Dealing with mass elephant as LA Agartha

[Big Dog]

Anyone have any tips for dealing with mass elephants as LA Agartha? They just eat my sacreds up and none of my magic seems to be good against them. Any ideas for making a thug or something that can deal with them?

[terve886]

Elephants generally have low morale, making them easy to rout with fear spells. Combined with their trample, they will also do friendly damage as they run away, going over units blocking their retreat.

[Big Dog]

Originally posted by terve886:

Elephants generally have low morale, making them easy to rout with fear spells. Combined with their trample, they will also do friendly damage as they run away, going over units blocking their retreat.

Got anything else? They just run over my mages It's like a stack of 40 of them plus flyers. They wreck my super heavy infantry as well. They just run over my hoard of skeletons too.

[terve886]

Originally posted by Smokey The Bear:

Originally posted by terve886:

Elephants generally have low morale, making them easy to rout with fear spells. Combined with their trample, they will also do friendly damage as they run away, going over units blocking their retreat.

Got anything else? They just run over my mages It's like a stack of 40 of them plus flyers. They wreck my super heavy infantry as well. They just run over my hoard of skeletons too.

The main counter of elephants is generally other size 6 units, spells that abuse their low MR or spells that abuse their low morale. LA agartha is in kinda bad spot considering they mostly have Earth and Death access.

Trample damage is resisted by defence skill and it does AP damage with min damage on 1. As such, stacking protection and def skill helps to some extend, but not to extend you are looking for. Summoning elementals is a good way to get size 6 blockers, though Earth elementals aren't the best for the job but should at least bring you some time.

[Bumc]

I had some luck just frighten-spamming against elephants. Its range 50 with 5 precision and mages auto-aim it on big units, so starting in backline and going "hold and attack" with your heavy infantry generally gives enough time for elephants to start routing.

[Bumc]

Also, glaives and two-handed weapons in general are pretty good to just cut the elephants down. If you cannot afford enough shard wights for them to matter, consider just hiring some indie barbarians.
They chop up elephants real fast when given good enough commander to not start routing immediately.

[Big Dog]

I ended up giving thristle maces made by my pretender onto N1 indie mages and having them cast charm animal. 2 N2 mages is all it took to make a difference. I also got a bunch to rout into a massive army from running out the turn timer with a high prot regen thug that their fliers and undead surrounded.

[joeball123]

Spells like Bonds of Fire (F1, Thaum-1, morale + DRN vs 21 to escape), Prison of Fire (F3, Thaum-4, morale + DRN vs 21 to escape), Web (N1, Evo-2, str + DRN vs 22 to escape), Earth Grip (E1, Alt-1, str + DRN vs 23 to escape), Earth Meld (E2, Alt-2, str + DRN vs 23 to escape), Maws of the Earth (E3 and a gem, Alt-5, str + DRN vs 23 to escape), Vine Arrow / Tangle Vines (N1, Evo-1 / Conj-1, str + DRN vs 19 to escape), Slime (W1, Evo-1, reduces combat speed by half), Slow (W2, Alt-4, reduces combat speed by half), Curse of Stones (E3 and 3 gems, Alt-4, reduces combat speed by 25% and inflicts fatigue damage per tile moved), Dessication (W2, Thaum-1, inflicts 2d8 fatigue damage each round until an MR check is passed), and Ghost Grip (D1, Conj-5, inflicts fatigue damage) can prevent elephants from trampling things with varying degrees of effectiveness. Spells like Weakness (D1, Alt-2) or Enfeeble (D2 and a gem, Alt-5) can help with keeping elephants stuck in the spells that check against strength.

Rage (F2, Thaum-3) and Hydrophobia (F2 and a gem, Thaum-8) can make your enemy's elephants as dangerous to them as to you.

Summon X Elemental (X1 and a gem, Conj-3 for size-3 Lesser X Elementals; X3 and a gem, Conj-5 for size-6 Elementals), Swarm (N1 and a gem, Alt-4), Phantasmal Warrior (A1, Alt-2), Animate Skeleton / Animate Dead (D1, Ench-1), Raise Skeletons (D2, Ench-3), Raise Dead (D2, Ench-4), and Horde of Skeletons (D2, Ench-5) can create distractions that might at least keep the elephants from running over your permanent troops; some of these, like the big elementals, may do a fair job of killing the elephants instead of merely distracting them.

Decay (D1, Thaum-1), Bane Fire Dart (D1F1, Evo-4), Bane Fire (D3F1, Evo-6), Disintegrate (D2, Alt-8), Incinerate (F3, Alt-5), and Pillar of Fire (F2, Evo-8) are probably among your better options for killing elephants with magic. Combustion (F1, Alt-2) and Conflagration (F2, Alt-8) may also work, although they'll be slow to kill; still, the damage that the elephants take every round from being on fire might help rout them.

As mentioned by others, fear spells - Frighten (D1, Thaum-1) and Terror (D3, Thaum-4), mostly, at least for LA Agartha - can work well for routing elephants from the battlefield.

[Chilli-Göttinger]

flame corpses in front scripted to attack large enemy monsters? meme and gimmicky but also aoe damaging a bunch of big things with 9 morale at once
also iron corpses, those dont care about some lost and poke them to death while the mages fire into the elefaphants
and crossbows, you dont have them for no reason. even agartha does hit big things.

la agartha is made to industrialy whittle down enemies with superior engineering

[Ddraig Lleuad]

Honestly, Entrance Guard should do pretty well if you can mass enough, especially if you can prot buff them. If they're eating your Blindfighters it's probably because they've brought considerably more gold value in elephants than you did in sacreds. You won't win cleanly, but the thing about elephants is they really want to be able to trample over enemies and kill them in one go, because they're remarkably fragile and have low morale - if they trample over something and it survives to hit back, elephants tend to get hacked up a lot and rethink their life choices.

