How to deal with elephants

[Gandalf Parker]

Sombre said:
I don't totally understand how that would work Gandalf. I haven't tried it though, have you? I mean against a real elephant rush, not just a handful of them.

I suppose that I could use the mini-map battle simulator to test it a bunch of times. Put a bunch of elephants on one team and a bunch of slingers on the other. Maybe someone else will care enough.

But I dont see why its a question. I see the shards spell mentioned often enough when elephants are mentioned. I can get alot more slingers tossing a LOT more stones than I can get mages into the field.

Most of the answers I see focus on the elephants low morale, low defense, big size. Its not how hard you hit them but how often you can hit them so that they will rout back thru their buddies. When I run into elephants I look for cheap bulk with lots of attacks. Slingers, or the woodsmen with double-dagger attack. I also like to toss in those woodsmen with blowpipes to paralyze.

Oh yeah, and poison bladder bags. Its a cheap and early area affect.

Of course Im thinking early game mostly.

[anticipatient]

how about mind burn?

<edit> oops, i think this has been covered.

a higher level astral mage may be able to kill an elephant a turn with it, though. armor negating, 12+ damage. I don't know how the "+" is handled.

[Endoperez]

anticipatient said:
how about mind burn?

<edit> oops, i think this has been covered.

a higher level astral mage may be able to kill an elephant a turn with it, though. armor negating, 12+ damage. I don't know how the "+" is handled.

+ indicates that the spell's damage, area of effect, number of effects or similar scales.

The amount of scaling is already included in the initial value. Most spells with a plus have a bonus of 2-4 per level. I think Mind Burn is S2 spell listed as 12 points of damage. It could be e.g. [8 + 2*level] or [10 + level] points of damage, so S8 caster would deal 18 to 24 points of average. At most it could be 6*level damage, but I don't think any spell scales that well.

Scaling area of effect is much more useful, most times, as is penetration bonus from extra levels of magic (+1 penetration per two levels above minimum, manual explains it very well). Water 9 pretender and Falling Frost (both damage and AoE scale) is very powerful.

[llamabeast]

In any case you certainly couldn't take an elephant down with a single Mind Burn.

[Leif_-]

llamabeast said:
In any case you certainly couldn't take an elephant down with a single Mind Burn.

Well, of course not, everybody knows that elephants never forget.

[Ewierl]

You missed False Fetters; slightly better than Bonds of Fire, as they have to make MR checks instead of morale, which start lower and is tougher to boost in the early game.

[Dedas]

Oh yes, how could I have missed that? Thank you, I'm adding it to the list right away.


@parcelt
Thank you for your kind words! I'm glad that the list can help you somewhat.

[Sandman]

Crushers (con 5) are size 6 and difficult to kill. Why not put one in front of your army to distract the elephants?

[Baalz]

Body ethereal also gives you a 75% chance to avoid trampling. Easy to cast and can be effective if you've got some high damage dealing troops that just need to last a couple rounds to take the elephants down.

[Meglobob]

I have used elephant/mammoth rush many times. Only once has anyone stopped me and that was Bander Log with massed soul slay. It totally ruined my day, but was very, very effective.

I have had people try bonds of fire, massed archers/crossbows, single target evocation spells like lightning, shadow bolt, thunderstrike, firebolt, body ethereal etc and they have all failed miserably.

Sorry, to say Dedas some of those on your list are a little misleading. They will not stop a well put together elephant/mammoth rush.

A few final points, no player will ever put anything behind massed elephants just in case morale breaks and why just use elephants on there own? You support your elephant legions. As Caelum I support mine with archers usually scripted to fire archers or rear and small squads of flyers, again scripted to attack rear/archers. The aim of those support forces is to counter the counter to elephants ie...mages/archers.