elephant archers are a joke

[Divine Porcupine!]

they have the lowest damage output & slowest train time of any unique archer. they cost more than any other archer. and obviously they move the slowest. making them the hardest archer unit to mass and damage other units. the only thing attractive about them being their durabilty which is pointless when you have a low damage output & are so hard to mass.

the joke is that they are a mobile tower so how about letting them fire multiple arrows like one. if it's going to be this hard to mass (cost + time) you might as well give them an attack simular to the chu-ko-nu.

[woodsmanac]

Kind of a tank unit. But ya time and money better spent elsewhere.

Should speed them up in general then allow for x3 garrison which would produce more arrows per attack but slow them down per unit garrisoned.
👊BAM

[Shade-O]

Balance wise as far im concerned they're fine. Having durable expensive archers is needless to say not usefull in all situations but definitly has its merits. Mostly when fighting against powerfull ranged units like longbows and cho-ko-nu since they can fight them back and take the damage even surviving a lot of focus firing due to their pierce armor.

[Cats. Just Cats.]

They are definitely a weird concept, but practice has shown that they can be made to work. Multiple shots would probably make them too powerful. Like Shade-O said, have them fight other archers. The other unique unit, the Imperial Camel, can then be used to deal with cavalry, so overall the Indians have proper answers to different kind of situations.

But I have to agree with one argument I've heard, that the Elephant archer is just a worse version of the Ballista elephant. Yeah, it's true. The Ballista elephant is definitely the preferable unit. More range, more damage and the same cost. At least, the Elephant archer should get the same range as the Ballista elephant (range 5 instead of 4). Because it is so bulky, it needs the additional range or else the elephants from the second and third row will have no chance to fire. And a slight price reduction, maybe 100 food to 80 food, would also be a conceivable idea, so that massing them gets a bit easier.

[Divine Porcupine!]

cats, you do know ballista elephants cavalry armor & siege attack upgrades and while elphant archers benifits from archer upgrades. so the elephant archer gets 1 more range over the ballista elephant.

i'd choose the war wagon or baslita elephant over an elephant archer anytime. as they actually have some attack to dish out with their durabilty (war wagon also trains fast & cheaper). i feel more like i'm buying mobile walls than mobile towers. and if i'm the indians i'd rather invest into heavy-cav archers than their elephant archers.

one thing that is funny though is send in some siege ram against the ballista elephant and watch it go to work on them. (especially effective as the mongols or ethiopians)

[Cats. Just Cats.]

Oh, I completely forgot that the Ballista elephant doesn't get the regular archer upgrades. Okay, then my range upgrade proposal was nonsense.

Yeah, I'd also choose the Ballista elephant or War wagon over the Elephant archer. But I guess it's only fair that the Indians get a second unique unit, if their first isn't the greatest.

[Divine Porcupine!]

the imperial camel is really nice. it trains faster than frank paladins and combine the saracen & malian camel bonuses. plus they have halberdier! one of the only camels civs that have both. making them easily in the top 5 anti-cav civs. (inca, italian, persians, and chinese are the other 4). but the imperial camels are still weak to foot-archers which & infantry. the elephant archer tries to cover up that weakness, but as mentioned it's too slow too keep up with the camels, hard too mass, and doesn't pack that much punch

[Divine Porcupine!]

it would be cool if they added the ability to garrison units like a tower/ram. and funny as hell to watch the animation (watching a infantry unit walk up to the elephants butt then vanish)

[Masasa]

Do husbandry

[WhiteMagick]

They could use +1 range.

[Dullahan]

For me, Indians is best civ but expansive cost, a big pack of elephant archers is hard to break, add camel and you are unbreakable.

[Divine Porcupine!]

Originally posted by Dullahan:

For me, Indians is best civ but expansive cost, a big pack of elephant archers is hard to break, add camel and you are unbreakable.

camel and elephant archer is not unbreakable. elphants can still be a threat, usually needing 2-3x as many camels to deal with one elphant. making them cost effective. then pair them up with some archers to help deal with camels (or any halbs if they are thown into the picture). this is especially effective as the vietnamese.

the itialians genoese crossbow can also crush the indians on it's own when massed. add in Condottiero/infantry as a meat shield and the indians are hopeless.

malian champion, Gbeto, & siege onager are simular story as the italians.

[talgaby]

He is right though, the imperial camel is one of the generally best units in the entire game. They can kill any paladin on 1v1, they are only a few percent slower than a light cavalry, they have a civ-based armour bonus and a bonus damage against buildings, meaning they can break cities without siege. They are like combining tarkans, light cav, and heavy camels together with a stupid high anti-cav bonus, and letting them getting spammed from every stable for a mere 60 gold. The only actually scary counter they have are the Genoese crossbows.

[Cats. Just Cats.]

So it seems fair that the Elephant archers are a highly situational unit, if the Imperial Camels are such a universally good unit. Giving the Indians two universally good units would be a bit too much. I still wonder whether the Elephant Archers should be a bit cheaper than the Ballista Elephants, rather than costing the same. The Indians already have the 10% more gold income, so I certainly wouldn't lower the gold price, but the food price could be lowered a bit.

[Carolus Rex]

Originally posted by talgaby:

He is right though, the imperial camel is one of the generally best units in the entire game. They can kill any paladin on 1v1, they are only a few percent slower than a light cavalry, they have a civ-based armour bonus and a bonus damage against buildings, meaning they can break cities without siege. They are like combining tarkans, light cav, and heavy camels together with a stupid high anti-cav bonus, and letting them getting spammed from every stable for a mere 60 gold. The only actually scary counter they have are the Genoese crossbows.

They are really not that great against anything that is not cavalry. They are worse against just about everything else than a paladin and are only on par with a fully upgraded paladin against buildings.

[Cats. Just Cats.]

That's right. And there is this weird weakness of the Indians, or I should better say lack, of either knights or Battle elephants from the stable. All the other civs (except meso-american) have knights or elephants to rush in Castle Age with.

That's why I argued to give the Indians non-elite Battle elephants, which could either be used in a Castle Age rush, or be supportive units for the Elephant archers. I think a mixed army of Battle elephants and elephant archers would also look cool, I somehow want to be able to build it (yes, a stupid reason perhaps, but it would be satisfying visually).