Mercenary Elephants

[Seleukos I Nikator]

I had a game playing as the Turks where I could get elephant units as mercenaries (at extortionate expense) in the Baghdad region, by around the time of the timurid invasion.

Does this always happen?

Any other regions where you can get elephant mercs?

Gotta love those ele's.

[antaeus]

it always happens, i cant remember if they have the same trigger as the timurids. i think you can get both elephants with canon and musket, but they dont arrive at the same time..

i stumbled onto them quite by accident during a general bribing spree one game playing as england or france.. then i bought them and realised i was half the map from home with really expensive elephants and a 20+ turn journey back to the west

[pwijnands]

You can get elephants once gunpowder is discovered. It takes between 25 and 50 turns for a single unit to be created, but I'm not sure if this starts when gunpowder is invented or if it starts at the start of the campaign (so an elephant unit is readily available as soon as gunpowder is invented).
You can get both types (artillery and musket) from Jedda, Mosul and Baghdad.

[Seleukos I Nikator]

SWEET

I love having elephants in my army, more as a statement of power than for actual tactical reasons.

[Aeneas Veneratio]

A bunch of Elephants with cannons on a mountain top + only one entrance to the top for the enemy = BUTCHER TIME!!

[Lost Crusader]

Elephant artillery are especially good for all-cavalry army, since you can have an artillery support without reducing your speed in the campaign map.

[antaeus]

yeah they are great, i rarely send them into a melee though, as they get scared quickly. the artillery is devastating and cause its mounted on elephants it can fire well over your army - so i sit them at the back and use them as more mobile artillery.

[Black Prince IV]

In my french campaign I had taken the whole map except the mid east. I had finally ot almost all of it when the Mongols attacked Antioch. I lost a few cities but I fought back and killed most of them. I only had to take out one more army and was chasing them through the Desert and picked up some elephants in the way.

[Surgeon]

Anyone know if the elephant with the SSM launcher is available in the default campaign? Or is it a unit that was never used and is just sitting around in the code?

[Old Geezer]

Elephant units are vastly over rated. The two I hired ran amok almost immediately upon taking flaming fire from Mongols (not Timmurids). It was a good lesson. The Timmurid elephants were more of a liability for them because they caused them more casualties from running amok among their owm troops than they did me. A serpentine or two and several flaming trebs or ballista and they go nuts. You just have to make sure that there is some support for the artillery to hide behind when the cavalry charges them.