AOE-II New Elephant Archers

[akku]

There have been many changes to Elephant archers, SOTL explains them nicely in this video:

10 changes to Elephant Archers (AoE2 DLC patch)

With the release of Dynasties of India today, we're also seeing a lot of tweaks to different units/civs. The Elephant Archer received particular attention. 0...

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Some nerfs compared to the OG Elephant archers was expected, since they can now be created in archery ranges rather than castles. And is available to 3 civs.

But have they been nerfed too much?

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What I think.

HP reduction, PA reduction:
This is fine, since they are no longer trained from Castle

Accuracy reduction:
This would've been fine, but one of the 3 civs getting elephant archer doesn't get thumb ring!! At least have the elite version attack with 100% accuracy.
The non elite version has 70% accuracy, and elite version 85%.

-2 to -7 CA armour:
This is honestly ridiculous IMO. They are costing pretty much the same as before (-10 food is pretty much negligible), only to get one shot by a ball of skirmishers.

Bonus damage against buildings:
Meh, wasn't necessary but not a big deal anyway.

Elephant archers were already never seen except in niche scenarios such as 4v4 BF. And this was the Indian EA which are far stronger than all these EA.
With all these nerfs, do you see them being used in normal games at all? Or will they go the route of Battle Elephants and OG Elephant Archers, never to be seen except in niche scenarios like closed Team Games (such as BF)?

 

[kalpit00]

To keep it simple - the unit's design does not align with its stats.

Units are either damage dealers, or they are damage soakers.

Elephant archer is designed to be a tanky pierce soaking unit. This implies you want it to be in the front line. And the unique thing about them is that it fires arrows. Its a pierce damage dealer + a soaker (Analogous to War Wagons only).

However, if it is designed to be in the front line, it will inevitably take melee damage as well, most likely from cavalry and from mass infantry (halbs)

This unit fails to find a place in the xbow-knight meta, simply because it does not dish out enough DPS (in equal resources) as compared to the xbow line, and does not function similar to the knight line (not enough mobility to raid or maneuverability, does not do melee damage)

In order to keep its uniqueness (the fact it does ranged pierce damage but also soaks pierce damage), we need make some radical changes - not in their stats, but rather in their bonus damage or design or something. Not exactly sure what though.

I am trying to think why anyone would make them right? It's a slow unit, so you want it as part of a push, not as a raiding unit. It is in the front line, soaks up all pierce damage and does some ranged damage itself.

 

[LockeAoC]

BF

 

[Baron Icey Harkonnen]

elephant archer goes pew pew

 

[LeoMontero]

they were used in DM too.

 

[akku]

they were used in DM too.

I forgot it existed 11
My bad

To keep it simple - the unit's design does not align with its stats.

Units are either damage dealers, or they are damage soakers.

Elephant archer is designed to be a tanky pierce soaking unit. This implies you want it to be in the front line. And the unique thing about them is that it fires arrows. Its a pierce damage dealer + a soaker (Analogous to War Wagons only).

However, if it is designed to be in the front line, it will inevitably take melee damage as well, most likely from cavalry and from mass infantry (halbs)

This unit fails to find a place in the xbow-knight meta, simply because it does not dish out enough DPS (in equal resources) as compared to the xbow line, and does not function similar to the knight line (not enough mobility to raid or maneuverability, does not do melee damage)

In order to keep its uniqueness (the fact it does ranged pierce damage but also soaks pierce damage), we need make some radical changes - not in their stats, but rather in their bonus damage or design or something. Not exactly sure what though.

I am trying to think why anyone would make them right? It's a slow unit, so you want it as part of a push, not as a raiding unit. It is in the front line, soaks up all pierce damage and does some ranged damage itself.

Yeah, the design definitely feels unconventional. Not necessarily a bad thing, but it's hard to find the right composition to fit these units.
I suppose the best bet is halb in front, and bombards behind. In 1v1s at least

I guess the idea is that it can keep dealing damage from range cause it doesn't die fast. Meaning, a relatively reliable source of damage from range like a tower, unlike arbs/cav archers.
At least that used to be the case, until this patch.

Now a ball of skirms melt them pretty fast. I suppose we will still see them in 4v4 BF and maybe DM though as much less scary versions of what they used to be,. But that's about it

 

[kalpit00]

I suppose the best bet is halb in front, and bombards behind. In 1v1s at least

I guess the idea is that it can keep dealing damage from range cause it doesn't die fast. Meaning, a relatively reliable source of damage from range like a tower, unlike arbs/cav archers.

