Qm said

[Chris_Byler]

The simpler suggestion of increasing their resource cost (to represent the difficult task of catching/breeding and then training an elephant, not to mention the expense of feeding it while you are training it, and the expense of a proper howdah and harness) would also make it more difficult to mass huge hordes of elephants. But alone, it doesn't address the "elephant plus hoplites" problem.

As a quick fix I favor higher rescost, but ultimately I'd like to see parts of squads allowed to rout while their braver squadmates fight on. Even if I have to wait for Dom4 to see it.

[Lord_Bob]

The simplest way to limit "unit mixing" with elephants from a mod point of view is to make elephants "magical" and create "Elephant Commander" with nice morale for elephants for the elephant/mammoth using nations and give them magical command. This is hardly abusable... someone who can deal with large numbers of massive mammoths probably isn't going to take any lip from a flying snake either. Elephant morale should probably be raised to 9 or something.

[thejeff]

How does that limit unit mixing?
As long as those nations have mages with any regular command, no one will bother with the Elephant Commander.
Send out a mage (you have to use a fortress turn to recruit the Elephant Commander, anyway). Say 15 elephants mixed with 10 high morale regular troops is enough to boost morale.

[Cor2]

another possible solution to masses of elephants is adding a large guttony rating. Make them consume 60 points of food.

the elephants and their elite keepers will starve if you mass to many. Diseased elephants may not be much concelation to those on the wrong end of an elephant rush.

[Lord_Bob]

If they have the gold to build all the mages required, I say let them. It's a great idea.

Mages don't cost much more than a commander anyway.

It would also allow a group of 20 elephants to be routed.

How many elephants do you need to kill to get your first rout check with 5 60+ group of elephants all mixed with each other?

With smaller groups (forced) at least SOMEBODY will make a route check.