2twTimurids.jpg

Believe it or not, 1 unit of infantry and 1 Elephant unit killed all those men on my side. The rest of the AI army did not even move. The 77 men I killed where the infantry escorting the Elephants. But the elephant unit did not lose a single man whilst it totally crushed all 900 of my men.

The Elephant unit started with 33 men and ended with 33 men in that battle.

Ive since engaged them several times and Ive lost every battle. Auto resolving battles usually leads to better results than manually fighting the Timurids.

What I need to win against those Elephants is a unit of armoured Mice. Nothing else even slows them down the Timurid AI must know how powerful they are because its army usually sits back to watch the actual and lets the Elephants do all the work.

I was rather busy halting a Mongol in case and dealing with the English that had occupied france at the time. Plus i was sending units to america to explore. So this attack took me by surprise.

Giskard

[Doug-Thompson]

Ouch.

Do flaming arrow or javelins have any effect?

[Mailman653]

Surely a good artliery barrage would scare off an elephant before it gets close to your lines?

[Cheetah]

Have you tired fire arrows and javelins? 3 or 4 unit of archer + 2 unit of javelin should be enough. If you cannot get javelins with Hungarians then have more archers. Since the rest of Timurid army sits back you should be able to focus your archer on the ele. And leave your dismounted knights at home bring horse archers for the rest and some meele cavs.

[Darius]

Thats some humiliating ownage right there, may wanna try usin balistas on em or something lol.

[PseRamesses]

Ouch, have you managed to counter them later?
Q: When, and under which conditions, do the Timurids enter the game?

[lalartu]

timurids are by far the most annoying thing that can happen in the long campaign. I sometime try to develop my faction enough so I can just run away to the carribean and face the might aztecs, while settling in their rich lands instead so I don't have to face the bloody mammoths timurids bring.


I found that bridge battles (where you protect the bridge) yield the best results, but I still lose obviously unless of course I manage to catch a detachment with no general and only half the army or something.

i noticed muskets do the best damage on them and if you put them in loose formation in front of your archers. elephants might actually not crush them all at once.

cannons are pointless because it's hard to hit them even tho they're so big and artillery in general is very inaccurate.

best thing to make elephants go berserk is flame archers, so bring tons and see how it goes.


also I think the only real way to own them on a battlefield other than pure luck is to go to asia minor and particularly lands around Baghdad (i ended up there after a failed crusade) and hire a few elephants mercs for yourself. they are trully amazing units, probably a bit too powerful though.

[Basileus]

Both Hordes realy kick ass, im fighting both in my current campaign and they are playing with my Turkish minions :(

[Antagonist]

....and if you thought regular Timurid Elephants were bad, wait until you see the Elephant Artillery. On Huge settings each unit has the equivalent of 15 Serpentines. They can pretty much annihilate most units before they even reach them, and whatever's left is swept away with one contemptuous swipe of a tusk...

Antagonist

[giskard]

Antagonist: See the first screenshot, that was caused by 1 unit of Elephant artilery charging me. These below are regular elephants though.

Anyway....

In open battles Elephants move too fast for artillery of any type and 1 elephant unit will route your seasoned vetrans as quickly as they route peasants.

Also

Arrows (flaming or not) dont touch them
Bolts dont touch them.

Btw I stacked one of my armies with Crossbow men and they wiped out every Timurids charge in seconds until the time came for the Elephants to charge and that was the end of my battle.

No other weapon touches them either because the men carrying them are too busy running for their lives to use them.

Heres some screenshots from a few more battles where I got owned by Elephants.

http://www.respawn.co.uk/temp/m2tw1.jpg

http://www.respawn.co.uk/temp/m2tw2.jpg

It will give you some idea of what units dont work against elephants. These armies where scrapped up out of what was left of my defenders in the area.

Timurids basically killed off all my experienced generals and troops I sent against them. By the end of my current game, i was using what ever troops i could find to fight them off.

So in open warfare you will lose most of the time against the Timurids lone Elephant charge. The rest of army only really gets used to run down your routing troops. Outside of that role, the Timurids have no need for other troops if an Elephant unit is involved in the battle.

And oddly enough, the unit i used last was the cheap spearmen and whilst they ran as fast any other unit in open battle. In siege games they successfully killed off an entire Elephant unit but I had to use 5 units of cheap spearmen to do it.

Only problem was, there was 4 more Elephant units outside and the game crashed as the last Elephant died. So there may be a bug in the Elephant unit. IF anybody else tries this and the game crashes whilst your taking out an Elephant unit, please let me know.

Btw, M2TW has never EVER crashed on me except for that one time.

PS I won as hungry with 2 turns to go, after i found out what kills Elephants, my defenses siege where more successful.

Giskard

[Waleed]

Elephants are easy to deal with once you know how. The elphants are heavily armored and trample everything that gets in their way so what you want to do is make their morale fall so bad that it routs them.

