Elephant Rework? (Delenda Repost)

[AeonAnimus]

Hey guys,

I've seen some mention around here about how the Elephant mechanics are not very historical in 0AD, thought I'd make a thread where we can propose a simple way to rework them. As many of you know, Elephants were not used as siege engines in the ancient world, they were used to break the ranks of a phalanx, because soldiers would typically flee when Elephants approached a shield wall. Elephants also had an adverse effect on cavalry in a similar fashion, causing horses to "spook" and veer off the course of their riders. In this way, Elephants were primarily used to disrupt the execution of military strategems and cause havoc in the ranks of the enemy. There were also turrets on the Elephant's back that allowed for rangers to fire down on enemy soldiers. These Elephants were sometimes intoxicated with wine before battle, this supposedly caused them to go into a berzerker rage, and might have made them less sensitive to pain. Below I propose how to apply these effects to elephant units in the game.

1. Elephants cause enemy units within radius to flee (Use code that causes women and slaves to flee)(Exempt elite infantry/heroes from this effect?)(All cavalry should spook IMO)

2. Use elephants as mobile turrets with the ability to garrison ranged units on top of the Elephants.

3. Ptolemic African Forest Elephants were notably smaller than Indian Elephant and African Bush Elephants, thus these 3 types of elephants should have different turret capacity, health, speed, and damage based on their size. (Bigger = stronger and slower)

--Ptolemaic Elephants 1 or 2 garrisoned rangers (Perhaps Ethiopian/Kushite Elephants in this category) (fastest, weakest)

--Indian/Mauryan, Persian, Macedonian, Epirot Elephants 4 garrisoned rangers

--Carthaginian, Ethiopian, Kushite Elephants 5 garrisoned rangers (slowest, strongest)

4. There should be an upgrade at the Elephant breeding facility called "Elephant Wine" that costs food and glory and buffs Elephant damage, health, and speed.

5. Hero units like Hannibal that ride on Elephants should reduce one available slot for garrisoned archer units depending on the elephant type.

6. Elephant merchant units could potentially double or triple resources acquired through trade at the markets, and notably have more HP, with the ability to fight enemies. (Trade elephants shouldn't cause enemies to flee.)

7. Reduce Elephant damage to buildings but not units, any elite units or heroes that face these units should take damage. This enforces the historical strategy of how elephants were defeated in battle, primarily by ranged weapons.

8. the 2 larger Elephants should start slower than most units without the wine upgrade, allowing units to flee without being damaged by the elephant itself. (rangers still can do damage)

***

In closing, reducing Elephant utility as a siege weapon might create some imbalance issues with certain factions that otherwise don't have good siege weapons. That being said, these units could be used strategically to scatter enemy troops to capture locations. Imbalances might also be addressed by creating simple siege weapons like a battering ram, or ladder (Setting ladders against a fortress causing 2x damage &/or capture rate). 

Just reposting a thread I made at the Delenda mod section in case the main devs want to consider these changes for future release. Just a suggestion for making the game a little bit more historically accurate and dynamic.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_elephant

Edited October 23, 2020 by AeonAnimus

[Phalanx]

Yeah, Elephants are a fun topic.  There is a thread somewhere discussing the accuracy of our elephants.  I 100% agree, but extra mechanics need to be added to Elephants to prevent Elephant-owning factions from being super op against ones that don't.  Specifically terrain  limitations.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

In DE I've basically made them an uber battlefield unit. They are still decent against buildings because of their high hack damage, but they cause no crush damage anymore, which reduces their prevalence as "siege" units. 

[Freagarach]

9 hours ago, AeonAnimus said:

2. Use elephants as mobile turrets with the ability to garrison ranged units on top of the Elephants.

Significant work has been done here: D1958.

9 hours ago, AeonAnimus said:

any elite units or heroes that face these units should take damage.

Sounds like trample damage? (D1838)

[AeonAnimus]

19 hours ago, Phalanx said:

I 100% agree, but extra mechanics need to be added to Elephants to prevent Elephant-owning factions from being super op against ones that don't.  Specifically terrain  limitations.

I feel like balancing could be done by playing with the hp, speed, and damage ratios. Also keeping the big elephants really slow will prevent them from doing too much damage, they'll just throw non-elite units into dis-array and draw fire from archer units. (At least until upgraded with "Elephant Wine")

16 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

In DE I've basically made them an uber battlefield unit. They are still decent against buildings because of their high hack damage, but they cause no crush damage anymore, which reduces their prevalence as "siege" units. 

Ah this is good to know. I played Epirots recently (So much fun!) and with 10 elephants i totally annihilated a Ptolemaic AI with a base 2x larger than mine. It was a lot of fun, but I felt like I was a little bit over powered, to be fair the AI was set to medium so maybe that's why I won. Maybe a reduction of Elephant Attack Speed would be a way to reduce damage of Elephants? I don't know, I'm still not totally familiar with all of the mechanics of the game.

10 hours ago, Freagarach said:

Significant work has been done here: D1958.

Sounds like trample damage? (D1838)

Neat to see that there is a framework for the idea! Maybe trample damage would be a way to reduce Elephant damage to buildings then? AOE damage would be a nice way of increasing power against multiple units, and reducing damage done to single buildings.

On another note, trample damage could be an effect from "Elephant Wine". Slowing down attack speed and lowering individual damage output from elephant attacks could be a way of keeping them from getting too overpowered. Again just some ideas for all you smart devs. It's a fantastic game.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

6 hours ago, AeonAnimus said:

this is good to know. I played Epirots recently (So much fun!) and with 10 elephants i totally annihilated a Ptolemaic AI with a base 2x larger than mine. It was a lot of fun, but I felt like I was a little bit over powered, to be fair the AI was set to medium so maybe that's why I won. Maybe a reduction of Elephant Attack Speed would be a way to reduce damage of Elephants? I don't know, I'm still not totally familiar with all of the mechanics of the game.

The AI basically has no idea how to play the mod, sadly.

[AeonAnimus]

On 23/10/2020 at 6:18 PM, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

The AI basically has no idea how to play the mod, sadly.

Ahhh, that makes sense. Here I was thinking I was amazing at this game lmao.

[Phalanx]

19 hours ago, AeonAnimus said:

Ahhh, that makes sense. Here I was thinking I was amazing at this game lmao.

I feel that soooo much XD

[Wildo]

Just chiming in to say I love your idea of ladders and the mechanics of them, especially for factions with weak siege options.