Math it out. A trampling unit rolls 3d6 vs the target's defence + DRN, trampler ignores shields and wins ties. A Guard has an effective defence skill of 7 without the shield, so it's very likely to get hit. Trample damage is 5 + 2x Size - 17, for an elephant. It's armour piercing, so that's 17 damage vs 21/2 = 10 (maybe 11? I'm not sure which way it rounds) prot. Effectively 7 damage. Less if you paint Legions of Steel (effective 12 prot), or Marble Warriors (effective 14 prot), or both (effective 15 prot).

Except, Entrance Guard have 14HP each, and elephants often don't stack up trampling the same square, because they're each size 6. So, the elephants trample into a double line or box of Guards, dealing decent damage. Now they're surrounded by mostly alive and very annoyed Agarthans, who start hacking the elephants to pieces with their 16 damage swords. The elephants, with only 11 prot, rapidly collect great open wounds, and their poor morale of 9 means they rout pretty quickly.

40 elephants is like, 4,000 gold, right? That would get you 250 Entrance Guard, but I'd honestly expect around ~80-100 to pull a win. I did it with ~60 'Adite Elite Soldiers, more of a 1:1.5 ratio of elephants to opposition, but while an 'Adite Elite has less prot, it also has enough HP to reliably survive getting trampled twice, and hits back harder to blenderise the elephants faster, winning more cleanly. But the most important thing is that breakpoint of reliably being able to survive getting trampled at least once. It's bloody, but very doable.

[Big Dog]

Originally posted by Ddraig Lleuad:

Honestly, Entrance Guard should do pretty well if you can mass enough, especially if you can prot buff them. If they're eating your Blindfighters it's probably because they've brought considerably more gold value in elephants than you did in sacreds. You won't win cleanly, but the thing about elephants is they really want to be able to trample over enemies and kill them in one go, because they're remarkably fragile and have low morale - if they trample over something and it survives to hit back, elephants tend to get hacked up a lot and rethink their life choices.

Math it out. A trampling unit rolls 3d6 vs the target's defence + DRN, trampler ignores shields and wins ties. A Guard has an effective defence skill of 7 without the shield, so it's very likely to get hit. Trample damage is 5 + 2x Size - 17, for an elephant. It's armour piercing, so that's 17 damage vs 21/2 = 10 (maybe 11? I'm not sure which way it rounds) prot. Effectively 7 damage. Less if you paint Legions of Steel (effective 12 prot), or Marble Warriors (effective 14 prot), or both (effective 15 prot).

Except, Entrance Guard have 14HP each, and elephants often don't stack up trampling the same square, because they're each size 6. So, the elephants trample into a double line or box of Guards, dealing decent damage. Now they're surrounded by mostly alive and very annoyed Agarthans, who start hacking the elephants to pieces with their 16 damage swords. The elephants, with only 11 prot, rapidly collect great open wounds, and their poor morale of 9 means they rout pretty quickly.

40 elephants is like, 4,000 gold, right? That would get you 250 Entrance Guard, but I'd honestly expect around ~80-100 to pull a win. I did it with ~60 'Adite Elite Soldiers, more of a 1:1.5 ratio of elephants to opposition, but while an 'Adite Elite has less prot, it also has enough HP to reliably survive getting trampled twice, and hits back harder to blenderise the elephants faster, winning more cleanly. But the most important thing is that breakpoint of reliably being able to survive getting trampled at least once. It's bloody, but very doable.

I had 140 blind fighters with regen bless and they died to the elephants + other random junk. They had no mage support cause the mages are too busy casting bless.

[Ddraig Lleuad]

Huh. Yeah I tested it out specifically rather than just assuming, and they really do get slaughtered. I wonder what I'm missing?

[Chilli-Göttinger]

addite can reach heads with spears so they have more killratio against elephants probably while agarthans simply hack in the bodies

regen bless on blind fighters doesnt sound that awesome against elephants, although it makes sense on the frail living mages maybe. i had some succes with gimmicky + att + def random combat speed + (and off course reinv and magic ld+) bless and magic weapons when massing blind fighters to tackle all units and being little pillboxes one and each of them

[Ddraig Lleuad]

Nah I was using 'adite elites, the ones with scimitars, and they chopped elephants up pretty good. I wouldn't assume head hits would make that much difference, rare as they are.

[Big Dog]

Originally posted by Ddraig Lleuad:

Nah I was using 'adite elites, the ones with scimitars, and they chopped elephants up pretty good. I wouldn't assume head hits would make that much difference, rare as they are.

I think it has to do with their size, hp, damage output, and even defence skill compared to the Agarthians. I think the sacreds with regen would beat the adites tho.

oh the wiki says the trampled unit's size doesn't matter? I always thought it was the size difference not just the trampler's size but I guess I am wrong on this.

[terve886]

Originally posted by Smokey The Bear:

Originally posted by Ddraig Lleuad:

Nah I was using 'adite elites, the ones with scimitars, and they chopped elephants up pretty good. I wouldn't assume head hits would make that much difference, rare as they are.

I think it has to do with their size, hp, damage output, and even defence skill compared to the Agarthians. I think the sacreds with regen would beat the adites tho.

oh the wiki says the trampled unit's size doesn't matter? I always thought it was the size difference not just the trampler's size but I guess I am wrong on this.

size difference matters when it comes to head hits, but trampled units size indeed doesn't matter (as long as it is small enough to get trampled that is).