Elephants or panzers ?

[Narakir]

I'm playing parthia on VH/VH and I was progressing quite well. Then I encountered those nasty beast, seleucids had hired some mercenaries elephants who have about 80+ defence, parthia have no javelins throwers except it's early general but it isn't enought.

I fought the seleucid army and crushed them prety easly except those elephants panzers, I shot them with billions of arrows and charged them with spear infantry and with heavy cavalry (yep it's suicidal) on the back they just killed everything without a lose ! Quite disgusted I abanoned the battle and did some tests.

I tried a front charge of four elite phalanx units with the same elephants I lost one and killed them all, even if my panzers very blocked during two minutes by the pikes . Then I tried to fight them with 6 units of numidian javeliners, I hopefully killed them but spent half of all my javeliers ammo . Back to my parthian game wondering if I'll have to wait two centuries to have some mounted rocket lunchers to kill them... or is this something I missed ?

[DARTH VADER]

Heavy cavalry will not be of use against elephants or any cavalry..maybe to delay them.
Also spearmen should fight them by holding their position in guard mode than disrupt and try to encircle them.
In fact historically elephants were defeated only by skirmishing (javelineers mostly) and provoke of fear by mass of troops.
So by having a mass of troops holding them in place for a long time will make them progressively to fear and run.

[Gaius Baltar]

Archers firing fire arrows does it everytime for me.

[Narakir]

I've tried both, a pack of 2000 numidan spearmen who have good moral et dosent' tire easly, no succes and no elephant dead. Same thing with the same number of archers raining a hell of arrows on them, nothing... I've looked thier stats those monstrer have about 52 armour and 38 in defense skill so 90 in defense and 15 hitpoint ! isn't that realy too much ? What a faction without peltast can do against that ?

[Pelican Man]

Any faction can do something against that. All they have to do really is just hire some mercenary peltasts and use them for just in case you see an army heading for you with elephants. preperation my friend, preperation. Ele's are not that bad to deal with. hold them down, and fire from all sides. then its over for them. Yes, they are tough sob's, but doesnt mean they can't be killed. I mean, who would have ever thought superman would ever get hurt???

Please disregard that last statement.

= )

[DARTH VADER]

Will soon provide a fix for you to test..to be used for 8.0.
I think it provides better balance. I ALWAYS hear your requests.

[Ahlerich]

hm i havent faced elephants yet...but the difficulty vh gives the enemy a lot of bonuses.
i rememebr when i first tried 7.5 on very hard...i played one unit of my german phalanx against one unit of merc/rebel spearmen. my spearmen got massacred and the last few routed
so 120 spearman vs 120 germanic phalanx(without beeing flanked)
result ~10 spearman dead and 100 phalanx dead..the rest running.
i have not played very hard since then but i find playing darth mod on very hard gets too frustrating (enemy too hardy) so i think very hard is a setting only for ppl who really like to fight for surviving and throw 2 stacks against one of ai. well there might be more superior factions then the germans, where very hard is more reasonable, i dont know. playing german on very hard does not make much sense i think. there is a point when the enemy is too hard and it doesnt make fun anymore (has nothing to do with strategy)

[Narakir]

I finaly crushed those tanks... hopefuly there was a unit of mercenary peltasts to hire . Anyway giving some skirmishers to the parthians sould be a good idea, RTR did it and I don't think that it will ruin the balance.

@Ahlerich I always play very hard, but I agree it's too frustrating to play it with factions based on HtH fighting like barbs or romans, but if you play horse archers this dosen't change anything.

I've tried a macedon game this morning and I was quite frustrated by something wierd with the phalanxes versus the hoplites, I foight greece and it seems thant hoplites bash the phalanx and break it's formation quickly and kill the phalangiste with thier swords actualy it's like no phalanx can hold against any unit of shorter spears hoplites, is it normal ?

[Ahlerich]

i was a little disappointed with the strenght of phalanx formations against other enemys also.
i acually raised the phalanx attacks by 1 or 2 points which is usually dangerous coz little changes can throw of the balance , but oh well a useless phalanx in a germanic army isno good

[DARTH VADER]

Ahlerich is more than right in his saying of Very Hard battle settings. But now you should all try the new fix here: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=50026

I really thank you all for the feedback.