War Elephants morale Problem ?

[Ragnarok-X]

I cant exactly Remember the nation, but one has access to elephants which cost 120 gold and i think 20 ressources, those guys are pretty strong and can trample, and have a morale of 10.
In its the description it says they will flee if they are afraid. I guess thats ok, so i bought a lot of them, later on i had a army of about 20 Elephants and my pretener, Nasajaro (? the one with the 4 arms), he had 2 of the better ice swords and 2 shields. Now i attacked the army and guess what ? My leader was killing most troops when at about turn 3 or 4 ALL of elephants decided to run home, THOUGH only 2 were lost (10%), they had a morale of 10+1 (Dominion) AND the leader (my pretender) was STILL at full health and chopping down enemys.
Whats the deal with the elephants, a morale of 11 isnt bad, is about average, so why did they route ? This happended approx 4 times, almost each battle they were involved.

ty

[Raz 24]

The elephants fail morale checks very easy...
So mix them with high morale troops.
You answererd your own question by saying in the info they rout easy

[Ragnarok-X]

ok, but how am i supposed to know that they rout easily if morale is 10 and each other stat (given its a stat-check) is more than average, too ?!?

ty anyway

[Xavier]

Because morale 10 is lowwww.

[aldin]

There's three ways to keep skittish troops a bit calm:

1) Put them near units/commanders that boost morale (typically banners of some sort)
2) Group them with units that have high morale (so the GROUP is less likely to rout)
3) Cast Sermon of Courage / Fanaticism; A LOT

~Aldin

[OG_Gleep]

Use of any trampling unit takes some planning. Especially those nasty beasts. You have to assume at some point they will route and make sure that you give your army and commanders a good shot to avoid the damn things. I put all my commanders and expensive troops on the opposite flank. Mages especially are very vulnerable to a routing horde of tramplers.

[Norfleet]

You should always plan for the elephants to rout: I tend to put them in the center, then deploy commanders and mages on the flanks. In a fight, most things that move tend to end up massing up in the center anyway: Elephants placed on the sides will thus curve into the center line, then rout and run over anyone you have in the center. If you put them in the center, they'll go straight forwards and bowl through enemies until they break, then exit through the center again, which has already been cleared for them.

Alternatively, you can cast Growing Fury on them. Then they'll go berserk and continue trampling and crushing more enemies!

[Ragnarok-X]

thanks everyone ! The berserk idea is really good

[Coffeedragon]

Use the undead variant (Behemoths). They never seem to suffer from morale at all!

[General Tacticus]

The Elephants not only have weak moral, they have both high hit points and low defense/protection. So they'll take and soak up a lot of hits, which is good, but each of these hits will force a moral check on them, which is bad. So Elephant will rout after what looks like only light losses, unless you factor in all those hits they took that didn't kill them...

My own favorite strategy with them is to put a heavy infantry squad front and slightly to the side, and the elephant at the same side, back a bit, on hold and attack. The fact the heavy infantry is offset means that the enemy will tend to end up on the open (center) side, with only a few on the other side. Then the elephants come in, and they demolish the weak flank of the enemy, which is already well engaged by my infantry, meaning the elephants don't take many hits and don't get mobbed. Well executed, this means the elephants don't take losses, and the enemy routs with elephants on its tail (guess what happens to them ). The only catch is that the heavy infantry must be able to hold its own for 3 or so turns, while being outflanked on the open side...