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.
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