Battle Elephants! 🐘 (AoE2)
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 28 ก.ย. 2024
- Analysis of the Battle Elephant in Age of Empires 2.
0:40 General overview
1:55 Limitations
3:15 Upgrades
4:30 Khmer
5:02 Burmese
5:35 Vietnamese
6:10 Malay
7:06 Bengalis
7:40 Dravidians
8:25 Which is the strongest?
9:37 vs Pikes/Halberdiers
10:10 vs Crossbow/Arbalester
11:08 vs Monks
11:34 vs Siege
12:20 Dravidian's moment to shine
12:35 Persian changes?
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Patreon: / spiritofthelaw
Background music from Epidemic Sound: www.epidemicsou...
Game: Age of Empires II Definitive Edition
The only problem with Spirit of the Law videos is that I feel confident and knowledgeable after watching them.
and losing in the ranked just an hour later even after using SOTL’s calculations
@candrarazaka4351 the man can't click for you
@@candrarazaka4351haha
Calc doesn't matter if we are sloppy with our start and micro
One thing you didn't really get into is just how quickly you can produce them. You can produce 280% the HP from a single stable producing battle elephants compared to knights. Combined with their very decent base stats, that makes transitioning into them extremely easy, and pushing out enough units to make a difference even easier.
Speed to produce stable units is not that big of a deal. It's a cheap building and easy to add more. Also elephants have double the food cost compare to knights. So yes it's producing a high HP unit but it also costing twice as much food.
@@Whisper0ak Counterpoint: Malay
I always found it funny how battle elephants or elephant archers have a rider but Persian war elephants fight on their own.
They even have a UT called Mahouts, which were literally elephant riders.
War Elephants weep.
Everytime I have Battle Elephants as an option I just think "Mass Elephants! Do it!" And I do it, without fail!
Battle elephants are possibly my favorite non unique unit. They’re just so fun to use
@@MaryamMaqdisi Agreed! Even the 'thump' they make when attacking is satisfying.
I feel that the lack of mobility for elephants means you should direct them towards the enemy base as to force them to engage your elephants or risk having their base leveled.
That's the trick, slow, tough and dangerous.
Elephants aren't going to level a base any time soon. And a mass of halbs will show up soon enough to deal with your VERY EXPENSIVE elephants. The enemy will engage your elephants with glee.
@@Whisper0akHalberdier anti elephant damage bonus is too high
As a teuton: Try leveling my base, my elite deutschritter will level yours if youre not back soon
Elephant fact
Each elephant creates about one tonne of poo per week, which keeps the soil fertile and disperses tree seeds. Elephants also dig waterholes and create footpaths, literally changing the landscape around them!
Should add this as an economy bonus lol
Oh but when I shit outside everyone suddenly has a problem 🙄🙄
I'm really curious to see what happens to the Persians and their war elephants. because of the elephant in the room* hint.
+ maybe a Caucasus DLC theme
Armenians, Georgians, Azeri, Kurds, Avars... So many to choose from!
Caucasus DLC
Yes please
Hmm imperial age tech. Get elephant archers and war elephants and +30% speed for all elephants
No upgrades to elite
Just fast elephants charging around the battlefield.
Supported by good Paladins, cavalry archers and archers with no gold cost.
I've been out of touch with the community for a while now, what's that about the Caucasus dlc? I'm interested
@@jomolhari on the latest patch, the devs said that they haven't forgot about reworking the persians, and some say there is place of a DLC on steam
Not announced directly yet though
Finally my favourite unit is getting a review
I play this casual Single player mode (Inf. Res. 500 pop, Acropolis, Regicide) and there's some useful information for me here. Khmer were hard to play against in that scenario and now I know why I can't win with them against some civs. You also gave me an idea for possible new way to defeat 500 Persian elephants. That's generally near impossible.
Celts or Etiopians and go full Siege Onager, should do de trick.
@@Bzhydack I dunno, AI would probably be able to dodge Post imp SO spam from Celts and Ethiopians
Khmer scorps, Mamelukes and Kamayuks might be the best bets...Siege Onagers can also work
I do like how there are several elephant factions and five different elephant units as I love using them in TotalWar games. And they just sound fun whenever you tell them to do things.
