India has no special unit

[caralampio]

Have you noticed that India has no advantage in its "special" War Elephant unit? It is the exact equal of the Knight. Same requisites, same costs, same 4-3-2. Actually worst because you can't upgrade Horsemen to Elephants.
The manual lists the Elephant as 4-4-2 which would be nice, but they must have figured that it would be too powerful and it got downgraded somewhere along the design process.
An interesting idea for a future development would be to allow elephants to anyone with Horseback Riding and access to Ivory, and make them something like 3-2-2.

[Dan Magaha FIRAXIS]

The benefit of the War Elephant is that it requires no resource, and can thus be built in any city regardless of your trade net.

Dan

[Capt Dizle]

Dan, have you ever played a full game of Civ3? Have you played one post patch? Has Sid ever played a full game? Does Sid even acknowledge the existence of Civ3?

[MOHonor]

Jimmy, you have a life outside of these forums? Do you think threadjacking is the height of insight? Is your medicine running low and you're losing control? Do you even know why you're laughed at and ignored?

[Dida]

Originally posted by Dan Magaha FIRAXIS
The benefit of the War Elephant is that it requires no resource, and can thus be built in any city regardless of your trade net.

Dan

erg, that's no advantage.

[Skanky Burns]

While it seems to be an advantage, its a long shot that anyone is ever going to use it.

Most of the time you will have iron and horses near the start, or just after a short war. Therefore if you have these resources, the only cities that can't build the unit due to lack of resources would be new, far away cities.

Now, the advantage of the Indians is that these far away cities can still produce the W.E., despite not having any resources.
The catch - these cities will be soo corrupt that it will take 80 turns before they will even pump out their first unit.

Therefore its no advantage.

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by Dida


erg, that's no advantage.

erg, it's the least advantaged. Someone has to draw the short straw.

Salve

[muppet]

Originally posted by notyoueither


erg, it's the least advantaged. Someone has to draw the short straw.

Salve

In the case of the Americans, English and French, one can argue that someone must draw a short straw.

In the case of India, it's more like a broken toothpick.

[The Eliminator]

It is no wonder that you jagoffs don't get the answers you're looking for from Firaxis. Lighten up.

[muppet]

c'mon man. That was light-hearted humor. I've never criticized firaxis or their responses to date. In fact, i'm honored that Dan even bothers to appear on these boards.

Ok, truly serious, on topic, and constructive response to 1st post:

Caralampio,

If the Indian War Elephant appears to be underpowered, you can adjust the unit stats to suit your custom preferences. If you go into the editor, you can maybe add +1 to attack, and add that the unit requires iron as a strategic resource. This would put it more in line with other special medieval units.

I believe firaxis had to consider the overall game balance and variety when they designed the special units. It may have been considered too much for the War Elephant to have both increased combat stats and no need for resources. Also the proposed 4-4-2 stat is already taken by the Japanese Samurai.

A low resource situation may arise easily on smaller maps, or scenarios where we've chosen to limit the seeding of resources. The India Civ is the only one that I can play where I do not consider starting location as critically or early expansion and conquest territory as selectively, which is also an advantage.

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by The Eliminator
It is no wonder that you jagoffs don't get the answers you're looking for from Firaxis. Lighten up.

What the h*ll is negative about this thread?

I'm sure that we aren't bursting Dan's or Jeff's or Soren's bubble. I'll bet they were just sitting there gloating over it. Those 3 conspirators thought, *Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy, look at that awesome War Elephant. Ain't it just the best? Wait till the gang on Apolyton see this. They'll say we're gods! Oh boy!*

Come on. It's a very weak unit in any game where horses are available (all that I've played so far). I'm sure this is no surprise to the Firaxians.

Salve

[Optimizer]

Solution - Gurkhas

The War Elephant looks way too cool to be exclusive to the Indians, and it is not really good enough for being a Unique unit.

My solution looks like this:
The War Elephant is a 4/1/1 available to anyone and requires Bronze Working and Elephants (Ivory remade to a strat. resource).

The Indian UU is the Gurkha, a Rifleman with an attack bonus and the Alpine ability.

Gonna try this when my Civ 3 works again.

[Tarquelne]

I agree that no S-resource requirement isn't enough of an advantage. Or maybe just not the sort of advantage I like to see for a civ's unique unit - I'd rather have the advantage be one the civ will always get, not conditionally.

And I thought War Elephants were in the wrong era, anyway. I made them an Ancient unit replacing Horsemen, 3/1/2, not requireing Horses, but more expensive than Horsemen. (3/1/2 is what Mounted Warriors have - I changed them to 2/2/2.) I also wanted to spread the unique units around a little more - there are still 2 other Knight varients.

[godinex]

I think the best way of make the Indina UU is asking a Indian player what is the best way for make it.

In the case of the Elephants the solution is simple: 5-3-2 or 4-4-2

[TheBigTurkey]

or have the elephant be able to destroy all units in a square it attacks, like in civ2 for every unit.