[MaxWilson]

Resources doesn't *just* mean blacksmiths. It can also mean things like the time it takes a Basalt King to enchant a glaive; anything which takes a certain amount of time. If you wanted to prevent elephants from being easily massed, it would certainly be justifiable to raise the resource cost on elephants to represent the time it takes to train one, the limited number such trainers available, etc. On the other hand, if you're thinking more about the breeding rates of elephants and how unlikely it is that a single province could produce 300 of them over the course of three years, well, population is already decoupled from army recruitment in Dominions 3.

-Max