Elephant upgrades

[SirPat]

This affects both war elephant, mahout, and elephant archer(only armor)


"Elephant armor tech"
researchable at blacksmith/stables cost 7 turns

Gives +1/2 armor/p.armor
And (maybe) would be a unit upgrade that also have +40hp and named armored heavy war elephant, armored heavy elephant archer, and Armored mahout

"Bladed tusks" a blacksmith tech cost 7 turns
Gives +2 power except for elephant archer

"Elphant castles" a stable tech/ a tech at the stables that give all elephants +2 carry but cant carry seige and cav
That cost 6 turns

These techs will make all elephants deadlier but longer to max and gives a new playstyle using elephants as a means of transportation, a transportation slower than a man in game:lol:
And for balance purposes elephants cant enter wagons

[Badnorth]

Nice idea Pat

But aren't the elephants already strong in a way?
They would be so much harder to kill because of their armor.

[Squirrel5555]

Definitely wont create a new playstyle, or a new means of transportation. Maybe people will use them to tank in town centres more

[SirPat]

Definitely wont create a new playstyle, or a new means of transportation. Maybe people will use them to tank in town centres more

hmm.. good point oh and thanks Quad
Well they are super expensive but pikemen can destroy them so aslong as theres a counter then why not

[Badnorth]

Also I think this is gonna be useless because of the Annoying convert cheap healers has.
Even if you have loyalty the elephant is gonna die with 1hp
Plus the -20% mental Resistance every fail

Convert is veeery annoying.

Without conversation in the game this would be a good idea

[SirPat]

Actually who Even thaught of converting an elephant to be christian and join your team thats messed up
Ill make a topic about that

[Badnorth]

Yes you can even convert Walls it doesn't make sense.

[Endru1241]

Who's telling it's christian religion?
Who's telling it's religion at all?
Who's telling an animal can be precisely commanded?

While some campaign fabule elements could suggest one tile representing a single being, I believe the keyword here is unit.
Unit in most cases would never mean a single soldier or animal, but smallest commanding part of army:
- it may be an animal and it's trainer, with some servants/workers to clean and feed;
- it may be roman decury (ten men squad);
- it may be chinese go (five men squad);
- it may be knight with squire and some men;
- it may be siege machine with commander, who calculates trajectories and workers to tend to it;

Similarily conversion represents the power of propaganda - either cultural, political, religious or financial. It can represent the influence, so even unattended building could be deemed ours or theirs.
And most structures were never unattended.
Walls would have partols and some workers + more significant number of crew in times of siege.

AoS is the game of strategy, as the name suggests, and we have to use symbols or other tools of simplifying to focus on strategy, tactics and skip unneeded realism.

As for the topic - I am not sure we should really go into strengthening elephants, where they are already strongest.
For me personally - elephant archer is rarely used, as I go either range (longbow), damage per cost (slinger) or just universal regular archer. It is great to defend e.g. against melee footmen though.
War elephants have great damage, resilence and overall strength. The problem in most cases is, that 5 turn tech is needed to make it even useable. And even then it's easily outmaneuvered. So imho - they are just too slow.
Denying them wagon access wouldn't help, no matter what boost they would get instead if the speed is not considered.
On the other hand increasing armor, especially pierce one would make it just too good at tc defending.

So what I would give them as an upgrade?
Forced run - ability to move faster, but giving up attack and maybe lowering some defensive stats too. Introducing it could also be reason to remove wagon access.
Melee armor - it wouldn't affect main melee counters too much, but allow to better defend against non-specialised melee units.
Ability similar to wheel blades ( especially useful for elephant archer) - maybe even add it without any research required.
Some small bonus vs horse units or aura similar to camels ( or just the same).
Bladed tusks sounds reasonable - I'll add it to the todo list.

[SirPat]

Endru, that was an amazing explanation thanks and the ideas.

Forced run
How much like 3-4 speedsounds reasonable

Melee armor
So what you mean was like a swordsman would deal lesser dmg because of armor while anti elephant units wouldnt really have a hard time

Ability, bonus vs cav and Aura
Sounds good and how much dmg would the ability give and it really should be part of the elephant archer

bladed tusks
How much dmg should it give 2-3 or make it give +1power more like a tier 3 blacksmith tech only researchable when sword upgrade 2 is researched

And thanks again for evaluating these Ideas

[SirPat]

I did made a few imgs for bladed tusk tech for just in case.

Tusk.png (262 Bytes) Viewed 1486 times

BladedTusk_tech.png (385 Bytes) Viewed 1486 times

BladedTusk2_tech.png (397 Bytes) Viewed 1486 times

[L4cus]

are elephants affected by blacksmith cav tehcs?
if they are, maybe make techs only affecting elephants, and the cav techs doesnt
if they arent, then adding armor tehcs would be unbalanced...(maybe some balances for adding those techss)
i posted about elephant afraid of fire on spear throwers topic, and about anti-elephant specialized units too.
about the ablity similar to wheele blades, it could be "trample"
right now i dont have my phone with me so i am not sure about the elephannts stats right now.