SOTL always giving the facts.
0:47, when Spirit said there is more in common than we expect I Agree. but I think he meant having one less Hack/Melee armour than the Knight (Pierce is identical. Hack/Melee is not)
I have started upvoting your videos before watching them!
Fascinating.
Great content as always spirit.
Question: do you understand how pathfinding works and why villagers sometimes take weird routes back to the town center when boar luring?
Fear
If I understand the AoE wiki correctly, Battle Elephants' trample damage doesn't ignore armor. I'm not sure how relevant trample damage is in big fights generally, but it seems Dravidians are the only civilization to have a really functional trample damage on their elephants, as without Wootz Steel the armor almost always reduces this damage to 1 and Dravidians can sneak in 3-4. Or am I missing something?
You are missing that the armor is taken into account before one takes 25% of the damage, not after.
@@martijnbouman8874 thanks! Bad for Dravidians, but good to know!
The Elephant facts were great also the vid was interesting XD
Fun fact: In ancient Thailand, there’s the honor guard position in army whose only duty is to protect war elephant’s legs in the war. Wherever the elephant goes, these four guys will have to keep up in order to fend off enemy from getting close enough to injured elephant’s legs. It’s a prestige rank that only the best fighters will get promoted into
How to fix BE?
Battle elephants should get more punch at lower rate. Maybe attack rate 2.0-->3.0, attack 12/14-->18/21.
This way they keep unchanged in straight fights but get less exploited by getting outmaneuvered
Hello sir. I was wondering if youve ever considered making a similar video as the one where you compared AoE2 &3 about AoM...I think that would be really intersting and the game really deserves it..its amazing
Cute little elephant makes a cameo. I’m so happy.
you know, the idea of calling an elephant, of all things, a glass cannon, is very funny
Now I just wanna see a Huskarl riding a Burmese chonker.
You underestimate the Bengali conversion resistance a bit. It adds 1 second to the MAX, but it adds THREE seconds to to MINIMUM, which makes a truly profound difference in how easy it is to evade monks. Bengali elephants can *consistently* evade conversions even from point-blank range, something no other battle elephant can do.
Imagine the terror your opponent feels when your battle elephants rush into his base with the speed of an elite eagle warrior :p
I don't think persians War Elephant should be that weak to pike/halbs. It's a super expensive unit, which makes it weak to conversions, it's hard to mass (castle+costs), elite upgrade is stupidly expensive...
It's one of those units that should be a game ender, IMHO, if you let persians get to the point where they can spam EWE, it should be GG.
Ya, I love persian War Elephants, but they are weak to one of the cheapest units in the game.
Actually war ele beat halbs with same res. Going for war ele is slow process and in most scenarios is not legit. And even persians gets there, monks is huge problem (combined with halbs)
@@valger3652 Exactly my point. And still they get beaten by halb, even if they are cost effective, because halbs are easy to spam, phants are not.
Appreciate the breakdown as always!
On the War Ele front, I'm nervous. War Ele is my favorite unit and I would like them to be a bit more viable in TGs but not if it means destroying their tankiness and general unstoppable quality they have now when you are able to mass them. I wouldn't mind something like Mahouts giving free Heresy to just War Ele or something like that, maybe some other bonus to production speed or the like. But I fear any really big changes will make them OP or totally change their identity. Guess we'll see!
You know what would be amazing? To give War Elephants to all South and South Eastern Asian civilizations and Persians. Then, give Persians a new UU. Probably a heavy cavalry type.
Persians do need that rework, but I'm ok with the war elephant staying more situational, as a matter of flavor.
Surely the simplest way to fix the Persians WE would be to give them heresy. They're easily expensive enough that the mere loss of a WE is enough of a punishment.
Seeing some Dynasties of India civ overviews coming out soon?
Hurray!
Cant wait for more Elephant Facts!!!!
0:50
With elephants you could actually have them cost wood instead of food since elephants eat a lot of wood. One of the advantages of their large size is a very long and very slow digestive system that allows them to get nutrients out of things that are too tough for most animals to digestist.
I'm a big fan of burmese chonkers. Cheap faith is also pretty clutch for them, though I wish it was a castle age tech.
Unfortunately, most people would probably agree that only malay chonkers are actually viable.
