Fighting 11 Trimundin Elephant units with er.. more elephants reinforcement. ouCh!!

[blueslabel]

I'm playing England right now and the Trimundin is expanding into my boarder. An army of 11 armoured elephant with cannons plus several dismounted heavy archers units attacked my huge army with a 6 stars general, 4 units of mercenery arquebusiers, 2 cannon,2 rebault units and some heavy cavalries and knights.

The arquebusiers and cannons did quite a job initially. i managed to drove the elephant units off twice, sacrificing some units and managed to rout and send about 8-9 of them running amok. however, my gunner units took too much time to reload and as soon as 6 of their reinforce elehant units reached my frontline and charged with their heavy archer showering flamming arrows on my men..

u know what i mean.. bloody scenes.. arquibusier units routing without listening to the general's horn, my dismounted knights suddenly became birds, flying and bouncing all over the place. cavalry units crushed like cornflakes despite flanking them. Worse still when those routed elephants units came back.. GOSH!! ELEPHANTS running EVERYWHERE!! i thought i was playing "ZOO TYCOON!!!" i was utterly defeated. bitter. it was my first defeat since i've finished the long campaign and i absolutely will take revenge.

Anyone fighting this large no. of elephants before? I found it almost impossible to concentrate my missiles to all of those beasts. Any advice? Thanks!!

[RickooClan]

quality stuff!

[Cheetah]

If you are facing several stacks full of elephants then use your night fighter ability to elimate them one by one; this way you dont have to worry about enemy reinforcements.

[LegioScythia]

A lot of pikeman grouped together might be able to hold them of.

[TevashSzat]

Large group of concentrated infantry = Target practice for elephant shooters

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

In a custom battle I fought, 2-handed German swordsmen took them down with about 75% casualties. That was with the Lands To Conquer mod though, which has a 2H workaround...

Do the longbowmen stakes hurt eles?

[Forward Observer]

If one can catch the elephants standing in one place for a short time, a single flaming ballista bolt will take one out quite nicely. The biggest problem is that to get a ballistae unit close enough to hit one means that they your unit can be decimated if the elephants happen to direct a salvo at it.

The other problem is that if you hit one or two, it will usually set them off running amok. This can be good if they are in the middle of their forces, but bad if they are near your troops. Also when the elephants are moving, and particularly running amok, they become almost impossible to hit with any artillery. About the only way to bring them down is repeated concentrated flaming arrow fire. It takes a while to reach their hit point limit, but they will come down eventually.

If one can manage a bridge defense, they also are a bit easier to deal with since they have to congregate in a small area to get across the bridge.
I one can kill a few and get the rest to start running amok on their side of the river right in the middle of their forces they suddenly become an asset to your side.

My most decisive battle against them was pure luck. It was in the mountains around Jerusalem and their army was made up of over half elephant units.

I had the good fortune to be on a high ridge that they could not or would not climb. They also could not direct any cannon fire at my high position, and mostly just milled around directly under my position. All I had to do was line the ridge with my long bowmen, and pour on the flaming missile fire.

I must have eliminated half of their elephant army in that battle, but it was just the luck of the draw on army placement that one encounters when attempting to fight a battle in a mountain region.

Cheers

[Budwise]

I tried this on a custom battle but it worked quite well. Try archers with flamming arrow ability and get seiged. The Timorid Elephants, even 12 units of cannon elephants, will not penetrate the walls and the flaming arrows will send them off quickly. Great if your still playing England.

[Ars Moriendi]

Budwise gave excellent advice - timurid cannon elephants are indeed weak against walls and will be driven off quickly by fire arrows.

But.. if you must take on them on the field, you could try a two wave approach, tackling a stack in two separate battles. First wave : bring enough cavalry to charge and capture timurid's foot archers and encircle and kill the horse archers, and some spearmen foot to mob the heavy cav. Elephants - just ignore them and avoid getting charged by them as long as possible. Keep your units moving all the time, charge right from the beginning, don't waste time, or else you'll get too many losses from arrows and cannons. Don't take ranged units for the first battle.
If everything went good and most of the supporting troops are gone, attack them with a second stack, this time bringing archers with flaming arrows ability and all the artillery you can muster - ribaults are excellent but even ballistas with flaming bolts will do fine. Deploy as wide as possible to minimize casualties from cannons and stay as far as possible while shooting with everything you have. When all the elephants go amok, charge all your troops against the remnants of the timurid army.

You might wonder "why not bring ranged units from the beginning and keep them in reserve for a second wave in the same battle" - two reasons :
- it's very likely you'll lose the first encounter, and if you do all your missiles and artillery will be captured or killed leaving you defenseless against the elephants.
- ranged units are vulnerable to heavy cav charges ; and/or will be just target practice as long as the timurids have lots of foot and horse archers plus the cannons.

[CamelGunner]

If you can't beat em, join em I guess..

(Not really, I just wanted to sic em on the mongrels while I wipe out the rest of christianity, then it's go time)

[Empirate]

I just had an amazing siege defense at Acre against two full, well-balanced Tim stacks. I (Hungary) was holding well on one front against the original siege army: Their ram was burned, at one place they had set ladders and at another they had managed to bring up a siege tower against flame arrow fire, but my DCKs held them on the walls quite well. I had only deployed a very few units near towers on the backside of my fortress, so the towers (ballista) would fire at the reinforcement stack. So while I was concentrating on the battle at the gates, which was going well despite some casualties, up comes the message that my walls are breached! The reinforcement army had brought one unit of Ele Artillery, and this had concentrated on one section of wall for a long time, until it fell. So don't give me "Elephants don't shoot at walls", they certainly do. It cost me the battle in this case. I managed to hold out in my citadel for a while (the second ring was taken when lots of Tims rushed through the gate together with some of my fleeing/withdrawn units), but in the end, the Tims marched infantry along the walls and thus took my third gate.
I managed to kill a lot of enemies - in the beginning I had 1450, they had two stacks of 1200 each, in the end I had killed almost 1150 of them with a rather unimpressive army on my part. One particularly gratifying moment occurred when ballista towers reduced the very regiment of Ele Artillery that had brought down that darn wall. They ran amok right through three regiments of Sarbadar Militia. But in the end, the enemy was just too powerful. I wish I'd had Cannon Towers there - that way, the Ele Artillery would have been down in no time. Still, a memorable battle.

[Matty]

I have the Timurids ready on my computer at home for then I get back this evening, me defending the bridge outside Alexandria with three cannon, two ballistas and six urban infantry. A little nervous I have to confess....