In 1 v 1s as a ranged unit, it will never be effective because they are quite expensive to start massing, and they would just die to knights or monks (and even skirms now) in lower numbers, unlike say xbows or a ranged UU like plumes, rattans because they are cheaper, mobile. How the game plays out is you need a certain mass of ranged units where in you can engage with the knights, otherwise enemy just patrols and you lose the fight every single time.

And I get your point about adding halbs, but that comes much later. You wont have eco to add pikes on top of Ele Archers in castle age (and even if u did, then whats the purpose of Ele Archers 11 it doesnt do anything for u in that stage of the game)

Every unit you add should accomplish something, whether it is as a form of defense or offense, but this unit fails to be effective in the time window where other meta units can be fielded. Like by the time you have the food eco to sustain 2 range Ele Archer production, enemy will have food eco for 3 maybe 4 stable kts/camels production and he runs you over. This is not to mention enemy can also make skirms, monks, other units to counter your unit.

Compare this to the xbow, and xbow has such a huge power spike it instantly brings the game in your favor early castle age. And even if enemy clears ur first xbow wave, you do damage, get ahead in eco, make second wave, supplement with pikes and boom your enemy is screwed again. or add mangonels or kts to counter his skirms. or go imp into arbs. Xbow is so much more scalable than Ele Archers.

And Ele Archer cannot be used as a static tower like form of ranged unit, as it costs pop, unlike towers which you could make a lot of.

 

[akku]

In 1 v 1s as a ranged unit, it will never be effective because they are quite expensive to start massing, and they would just die to knights or monks (and even skirms now) in lower numbers, unlike say xbows or a ranged UU like plumes, rattans because they are cheaper, mobile. How the game plays out is you need a certain mass of ranged units where in you can engage with the knights, otherwise enemy just patrols and you lose the fight every single time.

And I get your point about adding halbs, but that comes much later. You wont have eco to add pikes on top of Ele Archers in castle age (and even if u did, then whats the purpose of Ele Archers 11 it doesnt do anything for u in that stage of the game)

Every unit you add should accomplish something, whether it is as a form of defense or offense, but this unit fails to be effective in the time window where other meta units can be fielded. Like by the time you have the food eco to sustain 2 range Ele Archer production, enemy will have food eco for 3 maybe 4 stable kts/camels production and he runs you over. This is not to mention enemy can also make skirms, monks, other units to counter your unit.

Compare this to the xbow, and xbow has such a huge power spike it instantly brings the game in your favor early castle age. And even if enemy clears ur first xbow wave, you do damage, get ahead in eco, make second wave, supplement with pikes and boom your enemy is screwed again. or add mangonels or kts to counter his skirms. or go imp into arbs. Xbow is so much more scalable than Ele Archers.

And Ele Archer cannot be used as a static tower like form of ranged unit, as it costs pop, unlike towers which you could make a lot of.

Yeah, definitely.
They were already pretty much unviable in vast majority of 1v1 scenarios.

Obviously (old) Indians weren't gonna use EA in Castle age anyway. I meant that halb + EA was a potential option for them in late imperial age. This was something they could situationally manage if they were going Crossbow/CA, and eventually transitioned.

Right now, yeah. Considering how nerfed they are, I doubt we will ever see them in 1v1s. A ball of skirms one shot them.
At least before, EA were strong enough that it was reasonable for Indians add like 10-20 of them to your army if you were going cav archer or something to begin with.

For the new 3 civs, EA is probably the last thing you'd go for in 1v1s, when there are much better options, even considering none of them have knights or cav archers!

 

[TheCapybara]

I think it's far more likely they'll get made now, given the accessibility of them in the archery range, plus some of the bonuses attached (taking 25% less bonus damage, the Bengali UT, healing automatically, Dravidians firing super fast, Gurjaras getting them much cheaper). That doesn't mean we'll suddenly see them in every game, but especially on closed maps like hideout or arena, I think they'll make a lot of sense to mix in (both 1v1s and TGs), and on a map like BF they'll be popular I reckon.

 

[kalpit00]

I think it's far more likely they'll get made now, given the accessibility of them in the archery range, plus some of the bonuses attached (taking 25% less bonus damage, the Bengali UT, healing automatically, Dravidians firing super fast, Gurjaras getting them much cheaper). That doesn't mean we'll suddenly see them in every game, but especially on closed maps like hideout or arena, I think they'll make a lot of sense to mix in (both 1v1s and TGs), and on a map like BF they'll be popular I reckon.

I mean on paper it sounds good, for 1 pop you are getting a tanky unit, the only problem is it sits behind other units and does not bring as much damage for its cost.

I agree the only scenario we will see this unit is closed campy maps like BF, cause you can wall and boom.

