Indian Unique Unit: War Elephant

[Dauphin]

Based on the graphics at the civ3 website, the Indian war elephant looks more like an African elephant. Is it me, or do they look like that to you aswell?

[d_dudy]

personally, i don't think it's an advantage at all. i mean, surely anyone wil some hills and some valleys will have horses and iron. i think the indians are gettin a raw deal

[Akron]

Originally posted by Gramphos
Conclusion: Then Indian Unique Unit is a wildcard.

Definitely. But it sorta gives you an extra resource. You don't need any horses b/c you have elephants, so instead of trading for horses, you can trade for some other essential resource instead. This will be a hard unit for Firaxis to balance though, as it depends entirely on the map.

[Akron]

Originally posted by Gramphos
Conclusion: Then Indian Unique Unit is a wildcard.

Definitely. But it sorta gives you an extra resource. You don't need any horses b/c you have elephants, so instead of trading for horses, you can trade for some other essential resource instead. This will be a hard unit for Firaxis to balance though, as it depends entirely on the map.

[Falconius]

I like how every week on this forum there is someone saying that this Unique Unit gives its Civ too much of an advantage. Well, if EVERYONE has too much of an advantage, guess what?

[Comrade Tribune]

Originally posted by Fiil

Won't elephants come with the same invention as the knights?

Very important question. Nothing has been said about that. Historically, they came earlier.

[jsw363]

Originally posted by PGM
And the human part of the knight unit is much more important than the one in the Elephant unit. It's not the horse fighting, it's the knight, but the Elephant does its own fighting, with much less human interference.

I guess I'm not too sure about this, since I'm not an expert on Indian history, but I don't think that the elephant (animal) actually fights. I confess that I actually don't understand how War Elephants combat, but I doubt that the elephant is grabbing things with its trunk in an attack. I would think that the mahout (driver) does most of the fighting.

Big Crunch- I guess I'm not sure. The tusks seem like a male African, but the ears could be Indian. (That's the only ways I know how to distinguish between the two.)

Fiil- I agree. If they go to all the trouble of creating a special resource (ivory) that relates to the elephant, you'd think that they'd use it.

[TechWins]

Big Crunch - Aren't Indian elephants primarily black? Or is that African elephants? I know one of the two is primarily black, while the other is a greyish color.

Yes, the Indians could be getting screwed on their UU but so could the Chinese. If it is just as likely that Indians won't have any resources of need (none are required for UU) and the Chinese to have iron and horse resources, then the UU's appear to be balanced. What I mean is that the Indians might be getting a raw deal that their only bonus for their UU is that they don't have any resource requirments; the Chinese might be getting a raw deal that they have a lot of resource requierments. So I guess both of the two's UUs are wildcards.

[Dan Magaha FIRAXIS]

Originally posted by jsw363


I guess I'm not too sure about this, since I'm not an expert on Indian history, but I don't think that the elephant (animal) actually fights. I confess that I actually don't understand how War Elephants combat, but I doubt that the elephant is grabbing things with its trunk in an attack. I would think that the mahout (driver) does most of the fighting.

Depends on what the opposition did to them. From what I gathered, the mere presence of elephants was a deterrent -- it frightened horses and soldiers alike. The mahouts could certainly attack, but the real carnage began if/when opposing infantry would actually engage the elephants... there are accounts of elephants brutally impaling soldiers and crushing them underfoot, probably out of fear as much as anything else. Couldn't find anything about them using their trunks, though

Dan

[KrazyHorse]

Elephants were real terror weapons in their day. Remember how tall an elephant is. Now remember that the infantry they went up against had spears and swords. An elephant standing still might be an easy target for twenty brave men, but a charging elephant gives no chance to coordinate an attack. Elephants can move right through the thickest portion of the battlefield faster than a man could run over open ground, and would leave swathes of injury and death behind them.

[Inverse Icarus]

dan whisks by without mentioning multiplayer.

must have missed those threads.

::glances for the most pessimistic smiley::

[Urban Ranger]

Elephants are nasty when aroused. They just go around trampling, and nothing in the ancient battlefield can stand in their way. Warhorses would be terrified. Men ran away easily. They were like organic tanks.

Regarding the question of how easy it was to acquire elephants, I reckon it wouldn't take a lot of them to form a War Elephant unit, and they can be raised locally. It wouldn't be too hard to raise 100 elephants or so in 10 - 20 years.

[Skanky Burns]

Dan was meantioning in another thread about a game he was playing against the Zuluz (among others), where he eventually prevented them from going on the war-path by denying them resources. Seems like this tactic would fail against the Indian UU But either way, its is interesting that the UU differs from the base unit (knight) only with resource requirements.

[Gramphos]

Originally posted by Fiil
Won't elephants come with the same invention as the knights?

Probably, as it replaces Knights, but if you already bave Iron and Horses you have no need of a unit not requiring them.

[Harlan]

I'm really glad to see the Elephant as the Indian unit, and not some strange thing like the Rider happening again. If it was up to me, I would do the Elephant stats a bit different though. As someone else pointed out above, they were like the tanks of the ancient world. Certainly not the equal to a Knight. Their stats should be significantly better than the Knight, but also their cost should be signficantly more (also very historically true). That way, the bigger firepower doesn't make the Elephant any more powerful than any other UU.