Qm said

[lch]

Or make elephants afraid of size 1 units... like Markatas.

[Gandalf Parker]

I like that. It fits. And it goes with the rock-paper-scissors thing. Make a unit which some think is a waste, useful in breaking what some think is too powerful an option.

I had always thought that the elephants were more susceptable to the rain-of-arrows morale check also. It always seemed as if I had little problem with elephants if I had lots of slingers, so boosting slingers vs elephants might be worth doing also. Or make elephants hate flyers.

[CUnknown]

lch said:

This seems to present the obvious idea how to "fix" this: Make morale mixing dependent on location of the units. A little like standards, units should be inspired by their comrades in their squad around them and may get morale boost through that, but not if they fight the enemy hordes on their own, while the rest of the squad is far away.

QM said:

What I would like to see for elephants is periodic squad numbers/average morale value independent morale checks. If whenever an elephant hit it had a chance to trigger such a morale check for the whole squad, that would greatly reduce the incentive for giant mega-squads. It could be an ability like any other (called panic or something) and could probably be thematic with some other units too.

I really like both of these potential fixes a lot more than morale capping, preventing the mixing of elephants and other units, or even my own suggestion of just raising their gold or resource cost.

Great ideas, guys!

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

How much supply does 50 elephants take, 300? If the effect of starvation was a bit more dramatic than it is right now, you'd have a counter tactic right there.

[Edi]

If animal leadership were a separate category of leadership, that would solve the problem nicely since you would need specialized commanders to handle the elephants, which means falling behind on research or something else.

[Xietor]

Having animal leadership may unfairly penalize Pangaea however.

Maybe requiring Elephant Handlers to handle elephants would work, and give them a leadership of 10. And it is very thematic as well. The average leader likely would have no clue how to handle them in battle. It would require specialized training.

[Kristoffer O]

Xietor said:
Having animal leadership may unfairly penalize Pangaea however.

Maybe requiring Elephant Handlers to handle elephants would work, and give them a leadership of 10. And it is very thematic as well. The average leader likely would have no clue how to handle them in battle. It would require specialized training.

Actually there is a howdah with crew and another guy who sits on the neck of the elephant with a wedge and a hammer ready to split the elephants skull, should she go berserk. So the elephant is full of handlers. That aside it might be a good idea.

One could make it a commander without command ability, but that would make it quite rare, since most people would prefer a smart mage to a stupid beast

Pangaea could easily get animal leadership on most commanders without thematic repercussions

[krpeters]

Xietor said:
Having animal leadership may unfairly penalize Pangaea however.

If we had a seperate animal leadership category, shouldn't all of Pangaea's commanders automatically get animal leadership? That would be very thematic.

The animal leadership category is a good idea anyway. Nature mages should get a bonus (much as death mages get undead leadership)

[Jazzepi]

Lazy_Perfectionist said:
How much supply does 50 elephants take, 300? If the effect of starvation was a bit more dramatic than it is right now, you'd have a counter tactic right there.

I've always found starvation isn't a huge issue for armies on the march. Once you're in the opponent's capital there's always enough supplies, because of the huge population, despite the scales.

Jazzepi