There are two almost surefire ways to dispatch any elephants you encouter.

1) Ballistas. Try to have multiple units, 2 or more will do but ideally around 3 units of ballista per elephant. Use the ballista's special fire ability and target the elephants. I've noticed once 2 or 3 elephants fall to the fire ballista bolts in a short time they run amok. This can be real fun to watch if they decide to run amok right into the enemy army :).

2) Archers with Fire arrows. What you want is archers, and a lot of them. I try to use at least 6 archer units with fire arrows. What you want to do is turn your archers fire at will mode off and once the elephants are in range of all of your archers target the elephants with them. What this will do is change the morale of the elphants to "Shaken" or "Wavering." While you're doing this you should have cavalry ready to charge. As soon as you target the elephants with your archers you should charge in your cavalry. If their lances are drawn the charge combined with the morale reduction from the archers will cause the elephants to rout.

I've found crossbows to not really be useful at all with elphants and haven't tried gunpowder units yet but the above two methods have worked for me with greater than 90% success. One tip is to space your archers out so they all don't get trampled by the elephants. Same with your ballista units. The key to dealing with elephants is to rout them as quick as possible as once they charge the effects are devastating.

So when the timurids come to town make sure you're well stocked on ballistas and archers :)

[Husar]

cannons are pointless because it's hard to hit them even tho they're so big and artillery in general is very inaccurate.

I disagree, cannons are accurate enough and elephants are big targets, if one has them, pikemen or maybe a similar unit in spearwall formation can stop them as well, the pikemen will lose some men of course but the spearwall is likely to kill one or more elephants.

[Basileus]

Btw anyone try Gunpowder units against elephants?

[Somebody Else]

Leave roadbumps in the path of the horde, that'll slow the elephants.

A roadbump being a fort with as many culverins in as you can muster. It's an expensive way to fight, but you do get a turn to 'sally' and watch as your culverins - being right in the middle of the map - cause carnage in the horde. For added effect, target the elephants and get them to trample their own troops.

[nameless]

As the English, what about the stakes?

Can they be used?

Also, what were the level experience of those elephants? I assume since their hordes they were pretty high ranking?

[giskard]

Artillery used in mass may work but i found they are too inaccurate and 3 per elephant is losing tactic because ive usually been facing between 3 and 5 Elephant units per battle.

Thats a min of 9 artillery units, max of 15.

In other words, will not able to take any other types of units.

Fire arrows do not work either, tried that several times my self. Its like using pea shooters.

Spears are the only things that appear to work so far.

Im placing my money on elite pikemen of some sort. Grouped together to maximize the bonuses with a good general right next to them blowing his horn.

PS ive not tried gun powered based weapons such as rifles yet, but since arrows dont work, i would not expect those too but if somebody tries it and it works, let me know.

Giskard

[Doug-Thompson]

One unit of Boyar Sons (a good javelin-armed cavalry) kills three of seven elephants before running out of ammo and most of its men. Four units of Boyar Sons (still "cheaper" than one elephant unit) completely wipe it out for the loss of 14 men total.

Get some decent javelin-armed units. I'd guess that even foot javelins would do if you don't mind losing some men.

P.S. BigTex's point about routing them rather than killing them is excellent.

[BigTex]

Elephants are cake to deal with. Just takes 1 or two exploding shells and there gone. Archers are important, but fire arrows will not rout them alone. It takes a charge or some javelins in combination with the fire arrows to rout them. If you can though, lots of javelin units will massacre any elephant unit. Always put then in loose formation though. With catapults and any arty always use exploding shells.

The key in fighting elephants is not to worry about killing them, but to rout them. Once their routed, or better running amok there no longer a bother to you, maybe your enemy though.

[Aquitaine]

Also, that first screenshot has you with a captain going up against their best general (Pir the Pious has the max number of command stars). That never ends well.

[giskard]

Aquitaine:

True but as I explained in the text that goes with those screenshots, those elephants wiped out all my best generals in earlier battles. What you see in those screenshots is what ever army i managed to scrape up at short notice.

I did get a few captains promoted else where after a few heroic victories but i decided not to send them to their deaths like the others.

I tried Ballistas yesterday after reading the tips in here. I thought id make sure....

Their fire rate is not great but it might be fast enough to do the job. Also they appear to be very accurate too. Far more accurate than the cannon i usually use.

There is one other artillery weapon that appears to do the same job but fires much faster. Im not sure what it is yet but it may be the artillery of choice for use against elephants.

I believe it fires rockets.
Not sure about its effectiveness yet though.

Giskard

[Whacker]

@ Honorables Husar, gizkard, BigTex

I've found that cannon are not that great vs. elephants. I took a whole stick of cannons vs a single unit of cannonphants, using explosive rounds. It took a good long long while, the elephants finally ran amok after about 10 min of barraging and losing 9 'phants. I was able to kill 3 more including the general before they routed off the map.

