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.

[Baalz]

Body ethereal also gives you a 75% chance to avoid trampling. Easy to cast and can be effective if you've got some high damage dealing troops that just need to last a couple rounds to take the elephants down.

[Meglobob]

I have used elephant/mammoth rush many times. Only once has anyone stopped me and that was Bander Log with massed soul slay. It totally ruined my day, but was very, very effective.

I have had people try bonds of fire, massed archers/crossbows, single target evocation spells like lightning, shadow bolt, thunderstrike, firebolt, body ethereal etc and they have all failed miserably.

Sorry, to say Dedas some of those on your list are a little misleading. They will not stop a well put together elephant/mammoth rush.

A few final points, no player will ever put anything behind massed elephants just in case morale breaks and why just use elephants on there own? You support your elephant legions. As Caelum I support mine with archers usually scripted to fire archers or rear and small squads of flyers, again scripted to attack rear/archers. The aim of those support forces is to counter the counter to elephants ie...mages/archers.

[Dedas]

I actually put some research and experience behind this and the above spell list what I came up with, all level 5 and below. There are better spells of course but on higher levels, capable of dealing with later game threats as it should be.

Another thing, I did never state that the spells above should work on their own, quite the contrary in fact - they work best in combination with other spells and units. For example, you don't need that many Bonds of Fire to make a huge difference when your army consists of lots of arbalests and foot soldiers. The elephants will come to you in smaller numbers actually possible to stop. The thing is to break the "wall of tramplers" and buy time for the real troops to fire and hack. Just some poorly scripted mages with with minimal backup will do nothing. We all know that.

Oh, and if you have anything better to offer in countering an early game elephant/mammoth rush besides running away please share. I believe we are all ears.

[Baalz]

Oh I don't know Bob, I've personally had pretty good luck with frighten and in another case body ethereal (water blessed Bandar Log tiger riders - quickened 3 attacks plus a high defense). In another game I saw elephants crushing my neighbor and quickly researched up to enslave mind before they were turned on me. You think soul slay ruined your day? Elephants fear the communion. >

[Dedas]

Thank you Baalz, I will add Body Ethereal to the list. Oh and I just tested it myself in a little scenario I did. It works very well with simple units as heavy cavalry, units that you can recruit almost everywhere.

Oh, and archers and fliers are not that big a threat to mages in the back if you know how to protect them. You just need to roughly know how the combat AI works and of course know your opponent's scripting. I usually send in a scout with retreat order first, or spy on the enemy when he attacks indies to find out. People usually don't change their setup even though they should. Because you never know who's watching. He he he!

[Folket]

I think mind burn and soul slay should be on the list.

[Dedas]

Soul Slay is already added. I'm a bit skeptical to Mind Burn though, mostly because I haven't tested it yet on elephants. It looks like it does too little damage. Maybe you have some experience?

[Ironhawk]

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]

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.