When hearing about a Persian reshape I think about changing their double HP bonus on town centres and docks to Feudal age onwards and especially the amputated douchers because of it.
the balance disadvantages dravidians endure, all because of wootz steel! lol!
frankly, japanese faster attack and burmese extra attack on infantry are free and better! (available before late imperial and free)!
Sometimes I feel that Dev think if Dravidian had viking stable which normally under the average line but with normal elite ele would be extreme since elite ele > paladin, so they decide apply wootz on stable and let them had the worst stable unit in aoe2 for variation. Sometimes I still want Dra had elite ele but without wootz apply on them instead, which was boring but at least not that awkward.
@@areyouapoo agree. give them good stable, but take away wootz steel effect for cavalry. or take away elephant and give them hussar with all stable upgrades.
12:50 No, we should have Mahout battle elephants. It may sound stupid but it will be fun like Mongolian Drill Seige Rams. It will differentiate them from other battle elephants. It will also differentiate them from War Elephants.
I think they should give Dravidians Heresy. if the logic of giving it to Malay is that only civilizations with bad elephants can get it, then they fit the bill too.
Didn't get mentioned but Burmese also get 50% off researching Faith (although by that point in the game, Monks aren't your main concern)
Since Dravidians have unique tech that allows their infantry and cavalry to ignore all armor I don't think they would ever miss those stable units...
I hope they don't mess up war elephants
Where’s the best way to play these games? I’m a 90s kid that played the OG AOE2 and Conquerors expansion with PC games back in the day. I’ve managed (with a LOT of help) to download Battle for Middle Earth 2 on my laptop for free.
I’d love to play these upgrades AOE2 games.
Persian War into Battle Elephant with Charge Attack? Maybe that's the route they'll take with them if they add them to that civilisation as they've been adding more and more as the game goes on right. Or just scale up their damage a bit and keep the 50% trample of WAR Elephants somehow instead of the 25%. This would give them Elephants versus pikes against halb civs later on, knights versus archers & siege to a fair extent given their team bonus & camels versus other battle elephants and knight civs.
I just really want a Magyars Eco Bonus to be completely honest - I've said hussar/light cav line gains food/wood during combat, but to get them to not be 100% war-like... Maybe to further the raiding theme that is internal to their own civ - by giving them gold/stone miners generate food/wood at a fairly reasonable rate (you mine things & we either steal it or you give us wood for our cav archer arrows or food for us & our horses - battle of Lechfeld... SPOILERS - yes they lost, but the before and after this battle provides a lot of ideas for the civ)! It's not like Magyars have some insane Castle Drop Strategies so this would bypass worries about them becoming too strong in castle & would up their Arena potential for example.
1. Malay: give them castle age cavalry armor. Burmese: give them castle age archer armor. Tatars: give them castle age infantry armor. No civilization should miss any castle age blacksmith tech only those in the imperial age. Malay can get less discount on their battle elephants.
2. Give persians the battle elephant for a cheaper option than their unique unit.
WOULD YOU SAY THIS IS ADDRESSING THE... ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM?!?!?!?! 🤣😂🤣😂🤣😂🤣😂
Battle elephants are made for some civs to feel a little persian might
Dravidian elephant is my fav. It ignores armor as all elephants should and beats the 💩 out of Teutonic knight. 🙌🏻
Why dont Ethiopians and Malis have Battle Elephants?
Didn’t Hannibal get his elephants from Africa?
My prediction is that Persians will get battle elephants and have their UU replaced. The war elephant will then become a scenario editor unit for campaigns
But Burmese have discounted faith and it's way too expensive otherwise, so, in Imperial Age, they have by far the best elephants against monks in my opinion.
Hey Spirit of the Law, Guys here
Uh-oh, got a script error at 10:38; Elephant Archer instead of Battle Elephant! I'm sure you can fix it with an annotation.
Honestly, it's about time. Why are we dealing with 2 types of War Elephants?
Plus, I get the feeling that Persians had War Elephants because Indians were not available... once they became available, Persians having them felt wrong.
If anything, give the Persian War Elephants to all relevant civs, and give the Persians a new unique unit.
Burmese elephants just really hate archers for some reason
Hey guys spirit of the law here!