@ Honorable Basileus

Two units of Jannisary musketeers will in general mop up a single unit of elephants. They'll take some fearful losses, the damn annoying "We won't shoot until we're in perfect formation even if that means we're getting shot to pieces and won't even be able to reform!" bug will often crop up. I do firmly believe that if that bug is fixed, a single unit of Jannisary musketeers could take on a single elephant unit head to head and win. Usually using two units of musketeers vs a single elephant musketeer unit, I can kill 6-10 elephants before they make contact with my lines, and the remaining 'phants are all injured.

Cheers!

[Cheetah]

Hm, I was not clear enough but here is the equation:

morale penalty + 1 or 2 ele killed = ele routed

fire arrows= morale penatly
javelins= dead eles

Of course if you dont have one part of the equation you need more from the other. Thus if you dont have javelins you need considerably more fire arrows (and not x-bows!!!), and if you dont have fire arrows you need more javelins.

Fire ballista can work because it has both, it can kill and give them morale penalty at the same time.

Ribault can work if it can kill, I am sure it gives morale penalty.

Musketeers can kill, perhaps combining them with fire arrows would be even more efficient?

ps. giskard, just a non-related question: I see you played Hungary, what was your early strategy? Which province you took first?

[Cheetah]

They'll take some fearful losses, the damn annoying "We won't shoot until we're in perfect formation even if that means we're getting shot to pieces and won't even be able to reform!" bug will often crop up.

hit backspace

[Whacker]

hit backspace

Ave Cheetah. Thanks for the hint... It didn't help one whit though. Tried again a few times as a single unit of Jan. Musk. against Musk. 'phants. Once the 'phants were in range and started firing, the Jan.'s never again got a shot off, no matter what I did. Leaving them alone, hitting backspace once, a few times, right clicking to fire, leaving them in and out of guard, leaving autofire on or off... Nada. Once they're under fire and taking losses, they won't reform and shoot to save their own miserable soon-to-be-over lives.

[JeffBag]

I find cavalry work surprisingly well against elephants; a single charge may kill a few elephants.

[pat the magnificent]

flaming arrows plus a couple of well placed serpentines fended off 12 units of war elephants in a custom battle for me.

a threw some pikes in for defense, but they just got slaughtered

[Dave1984]

Just spent an enjoyable hour testing and killing elephants and I have to say without a doubt the best and safest way to kill them quickly and efficiently is with javelinmen, mounted or no, although if they are infantry javelinmen then one on one may not be your friend, but it's not a major issue to recruit one more unit!

Aced up Longbowmen behind stakes suffered 70-80 casualties to no kills by the time the elephants reached them, with or without using flaming ammunition, and Janissary musketeers wounded a couple but killed none before they had the reforming problem, which is the only bug I've really noticed and had a problem with and at the minute is a reason to not recruit any musketeers ever.

However the javelinmen on average had 1-2 elephants killed in the first volley, and about 4 more volleys to finish them off or have them running amok.

Since RTW I have no desire to engage elephants in close combat, it isn't really a viable option and the kills/losses ratio is generally pretty poor.

[giskard]

D Wilson

That would make sense since pikes work ok too.

Good work mate and thanks for letting us know. :)

Giskard

[Derfel von Saljeth]

In my experience i used Mercenary Arquebusiers and Mercenary Monster Ribault to scare them. It worked pretty good :)

The only problem with them atm is i usualy have CTD when meet them

[Dave1984]

In my experience i used Mercenary Arquebusiers and Mercenary Monster Ribault to scare them. It worked pretty good :)

The only problem with them atm is i usualy have CTD when meet them

Yes, I should suspect that gunpowder units would be very good elephant killers and in the (maximum) two volleys any of the ones I used got off before being hit by that hideous reforming bug did not cause any kills but each time did cause visible damage (blood on the elephants)
I did try varieties of artillery as well with very good results, often downing 3-4 elephants per units per cannon volley if I was lucky. Unfortunately each time a combination of the general inaccuracy of artillery, especially cannon, and the long reload times meant that after two shots each the elephants had generally charged in for the kill.

At the minute it is pretty hard to say exactly how good pikes are in killing them.
Bearing in mind they seem to be only effective when braced, you'd need to be able to test them really after the passive ai big has been fixed- at the minute, I've found over and over again that the elephants stop at long range, slaughter pike units with their musketmen or artillery and that's that.
In order to bring them in for close combat right now, you have to have your pike advance very close, and when they are close enough to trigger an elephantine charge it happens well before they can brace themselves for it, with predictable results.
So sadly I think that right now they are pretty untestable in custom battle mode and I shall have to find some and ship them to the holy land in my campaign just as soon as I've secured my borders against those damned Milanese (again).