War Elephants morale Problem ?

[OG_Gleep]

Use of any trampling unit takes some planning. Especially those nasty beasts. You have to assume at some point they will route and make sure that you give your army and commanders a good shot to avoid the damn things. I put all my commanders and expensive troops on the opposite flank. Mages especially are very vulnerable to a routing horde of tramplers.

[Norfleet]

You should always plan for the elephants to rout: I tend to put them in the center, then deploy commanders and mages on the flanks. In a fight, most things that move tend to end up massing up in the center anyway: Elephants placed on the sides will thus curve into the center line, then rout and run over anyone you have in the center. If you put them in the center, they'll go straight forwards and bowl through enemies until they break, then exit through the center again, which has already been cleared for them.

Alternatively, you can cast Growing Fury on them. Then they'll go berserk and continue trampling and crushing more enemies!

[Ragnarok-X]

thanks everyone ! The berserk idea is really good

[Coffeedragon]

Use the undead variant (Behemoths). They never seem to suffer from morale at all!

[General Tacticus]

The Elephants not only have weak moral, they have both high hit points and low defense/protection. So they'll take and soak up a lot of hits, which is good, but each of these hits will force a moral check on them, which is bad. So Elephant will rout after what looks like only light losses, unless you factor in all those hits they took that didn't kill them...

My own favorite strategy with them is to put a heavy infantry squad front and slightly to the side, and the elephant at the same side, back a bit, on hold and attack. The fact the heavy infantry is offset means that the enemy will tend to end up on the open (center) side, with only a few on the other side. Then the elephants come in, and they demolish the weak flank of the enemy, which is already well engaged by my infantry, meaning the elephants don't take many hits and don't get mobbed. Well executed, this means the elephants don't take losses, and the enemy routs with elephants on its tail (guess what happens to them ). The only catch is that the heavy infantry must be able to hold its own for 3 or so turns, while being outflanked on the open side...

[PDF]

Apart from the old trick of mixing some high morale Hypaspists with the pachyderms, did someone try to lead them with a Strategos ("Standard" ability) ?

You can try to use a Strategos, but unless he's got some fast moving boots, the elephants will move out of the range of his Banner before it will affect. Also Elephants like to spread out for some reason. And later, get limps and things which cause them to spread out.

I tried it for a while and it didn't work. Though if you put them with a bunch of fast moving units on the battlefield ( so they have a higher base morale and wont rout from one hit ) and can bring him up behind it should work.