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

[Caliburn]

Jinettes and Polish Nobles can ruin any Elephant rider's day. Hell, they can ruin anyone's day...

[pike master]

surrender before it is too late

[Durallan]

if anyone wants the save ( I saved the game at the pre-battle screen) pm me, but in my Denmark campaign, 3 of my fullstack armies which were not really prepared or up to scratch, were attacked by the Timurids, it was one of the craziest battles I've ever played, I managed a clear victory somehow, the battle was thus,

3 Denmark Armies VS 4 Timurid Armies

I had some elephants in one of the armies, the biggest problem with this battle is that 1 of the Denmark Army stacks arrives late, which is actually an army I've been training since about halfway through the game so is nearly all gold chevrons. This battle happens just before the turn counter goes to 1 or 0 (meaning turn 199 ) I believe. But the carnage that happened, looking over the battlefield from side to side there were bodies everywhere pretty much, especially in the middle, if this battle wasn't carnage I don't know what is, when I won I was amazed and got alot of thrill out of that battle, I was smiling for about an hour lol

[Ars Moriendi]

Jinettes and Polish Nobles can ruin any Elephant rider's day. Hell, they can ruin anyone's day...

So true. Javelin cavalry is the way to go against elephants. In a 10 vs. 10 encounter, the jinettes slayed the beasts without breaking a sweat - see the screen below.
They took some 25% casualties, but that was only because after the javelins were gone, I tried to actually "herd" the elephants that run amok - bad idea...

[pevergreen]

Sigged... now what to get rid of to fit it in?

[pike master]

i went up against a guy who had spanish with almughavars, javelin men and spanish jinettes with a two elephant army supported by some cav to encourage them and they totally owned in the battle.

fear is the factor. if you have a general and elephant units blazing away with muskets there just arent very many units who will stand up to them without routing.not too mention even if the javeling are beating the armor stats they still have to deliver so many hit points and with cav supporting the elephants you are asking for routing of your javelin cav while they are trying to skirmish with the elephants.

an elephant army in skilled hands for 10k can totally own most other armies.

[Ars Moriendi]

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.

[Cadwallon]

As the Ottomans (VH/VH), I took a two tiered defence. Choke points, such as the bridge east of Antioch are key. Cannon, janissary archers and ottoman archer as well as Hashashim work a treat, though in the end I had to fall back from the bridge after doing significant damage to two stacks (including elephants). Antioch is my capital, and is a huge city with cannon towers. put a couple of naptha throwers near the gate, combined with handgunners (didn't get musketeers until after the Timurids were dead) and as someone said - elephant steaks all round....

Fact is the Timurids AND the Mongols could have gone through the rest of my empire like a dose of salts, but they chose to focus on my strongest city rather than weak points. The Timurids also dealt with stack after stack of crusaders for me, whilst also weakening themselves. Another great thing about having Antioch as your capital (or main build-up point for defence).

Can anyone comment on a bug which shows you in battle using ballista rather than the cannon towers you've bought? Also - if you could direct the cannon fire onto the rams you'd never be much at risk - though it seems to be fairly random (the cannon and ballista shots).

The passive siege bug also assists, as I get to deal with the Timurid stacks one at a time. Not that realistic though...

The successive mongol and timurid invasions do cramp your own style with regards to the rest of the world though. While I had completely taken over Italy and parts of Germany - if my armies had been freed up for invasions rather than defence I could have finished a lot earlier. It also means that Spain dominates the eastern mediterranean, and my deep water bagalas (which don't seem to have a proper graphic) don't cut the mustard when it comes to european ships. So no invasion of the new world for me....

[pike master]

[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]

why do you think they had to develop elephant guns?

you have to penetrate the vitals to kill them and it takes one powerful round to do that. the only damage many muskets would do is bleed them out until they are too weak to fight and move.

it has even been theorized that clovis man did not kill mammoths by well aimed thrust to penetrate the vitals but they more than likely killed them while the elephant was crippled from being herded off a cliff or so many spears were thrown into them to weaken them from blood loss.

this makes sense when you think that most of the elephants at the battle of hydaspes were still alive after the battle, but the fight was out of them and they were exhausted and the macedonians when they compressed the elephants along with porus army tighter and tighter into a small circle that the elephants crushed their own men.

[Ars Moriendi]

why do you think they had to develop elephant guns?
you have to penetrate the vitals to kill them and it takes one powerful round to do that. the only damage many muskets would do is bleed them out until they are too weak to fight and move.

