Elephant Killer?

[Sentinel]

I noticed, in the unit details, that Almughavars and other Javelinmen get a +6 bonus when fighting Elephants.

Has anyone used these units against the Timurid elephants? if so how effective are they?

Are you better off with good heavy infantry or normal archers?

[Per Ole]

never actually tried it, but javelins get a bonus vs elephants. However, due to their limited range, I'd suppose that they either get crushed or run after firing one volley

[Sentinel]

How fast could you run if being chased by an elephant?

They are supposed to be fast, for infantry.

[WhiskeyGhost]

Javelins are quite bad against elephants from what i've seen, mostly due to the fear factor the elephants cause, and the whole trample thing too. If you can, use a ballista, its much faster at dealing with em......sometimes

[Valdincan]

Siege equipment is better in my opinion, javelins get to close, and thus get squashed.

[sirnoob]

In another post someone recomended javeline cavalry because they can run from the elephants.

[SadCat]

A gun powder unit sitting on a wall with timer off will kill them some day. Jest takes forever. SadCat

[Noncommunist]

What about naffatun, they seem like they should easily be able to scare elephants but like javelins, they would have to be close?

[crpcarrot]

from previous posts most exp players were of the opinion that jaelines were the most effective against elephants (not tried it myself) however you need to develop effective tactics to get them close enough. timurid elephants also have the advantage of the generals dread so its not going to be easy.

for my self naffatun on a wall seem to work quite nicely

[Husar]

Cavalry.

I was quite surprised when i charged some elephant artillery with four units of heavy cavalry(mounted soldiers from venice IIRC) and they died in a a big blob of heavy cavalry. Another tactic might be to stop them with cavalry and then shoot them with whatever you have.
In RTW phalanxes worked, but in Medieval 2 they seems to just walk through pikewalls.

[Grog]

Hmm what cavalry were you using Husar?

I find that elephants are very cavalry resistant -both types Byz heavy cav have a negative modifier when fighting elephants, even with a decent general sitting right on then/fighting the elephants as well they are fairly rubbish in my experience.

I have taken to fort bombing the last few elephant stacks as the Byzantines don't seem to have any unit to effectively counter them open field.

Ballistas and Trebuchets do well when set to 'fire' ammo, just hitting an open field elephant on the move is tricksy. Byz guard archer can happily defeat elephants open field, given a few days to chase them around after setting them into panic/frenzy mode. I have tried pinning with all sorts of troops, while using fire siege/fire arrows to wither them, the attrition just isn't worth it.

So, if anyone can help with Byz vs elephants without resorting to cheap stack autoresolve or mercs I'd be glad to listen

[Husar]

I just tried it in custom battle and it seems cavalry with lances will never use their secondary weapon and never stop their charge, it looks like they poke them to death with their lances, maintaining the charge bonus as well.

[Iavorios]

I personally have done a lot of custom battles whith timurids on hard and i can tell you two things:
1. if the jav. cav. reaches the elephants (this a problem, because of the huge number of enemy HA and another cav.) they are dead. Jav. kill them to easy.
2. If you sneak pass the another units whith lancer heavy cav., the elephants are dead.
In fact the problem is not to kill the elephants, but to reach them whith your units. Try 1 CK on full armor and weapon upgrades and 2 XP aginst elephant of eny kind whith golden chevron. You will be supraised.

[Grog]

Hmm . I'll have to give it another try with my heavy cav, I just seem to remember my cav routing too easily or getting stomped by berserk elephants, to the point I have been using other methods I outlined above.

Do you have a 7-9* enemy general in your sims vs the Timurids btw? and could this be affecting my cav's morale? I have no problems dealing with the timurids otherwise, but these elephants are being a bit of a pain.

[Husar]

I don't remember what I had in the campaign, it was a city defense, maybe I even sallied. If they run amok, you should retreat and kill them from afar or just leave them alone. In the custom battle everybody had no chevrons, so maybe that's why they routed so fast. It's just that an army of heavy cavalry is almost unbeatable by anything except pikes, spears and more or heavier cavalry. Would cost a ton though, so I've had my problems with timurids as well, nothing is easy when they come with combined armies, in my battle the elephants were rather isolated.

[Eng]

Im very sad to say this but there is no elephant killer unit...
artillery is the best against them but u will have to lose greater numbers.
So my suggestion is never to fight them on open fields and get them to attack a settlement with cannon towers.

[Sentinel]

Javelin cavalry do not get the +6 bonus verse elephants they get the normal -4 penalty that all camel/horses get.

I have tried a few Vh custom battles fighting two artillery elephants (14 x 2) with two Almughavars (60 x 2).

The Almughavars always won with losses varying from 30 to 10 per unit. The better results obtained by moving one unit to each flank. The AI elephants always stood and fought with their cannons, and lost

When I tried the same battle the other way around, AI controlling the Almughavars, me controlling the elephants the results stayed in my favour.
A straight shooting match usually had the elephant winning, but the results was more variable and occasionally I lost. It seem to depend on how well the first few shots did.
However if I charged the elephants in melee mode they always slaughtered the infantry.

This seems to indicate that engaging in melee against elephants should be avoided and that Almughavars can be useful way of killing them if you can get them in range without the Timurid archers cutting them up.

[Whacker]

Javcav are the best hands down. Flank with a unit or two and try to get around behind them. Do not EVER melee or let the elephants catch up to your javcav, because then it will be a slaughter. Keep your distance and micromanage them, and the elephants will drop like flies. Massed arty will also work, but my experience is you need so many units and so much distance for it to really be effective. For cost, versatility, and sheer kill speed, javcav take the cake.

