How to deal with elephants

Gandalf Parker · #1 August 2nd, 2007, 11:38 AM

I tend to use slingers. Masses of them, spread out into as many groups as I can break them up into.

Dedas · #2 August 2nd, 2007, 11:52 AM

The thing with these counters is that they are easy to access and that you can use your research mages to cast them without preparation. They are intended to complement your expansion or defense army.

Ygorl · #3 August 2nd, 2007, 12:42 PM

We have a policy of never dealing with elephants. We don't even like dealing with those who do deal with elephants.

parcelt · #4 August 2nd, 2007, 01:05 PM

I think this is an excellent listing, in a recent MP game I was facing some big elephant hordes (30 to 50 elephants) from Arco and to my great frustration I couldn't really deal with them. I guess that doesn't need to happen again! Thanks for putting this together Dedas.

Ironhawk · #5 August 2nd, 2007, 07:09 PM

Quote:

Dedas said:
The thing with these counters is that they are easy to access and that you can use your research mages to cast them without preparation.

One of the problems with your suggestion is that it requires mages at all. As you say above you can even just use your research mages.... but if I have to pull my mages away from researching for several turns to go and fight elephants and then have them walk several turns back to a lab when its over thats bad news! Even if I win, I will be like 4-8turns behind in research. Thats just no good.

What I would really like to see is a list of units and formations that can counter elephants. I know for a fact that nets are quite dangerous to elephants, for example. So Ichythids (of all things!) are pretty good against them. Gladiators too, tho those are incredibly hard to deploy.

Does anyone else have purely military solutions to the elephant problem? Oh - and dont bother just sayign "archers" - they dont work. Either they dont do enough damage or the enemy player just kills them all.

GameExtremist · #6 August 2nd, 2007, 07:25 PM

In my experience archers are useless...maybe massed flame arrows might be helpful but if you are facing a large elephant horde they will be at and then through your front line in 2 turns...

I've found falling frost and magma eruption work quite well...blade wind too, poison cloud is another. Shadow blast works great too as it deals great damage and also paralyzes too.

Soul slay will work a treat, it deals instant death if they fail their MR save.

Dedas · #7 August 2nd, 2007, 07:25 PM

I didn't mean that you should wrap all the mages in your kingdom together to go on some crazy elephant cleansing crusade. What I meant was that you can use them as backup to stop an elephant rush happening at your front door, instead of just sacrificing your army alone in a no win fight. They could topple the odds in your favor with the right low level spells, spells that I wanted to make a list of. Oh, and we are still talking early to mid game here.

Yes, nets work well on elephants actually, as it stops their trampling for a turn (they soon break free thanks to their great strength) and lowers their defense to 1. So yes, against a few elephants this might work, but when you have a wall of them, well then you need to split them up, netting them piecemeal. This is where you combine nets with spells.
In other words: it all revolves around disrupting and dispersing the "wall of trampling". If it comes too close to your lines you are dead. You have to smash that wall before that happens, then it is fairly easy to you crush the bricks that falls through with your regular troops.

Sir_Dr_D · #8 August 2nd, 2007, 08:24 PM

Unless you have flaming arrows wouldn't massing indy barbarians be more effective then indy archers?

Sombre · #9 August 2nd, 2007, 01:31 PM

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.

Gandalf Parker · #10 August 2nd, 2007, 03:04 PM

Quote:

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.