Fortuna Orbis Preview: War Elephants

**Caligula Caesar** · January 11, 2011, 03:00 PM

They will have one similar to the Carthaginian one, and of course the Successor Indian Elephant should they be able to acquire it (these will be recruitable in several places, such as Syria, and might also be a mercenary troop).

**demagogos nicator** · January 13, 2011, 03:28 PM

Thanks for reply, it sounds good

**demagogos nicator** · February 16, 2011, 03:08 PM

Really did the crew of the Helenistic and Carthaginian elephants go to the battle unarmored? I think especially the mahouts were quite an easy target for the enemy archers.

**Boom S** · February 16, 2011, 03:59 PM

Originally Posted by demagogos nicator

Really did the crew of the Helenistic and Carthaginian elephants go to the battle unarmored? I think especially the mahouts were quite an easy target for the enemy archers.

apparently yes, they were unarmoured. check montvert's 'the armies of bactria'. it's not the same attire as the ones here though so that might change in the future. in reality it's not as easy to hit one person on a fast moving animal from afar as it sounds. the archers are better advised to rain arrows on massed enemy troops rather than try sniping which would more often than not be futile.

oh and RTW doesn't allow separate models for crew and mahout, so that's another restriction.

**demagogos nicator** · February 17, 2011, 01:22 PM

Thanks for quick response. Your arguments seems to be logical

**Carados** · June 19, 2011, 02:30 PM

Is there a towered Carthaginian elephant at all, or is the RTR6 version good enough as is?

**Caligula Caesar** · June 20, 2011, 01:42 PM

I'll leave the full explanation to Boom, but he has researched the matter and concluded that the references interpreted as being about African elephants with towers are inconclusive and one of the African forest elephants would not be strong enough to carry a tower.

**CanOmer** · June 23, 2011, 01:29 AM

Nice elephants.

When these beasts moving, will the bells around its neck create sound?

**laslas** · July 30, 2011, 02:59 AM

looks very good

**Wandalstouring** · October 19, 2011, 10:24 AM

Can Boom please send me a short list of his sources?
I'm also going into this elephant issue and I would suggest roughly 3 sizes for elephants. The smallest from western North Africa, a medium size close to the maximum for East Africa and Egypt(going south to hunt) and the maximum size for India.

I'm not sure the biggest specimen of the North African loxondonta couldn't wear a tower and there is at least one reference to a kind of structure on the back of these animals. However, the coins seem to be quite clear in depicting one rider on one elephant for North Africa, so this was probably normal and anything else was exceptional. However, that a land mammal of about 2 tons should be only capabale of carrying one man seems a bit questionable to me. It's me guessing, but possibly the Western North African loxodonta were rather meagre, many even close to only a ton. This would fit nicely with the coins, but that means several things for the gameplay: they are much weaker and much less expensive than the Indian elephas. The guy riding them in North Africa probably has a shield, his elephant goad and some javelins.
On the other hand if that was the case for all tamed lxodonta, Ptolemy seems a bit insane commanding these loxodonta to attack the elephas at the battle of Raphia. So if food and habitat can make a difference, an animal the size of today's Loxodonta Africana Cyclotis could be used to attack Elephas Maximas Indicus. And Ptolemy seems to have gone quite far south to fetch his specimen.
It's me guessing again, but could one explanation be that there were the very meagre and small North African elephants used by the Numidians, Carthage and Rome, while Egypt, Ethipia, Nubia and the like had slightly bigger loxodonta from different hunting grounds. And last there were the Indian imports of elephas. So I would argue for 3 different kinds of elephants. Very tiny ones from western North Africa and East African ones that are almost the size of the Indian ones. Of course, they are all still expensive because elephants eat a lot.
To me things seem to make sense if under exceptional circumstances a bigger elephant could be acquired by the western North Africans (through trans Sahara trade or grooming small loxodonta babies). That's probably the animal that may have had some wooden structure on its back. That structure in my opinion must be very light, like sticks and some leather, just to give some missile defense and keep one guy on the back from falling down, but it's likely not really what we consider a howdah today. I've seen an image somewhere of elephants carrying bags on the sides and in each bag on each side was a missile armed soldier. Modify that into one bag on top with some supportive wicker/basket like and you get what I imagine to be mistaken for a howdah (the guy on top sits on a blanket on the elephant). The cutting by loxodonta with this howdah described for Hannibal's march is in my opinion probably someone in a secure position on their back cutting the high branches and this kind of bag/basket would be sufficient and light enough in my opinion. But as I said these are probably exceptional (just like this Loxodonta Africana Africana reported at 4m and 10 tons).
Just my 2 cents. Perhaps there are more sources on the topic that shed a different light on it.

**Caligula Caesar** · October 25, 2011, 09:40 AM

I'm trying to contact Boom about it.

**Boom S** · March 18, 2018, 08:12 AM

7 years later...
the Loxodonta is the biggest of the 3 ele sub-species, but has never been succesfully domesticated. if it was, clearly towers would have been possible but only the much smaller forest ele was tamed & used in battle, so...