Carthage- War Elephants!! unbelieveable hard?!

[JuliusCaesar83]

Hi!

i`m playing the scippii campaign and i`m at 235 BC and it is impossible to conqer sicily...
i`ve lost more than 5 family members and ca. 10 Armies!!! and i have only conqered one city...
the carthagians always build armies with 2 or more war-elephants which defeat my whole army!!!
now only build armies with 4 velites but they also were destroyed because they produce more war elephants and a perfect army!

do you have any solutions? i`m feeling helpless and disappointed...

the rest of the enemies (german, greeks, macedonians) are no problem but carthage is too mighty..
(sorry for my bad english)

i play with this settings:
campaign difficulty: medium
Battle: medium
Unit size :Huge

[hellfire]

I always dealth with elephants by shooting at them... a lot. Until they broke. Of course u need other troops, and maybe some velites or something to pin them down? if u have any infantry actually engage them put them in loose formation. Maybe set up on a hill or something. Anyways good luck

[Sitarus Originalus PM-30+]

hi all... i deal with elephants on the way i usually deal with units that are ment to be scary and bring terror to the battlefeald. What i mean is i use flaming arrows (archers have that ability) and also pigs. when pigs are set on fire they make elephants go mad! when using both of them right elephants will broke, maybe even run to the anemy units and kill some of them. also a phalangax are good to kill them but never use a cavelry unit to attack elephants cos horses are afraid of them! )sorry for writing mistakes!)

[JuliusCaesar83]

i agree with you, but it is very difficult to stop the perfect armies from the SPQR-Mod Carthage.
and you are right with that, that on the hills its much easier to beat them. when i`m in defence on hills i have never been defeated but when i have to attack on flat ground, its not easy to win and the allied force are often very stupid-but this is the work of the stupid developer which blamed themselves with the barbarian invasion, which is much more worse than the orginal bzw. the many mods which have been made from our community are much better than that add-on.

[Tacticalwithdrawal]

I did a battle where my army killed 4 units of Carthage Elephants (92 of the buggers!)

You must have velites. Set your army up with the usual 10 cohortes of infantry (Hastati/Triarii/Principes) + a general + a couple of cav and then Velites for the rest.

Your infantry can basically ignore the elephants, they are going to be squashed by them anyway and there isn't a lot you can do so just use them to concentrate on the carthage infantry.

Cav & General must be kept well away from the elephants or they will die, simple.

Velites are your elephant killers. Keep them behind the infantry, fire at will, gaurd and skirmish switched off, loose formation on. When the elephants start to approach immediately attck with your velites (ideally 2 units to each elly). But don't let your velites get engaged by other enemy troops, use your cav to keep his cav away, if you loose the velites you are stuffed.

You'll find the ellys will trample your infantry but that your velites will kill them (though you may loose a lot of velites too).

By the by, keep after those ellys even if they go beserk because
a. they seem to have a tendency to go beserk towards your troops rather than his
b. if any of them get off the battlefield the AI will heal them and you'll just have to kill them again.

Hope that helps

[Savage_Swede]

onagers help too! I know they suck at aiming but one hit is enough for the nellies to go nuts!
And alot of fire arrows can scare them too, and with velites showering them on the same time they will soon be reduced to a big pile of hamburgers.

[Hyungoku]

onagers help too! I know they suck at aiming but one hit is enough for the nellies to go nuts!
And alot of fire arrows can scare them too, and with velites showering them on the same time they will soon be reduced to a big pile of hamburgers.

lol

true true

[Tacticalwithdrawal]

onagers help too! I know they suck at aiming but one hit is enough for the nellies to go nuts!
And alot of fire arrows can scare them too, and with velites showering them on the same time they will soon be reduced to a big pile of hamburgers.

ach, I'm far too homicidal for that, I wan't to kill all the swine not scare them off the battlefield

In the battle where I wiped the 92 ellies it got to the stage where I had one velites unt reduced to 12 men chasing down the last survivng 2 ellies. They did get it eventually.

Funniest site of the lot is to put a unit of hastatii on shieldwall and 5 ranks deep, then watch them fly as the ellies plow through them

[makeshift52]

Another way is to get the infantry to fire at will and let pilums fly! (Backed up by velites of course)

[Siena72]

I just have a normal army with at least 4 velite units - when facing elephants. I keep velites in the back - with defense mode enabled, with skirmishing and fire-at-will DISABLED. if you have fire-at-will enabled - velites will fire at whatever is close to them - and will soon run out of javelins.

I wait untill elephants approach velites range, and then manually target them. Velites usually kill elephants in a few voleys.
The key is to keep velites protected from the rest of the army.

[imb39]

Hire some hoplites. Their spears are good but you have to place them very carefully. Don't let put them in phalanx mode until you have to (ie they are just about to engage the elephants) so that they can run. Spears are good against ellies. Velites are best.

[Sidmen]

I didn't find the elephants too awfully hard, sure they just charged at my general untill they ran from the spears, but they always routed into thier main force. In sieges they help me out more than my enemy, rout one unit and it runs into the other and when the mass routing is over, you have 1000's of friendly fire deaths on your opponents' side..

Like the largest battle i've ever faught, 5 egyptian stacks against my half stack Selucid fort. Thier elephants started to run after 10 minutes and killed almost 5000 of thier best troops. The rest of thier armies were killed by 2 units of milita cav.(now 2 gold chev). I just wish that front would quiet down, After killing 5 full stacks (and 7 generals) THe egyptians simply rose another 2 stacks and sieged the exact same fort again.

[makeshift52]

Still, elephants are tricky, there is no denying that!

[Sidmen]

Actually, I do deny that.. Just set your veliets to fire on command, and wait till they get close... Now Armored ellies are tough crackers.

[makeshift52]

Actually, I do deny that.. Just set your veliets to fire on command, and wait till they get close... Now Armored ellies are tough crackers.

You think they are easy?

[Tacticalwithdrawal]

he's right, ellies are easy to deal with. Armies with loads of cavalry, good archers and good infantry are the worst (eg. occassionally Greek or Macedonian), or armies with loads nasty infantry (eg. Gauls or those "£%^$$*^%! German Chosen Axemen) are more difficult.

Ellies are only a problem if you don't have the infantry battle after control (or are trying to keep your kill ratio really high). They are more danger to the AI than yourself.

Although, if you have them in your own army and time their charge from the flank just right they rock!

[makeshift52]

I swear that one of the house rules is not to use elephants against the AI...

[Tacticalwithdrawal]

I swear that one of the house rules is not to use elephants against the AI...

but it's so much fun

[Tacticalwithdrawal]

(*^&^%&^%%&%! computers

could someone kill this duplicate post please?

[Savage_Swede]

I swear that one of the house rules is not to use elephants against the AI...

Well as romans i got one troop of merc ellies from the senate just before the civil war started.
At one even battle against the scipii i only lost 14 men all thanks to the ellies!