Elephants

[LorDBulA]

Cavalry sort of tends to be more versatile and cost-efficient though. The upkeep of one unit of the larger types of eles - nevermind armoured ones - easily pays for several units of quite high-end horse cavalry.

Cavalry more versatile - definitely.
Cavalry more cost-efficient - yes, on average (not in big battles).
But Elephants in right conditions are unsopable.
You have the power of 4-5 high end cavalry units compressed inside one relatively small unit. It all can be delivered at once and on short front.
Cavalry cant match it. 4-5 cavalry units will take minutes to cause damage that Elephants can cause in mere seconds.
This is the ultimate weapon for destroying big and armour heavy army.
They cost their weight in gold but they are worth every penny.

I have nothing against cav. Its great and I use it all the time in quite big numbers. Usually cavalry is my hammer but I can appreciate elephants..

[pansoiatr]

Elephants have to be treated as something exotic and very precious.
I have used them in my epeirote campaign,at the beginning,and they can easily turn the tide of a battle in your favour

[geala]

Try to use heavy cavalry in a charge against the back of a elite pike phalanx. Then try the same with elephants. You will see the difference.

I'm currently playing Makedon and I'm missing elephants a little bit.

[Digby Tatham Warter]

Elephants have to be treated as something exotic and very precious.
I have used them in my epeirote campaign,at the beginning,and they can easily turn the tide of a battle in your favour

Agreed, and as gollum would 'precious' they is.

I usually like to wait until the enemy is reasonably fully committed before releasing them into the enemies inf heavy rear. Using my own cav to clear the enemies missile units well away from them, as EB's Nellies are very vunrable to missiles and expensive(stops people using to many of them) also depending on where you are their recruitment zones are somewhat distant.

[-Praetor-]

To all people that think that the Elephants are weak:

I like to think that the Elephants are similar to tanks. They`re ugly, mean, cause considerable psicological trauma, inverse proportional to the enemy`s experience, pack a lot of punch, and are fairly protected.

But remember what happened to tanks and troop carriers when they entered Grozny on the 1st Chechen war??? They were cut to pieces. Why? Because they were used for an end that they weren`t designed to. The same happened in 1939 in Warsaw, 1942 Stalingrad, etc.

You have to use the weapons in the context they`re designed to.

You cannot make a Merkava 3 enter a destroyed city which`s boiling with Javelin and Kornet missiles, etc... but use a tank on plain ground, boy those guys can roll over an entire battleline.

Same with an elephant, you cannot make a frontal assault with an elephant to an army generously supported by iberi velites whose javelin packs are still full.

If you dislike that an elephant is no more the armored benemoth with chobham composite armor that were on RTW, that`s your problem. I agree that they are a bit underpowered, but if used properly, you can provoque mass rout in seconds.

You just have to learn *how* and *when* to use it.

Besides, if ppl dislike them so much, why the heck don`t they go to the EDU file and mod their stats by themselves???

Cheers!

[MiniMe]

Used wisely, elephants are immortal mummakils from Pellenor fields =)
But AI is definitely not good at using elephants, that's true =(
I hope one fine day AI combat behavior in TotalWar series is going to be moddable.