How to deal with elephants

Jazzepi · #1 August 2nd, 2007, 09:48 PM

I don't think any unit in the game has base morale that low.

Jazzepi

Salamander8 · #2 August 2nd, 2007, 09:50 PM

Lowest I can think of offhand are the basic slave forces (triton, merfolk, atlantians, not Lobo Guards of course) of R'Lyeh with 8.

Jazzepi · #3 August 2nd, 2007, 09:55 PM

8 is extremely low, by the way, in enemy dominion it becomes a 7.

To give you an example, I was attempting to take over a province offered to me for sale that had 20 points of PD in it. With about 10 archers, my 7 morale 80 man squad broke in about four volleys.

Jazzepi

Salamander8 · #4 August 2nd, 2007, 09:58 PM

Yeah 8 is very bad. That's the main reason I try to not build many of those types and stick with the less skilled, but mindless Lobo Guards as any R'Lyeh. Although I have had a lot of success with the cowardly troops with a hero with the valor hall of fame ability leading them.

sector24 · #5 August 2nd, 2007, 10:34 PM

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that any unit actually has morale that low. But the in game description says that average human morale is 10, 8 is low and 15 is high. I have a hard time understanding how 9 is "low". One less than average isn't really panicky, is it? It sure isn't in games when elephants are used against me.

Wahnsinniger · #6 August 2nd, 2007, 10:49 PM

Since I cannot find the thread that talked endlessly about fixing elephant rushes...I'll post this here. Why not just make it impossible to have animal and non-animal units in the same squad. It makes no sense anyway. A bunch of militia wouldn't be sharing a barracks with a bunch of war dogs, and no elite soldiers would fight right alongside elephants because of their unreliability. That way the Elephants 'relatively' low morale couldn't be boosted by high-morale units.

sum1lost · #7 August 2nd, 2007, 10:51 PM

Quote:

Jazzepi said:
I don't think any unit in the game has base morale that low.

Jazzepi

Markatas, maybe?

sector24 · #8 August 2nd, 2007, 11:34 PM

Honestly, the only way I've dealth with elephants successfully is to find the province that they're being produced in and use spells to reduce the population/resources to 0 or the put the unrest over 100. Once the elephants get on the field, the only thing that will stop them is an army much larger and more expensive.

Gandalf Parker · #9 August 2nd, 2007, 11:39 PM

And again I am forced to wonder why there are unstoppable tactics.

Not wondering that there is one, but that there is more than one. Wouldnt that mean that one such tactic (for example, elephants) can be challenged by the other such tactic (dual-bless, Vanheim, etc)?

OmikronWarrior · #10 August 2nd, 2007, 11:46 PM

Starvation will send morale to the pits as well (-4, I think). Still, the issue with elephants isn't so much how low or high their morale is, but what it takes to trigger a morale check. Your best bet is to a spell causing fear (such as Frighten), as almost any other method involves inflicing a lot of casualties (which is very hard to do to elephants due to their very high HP) or getting close with a creature with the Fear attribute (which means expossing that unit to the tramplers). A morale of 8 means their is a roughly 50/50 chance of a rout depending on the current survivor bonus. Considering how not all nations have easy access to death magic, this isn't much of a solution. In the "qm said" thread, I propose a new game meachanic which pits the tramplers morale against the total weapon length in the desired square.