Bigger African War Elephants

[Tyrannosaurus]

This mod I'm working on changes all African war elephant units to bush elephants instead of the default forest elephants. Carthaginian, Kushite, and Ptolemaic elephant stables will also hold bush elephants. I also wanted to change the elephant units' stats so that the African war elephants would have a stronger attack but also a higher cost than the Asian ones, but I have not figured out how to do that yet.

The reason I made this mod is, honestly, because I feel the whole notion of Carthaginians and other ancient North Africans riding forest elephants (or some extinct species of diminutive North African elephant) is an inaccurate "brain bug". It seems to be based on Polybius describing Ptolemaic elephants at the Battle of Raphia as being smaller than the Seleucids' Indian elephants, but when you look at the elephant population living where the Ptolemies (and presumably the Kushites too) obtained their elephants, they appear to have been the larger bush elephants. It's possible that Polybius had simply fallen for a stereotype that everything grew bigger in India due to the humid climate and therefore assumed that Indian elephants would be larger than African ones.

Besides, forest elephants are adapted to the humid rainforests of Central Africa, not the North African deserts or scrubland. Bush elephants are better suited to drier conditions, and some do in fact inhabit deserts in Mali and Namibia.

Article of interest:

Proving Polybius wrong about elephants

The screenshot below compares the modded African war elephants to one of the wild forest elephants.

bigger_african_war_elephants.zip

Edited February 20 by Tyrannosaurus
Mod is now ready for download!

[Tyrannosaurus]

OK, I figured out a way to change the African war elephants' stats. It involved creating new templates in the simulation/templates folder that the African elephant units' templates would all refer to. However, I would still like to be able to edit the "AfricanElephant" class mentioned in their template files:

 

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Entity parent="template_unit_champion_elephant_melee">
  <Identity>
    <Civ>cart</Civ>
    <GenericName>North African War Elephant</GenericName>
    <SpecificName>Pil Malḥamit</SpecificName>
    <Classes datatype="tokens">AfricanElephant</Classes>
    <Icon>units/cart_champion_elephant.png</Icon>
  </Identity>
  <VisualActor>
    <Actor>units/carthaginians/elephantry_c_m.xml</Actor>
  </VisualActor>
</Entity>

 

[Stan`]

You can change the stats for all african elephants in that file binaries/data/mods/public/simulation/templates/mixins/elephant_african.xml

[Tyrannosaurus]

34 minutes ago, Stan` said:

You can change the stats for all african elephants in that file binaries/data/mods/public/simulation/templates/mixins/elephant_african.xml

I don't see it in the folder for some reason.

Edited February 18 by Tyrannosaurus

[Stan`]

Ah my bad that's probably only in the dev version, sorry. Doesn't mean you cannot copy it though.

See https://code.wildfiregames.com/D4590

[Tyrannosaurus]

49 minutes ago, Stan` said:

Ah my bad that's probably only in the dev version, sorry. Doesn't mean you cannot copy it though.

See https://code.wildfiregames.com/D4590

Thanks, but I tried copying it over into my mod's simulation/templates/mixins folder and it doesn't seem to have any effect on the elephants' stats.

Edited February 18 by Tyrannosaurus

[Tyrannosaurus]

OK, I figured out the problem. I needed to add a couple of files (unit_elephant_african and unit_elephant_indian) to the simulation/data/technologies folder and edit them to suit my mod.

[Tyrannosaurus]

Mod is now complete and ready for download (it has been attached to the OP)!

Edited February 20 by Tyrannosaurus