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Questionable use of war elephants


Aerys Targaryen
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Hello everyone! I was just wondering, why elephants were used as a replacement for seige machines in 0ad? Historically they were used to scare away enemy troops, break formation, trample and kill enemy soldiers quickly at the start of the battle etc.., Elephants are, more like Iberian fire ship, vulnerable unless used in the very beginning. Or they were made to damage buildings because of lack of replacement for seige?

I'd suggest the following,

(1) Aura - War elephants scare away enemy military, especially cavalry. All enemy cavalry has -20% attack and enemy infantry has -5% attack within X meters.

(2) Elephant madness - War elephants, once it comes under attack, should be used within Y seconds. Else, elephant becomes mad and tramples nearby troops (even friendly troops)

(3) Elephant Charge - War elephants can charge towards enemy troops.to kill them within a particular radius, then die. Charging speed should be at least 15 or so. If the enemy formation is tightly packed, then the elephant will kill more and if not, elephant will kill fewer troops.

Civilizations like Mayurya, Carthage needs some seige machines like catapult or rams. I don't know specifically about those two civilizations, but other Indian civilizations had used catapults and bolts (bolts were sometimes placed above elephants too), so it won't be historically inaccurate to give bolts and catapults to those civs.

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Yes, I know, war elephants had many functions: prestige, intimidation, command posts for generals, lookout platforms, moving turrets for archers to shoot from, shielding infantry aganst cavalry, etc, however, they were *not* living battering rams (at least not in the Hellenistic Mediterranean). Gameplay (and conservatism) occassionally conflict with historical accuracy, though.

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Do you happen to remember which commit was at the time of bundling the one on mod.io currently?

(I really dont want to have to clone the whole repo, disk space and stuff)

If I have time I could try it on linux to see if that would make a difference.

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