But in 1v1s, I dunno. I don't see how anyone would survive to get to them - they are not like battle elephants where you can just punch through siege rams or halbs or any other unit if you find an opportunity to take a great engagement (vs lower halb numbers for example). So even if you are able to boom it out, you will have to give up map control or be behind in army numbers, and then its an uphill battle from there. In case of boom games like goths spam or frank paladin powerplay, you can raid enemy, force them to react and send their army back, or also just engage and punch through. Not with this Elephant Archers though.

 

[kalpit00]

What do you guys think of Elephant Archers getting a Melee Shield (like the range shield Shrivamsha Riders have) or some Melee Armor, or maybe armor against bonus cav damage - to make them a bit viable against Cavalry?

Think about it, as it stands, Elephant Archers take no damage from xbow or CAs or other normal ranged units head on. They will still get melted by a ball of Elite skirm, something every civ has (except for turks lmao). But as we talked about, Elephant Archers would still die to knights/camels because they are so costly and in lower numbers they cannot engage.

So I am thinking about a list of ways they can handle this castle age scenario against various different plays while also creating a set of potential counters against them to not make them broken.

1) Melee Shield (I don't know why but I am super excited about this and want to talk about it first)
Imagine they have a shield which makes them impervious to the first 3 melee hits (let's not make their health bar regenerate too fast like the rider cause that might make them OP). Now, if you have some knights or camels chasing them, Elephant Archers would be able to survive so much longer in lower numbers. As for halbs, 3 first hits wouldn't make any difference as you are likely to mass a large group of halbs and run at them, and so in general Elephant Archers would still struggle against halbs - which makes sense considering they are elephants


2) Generic Melee Armor - They currently have 0 melee armor and I think part of the reason why it doesn't even get noticed is because they have such high HP, and so melee units take a bit of time at them before they die (its a very funny battle between knights vs Elephant Archers in lower numbers because neither of them can take the other out quickly - but knights still win due to lower cost, no need for micro, etc) It's a long shot and I don't know if giving them some melee armor (1 for non-elite, 2 for elite) would make a difference, but devs can test that out.
Again, Halbs and Camels would still counter them as most of the damage that would go through is Bonus Damage.

3) Armor against Bonus Cavalry Damage (about +7 would be good for non-elite, + 11 for elite?) - it sounds counter intuitive and kind of unnecessary because well they are cavalry and you want them to take bonus damage from halbs, camels, mamelukes. They will still get heavily countered by skirms, genoese xbow, Camel Archers, as they have more Archer and CA armor classes too. But this doesn't help them too much against knights - which is ok cause you can always make pikes to the army comp and still have them be resilient against camels, xbows in castle age, and it could make them somewhat viable, but still like they might die to meta play


As for the counters, I don't think any of these changes would make them uncounterable (like the Sicilian Cavaliers). Elite Skirm is the best counter, you still have monks, UUs like genoese xbow, Camel Archer, and I want to say the Devs have a new unit in their minds which they might plan to release next DLC - a specific unit which counters all Elephant Units only

 

[Lord_patito]

I keep thinking the same I thought about them when it was the UU for indians:

They should outrange Archers. They're Slow, expensive and they die to every counter unit in the game. They're not supposed to be a front line unit. They should be a super-tanky back line unit that it's really difficult to save when out maneuvered.

Being slower and having less range than archers makes no sense. even a noob like me can shoot and retreat with xbows. It's like micro against an onager, except that if you miss micro, nothing happens. Maybe one or two xbos dead. but nothing else. And it's not that your opponent have the eco to add Knights/Hussars as a meatshield (in fact, only 1 out of the 3 civs having EA have hussar to add in front. the other one have to add light cav)

 

[DracKeN]

The unit is incredibly bad. First of all, it's not a castle age unit. 90F/70G is simply way too expensive for a slow unit that is bad vs monks, skirms, camels, even pikemen. There are few units that simply aren't useful in castle age, but have a major spike in imperial (some UUs, etc.). But Elephant Archer is even worse in Imp. I guess Dravidians have the best ele with faster attack. That being said, their FU Elite Ele Archers are trading horribly vs frank skirms. Using Dravidians as an example, the civ has clearly the worst balance any AoE civ ever had. By far the worst civ in the game late game, OP water civ and broken maa archer skirm civ. And when Dravidian face Dravidian, it's sick amazing 3 hour skirm vs skirm war.

 

[USC_kiky]

I guess the design of this unit is a moving tower, except that towers don't get countered by monks, skirmishers and pikes...

 

[IYIyTh]

Probably only while also building 40-50 outposts.