[zaher]

Put Almughavars, afghan javelinmen, catalans off-skirmish. Order them to shot elephants. 3 javeliners killing 2 ele units in 2-3 sec, elephants even dont get time to move. Thats it. Someone writing that fighting in open vs Mongols or Timurids is stupid, but I enjoy it Especially with high morale and javelin attack 12-13 units. Last time i did it yesterday with hired Catalans, playing as Byzantine , i declared war on Timurids when they started to produce elephants in big quantities. So, after killing 2 ele units with my 3 Catalans, 2,5 Catalans remained, so i decided that 6 catalans total i have atm is enought to whipe Timurids out of map or until i get to lands with afghan javeliners.


So have fun in a way you like more, but continues cavalry charges can kill ele too, the question is how many cav units it will consume or how many time it will take.


P.S. Sentinel, javelin cav shoting same javelins and they must be on skirmish mode, so they dont get cav penalty vs eles. They just better targets for missiles. Again, 3 boyar sons killing 2 ele units in 4-5 sec, with slightly more loses than foot javeliners.

[Grog]

So, if I have to resort to recruiting javelins as byzantine, where is the best/closeest reigon to constantinople? (I have made a point of using no mercs all this game *grumble*) I'm guessing the afghans would be around baghdad/yerevan area, and catalans over spain way? My empires western border is marsaille and I'm involved in a fairly heavy war with france/milan/scilily on this front ;)

[Sentinel]

Original quote by zaher

P.S. Sentinel, javelin cav shoting same javelins and they must be on skirmish mode, so they dont get cav penalty vs eles. They just better targets for missiles. Again, 3 boyar sons killing 2 ele units in 4-5 sec, with slightly more loses than foot javeliners.

Good point. All cavalry get a -4 penalty verses elephants, I assumed this was to all attacks, ranged and melee, but it could just apply to melee. If it does then you must also assume that the + 6 for javelin infantry only applies to melee?

[Husar]

If you're the HRE you can use their gunpowder javelin cav aka Reiters.
Or use stakes if you can, they should do better than pikemen.

[joe4iz]

Spanish Musketeers do a nice job. I like two in every stack that encounter elephants. I've used them several times to repel the elephants. Elephants feign charge, and musketeers have decent range. Covering them with Pikemen to keep the cav off and use heavy cav to chase away the flankers. I still like to have some bowmen to fight off their horse archers.

[ReiseReise]

The best thing I have found is flaming ballistas; every faction has them, and unlike cats, trebs and most gunpowder, they only miss about half the time instead of 95% of the time. You only need to kill 1 or at most 2 of the elephants with a flaming bolt and they will run amok. 2 sets of ballistas can usually do it on the first volley. Put them behind your line (but not too close...), so they don't get charged by other cav. The enemy riders (of the regular elephants) will not be able to fire on your line without them being in range of the ballistas. As for the cannon elephants..... good luck, maybe try serpentines if your faction has them.

[Ars Moriendi]

Quote myself from a 4-month old thread :
(pay attention to the disclaimer before deciding your strategy based on this)

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Ok, not everyone can get jav-cav in campaign, so I ran a few more battles trying to figure what works against cannon elephants and what doesn't.
10 vs. 10 units, grassy plain, normal/medium, 1.1 + Problem fixer.
Here's the findings :

Swordsmen (English Armoured). These don't stand a chance, many just ran away before getting near the big beasts, the rest were easily trampled under foot. More elephants died from cannon targeting errors than from swords.

Pikemen (Scottish Noble). I won, but 80% of the army died. One would expect those 20' spears wielded by armoured professionals to be more effective against elephants.

Two-handed axes (Varangian Guard) Better than expected. Victory with 60% losses. Big axes good.

Culverins. I won, barely. I thought the big beast will be easy target practice for serious artillery, especially when the AI likes to keep them in a large group in the middle of the map. I was wrong.

Mortars. Useless. Only killed 2-3 elles before being blown to bits or squashed.

Rocket Launchers (Mongol). Magic ! More than half the elephants were routed in less than 20 seconds, the rest died or ran amok soon after. I only had minimal losses. As a bonus, the fireworks display was impressive to say the least.

Musketeer (Portugal). Comfortable victory, not too many losses, but somewhat slower to drop those elephants than I thought. I mean, 600 muskets output a lot of of lead, so unless the rugs hanging from the elephants were made of kevlar, something's not right here.

Camel gunners. Very good for this job. They can move faster than foot gunners, which means less time spent in the line of fire. Surround the elephs and shoot away.

Heavy cav (French Chiv Knights). It's weird to witness some of the finest cavalry charging almost perfectly without any visible results. Well, pull back and try again as true knights should, until they're dead. Victory, but no army left at the end, so if you care about your shiny chevaliers, don't do this.

Horse archers (Mongol Heavy). Very poor peformance. When all the arrows were spent only 3 elephants were dead, while my army was ~50%. I managed to win in the end by charging from all sides, but only had like 10 horsemen left.

Longbows (English Yeoman) BEST choice by far. As good as jinettes for this job. I deployed behind stakes in a thin long line and used flaming arrows. They don't kill as quickly as javelins, and took some 20% losses to cannon fire, but are protected from charges and have much more ammo - it took less than half of their arrows for victory, so I could have probably taken on a full stack of cannon ellephants.

Naffatun (Turks). Excellent show : victory with 25% losses. Deploy wide and loose, run to encircle, light fuses, throw pots. Result : 350 tons of roasted elephant. Carve a steak and serve with a bowl of chilled naptha on the side. Bon appetit !


CONCLUSION : There's a lot of ways to deal with elephants. As long as you can avoid being stomped under their big feet, you'll probably be okay. Just kill them from a distance, throw stuff at them, preferably flaming.

DISCLAIMER : I only played one battle for each scenario. More extensive testing might give different results. Also, in a real campaign battle the elephants would have other support troops which drastically alters the required tactics.