Normally yeah, cost-efficiency isn't everything, you also have production-efficiency and once we near pop cap, pop-efficiency. But for the Elephant's case, well, they are the fastest produced unit aside a few unique units (but they are produced madly fast at STABLES), and nobody can say that Elephants are not pop-efficient either.While it's a good video and you have some good charts I think you make the same mistake that most people make when comparing the cost efficiency of unit match-ups: realistic gameplay.
In a real game between two evenly matched players they won't just have a total amount of resources to use, nor will they only make x amount of units. Unit creation speed and unit movement speed is also a big factor in a real match as well.
Camels and Halbs move faster and create faster, letting them reinforce battle quicker. In a real game it would look like the Battle Eles were winning at first but it wouldn't take long for them to be out popped by any other unit they would face.
You also can't produce that many Battle Elephants in enough time to overrun your opponent before they mix in a good amount of Halbs, Camels, or even Monks.
Most Uncounterable Unit (In Scenario Editor)
Camels are an OK soft counter, if they can gang bang on dispersed Elephants and then quickly flee before reinforcements arrive. But once you have some 5-6 Elephants close with each other, Camels can't counter anymore, they still trade "OK", at least they aren't dead weight, but they won't win a battle unless they massed a massive number advantage (3vs1), and even then the Elephants trades very well. Camels are still a nice answer if the enemy is deploying Elephants AND other cavalry units, or just a few to hit on the reinforcements line and so on, but little more. Camels DOES NOT get more bonus against Elephants, unlike Halberdiers, basically.
Then you have Halberdiers. They do hard counter in cost efficiency and they aren't that terrible in pop efficiency, but hey, Halberdiers are much worst against all other units that Elephants are, and Battle Elephants with Husbandry moves almost at the same speed than Halberdiers to use the "speed argument" to start with.
Now what usually restricts Elephants is their high cost, but the Malay discount is obscenely high. Still, despite Battle Elephants are hard to hard counter, that is just a way too high focus into countering. Sometimes games aren't decided by who counter the other better, but just who makes overall better trades and battles, and Battle Elephants definitively trades well, but it is not the most insane thing neither, they still move relatively slowly, are a melee unit, cost a lot to upgrade/deploy and so on.
Still, aside Malays, the other Elephant civs struggles with their very high costs, and even Malays struggles with the upgrading costs. Vietnamese ones lacks Husbandry, Burmese ones lacks any decent support unit to handle Pikes, Khmer are just a way too slow of a civ already and the game will be over before they can support their Elephants with Scorpions well, and well, Malay are definitively in the best spot for Elephants, but in exchange their Elephants are a bit lackluster once pop cap is hit, specially against archers.
Though one relevant problem is that he assumed food values are the same than gold or wood ones. Food is pretty expensive for Castle Age and is still a bit costly by Post-Imperial. Since Battle Elephants uses a lot of food compared to gold, using altered values likely will still make Malay Elephants pretty bold before pop cap or by a few minutes into it, but less insanely.
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