Quote Originally Posted by carthage_supreme
starting a game as epeirotes , after playing a few turns i had an extremely high inflatation (-50 000). Why are elephants sooo expensive? i know it's due to add to the realism , but then again it makes the game unbalanced. It was the same for the bigger ships in an advanced stage playing carthage , they cost up to 2600+ in upkeep.
Breeding and training elephants is difficult even today. Elephant eats about 160kg of forage per day. Captivity and battle-training is very stressful for elephants (elephant is a peaceful animal, a very cruel training is needed to make it a killing machine) and causes them die earlier. In 10 years about 1/5 of the herd dies and numbers have to be replenished by new elephants from India or Africa. That's why they are so expensive.