They had to develop elephant guns so that a single shooter would be able to kill a large animal from a safe distance. That requires accuracy, long range, and power.
Musket were slow, unreliable and very inaccurate. Now, in our context - massed formations on battlefield - accuracy don't matter (how hard can it be to hit a large grup of closely packed elephants at 50 yards ?) and neither safe range (the guys in M2TW are soldiers not hunters).
So, only question remains the power, and it appears that muskets weren't lacking in that department. They used large lead balls (12-20mm diameter) and copious amount of powder (about twice per projectile weight unit compared to later guns).

As this guy, who apparently owns and fires a musket, will tell us :

As a person who OWNS a bess and regularly fires it a bess "75 cal" will bloody well kill you good with 1 shot anywhere in the body trunk "torso" and will put a fist size hole in you ...
(http://complicationsensue.blogspot.c.../velocity.html)

Or here :

At about 30 yards a musket ball will go clean through a man, even at 50 yards it may well pierce both breast & back plate of a pike man, the heavier musket balls were said to penetrate the front plat of a corselet at 100 yards.
Experiments have also shown that a 12 bore ball fired with a charge at most as powerful as those in the period would penetrate solid oak to 2 inches at 40 yards.
http://www.fairfax.org.uk/main/soldiers/musket.htm

I don't know how thick elephant skin is but hundreds of musket balls fired at close range seem adequate enough for the purpose of killing them.

[pike master]

your not taking into consideration that not only does the projectile have to make it through 6 inches of tough hide but then it has to make it through significant amounts of muscle tissue. then IF it makes it through all that it will have a very good chance of hitting the shoulder blade or a rib.

muskets were not elephant guns and would take numerous shots to weaken the elephant through blood loss too bring one down.

even in the modern era some elephant hunters experimented trying to take down elephants with .303 british enfields with shots to the head. they came to the conclusion it was not a good idea.

even when elephants are slammed with calibers like the .460 wm, 375 h&h, and 458 win. mag. it often times requires a second or third shot to finally bring them down. they are very tough to kill.

and these are not even armored like war elephants with the various types of armor they covered them with. i would say many musket balls would have gotten stuck between the armor and the outer layer of the hide.

[phonicsmonkey]

So, as Venice, my best chance is flaming arrows fired from a ridge or hilltop? without stakes, what can I use to screen them? if spears or pikes, won't they get blown apart by elephant cannons?

I want to take these Timurids on in a fair fight, no bridge battles or passive siege AI for me...just like the Mongols I just waved goodbye to

[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....

[anders]

your not taking into consideration that not only does the projectile have to make it through 6 inches of tough hide but then it has to make it through significant amounts of muscle tissue. then IF it makes it through all that it will have a very good chance of hitting the shoulder blade or a rib.

muskets were not elephant guns and would take numerous shots to weaken the elephant through blood loss too bring one down.

even in the modern era some elephant hunters experimented trying to take down elephants with .303 british enfields with shots to the head. they came to the conclusion it was not a good idea.

even when elephants are slammed with calibers like the .460 wm, 375 h&h, and 458 win. mag. it often times requires a second or third shot to finally bring them down. they are very tough to kill.

and these are not even armored like war elephants with the various types of armor they covered them with. i would say many musket balls would have gotten stuck between the armor and the outer layer of the hide.

wont the pure system shock of getting hit with a salvo of heavy, expanding lead balls be enough to take the animal down without actually hitting any vital organs? I mean, the salvo might not hit any important parts of the elephant, but the added effect of all those hits should cause enough damage to bring the animal into shock, and the blood loss should get lethal pretty quick. also, you dont have to take em out, only take em down, couple of rounds in knees or ankles should do that.

[dellis]

Well Ander you have to remember that an average elephant weighs in at 15000 lbs. The average human is 150lbs so and elephan has 100x the mass of a human. You then compare bullets. So lets take you slow moving .75 cal ball. (by the way, huge difference between a brown bess and a medieval musket firing non corned gunpowder) Lets drop the mass down 100 percent, and you are looking at something with comparativly the same weight in birdshot. Even the vice president can tell you that you can spray someone all day with bird shot and not kill them.

[pike master]

on mythbusters they tested the theory about bullets making people fly through the air when they got it. myth busted.

remember that despite the elephants size arqs and muskets that were used on the battlefield used loose fitting balls instead of tighter fitting more accurate balls for ease of loading and were lucky to even hit a mass of soldiers hundreds strong let alone a elephant in its legs.

not sure how elephants tolerate pain but i would think they are pretty resilient considering the romans had to literally pincushion them with pilums during one of pyrhuss battles to get them to panic.