The speed is the reason I never use them. Fast cavalry is so much more useful in 99% of situations.
So you're telling me that halberdiers have a lot of bonus damage on some elephants?
I really wish all elephant civs get access to heresy!! They should be an absolute nightmare to deal with…at the moment minks counter them too easily.
Oh, the elephants on the games are so cute.
I really need you to talk about your TH-cam data's xD
I really love watching your videos for some time and I play aoe since 1998 when I was 7 and love it.
But today was the first time managed to meet a german girl that:
1. Plays aoe since 2004 so for a long tine
2. Knows you😮
Are there many females watching you?
According to the analytics 2.6% of my viewers are female. They're rare, but they're out there!
@@SpiritOfTheLaw wow thanks for the fast answer.
OK maybe the percent are not very high, but I guess in total numbers there are not so few, due to your extremely high number of viewers in some videos.😊
Keep up the good work👍🏻
0:48 "...having 1 less pierce armor than the knight."
Shouldn't that be '1 less melee armor' since it's the number on the left?
Yeah, Elephant facts!!!
Wait what? Persians have Elephants or not? I think I played them and they have them. Did you leave them out because the will get a rework?
They have elephants, but they are different units.
@@davidspackman7534 Ah you mean because its a unique unit? hm makes sense I guess.
@@gibkitt ya
I couldn't help but notice that Dravidians eles don't have the chain between their tusks. Anybody got any idea why?
Wait. Is that how mahouts is pronounced? I never said it like that.
Your favourite animal!
Nice
-yeah I'd probably be a Khmer main if I played AoE2-
Hopefully Perians don't lose the War Elephant in the rework
I don't think they will. They saw the reaction of people to the chnages to the chinese start and quickly realized that nostalgia is sometimes more important.
They have already proven they will steal content from civs you already paid for and put it on new civs to make you buy it again with the splitting of India so I don't discount the possibility they will take it from them and make a new civs you have to buy to use it,
how often do people pick up heresy? or faith? (both?)
I think the devs should ask themselves what function they want the battle elephant to have. Right now it's just worse than the knight line in pretty much all aspects except for pop efficiency in chockepoints. Their extra building damage is offset by their higher cost. And they die horribly to the spear-line and monks without the option to disengage like normal cavalry. It's bloody useless at the moment and that's a shame
This is a reupload , right ? Not that I mind 😅
no
does anyone know the name of the last song? (around minute 12)
I watch these for the elephant facts
No one:
SotL: "Bengolis"
thanks gg
00:50 "one less melee* armor"
Hey, but what about the Indians? Will they ever get battle elephants?
The Indian civs are: Hindustanis, Bengalis, Dravidians and Gurjaras. The Dynasties of India split them into those four civs.
🐘
no title needed 🤣
i dont know why you would rework persians. they are a great civ with unique ways to play that fits the game great. i have the big fear that they fix the tc drop and that would be horrible. de was a blessing at first but i losing touch to my beloved game more and more.
Elephants moving slow is absurd. They shouldn't be faster than horses but still.
Because of the Eurocentric racist white supremist historians war Elephants are seen as not as good as horses just because Elephants primarily used only in India and Southeast Asia in Battle, but Elephants are never meant to be used as like but as moving towers and high vantage points, talented generals always managed to use the elephants effectively in the battle field, the effectiveness of the elephants only started to fade after the introduction of gunpower weapons, before that the Elephants are undisputed mounts of the battle field, so much so that the in the greatest text on empire building Arthashastra (300 BCE), Kautilya clearly states that the victory in the battle depends primary on quantity and quality of the Elephants, which is true up until the 1200s, that's why the first Empire to conquer most of India after Maurya Empire is the Delhi sultanate which is not by accident a gunpowder superpower.
So if Age of Empire want to accurately represent Elephants, they should have to considered them as mobile mini towers not as cavalry, which is weak to anti-range gunpowder units and slightly weak to cavalry archers, no melee foot units ever had any advantage against Elephant units.
No one:
Everyone when Elephant Fact appears: 🙂
I would love to see Persian get a new unique uint by moving the war elpunts to stables but haveing standard elpunts upgrade to eitls then a upgrade to war elpunts.
