FAQ: Ermor(Middle Age) VS Elephants.

[Soyweiser]

Originally Posted by Endoperez

I'm pretty sure Behemoths are in Enchantment, not Thaumagurgy.

Yep, ench4. You need D3, and 10 gems. A bit high up the research tree. It will not stop a early elephant rush.

[Tifone]

Sorry, my bad

[Soyweiser]

I thought of another nice tactic.
If you have a special anti-elephant army, and your enemy uses elephants in support of his main force. He/she will probably place the elephants on the fringes of the army to prevent them from trampling his/her own forces when the elephants rout. Your force will probably not survive.

This is the untested tactic.
Fight a battle against them to see where the elephants are positioned.
Position your anti elephant force at the other side of the elephants, at the back.
In the battle the elephants will probably charge towards the anti elephant force, running in front of the main force of the opponent.
With luck, that is also the place where the elephant force routs. Trampling across the main force of the enemy on their way out.
You will probably lose the anti-elephant force. Unless you set them to fire and flee, but then you have a smaller chance of routing them.

Problems with this tactic:
- Flyers
- Opponent changes tactics between battles
- You will lose that battle
- Sacrificing mages to deal with an army is always a bad tactic in the long run. You need every RP you can get.

[JimMorrison]

Originally Posted by Soyweiser

This is the untested tactic.
Fight a battle against them to see where the elephants are positioned.
Position your anti elephant force at the other side of the elephants, at the back.

Your elephant wielding enemy (if they make up much of their power) is likely not relying much on ranged, and probably little on magic artillery.

This implies, you may want most of your forces as far back as possible, to give you time to work.

Cluster a bit near the middle, so that even if his elephants are flanking, they will pull towards the middle regardless.

Set all units to Hold+Attack Large Monsters, or Fire Monsters, and queue up your anti-ele spells (they will throw down some buffs if you start out of range, not the worst thing).

If your army is designed for anti-ele duty, this setup should give optimal results unless a specific tactic requires you to start very close to the elephants, which is usually not advisable.

[Gandalf Parker]

Depending on your map position the much-hated "fire and flee" or some fire then retreat tactics can work well to hold back the elephant hordes. Keep commanders rotating in the provinces surrounding the one you are attacking to keep the commando troops returning each turn.

[thejeff]

When I'm using elephants I tend to put the elephants in the middle on the grounds that they'll end up there anyway.
Mages and archers go on the far flanks. Any other troops do as well, usually with attack rear orders, which tends to keep them farther to the sides.

So whenever the elephants rout, they'll at least avoid the archers and mages and probably only trample a few troops on the front line.


I'm not sure how that would affect any of these suggestions, but since several seem to assume elephants would be on the flanks, I thought I'd mention it.

[Baalz]

Not generally where MA Ermor is headed early, but if you happen to be at const-4 consider forging ethereal x-bows. With their precision, and the elephant's size and MR more or less every time you fire you kill an elephant. just stick them on scouts set to fire, fire, retreat. Bad guys won't get far when they lose several expensive elephants each fight. This also works very nicely with the fear spam suggested above, killing half the elephants will usually route the rest of them and if you're being attacked by more than 20 elephants you'll need to invest more than 25 pearls to stop them.

Cons-4 also gets you rat tail whips, which are often overlooked but both cause greater fear *and* give you animal awe (excellent for stopping the trampling and dropping the already low moral into the negative range). N1 indie mages are a dime a dozen, etherealize a few cheap commanders with rat tail whips and back them up by more with ethereal xbows and you'll stop a ridiculous amount of the beasts without bothering many of your mages to run around nor taking any casualties.

[Soyweiser]

Originally Posted by thejeff

I'm not sure how that would affect any of these suggestions, but since several seem to assume elephants would be on the flanks, I thought I'd mention it.

That is why you first examine a battle which the elephant army fought. After this you place your anti-elephant army in a spot where the elephants are not, but in front of the rest of the army is. I would just choose one of your flanks, the one with commanders probably, so you lose a large leadership part of the army. This prevents further advance.

The elephants run towards the enemies, and hopefully rout in front of the rest of the enemy army. The important step is first scout the elephant army. I think, that this would work as long as you have a lazy opponent who doesn't change the tactics from battle to battle. (Just watch two attacks of the same army to check this). Adapt your tactics to counter your opponents tactics.

I would use scouts and PD to get this information. If you have a scouts in a province you can attack with him to discover the tactics of the army (set the scout to retreat, wait for more turns if you also want to know the spells cast by the mages). Or after a large army attacks a PD, look at the tactics of the army.

"He who is well prepared and lies in wait for an enemy who is not well prepared will be victorious. Know your enemy and know yourself, and in a hundred battles you will be victorious"

[chrispedersen]

In CBM, spells like Earth grip are lowered to level 0.

Similiarly, tangle vines etc. You want to let just a couple of elephants through.

But lastly, as ermor, I'd really look at either ghost grip or Fright. Elephant morale only starts as an 8, as I recall, and if he's invading you, and gets hostile dominion and a fright - he's down to 2.

IIRC, ghost grip has 5+targets and stuns for oh 20-40 stun, with a good range. 4 casters of that, casting at a group of 10-20 elephants should be enough that

ANY missile troops should slaughter them. People forget that chance to hit with a missile weapon is related both to size (elephants are huge) and fatigue.

You shouldn't have any problem stopping 20 elephants with 4 ghost grippers, 40 slingers.. and 6 or 8 vestals.

[Soyweiser]

Originally Posted by chrispedersen

ANY missile troops should slaughter them. People forget that chance to hit with a missile weapon is related both to size (elephants are huge) and fatigue.

They also only have a defence of 8, Protection 11, and a magic resistance of 6.

And if you stop them from trampeling, they only have their trunk attack. At damage 17 (strength 20 - 3), reach 0, and attack skill 10, not great for a 100 gold unit. Average heavy infantry are better armed.

The more I look at them, the less dangerous they look.