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.

[JimMorrison]

But elephants have morale issues, and a single mind burn -could- rout the formation.