The unique uint they should have is the Immortal and it should be like a champion but you have to kill him twice and would help them in there infantry being poor
Burmese Battle Elephantskarl
Elephant facts...?
Honestly I hate how slow and weak-to-basically-everything elephant units in AoE2 are
No elephant fun facts? I want my money back
This ranking system is just silly, every civs battle elephant has a different role to play.
Battle Elephants rankings (subjective btw)
6. Dravidians (despite wootz steel, who uses them anyway)
5. Malay (that cheap cost and heresy is not enough to compensate the lack of armor upgrades)
4. Vietnamese (chatras stack with bloodlines makes them an excellent damage sponge too bad they do little damage)
3. Burmese (another damage sponge with howdahs and extra armor, and wrecks archers with manipur cavalry but only if they can catch them)
2. Khmer (tusk swords and extra speed basically makes them a fat knight)
1. Bengalis (paikhs and resistance against their hard counters make them more durable and hard hitting than others)
Also, should armored elephants be available to burmese, khmer, and malay? And elephant archers to burmese, khmer, and vietnamese?
The malay elephants are far more viable than vietnamese elephants
@@commandeurrod974 vietnamese elephants are there as a screen for their archers and as makeshift rams. I don't know how to use malay elephants since they overlap with 2handed swordsmen and karambits when it comes to spamming them.
The best dravidian elephant is a weak leitis!
Amazon tunnel Malay ele pppppush
Now it's devs turn to change elephants so that this video becomes irrelevant.
Second
You have my respect. You are the first to write "Second" in this video. Isn't that something?
I think the halberdier whopping anti-ele damage was created as a counter against Persian war eles. I wonder if the devs have ever explored reducing the amount of halb bonus damage against battle eles, because +60 right now is pretty high (and was needed when war ele base hp was 470!)
My most flattered I've been playing Aoe2 was playing Malay on hideout and doing a 10 elephant Castle age rush. My opponent threatened to get me banned as I was clearly cheating as it was impossible to have that many elephants at that stage of the game😂😂😂
Some players regularly claim the other is cheating. This behavior is particularly prevalent among Chinese players.
@@Whisper0ak Just people being sore losers at the end of the day. If I was ever genuinely suspicious that my opponent was somehow cheating I would just watch the replay file back from their perspective before throwing around accusations or reporting.
Sounds like someone who only knew Persian elephants.
The Dravidian Battle elephant is like the Internet Explorer. It certainly exists.
It's kinda like Spanish archers, it's so bad it actually might catch your opponent of guard.
Exists as a point of comparison.
@@Edelweiss1102Spanish archers can kill a lot of villagers in feudal age. Dravidian battle elephants can't do anything.
I feel like if they doubled the healing and gave them a speed boost and/or health increase and/or cost reduction they could make a name for themselves.
@@Edelweiss1102 Agreed, dravidian elephants are bad, but they are still strong enough that your opponent must tech into the very expensive halberdier upgrade, because dravidian battle elephants defeat all other non-elephant units in melee battle, including paladin and teutonic knight.
Battle elephants with husbandry and mahouts would be terrifying. 😳 Also kinda funny if you think about it. Superspeed(ed) elephants. 😂 Jokes aside i would really like to see elephants being used more, especially battle & war elephants.
It's also a shame that a unique tech which adds self-healing to battle elephants only heals 30hp/min. That's less than berserks self-healing (40hp/min) for a unit that has triple the hp of a elite-berserk... I like the idea but it's just really useless like that. Same with one of the camel civs iirc. (Self-healing for camels but it's super weak and thus pretty much useless.)
Mahgrebi Camels is a very good tech for post imp Camel Archers. CA civs live off of keeping their CA alive in a deathball way beyond when gold runs out. The Berber Imp Tech elevates their C(amel)A quite a bit over other CA civs.
Actually it helps a lot to maintain the elephants fighting more time
It is not meant to heal the elephant to it's full HP
It is meant for something that has less hp which are elephant archers and armored/siege elephants. Though even that the number still pretty low, now that stronghold got buffed, medical corps is easily the worst unique tech in the game at this point.
Double it and give them an armour boost. That might start getting people's attention.
I hope to see one Persian/Sassanid campaign in the future to make their elephants shine