[PATCH] War elephants should be upgradable

[elexis]

War elephants are used to destroy buildings (though that is historically inaccurate as pointed out by causative).

Since r18037 elephants are too strong in the early game: 750HP, 10 hack and pierce armor and 150 crush damage. Especially mauryans can build just few elephant stables (instead of market/tower/blacksmith/temple), research city phase and then send 5-10 elephants and completely wipe out an enemy with all buildings and units without sending any support units.

Reducing the HP and armor however means that the elephants will die too quickly in late game when there are many champions defensive buildings around.

So the best solution seems to be to make cavalry upgrades work with elephants too (so that they are weaker in the beginning and stronger later).

Also units should be weak and strong simultaneously. As elephants have no weakpoint currently, their hack armor should probably be reduced to something like 5.

[fatherbushido]

Or an elephant specific tech ?

[Palaxin]

first draft of an elite elephant tech (since war elephants are a separate unit class I also prefer a new tech instead of extending the cav techs)

[Palaxin]

attribute	before tech	after tech	currently
HP	640	800	750
Hack Attack	16	20	20
Crush Attack	120	150	150
Hack Armour	5	5	10
Pierce Armour	10	10	10

all in all a significant nerf because the tech is quite costly with 1500 food, 500 metal and 60 s research time

Other suggestion: We have 5 elephant civs, so it would be worth the effort to provide more specific elephant techs like

• ​elephant tusk sword and iron spikes: +100% hack attack
• ​iron chains and balls: +25% crush attack
• ​elephant plate armour: +2 pierce armour
• ​elephant chain mail: +2 hack armour
• ​Caparison: +1 hack and pierce armour
• ​mahout: +20% walk speed and +50% trample damage
• ​Howdah/Tower: +30 pierce attack from garrisoned troops

[Palaxin]

whitespace fix

[fatherbushido]

I didn't look at the stats.

• elite is confusing (with promotion)
• perhaps mauryans archers elephant should be affected too (as they are not upgraded by cavalry techs)
• i don't know if we really need the charge part of your modifications
• i guess there will be too many techs in some fortress (i think of seleucid one for example).

about your other suggestion : i have no opinion, perhaps it's too complicated. Just remark that Trample doesn't exist in or games and we don't have troops garrisoned in elephant tower currently.

[Palaxin]

Thanks for the comments :)

• I'm also not satisfied with elite, but I don't come up with a better general-purpose tech name. Therefore the suggestion with more specific techs.
• Archer elephants are treated as civ soldiers and thus already have promotion.
• I think it makes sense that charge attack scales proportionally to normal attack (usually 200%). AFAIK other techs don't change charge attack, is there a reason?
• This is a general GUI problem as there probably will be added more techs in the future. A button could lead to a second page or we could add a scroll bar. I'd vote for the first option.
• Trample is planned and secondary attacks, too. Garrisoned soldiers could also be simulated by an additional pierce damage component in the elephant's normal attacks.
• Either way not all suggested techs need to be implemented and each civ may have other techs available.

[fatherbushido]

I suggest for example to nerf health and to do an health / speed upgrade in the corral (like the cavalry breeding) or in the elephant stables.

(Btw, there is some elephants upgrade techs in delenda_est mod.)

[Vladislav Belov]

Any updates with last comments?

[elexis]

Feature freeze in 2 days.

[elexis]

Moving to the new WIP milestone.

[fatherbushido]

Some elephant upgrade could be nice. From balance / mp point of view, actually there is no real problem currently (imo). We have now some icons for elephant. We must do that in keeping the logic of other upgrades (7 specific elephant tech doesn't seem to fit the current policy. (I don't say it's not nice)).

[Palaxin]

see also ​civ-specific elephant bonuses and technologies in AoE II Rise of Rajas

[Imarok]

Move tickets to Simulation as UI & Simulation got some sub components.

[Freagarach]

Elephants now (r24604) benefit from resistance techs.

[Stan]

Backlogging due to lack of progress, lack of review, or users going MIA.